Comments on: MetaPop: another meta-clone

MetaPop: another meta-clone

dhacker — Fri, 02 May 2003 11:00:34 -0800

With all the talk of Meta-Clones and the constant back and forthing of what makes a good FPP - I just ran into this - MetaPop. Relieves the pressure of deciding what to talk about - just let the "group" do it for you.

By: mathowie

mathowie — Fri, 02 May 2003 11:22:26 -0800

After copying the functionality of daypop and blogdex in popdex, metafilter is next at meta.popdex.com (using the mefi clone code, no less).

That popdex guy is a font of originality.

By: mattpfeff

mattpfeff — Fri, 02 May 2003 11:34:32 -0800

The primary discussion here focuses around links that are popular in the blogosphere as found on Popdex, Daypop, Blogdex and others.

Heh. It's like a reverse filter -- "Here are all the links you've already seen everywhere else!"

By: dhacker

dhacker — Fri, 02 May 2003 11:43:19 -0800

MetaPop: We talk about the same things everyone else is talking about

By: carter

carter — Fri, 02 May 2003 11:52:31 -0800

As Andrew Orlowski said in his Register piece on Googlewashing, "You are in a twisty maze of weblogs, all alike."

By: MiguelCardoso

MiguelCardoso — Fri, 02 May 2003 12:11:48 -0800

It's like a reverse filter -- "Here are all the links you've already seen everywhere else!"

Ha ha ha, mattpfeff!

Imagine the guidelines!

If it's something everybody else has found on the Web, make sure it's something most people have seen before and will not provoke any discussion whatsoever...

By: PrinceValium

PrinceValium — Fri, 02 May 2003 12:22:30 -0800

It's metafilter's evil twin! Here's a self-link, a link to Dear Raed, a linkless post.. I'm like a badass in a candy store.

By: mitchel

mitchel — Fri, 02 May 2003 12:59:47 -0800

probably 60% of everything on aldaily and 80% of everything on memepool winds up here... what are the other famous filters that most closely replicate metafilter's content? i never ever wade thru /. anymore but it would ballpark that at around 30% reduplication?

would it be good thing to just say have a list in the guidelines of metasources that any classy person won't duplicate links from? not so that the mefi police would call people out, just as an unspoken thing...?

i guess you'd want two short lists, one for other filters that most of us follow anyway and one for kneejerk sites like imdb and the onion that never bring anything at all to a discussion. along with news and opeds, posts from other filters annoy me the most. of course they are almost always opeds or metaopeds like edge.org stuff.

By: y2karl

y2karl — Fri, 02 May 2003 14:42:33 -0800

probably 60% of everything on aldaily and 80% of everything on memepool winds up here... what are the other famous filters that most closely replicate metafilter's content?

But, sahge... What if one doesn't read those sites? Or blogs? If you then reproduce a common link, are you still going to hell?

By: mitchel

mitchel — Fri, 02 May 2003 21:30:28 -0800

no. as i said, i would like a silent elitist thing. but it could only ever happen if there really was a small handful [6-10] of sources that replicates, say, 85% of links here within a couple months window. that's my first question: i wonder if such could be compiled. the advantage, then, would be to have a "similar sources" link page. the goal is to gently push metafilter a bit away from these beaten paths which i assume provide a crutch [i wouldn't know, i've been a lurker ever since i switched logins a coupla years ago].

good = discussion of the current links in the blogosphere;
better = discussion of out of the way nuggets.
maybe that's a dumb value judgement. but the current links in the blogosphere = metanewsfilter, if you get me. i suppose the reductio ad absurdum of my thought would be,
best = discussion of such out of the way links that cannot even be googled? so it's much more a thought i'm thinking than a complaint.

or, and this would be interesting, you could make a new foofilter that automatically read the links of the 6-10 sites off the html source of those sites and turned them into posts, which readers could comment on. sort of an assembly line of discussion.

i dunno. aldaily links are never ever best o the web quality any more than newsfilter posts, yet memepool kinda always is [though far more limited in scope than here]. but if we pretty much fpp everything in memepool, why fpp to any of it at all? why not just have a link over on the sidebar, like any normal blog?

just thinking about the optimal experience for the users here. i know we don't all visit the same sites; many don't visit metafilter regularly either, it's random. but for me coming across something that i've come across several other times in a week is the same experience as coming across a double post. not really exasperating, just... a glitchy patch in the holovid.

By: dhartung

dhartung — Fri, 02 May 2003 22:35:19 -0800

Good gravy, there's even a Howie involved. {cue Twilight Zone music}

By: vito90

vito90 — Fri, 02 May 2003 22:55:24 -0800

mitchel - ...two short lists, one for other filters that most of us follow anyway and one for kneejerk sites like imdb and the onion that never bring anything at all to a discussion. along with news and opeds...

This sounds like a reasonable idea. But a distinction should be made between using said sources as FPP's and using them in the comments. Many a movie thread has been enhanced through links to ubiquitous sites like imdb.com.

By: taz

taz — Sat, 03 May 2003 03:39:37 -0800

Most of the time, what I see on Metafilter (if it's not newsfilter) is new to me because I don't even have time to check out all the MF posts, much less keep track of multiple sites... For myself (when I remember to do it), I do a google on my main post subject/site, to make sure it hasn't been logged by a lot of sites. One thing I do know is that once it's been posted on MF, it will usually show up all over the place almost immediately.

By: stavrosthewonderchicken

stavrosthewonderchicken — Sat, 03 May 2003 04:06:49 -0800

This is funny.

Our very own (well, sort of) Neale Talbot did something like this a long long time ago, of course, scraping daypop I think, but he's rejiggered his site around again and I can't find it if it's still there.

By: rcade

rcade — Sat, 03 May 2003 09:23:38 -0800

It's a shame that all of these Metafilter clones are starting up without throwing in their own wrinkles on how a community weblog should operate. I'd be more interested in them if they were trying different things with moderation, message posting, or the like.

By: amberglow

amberglow — Sat, 03 May 2003 10:02:47 -0800

All the clones, including metapop (which is already snarking at metafilter) are really compliments to you matt, so you should be proud (or if not proud, profited by selling the underlying code).

By: billsaysthis

billsaysthis — Sat, 03 May 2003 10:33:02 -0800

rcade, for my two cents, sportsfilter is putting a new wrinkle on community if for nothing else than all the good natured insults constantly hurled back and forth. Plus the various fantasy leagues with only SoFi members running teams.

By: mischief

mischief — Sat, 03 May 2003 13:04:30 -0800

already snarking at metafilter

To be expected since Matt's membership policy is exclusionary.

By: mattpfeff

mattpfeff — Sat, 03 May 2003 13:16:42 -0800

Our very own (well, sort of) Neale Talbot did something like this a long long time ago

It's here; I was reminded of it, too, but as I understand it it never really went past the experimental stage (so I guess I was reluctant to link to it). The name, ironically, is "MetaPop". (Heh.)

(It was also discussed on Blogroots, here.)

By: rusty

rusty — Sat, 03 May 2003 15:20:13 -0800

MetaFilter: We're a Community Because You Can't Get In.

By: stavrosthewonderchicken

stavrosthewonderchicken — Sat, 03 May 2003 17:29:53 -0800

Hey, who let rusty in here?

By: PrinceValium

PrinceValium — Sat, 03 May 2003 20:51:32 -0800

To be expected since Matt's membership policy is exclusionary.

Most memberships are. Pick a country at random and try to become a citizen, for example.

By: ajr

ajr — Sat, 03 May 2003 21:03:23 -0800

The clones raise an interesting issue regarding online identities. Several of the "mefi elite" have posted on Metapop , see here. Recently, Dave Winer made quite a fuss regarding his attack CSS and there were numerous nasty comments that almost certainly were made by an individual fraudulently using Dave's information. (An example.) The problem of stolen identities is bound to get worse as things continue to grow.

By: quonsar

quonsar — Sat, 03 May 2003 22:13:03 -0800

Several of the "mefi elite"

sev'ral ye say? why, i been lookin's fo dem varmints from here to tarnation and back! lemme at 'em!

By: mathowie

mathowie — Sat, 03 May 2003 22:13:04 -0800

ajr, how could that be someone faking like they were Dave? They posted a screenshot on Dave's server at Harvard, something which only he has access.

By: dhartung

dhartung — Sun, 04 May 2003 00:18:35 -0800

ajr clearly doesn't know Dave. An impostor would have had trouble sounding half as curmudgeonly.

By: ajr

ajr — Sun, 04 May 2003 19:46:11 -0800

I don't know Dave, so I only assumed that he was not such a curmudgeon. I wasn't implying that someone had posed as Dave on his own page, but that somebody had posed as Dave in comment fields on the sites that addressed Dave's post (see the first comment on the post I linked). It just strained credulity to me that Dave would take the time to attack someone's text input box. But like I said, I don't know the guy. The point I was trying to make, however, is that all of the MeFi clones present the possibility for others to "steal" established screen names and, for lack of a better term, "dilute" the value of those names.

It isn't really a problem for people that don't want to develop an online identity, but there is a real potential for someone that has a recognizable name to suffer harm from an imposter (especially at the hands of Google). I propose that the easiest solution is to simply post the newest clones to mefi, so that anyone interested can hop on over and reserve their name before it's taken. Admittedly it's not a real solution, but it might help. . .

By: stavrosthewonderchicken

stavrosthewonderchicken — Sun, 04 May 2003 19:51:59 -0800

Except that the freefilter clones only allow 20 characters in the name field, which forces me to truncate to the less euphonious 'stavthewonderchicken'. Ah well, what's a syllable or two here or there, eh?

By: ajr

ajr — Sun, 04 May 2003 19:59:04 -0800

I just read the link again and realized which screenshot you were referring to mathowie. My mistake. In the future I won't be so quick to give Dave Winer the benefit of my doubt - what an ass.

By: mark13

mark13 — Sun, 04 May 2003 20:35:20 -0800

rusty:

MetaFilter: We're a Community Because You Can't Get In.

Finally, everything is decided for you. Too bad MFites prefer it that way. Outside opinions are eeevil!