Flag it and mov... errr.. different flag

July 23, 2012 1:24 PM

I was reading through a thread about health care and thought how nice it would be to have a script that would put a national flag next to the user's name so I could keep track of what country they live in. Wondering if anyone out there with such skills would help make my wish come true IF it is even possible based on the information currently in user profiles.
posted by terrapin to MetaFilter-Related at 1:24 PM (111 comments total)

if this idea gets any traction, it should be something people turn on, not something based upon profile info.
posted by nadawi at 1:29 PM on July 23, 2012 [3 favorites]

I have the same request - but for Arsenal fans.
posted by Jofus at 1:33 PM on July 23, 2012 [23 favorites]

I would both love this, as I find myself clicking through to see if someone's profile gives information about their geographical location fairly regularly, and insist on a skull and crossbones for myself. So I don't think too much choice in the matter would all that useful.
posted by straw at 1:34 PM on July 23, 2012

it would solve the real problem if people just said "In France" or "In the USA" etc. Same is true of profession (e.g. "As a bricklayer..."), religion, race, sex, gender, pet-ownership-status, etc. Trying to suck that info out of profiles will solve the problem sometimes, but it will make it even worse in general because people will state the useful info even less, because they will rely on the profile info.

all that aside, I don't want a USA flag next to my name. I am a netizen.
posted by rebent at 1:38 PM on July 23, 2012 [2 favorites]

It's totally understandable to want something like this when you're reading a thread about health care. Now, think about the feature in any sort of thread aside from that. The way I see it it's either superfluous or trouble. (Trouble is usually superfluous too.)
posted by carsonb at 1:38 PM on July 23, 2012 [3 favorites]

I'd be for it if it was something we could turn on.
posted by josher71 at 1:39 PM on July 23, 2012

Yeah, I can't imagine wanting a "Team USA" flag next to my name, although I can totally sympathize with the pony request. It would be interesting in some contexts.
posted by alms at 1:40 PM on July 23, 2012

I'm sure this could be worked up with a Greasemonkey script.
posted by Chrysostom at 1:42 PM on July 23, 2012 [4 favorites]

I would like an icon that showed whether or not the commenter was wearing pants. Perhaps additional icons for kilts and whatnot.
posted by bondcliff at 1:42 PM on July 23, 2012 [12 favorites]

One analogous to this one.
posted by Chrysostom at 1:46 PM on July 23, 2012

Maybe we could use our words instead, as rebent says?
posted by Sidhedevil at 1:47 PM on July 23, 2012

I would like an icon that showed whether or not the commenter was wearing pants. Perhaps additional icons for kilts and whatnot.

I fear that this script would end up showing 'pantsless' icons for every name but my own. Then I would feel sad reading Mefi.
posted by frimble at 1:57 PM on July 23, 2012 [2 favorites]

I can see how it would cause a lot more confusion in some cases. My location is in my profile, but has little bearing on the perspective I bring to most discussions, since where I live right now is not a place I identify with at all.
posted by bardophile at 1:58 PM on July 23, 2012 [1 favorite]

It sounds like the request is for a greasemonkey/etc. script rather than a site feature.
posted by feloniousmonk at 1:58 PM on July 23, 2012

Tags: greasemonkey, script.... I OPPOSE THIS SITE FEATURE REQUEST
posted by shakespeherian at 1:59 PM on July 23, 2012 [3 favorites]

you forgot the PANTS tag
posted by elizardbits at 2:03 PM on July 23, 2012

If any site interaction would be involved it might be an open field where members opted in by entering something in it that would match up. Leaving it blank or putting in like Jambandistan would probably result in nothing being displayed next to a user's name.

And I wouldn't want a US of A flag either as I am a citizen of Vermont.
posted by terrapin at 2:03 PM on July 23, 2012 [2 favorites]

Jambandistan would show a little psychedelically-painted VW Microbus.
posted by shakespeherian at 2:04 PM on July 23, 2012

If expats want to identify with their native land or adopted land they could. Again no one would be forced to use it but it could prove useful in a variety of places including AskMe especially in travel-related threads.
posted by terrapin at 2:06 PM on July 23, 2012

It'd be pretty involved for a Greasemonkey script. Lots of lookups, caching, local stores of flag icons, syncing when people change their profile data. Not your typical GM script. It'd be easier if it was done server-side.
posted by Blazecock Pileon at 2:15 PM on July 23, 2012 [1 favorite]

It'd be easier if it was done server-side.

True, but this isn't something we're going to do on the server side. So if this is going to happen it will need to be an outside script.
posted by pb (staff) at 2:19 PM on July 23, 2012 [3 favorites]

So you want other people to use a national flag but you don't want to use one yourself? I am honestly confused.
posted by Sidhedevil at 2:20 PM on July 23, 2012 [1 favorite]

terrapin: "Leaving it blank or putting in like Jambandistan would probably result in nothing being displayed next to a user's name."

Pantlessistan?
posted by deborah at 2:21 PM on July 23, 2012

A variation of this would be really helpful for the Furry community.
posted by Brandon Blatcher at 2:22 PM on July 23, 2012 [1 favorite]

I think the main outcome of anyone writing such a script would be fewer people giving their nation of residence in their profiles and/or people borking the spellings of their nations of residence in their profiles so that they couldn't be scraped for info by a flag generator.
posted by Sidhedevil at 2:23 PM on July 23, 2012 [3 favorites]

I want a hat by my username, not a flag.
posted by languagehat at 2:23 PM on July 23, 2012 [4 favorites]

On the geographic pony front I would like another option or two under contacts. I try to keep a little track of country-of-origin mefites and country-of-residence mefites, I've been using "geographic:neighbour" and "geographic:none" but always forget which is which. Could we get "countryman" or something?
posted by Iteki at 2:30 PM on July 23, 2012 [1 favorite]

This sounds great, speaking as someone who is always curious about traveling to new countries and experiencing different cultures, however my inner prudishness disguised by an outward appearance of joviality, combined with spells of narrow-mindedness might cause me to develop undue prejudices against certain community members.

obscurator ♐
posted by obscurator at 2:33 PM on July 23, 2012

Can I have an anarcho-syndicalist flag? I look best in red and black.
posted by Stagger Lee at 2:45 PM on July 23, 2012 [1 favorite]

Sorry Iteki, our contact categories are based on the XFN options and we're going to stick with those. We've discussed extending those in the past and we don't want to. You might use one of the other options available to keep track of folks in a different way. Whatever you choose might not be meaningful to others looking at your contact list, but if it works for you it could work.
posted by pb (staff) at 2:48 PM on July 23, 2012 [1 favorite]

Could we design our own flags?
posted by Cranberry at 2:49 PM on July 23, 2012

Frequently someone will remark "where I live..." but have no country/city identity in the the thread or in the profile. Could residential identification - at least by area - be more strongly required of sign-ups?
posted by Cranberry at 2:52 PM on July 23, 2012

I think asking someone To clarify where they are from is a better solution than a requirement making everyone easier to stalk.
posted by griphus at 2:57 PM on July 23, 2012 [2 favorites]

Frequently someone will remark "where I live..." but have no country/city identity in the the thread or in the profile. Could residential identification - at least by area - be more strongly required of sign-ups?

Frequently (not in my case), that's intentional. Some people have perfectly good reasons for not wanting their location known. Including, "I just don't want people on the internet to know where I live."
posted by Gygesringtone at 2:58 PM on July 23, 2012 [4 favorites]

Stagger Lee, I could do you a pretty one.

Comparing the amazing shit my fellow MeFites post about, say, a news article, compared to the inevitably facepalmogenic comments at the end of the article itself leads me to request, ponyfully, that MetaFilter simply start granting citizenship and issuing passports.
posted by kengraham at 2:59 PM on July 23, 2012 [6 favorites]

Could residential identification - at least by area - be more strongly required of sign-ups?

Absolutely not.
posted by DarlingBri at 3:01 PM on July 23, 2012 [4 favorites]

Cranberry: “Frequently someone will remark "where I live..." but have no country/city identity in the the thread or in the profile. Could residential identification - at least by area - be more strongly required of sign-ups?”

I think it's incredibly refreshing that Metafilter doesn't push people to reveal private details like a lot of other sites do, and I am very happy that the mods have not gone any further in that direction. Also, thanks, mods, for not automating the scraping of geo data, even if it might seem convenient to some.
posted by koeselitz at 3:03 PM on July 23, 2012 [4 favorites]

I am starting to think it would be very good for the edit screen for the profile to be more specific about the fact that putting any information on it at all means that others may use that information in unforeseen ways.

It seems like every week there's a new request to drag profile information into the larger context of the site. People who don't read metatalk might never realize how their information may be used. A good example is askme, where people are always admonishing others to take their location and other information out of their profile on sensitive questions because they know exactly where that person is.
posted by winna at 3:04 PM on July 23, 2012 [1 favorite]

Where I live isn't actually where I'm from, and where I'm from is also different from my parents' nationality (ie household mores I grew up with). So....would I get a triple flag?
posted by bquarters at 3:13 PM on July 23, 2012

I have an idea: how about if those folks who routinely balk at suggestions like this simply--and I know this may sound crazy--don't put information online if they're not ok with everyone seeing it?

Instead of getting all bent out of shape and respect-mah-privicah! about it, just keep yours bare.
posted by phunniemee at 3:14 PM on July 23, 2012 [2 favorites]

Or how about this request just stays a request and that people opt in or out were it to actually be realized. I put my living-in city in because I like the IRL invites etc. but I am not defined by where I live, as mentioned above.
posted by bquarters at 3:16 PM on July 23, 2012

phunniemee: “I have an idea: how about if those folks who routinely balk at suggestions like this simply--and I know this may sound crazy--don't put information online if they're not ok with everyone seeing it? Instead of getting all bent out of shape and respect-mah-privicah! about it, just keep yours bare.”

That would constitute a complete change of site policy, and as such seems like a bad idea.
posted by koeselitz at 3:18 PM on July 23, 2012

I transcend the nation-state paradigm.
posted by Egg Shen at 3:22 PM on July 23, 2012

I'm not saying we should institute any of these things (pantslessness icons, etc), I'm just saying that if you're uncomfortable with everyone knowing that you're pantsless, you probably shouldn't put it anywhere on the internet, ever.

It always seems that when a post like this comes up, there's a contingent of folks who see something like this as a huge, whopping invasion of privacy, when in reality, that information is right there anyway for everyone to see.
posted by phunniemee at 3:23 PM on July 23, 2012

No, I just think it's silly. My full legal name is in my profile. My city and state and nation of residence is in my profile. But I do not want anyone assigning me a fucking flag.

I don't salute my nation's flag. I don't venerate my nation's flag. I hate flag culture in general. Now someone wants to tag me with a flag for their convenience, because they're too lazy to click through to my profile or ask me where I live, and if I am referring to the state of affairs in that particular jurisdiction? I prefer not to, thanks.
posted by Sidhedevil at 3:31 PM on July 23, 2012 [5 favorites]

Flagged as flagist
posted by found missing at 3:32 PM on July 23, 2012

Hmm. I did not realize so many MeFites were in witness protection programs.
posted by Cranberry at 3:33 PM on July 23, 2012 [4 favorites]

I smell bacon with Cranberry sauce.

Y'all should smell hamburger.
posted by kengraham at 3:51 PM on July 23, 2012

It always seems that when a post like this comes up, there's a contingent of folks who see something like this as a huge, whopping invasion of privacy, when in reality, that information is right there anyway for everyone to see.

Since it bothers you, not dealing with those comments is an option.
posted by Brandon Blatcher at 3:54 PM on July 23, 2012

No. This is a terrible idea. Because then I'll be squinting at those little flag icons and wondering "is that Norway or Iceland? Is that the Netherlands or Russia? And whose flag is that one?" And then I'll just get aggravated.
posted by adamrice at 4:00 PM on July 23, 2012

Would also make Olympic threads more fun.
posted by 2bucksplus at 4:00 PM on July 23, 2012

I think much of the value I could contribute to a healthcare thread comes from having lived many years in different countries with different systems and experienced the differences firsthand. A (single) flag would hide rather than highlight where I'm coming from.
posted by -harlequin- at 4:01 PM on July 23, 2012

Hmm. I did not realize so many MeFites were in witness protection programs.

So, when exactly are my privacy concerns worth more than your idle curiosity? Is it when I've got an abusive ex-spouse? What about if it would hurt family and friends if my posts were connected to me specifically? Or maybe if I would be harassed for my religious beliefs?

You're requesting a change to the amount of information required to participate on the site, information that is potentially harmful to the person giving it. I don't think that sarcastically belittling the people concerned with the possible effects of that change is going to be a good strategy for winning them over.
posted by Gygesringtone at 4:07 PM on July 23, 2012 [1 favorite]

Could residential identification - at least by area - be more strongly required of sign-ups?

Why? MeFi doesn't require users to enter any personal information at all. You can sign up with nothing but a user name and a sign up date. Why should location be any different?

Many users, including myself, treasure that anonymity. It's part of what gives the site its integrity.

This is a solved problem. If you want to know where someone is from, just ask. If they want to tell you, they will.
posted by His thoughts were red thoughts at 4:11 PM on July 23, 2012 [1 favorite]

Hmm. I did not realize so many MeFites were in witness protection programs.

And I didn't realise that some of them were such nosy bastards.

You're not entitled to know anything - anything - about me. So when you act like you are, you just look like an arrogant tool.
posted by His thoughts were red thoughts at 4:15 PM on July 23, 2012 [2 favorites]

I would like to encourage the voices of those suggesting the "Words!" option, as I think it would be really interesting and valuable to learn more about the diversity of experiences on Metafilter. I have chosen to reveal more than I feel comfortable with, sometimes, on this site, but I've left my location fairly wide so that I get IRL notices but it's not that close by. I would not want a flag next to my name.

On the issue of pants I, um, take the Fifth.
posted by jetlagaddict at 4:21 PM on July 23, 2012

koeselitz: Also, thanks, mods, for not automating the scraping of geo data, even if it might seem convenient to some.

I don't know how to tell you this...
posted by Kattullus at 4:27 PM on July 23, 2012 [4 favorites]

I have no idea why some people feel the need for affinity with a flag. The great thing about MetaFilter is we're MeFites first.
posted by KokuRyu at 4:45 PM on July 23, 2012 [1 favorite]

The great thing about MetaFilter is we're MeFites first.

I pledge allegiance to the snark...
posted by His thoughts were red thoughts at 4:47 PM on July 23, 2012 [2 favorites]

I imagine that requiring - or strongly encouraging - people to put geographic info in their profiles when they sign up will just mean that suddenly, Central Asia will have a very high concentration of mefites.
posted by rtha at 4:58 PM on July 23, 2012 [4 favorites]

Because then I'll be squinting at those little flag icons and wondering "is that Norway or Iceland? Is that the Netherlands or Russia? And whose flag is that one?" And then I'll just get aggravated.

Then there is the Romania/Chad problem.
posted by ricochet biscuit at 5:03 PM on July 23, 2012 [1 favorite]

The great thing about MetaFilter is we're MeFites first.

Uh no, not if you aren't wearing the Monday jacket and matching scarf.
posted by Brandon Blatcher at 5:09 PM on July 23, 2012 [1 favorite]

Ahahahaha how about no.

...that being said, I would one day like to become a full citizen of Pantlessistan, but that oath-swearing bit where you have to formally revoke all pants in your possession past and present is tough. If I apply for permanent residency, can I keep two pairs?
posted by zennish at 5:12 PM on July 23, 2012

The natural endnpoint of this feature would be mandatory bear codes under every user name.
posted by The Whelk at 5:18 PM on July 23, 2012 [1 favorite]

I have no idea why some people feel the need for affinity with a flag. The great thing about MetaFilter is we're MeFites first.
posted by KokuRyu at 12:45 AM on July 24

You speak for yourself. I'm a curmudgeon first, a drunk second, a demon in the sack third and a Mefite, oh, about eighty-ninth.
posted by Decani at 5:42 PM on July 23, 2012 [2 favorites]

You sure you want to call yourself an eighty-ninth level Mefite?
posted by Brandon Blatcher at 5:45 PM on July 23, 2012

The natural endpoint of this feature would be mandatory bear codes under every user name.

*beep...*
*beep...*
*beep...*
*Rowr!*
posted by CrystalDave at 5:45 PM on July 23, 2012

The natural endnpoint of this feature would be mandatory bear codes under every user name.

Is this part of that homosexual agenda I've heard so much about?
posted by benito.strauss at 5:47 PM on July 23, 2012

bear code
posted by drinkyclown at 5:48 PM on July 23, 2012 [1 favorite]

So if we go this way, can we augment the gender field in the profile with a little butt icon to which we can apply hanky codes?
posted by straw at 5:51 PM on July 23, 2012

But seriously, didn't some user (Scientist, maybe?) float an idea like for annotating names with scientific affiliations, for those who have them? Maybe see if he/she managed to greasemonkey up something.

For my part, I wouldn't use this, as I like being forced to take people based just on what they're saying.
posted by benito.strauss at 5:51 PM on July 23, 2012

When you get to be a 95th level MeFite, pb lets you look in the back of the server. The server is full of stars beans.
posted by arcticseal at 6:15 PM on July 23, 2012 [1 favorite]

The server is full of stars beans bears.
posted by jessamyn (staff) at 6:18 PM on July 23, 2012 [1 favorite]

benito.strauss: "But seriously, didn't some user (Scientist, maybe?) float an idea like for annotating names with scientific affiliations, for those who have them?"

This is the scientist script.
posted by Chrysostom at 6:35 PM on July 23, 2012

ricochet biscuit: "Then there is the Romania/Chad problem."
I didn't know about that. That is amazing.
posted by adamrice at 7:41 PM on July 23, 2012

No man, no madness
Though their sad power may prevail
Can possess, conquer, my country's heart
They rise to fail
She is eternal
Long before nations' lines were drawn
When no flags flew, when no armies stood
My land was born

And you ask me why I love her
Through wars, death and despair
She is the constant, we who don't care
And you wonder will I leave her - but how?
I cross over borders but I'm still there now

How can I leave her?
Where would I start?
Let man's petty nations tear themselves apart
My land's only borders lie around my heart *
posted by hippybear at 7:51 PM on July 23, 2012 [1 favorite]

I like assuming that someone is also from my country (the U.S.). Later another comment tips me off that the thing I read about politics/religion/food/people/whatever was written by someone NOT from the U.S......

And suddenly I'm reminded that I am an unimportant person among BILLIONS and one of those billions of people who is not from my safe self-important little culture made an observation that I agree with. And I just feel....happier. Calmer, because I'm not as wrapped up in my own shit for a while but it's also not escapism into the internet. It feels like.....expansion. Like a Metafilter virus fed by humanism and experiences. I try to get this "IRL" but real life doesn't let me go back and reread a conversation even though I wish I could 'cause I was annoyed, tired, distracted, hyper, angry, sick, or whatever else.

I'm exhausted so this may sound like nonsense.
posted by DisreputableDog at 9:59 PM on July 23, 2012 [3 favorites]

I get little microscope icons near people's names if they self identify as a scientist, yeah. Do I value their opinions more? Not really. Does my heart swell with a sense of solidarity every time I see one? A little bit, maybe, but it's not statistically significant.

Personally, I'd like this only instead of a US flags for US residents, state flags. The thing is, in an ask me, I might tell someone from Illinois or Missouri who needs to plane some wood down to 5/8ths to swing by my place and we can take care of it in about 5 minutes. Making that offer to someone from Oregon is more like taunting than offering help.
posted by Kid Charlemagne at 11:04 PM on July 23, 2012

The script that Bondcliff requested. It sadly confirms my suspicions about the levels of pants-freedom other people enjoy.
posted by frimble at 11:40 PM on July 23, 2012

I think what we need here is user-identifiable favicons. Like, a little 15x15 user-configurable icon that you can have, and then if you have one and other people have the box checked that says they want to see 'em, then they appear in the bylines.

Yes, I know this is not going to happen. I still think it would be cool.

And yeah I bet this could be done without too much trouble by someone handier than me. We already have Plutor's Mark Librarian Contributions script and the Mark Scientist Contributions script that I shamlessly ripped off from that. They display graphics through some text-to-image format that I totally forget the name of right now (that is how shamelessly I copied Plutor's script) which is a pretty sweet hack. There's no reason in principle why flags couldn't be displayed similarly.

Now, the Mark Contributions scripts work by querying the contacts of a particular user (Jessamyn for Librarians, me for Scientists) and then seeing who they have marked as a colleague. There's presumably no reason why a script couldn't query peoples' profiles, check to see what's in the Location field, attempt to parse it (by feeding the coordinates, if there are coordinates, into Google Maps perhaps? Or by trawling the string for things like city names, country names, state abbreviations? That would probably be the hardest part of the script.) and then assign the appropriate flag to the user's byline if it was able to get something sensible out of the parsing.

This is not something that I am capable of doing but I bet someone like Plutor could do it if he wanted. If anybody out there is good at javascript and wants to make this happen, I bet it could be done.
posted by Scientist at 12:06 AM on July 24, 2012

Wasn't the scientist thing opt in? Or at least opt out? I'm personally not that keen on taking stuff from profiles and redisplaying it out of context without express permission, and that seems to be what's being discussed here. If you want to make an opt-in grease monkey then go for it (but please leave me out of it).

Also I don't think this will actually be all that helpful for health questions. It's got nothing to do with where or what we identify with, just what we know about. And that isn't always tied to where we currently live. I know a lot about navigating the health system in New Zealand, for example, and basically nothing about how it works in Ireland, but the latter is where I'm currently living. I'm sure there is also a proportion of people with incorrect or out of date locations in their profiles (I've seen it mentioned in ask.me occasionally). So a little flag could be quite misleading.

As with everything else I think it's much better to just state why or how the answerer knows what they're talking about in the answer, or link to authoritative sources that make it moot, rather than rely on scraping in stuff out of our profile which was likely put there for totally unrelated reasons anyway.
posted by shelleycat at 1:19 AM on July 24, 2012

rtha: "I imagine that requiring - or strongly encouraging - people to put geographic info in their profiles when they sign up will just mean that suddenly, Central Asia will have a very high concentration of mefites"

TASHKENT MEETUP!!
posted by barnacles at 1:23 AM on July 24, 2012 [2 favorites]

Ok, I now have a script that displays a flag next to peoples' name. The flag has no nation or anything on it, and is plain #CC0 Mefi gold.

When clicked, it pulls the location field, exactly as written, from the user's info and displays it next to their name. So, it doesn't splash national colours next to your name, and just loads the location field inline.

I haven't yet uploaded it anywhere, but if there aren't major objections to this conception, as seen here (top unclicked, bottom clicked), I can.
posted by frimble at 1:27 AM on July 24, 2012

As in a similar recent MeTa, it seems to me that a bunch of people are confused and think that this is a request for a change on how MetaFilter works. It's not.

Modern browsers support plugins/extensions which allow users to customize and script web sites they visit. So, what is being asked about/for, someone would need to download and install the plugin/extension that allows one to run scripts on various websites, and then download and install the specific script written to add the flags. Only the people who did this would see those flags. It would be, in my frank estimation, no more than 100 people. If that many.

Far, far more people will click on your username and check your profile to satisfy some curiosity, including seeing where you live.

"I think the main outcome of anyone writing such a script would be fewer people giving their nation of residence in their profiles and/or people borking the spellings of their nations of residence in their profiles so that they couldn't be scraped for info by a flag generator."

No, the main outcome of anyone writing such a script would be that a handful of people use it and everyone else is entirely oblivious to its existence. How many other such scripts are you aware of? You probably know of scientist's script because it's mentioned in this thread. What others?

I can understand people not wanting MetaFilter itself to expand the profile data's visibility, either across the site or to the rest of the Internet. I can also understand people not wanting someone to scrape profile data and using it in some publicly visible way.

What I don't understand is people not wanting individual mefites to use profile data in ways that they're implicitly already using it — a browser script like we're discussing only eliminates a click for a mefite who has it installed, it affects no one else's experience of MetaFilter.

And, anyway, there is absolutely no way that you can control this except to not put that information in your profile in the first place. It's available to logged-in mefites, they can control how their browser accesses and displays that data to them and no one else has any control over that whatsoever. It's tilting at windmills to complain about such scripts and, more to the point, the use of such scripts is extremely limited and dwarfed by the number of people who access that information in the traditional way...for purposes that you probably don't like. Such as stalking you online, or whatever. If you're antsy about people knowing this stuff, then don't put it in your profile in the first place.
posted by Ivan Fyodorovich at 2:20 AM on July 24, 2012 [4 favorites]

Due to the coordinates of latitude and longitude being entered incorrectly, two of my fellow Mefites here are currently shown adrift about one hundred miles west of Perth, Australia, and I understand they like it like that.
posted by halfbuckaroo at 5:56 AM on July 24, 2012 [1 favorite]

What I don't understand is people not wanting individual mefites to use profile data in ways that they're implicitly already using it — a browser script like we're discussing only eliminates a click for a mefite who has it installed, it affects no one else's experience of MetaFilter.

In the age of Facebook and the like, which actively ignore or change privacy settings, it's perfectly understandable that members of Metafilter would be wary of any sort of change that makes their information more available, even if just eliminates a click.

Any sort of change to user's privacy settings should be resisted like a dog hanging onto a juicy bone.
posted by Brandon Blatcher at 6:01 AM on July 24, 2012 [1 favorite]

nadawi: "if this idea gets any traction, it should be something people turn on, not something based upon profile info."

This is a choice people make in their own profiles. If you have put your geocode information in your profile, then in theory (although probably computationally troublesome), someone could write a script that identifies the country based on that geocode and then places it on the page.

MetaFilter has zero control over what someone might do with your information using a GreaseMonkey or other script, so it is honestly up to you to decide what information you do or do not want others to know about you.

Sidhedevil: "I think the main outcome of anyone writing such a script would be fewer people giving their nation of residence in their profiles and/or people borking the spellings of their nations of residence in their profiles so that they couldn't be scraped for info by a flag generator."

Unlikely. Such a microscopically small proportion of MeFites even know about GreaseMonkey, and the impact of such a script is so honestly minimal (it's not like this is something which would get indexed by Google are would be visible generally) that I can't imagine people forgoing the utility to most users of saying where they really are from. Not to mention it would negatively impact their ability to be involved in IRL, which seems to me far worse than some random yahoo seeing a flag by your name.
posted by Deathalicious at 8:05 AM on July 24, 2012

koeselitz: “Also, thanks, mods, for not automating the scraping of geo data, even if it might seem convenient to some.”

Kattullus: “I don't know how to tell you this...”

Sigh. Okay, well, yeah. I should have known about that, particularly since we just had a discussion about it. Ah well. We always have the option to remove geo data, I guess – which is what I did.
posted by koeselitz at 8:20 AM on July 24, 2012

Yeah we've talked about this in the past but it comes down to a few things

- Location information is and will always be optional to provide
- Provided location information is available to logged-in users
- We are pretty serious about maintaining the current level of privacy/security with the personal information people give us and not eroding it continually
- The admin-only personal information that we have is not shared with users except in pretty extreme circumstances (usually involving abuse of the site or harassment of users)
- We may, however, build tools that allow you to gain utility from the personal information you've provided [social explorer, IRL] and users will have to make a choice how you want to deal with that

That said, we are realistic that the level of absolute privacy/security that this site has in general is not very much and people who are concerned about this sort of thing need to make their own calculations about how comfortable they are with the level of privacy/security we have here and the trade-off of having certain site features not be as robust without this information.
posted by jessamyn (staff) at 8:29 AM on July 24, 2012 [2 favorites]

IF, that was one of your more condescending comments. I know what a script is. I do not want anyone's script assigning me a goddamned flag, as I think I was quite clear about saying. Thus, I will now bork my previously very clear location info in my profile to thwart any attempts to scrape it for a goddamned flag. I am sure I will not be alone in this.

Result: information made more difficult to access for the majority of site users because a few people want the dubious convenience of seeing flags.
posted by Sidhedevil at 8:41 AM on July 24, 2012

It's also worth mentioning that the "location" field allows for written location and/or lat/long location. The former is unlikely to be accessed by robots, doesn't show up in the KML file, etc. So if people want others to know they live in Nebraska, for example, but nothing more specific, they can just type it in the box and no flag salesman will call.
posted by jessamyn (staff) at 8:45 AM on July 24, 2012 [2 favorites]

Sidhedevil, is your objection specifically to the flag itself, or to the idea of making location info more easily accessible? Just wondering what your thoughts were on frimble's script, which doesn't use a flag, but the location field info text (and takes a click to see).
posted by Chrysostom at 9:35 AM on July 24, 2012

I also have one that uses a yellow hat, rather than a yellow flag.
posted by frimble at 9:39 AM on July 24, 2012

Sadly, the one place I would really find this useful is the one place I wouldn't be able to use it - on my phone.

Because it is a flat out pain in the ass to visit somebody's profile to see if you can get more context for one of their comments, then have to reload the monster thread on your return and waste data credit and probably lose your place on the page.

Is there a way of using site-specific scripts on the iphone? Because that'd be awesome.
posted by the latin mouse at 11:03 AM on July 24, 2012

Is there a way of using site-specific scripts on the iphone?

No, there's no way that I know of. You can run bookmarklets in Mobile Safari on an iPhone. So in theory someone could write a bookmarklet that adds information to a page on a phone.

Instead of opening profile pages in the same window, you could tap and hold someone's username. Then click "Open in New Page". That way you won't lose your place in the original thread.
posted by pb (staff) at 11:07 AM on July 24, 2012

Yea, but safari is so stupid that when you switch tabs it reloads the page. (if there's a way to stop it doing that please god tell me).
posted by jacalata at 11:25 AM on July 24, 2012 [1 favorite]

Yea, but safari is so stupid that when you switch tabs it reloads the page.

I think that's a function of how much memory the phone can devote to Safari. So if you have a dozen apps open it's more likely to refresh more often. I have a 4S and it does a lot better at keeping tabs around than earlier models.
posted by pb (staff) at 11:32 AM on July 24, 2012

I can't think about flags without thinking about...

POPULATION: TIRE
posted by sonika at 12:53 PM on July 24, 2012 [1 favorite]

I want a solitary teardrop of finest single malt next to my user name.
posted by Decani at 1:28 PM on July 24, 2012

"Result: information made more difficult to access for the majority of site users because a few people want the dubious convenience of seeing flags."

If your concern is that someone, somewhere might be doing something you don't like with the information you provide in your profile is enough to cause you to remove it, then you shouldn't have put it there in the first place. The flag script doesn't even exist. And you have no clue what other scripts people may have written to do similar things, so you should preempt those, too, by the same logic.

Because clearly the test isn't what people are actually doing (that is, how many people use such a script and thus how much it affects your experience of MeFi indirectly), but that even one person does it, or that even someone might do it. With the threshhold that low, you shouldn't be including any personal information in your profile at all. Or in your comments, for that matter.
posted by Ivan Fyodorovich at 12:30 AM on July 25, 2012

frimble, I would like to try your script when you think it is ready. Thanks.
posted by terrapin at 6:36 AM on July 25, 2012

Ivan Fyodorovich: “If your concern is that someone, somewhere might be doing something you don't like with the information you provide in your profile is enough to cause you to remove it, then you shouldn't have put it there in the first place. The flag script doesn't even exist. And you have no clue what other scripts people may have written to do similar things, so you should preempt those, too, by the same logic. Because clearly the test isn't what people are actually doing (that is, how many people use such a script and thus how much it affects your experience of MeFi indirectly), but that even one person does it, or that even someone might do it. With the threshhold that low, you shouldn't be including any personal information in your profile at all. Or in your comments, for that matter.”

It doesn't seem that simple to me, honestly. I know that I felt this way for many years, too. I had my full name and full address in my profile for the first seven years I was here, and it seemed to me refreshing that I could just share who I was without compunction. If I don't want to share something, I reasoned, then I don't have to share it; but my info was pretty mundane, and I didn't mind being associated with it.

But – at some point, my feelings on this have shifted a bit. I have a feeling that has something to do with the fact that, for the past three years, I've been working in an industry that's related to direct marketing. Even if you're not involved in that kind of thing, I think everybody's aware more and more of the fact that marketing data is a fact of life now, and all kinds of details of our lives are instantaneously added to a database somewhere that tracks this information and uses it to sell products.

I've been on the internet for fifteen years now, but I honestly never anticipated this. And, yeah, it makes me uncomfortable. I really didn't mind at all when it was a question of some person whom I may or may not know becoming aware of my address. But it's different when my data is being gathered and used to market products, even if it's not to me. Without my having much say in the matter, details about who I am and where I live are part of a massive system of profit-making. Isn't that a little weird? I mean, is it so strange to be weirded out by that, even if you're not really afraid of other people knowing details about who you are as such?

And the thing is – I know and trust the people who run Metafilter, and I know they wouldn't ever sell my data or use it for marketing. But when this data is available and scrape-able, it becomes almost inevitable that it will be used for those purposes. There was a time when that might have sounded like a paranoid delusion, but I really don't think it is at this point; companies make billions, maybe trillions, every year based solely on their ability to collect and use this kind of data, so it's not really beyond the pale to suggest that someone might try to use Metafilter's data that way. It's not like it would be that difficult, at this point.

I know that the last time this came up I said some things that might have sounded paranoid or overwrought, and I'm trying not to sound hysterical or accusatory about this now. I think it's a legitimate concern, though. There are a lot of us who don't mind others knowing who we are or where we live who nonetheless have compunctions about that data being used for marketing.
posted by koeselitz at 8:20 AM on July 25, 2012 [1 favorite]

I haven't been reading this thread, so I didn't notice that frimble was working on this. I've got one working that doesn't require click-to-see, but it's a little rude to the servers. (Just a little -- I mitigate that by only checking users whose names on visible in your viewport and by caching location data for a week.)
posted by Plutor at 9:08 AM on July 25, 2012

I think the frimble model is superior-I don't have to remember what the flag of Hungary looks like, and it has additional info, if the user listed it. If you're after location info to assist your thread understanding, it probably is useful to know the user is in Vancouver, say, rather than just "Canada."

Just my two cents, Plutor.
posted by Chrysostom at 10:12 AM on July 25, 2012

koeselitz nails it. There is more than one type of online anonymity; a motivated MeFite could probably identify my real name and some personal information easily from comments, and this is unproblematic because I'm aware of the possibility and the attendant risks/benefits and I don't consider it a threat; if I didn't, I would post differently, or not hang out here. One controls privacy by taking measures to maximize it, and then scaling back in specific cases.

(koeselitz, you are using things like Tor and NoScript and any of the many firefox add-ons that spoof your browser headers and stuff, if you are concerned about that kind of thing, right?)

That said, I'm sympathetic to: "If you don't want your location data scraped, don't put it in your profile."
posted by kengraham at 10:16 AM on July 25, 2012

Chrysostom: "I think the frimble model is superior-I don't have to remember what the flag of Hungary looks like, and it has additional info, if the user listed it. If you're after location info to assist your thread understanding, it probably is useful to know the user is in Vancouver, say, rather than just "Canada.""

That can certainly be available in the mouseover.
posted by Plutor at 10:36 AM on July 25, 2012

But, koeselitz, your argument amounts to saying, yeah, it makes sense for you to not put your name and other personal data in your profile because although Matt makes sure that it's not available to Google and other spiders, and not available to non-members, it is available to members and you have no control over how members are using that data. And it only takes someone $5 to be a member.

When we argued about this in the other recent thread about something just like this concerning the location information, there was the same disconnect — your specific argument here doesn't make sense to me. Your larger concerns about your privacy do make sense. Not wanting Matt to make the data available to Google or other spiders or to non-members all makes sense. Not making it available at all, so no one knows it, makes sense. Not wanting, and protesting, members scraping the data and then making it publicly available elsewhere...that makes sense, too. A lot of sense.

But not wanting, and protesting, individual members using the data that is available in your profile, that you've made available to them, via a browser script and only for their own customized usage of MetaFilter...that doesn't make sense because whether or not that's a reasonable place to draw the line theoretically, it's a completely impossible and useless place to draw the line in practice. Because you can't stop them. It's only doing what people are already doing — I look up a lot of people's locations, because I'm the kind of person who tends to see people in terms of where they live. It matters to me. So I look it up and I keep it in mind. I'm not alone in doing this and there are a hundred people like me for every one person who will actually install such a script and use it. If that many.

Which is the other weird thing about drawing the line in the sand here: the number of users who do, or will, use such scripts is so small as to be approximately zero. First they have to be technologically savvy enough to know they could do such a thing. Then they have to go and download and install the extension to their browser to make it possible. Then someone — they or someone else — has to go to the trouble of writing such a script specifically for MetaFilter. Then they have to install that script into their extension and use it. The beginning of that chain of probabilities is already a relatively small number — many regular mefites think that knowing how to include links in a comment is some nerdy thing that few know. Installing extensions and specific scripts to change how specific sites appear? That's rocket science.

It's a completely irrelevant place to draw the line.

If you have a concern about how this information might be used in ways that Matt simply cannot prevent — then you shouldn't make it available. The no-robots directive and restricting profile to members and keeping people from quoting it or otherwise posting it to the non-profile portions of the site are all very conscientious and unusually considerate ways in which Matt is trying to protect privacy. But that only goes so far — if you really worry about the information being available, somehow, to someone you don't want to have it, then you simply shouldn't make it available.
posted by Ivan Fyodorovich at 11:33 AM on July 25, 2012

MetaFilter: A completely irrelevant place to draw the line
posted by Plutor at 11:40 AM on July 25, 2012

Do you have a flag?
posted by patheral at 12:34 PM on July 25, 2012 [1 favorite]

I am enjoying frimble's script a great deal, but I think I would prefer it default to text display of the location.

Thanks to Plutor also. Did you ever get the memail grovel I sent last month? ;)
posted by terrapin at 6:12 AM on July 26, 2012

I changed my mind. I like the frimble script as is.
posted by terrapin at 8:33 AM on July 26, 2012