Mefites' Choice 2013 winners, Week Three December 22, 2013 1:28 PM   Subscribe

It's week three of our MeFites Choice contest, where we showcase the best posts according to you, the reader, via the use of fantastic flagged posts.

The top three posts from Week Three, Dec 15-21, with prizes from the wiki:

In third place, zarq does that thing he does so well and drops a monster post about a beloved TV show, this time it's everything you ever wanted to know about the spy comedy Get Smart. The post features not just every full episode of the five season run (all 138 shows are on YouTube), but also featured information on spinoffs, including the follow-up movies and the cartoon spoof Inspector Gadget.

Coming in hot in second, filthy light thief furnishes us with a mega-post covering the entire career of new wave Sci-Fi writer James Tiptree Jr. James Tiptree had an interesting life story along with friendships with other sci-fi writers of the day, but eventually was found out to be the pen name of Alice Bradley Sheldon, who it turns out had an even more interesting life story.

Cresting the finish line for first this week was mannequito, with a megapost homage to the silent/hidden track on albums. The post covers the history of hidden or unmarked tracks going back to the 1960s, what happened in the 90s with CDs, and how a few bands experimented with the mini-artform. It's a little sad we have to say goodbye to it in the age of digital files, but who knows what might come next to take up the hidden track torch.

Thanks everyone for voting and a big thanks to your top threes. Members posting special prizes to the wiki should contact these three to get them their special gifts. The final week four is on and we'll end this with a post detailing the 21 special extra awards, as well as next month's Podcast featuring the moderators' favorites.
posted by mathowie (staff) to MetaFilter-Related at 1:28 PM (32 comments total) 8 users marked this as a favorite

Can't we just give zarq a lifetime achievement award or something and level the playing field? Good god, man, this isn't even counting today's Iron Chef extravaganza.
posted by Mrs. Pterodactyl at 2:01 PM on December 22, 2013 [10 favorites]


Congrats on next week's iron chef post, zarq!
posted by oceanjesse at 2:08 PM on December 22, 2013 [6 favorites]


(After hitting post...yeah)
posted by oceanjesse at 2:08 PM on December 22, 2013


Wait, did people miss my Lil Bub post?

On a serious note, flt's Tiptree post is a thing of awesomeness.
posted by cjorgensen at 2:12 PM on December 22, 2013


No one is ever going to top zarq's Iron Chef post. Not even zarq.

Holy God of Posters, Hail Zarq!
posted by bearwife at 2:28 PM on December 22, 2013 [3 favorites]


Mrs. P, thanks but I believe my IC post may not be eligible now that I won a prize this week? If not, no worries at all.

Holy crap, i took third! Thank you, everyone! SO cool!! And to be in such fantastic and impressive company, too. Both flt's incredible post on James Tiptree, Jr., and mannequito's on the history of hidden tracks were freakin' INCREDIBLE.
posted by zarq at 2:38 PM on December 22, 2013


Yep you can only win once per contest. Thanks to everyone for keeping the pressure on and making amazing posts.
posted by jessamyn (staff) at 3:32 PM on December 22, 2013


See? No worries. :)
posted by zarq at 3:54 PM on December 22, 2013


More "large" than "amazing".
posted by Wolfdog at 3:56 PM on December 22, 2013


That's what she said.
posted by cjorgensen at 4:08 PM on December 22, 2013 [5 favorites]


After I scrambled across the forbidding, stony face of zarq's Iron Chef post, my only thought was, "Damn, he could practically build a Plex channel out of this post!"
posted by wenestvedt at 5:17 PM on December 22, 2013 [1 favorite]


That's what she said.

Not according to her Facebook status.
posted by Brandon Blatcher at 5:47 PM on December 22, 2013 [1 favorite]


That's what she said.

Yeah but not to you
posted by elizardbits at 5:55 PM on December 22, 2013 [3 favorites]


ooh tandem burn
posted by elizardbits at 5:55 PM on December 22, 2013 [4 favorites]


Wait so do people who post prizes pick the winners? Or the mods?
posted by griphus at 6:20 PM on December 22, 2013


From the original thread (The Most Choosiest Time of the Year! MeFites Choice Awards 2013):
1. This is for FPPs on the blue only.
2. Vote with the fantastic flag.
3. We'll tabulate top fantastic-getters weekly and announce winners and runners-up
4. Mods and other MeFites will sign up to offer prizes for top vote-getters or other topic-specific criteria.
I'm sure the mods can post end-of-the-week fantastic flag tallies, if there's a general interest.
posted by filthy light thief at 7:38 PM on December 22, 2013 [1 favorite]


Congratulations to the winners (and to us for since we get to consume the posts). Thank you too.
posted by JohnnyGunn at 7:40 PM on December 22, 2013


Wow. I'm honored. That's some quality company to be ranked in. My first ever attempt at a megapost.

It's also probably the first time two new posts on metatalk have applied to me directly ... I first read this while on a long-delayed train slowly meandering through the ice storm east of Toronto. I wrote up a reply and by the time I hit post, wifi had gone out again. Somehow against all odds, I made it to my parents place in Belleville shortly after midnight.

Merry Christmas y'all!
posted by mannequito at 11:46 PM on December 22, 2013 [1 favorite]


I might do a megapost next year. Probably consisting of some tangent related to the paper I am writing.

Thanks for the excellent posts everyone! :)
posted by Mistress at 4:45 AM on December 23, 2013


Thanks, everyone! And thanks to kagredon for offering the prize!

I had fun writing it, but I'll again promote Julie Phillips' biography on Allie Sheldon, as I basically provided the mid-length summary, missing some highlights. For example, in 1979, when Allie was known to be the person behind James Tiptree, Jr., Fairfax County requested that she get a business license for writing from her home. Allie fought it for some while, and Harlan Ellison even wrote a three-page letter in her defense. But when Allie was in the hospital for a period, her husband, Ting, quietly paid the ten dollars for the license.
posted by filthy light thief at 4:52 AM on December 23, 2013 [2 favorites]


It would be neat if "megaposts" weren't just essentially YouTube playlists.

Many of them aren't. These happened to be. Feel free to be the change you want to see on the internet.
posted by jessamyn (staff) at 8:16 AM on December 23, 2013 [8 favorites]


For what it's worth, my Tiptree/Sheldon post had a grand total of 2 YouTube links, with an additional 3 if you count those referenced for an additional TV adaptation of a story, and cthuljew's Golden Age of the Islamic Empire only had YouTube links above the break. Even the truly mega-post Twenty Years of Ultra-Violence by Pope Guilty was short on the YT links. I think zarq's series of TV-related posts are skewing the average.
posted by filthy light thief at 8:35 AM on December 23, 2013


The wiki is now updated. I'm assuming that the chocolates from Saeculorum go to the 3rd place winner for this week, as mathowie offered vinyl stickers to the top three post-makers.
posted by filthy light thief at 8:49 AM on December 23, 2013


Bug report for y'all: I was trying to favourite zarq's post but I'm having trouble with the mobile site. Basically MeFi doesn't even appear on my Get Smartphone, no matter how hard I twist the rotary dial. I'm using an iShoe 4.

Also there is some gum stuck on my heel, I wonder if you guys can fix that.
posted by the quidnunc kid at 9:00 AM on December 23, 2013 [2 favorites]


planetesimal: I know that's what the masses like to favorite, though."

*snort* If that was my motivation, I'd post porn.

FWIW, I've done this a lot with various TV shows. Blasdelb and I are now tagging those posts with "fulltvshow" for easy reference. But most of my posts under that tag never acquired enough favorites to even hit the "Popular Posts" page. The ones that do are the exception, not the rule.

filthy light thief: "I think zarq's series of TV-related posts are skewing the average."

Yep!
posted by zarq at 9:04 AM on December 23, 2013 [4 favorites]


I've joined the fullTVshow party, and started fullfilmography, plus deletedTV and BBCtapewipe for series that are incomplete due to BBC's incomplete archives.
posted by filthy light thief at 9:24 AM on December 23, 2013 [2 favorites]


YAY! Awesome!
posted by zarq at 9:35 AM on December 23, 2013


Don't know who's responsible for this one, but it's pretty damned cool and I wish I had thought of it.

We now have a MegaPost tag, and someone has kindly gone through several posts of mine that fit and added it. So, thank you, anonymous tagger. Nice work!
posted by zarq at 10:13 PM on December 24, 2013


What would fall under the MegaPost umbrella? This will hopefully lead to some great Christmas reading/watching, yay!
posted by jetlagaddict at 7:34 AM on December 25, 2013


I would say a megapost is anything that is a computer screen of text with a bunch of links, but I realize that is a subjective criteria.

zarq, I thought you were the one who added that tag. Anyway, I added the megapost tag to some of my past posts, and the OMEGApost for the Royal Institution Christmas Lectures post.
posted by filthy light thief at 1:39 PM on December 25, 2013 [1 favorite]


Ummm. How do I mark a post with "fantastic flag"??
Is that marking as "favorite"
or adding a tag?
Need to understand. thanks.
posted by valannc at 3:38 PM on December 26, 2013


You just use the flagging feature which is underneath the little [!] icon. One of the options is "Fantastic Post" You can use this at any time of the year--we use it to select things for the sidebar, podcast mention or just because we like to check out great stuff and can't be everyplace at once--but we're tabulating them this month for the contest.
posted by jessamyn (staff) at 3:46 PM on December 26, 2013 [1 favorite]


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