So the blogstop thread is still going strong.

August 4, 2003 1:11 PM

So the blogstop thread is still going strong. Somebody who's been here longer than me...has something like this happened before? This could be a precedent.

So, is it possible to create another precedent? Namely...posting another FPP, specifically so that people have somewhere new to go to comment, instead of trying to comment in the extant thread?

Surely this place is a FILTER and not a discussion board, but seeing how so many of us are still fooling around on that thread, I thought it'd be nice to have it "refreshed", so to speak.
posted by taumeson to Etiquette/Policy at 1:11 PM (46 comments total)

You're kidding, right? 27341 isn't "going strong," it's a cult thread, full of random discussion completely unrelated to the topic of the thread. That's why Matt cut threads off at 30 days in the first place. If you just want a friendly discussion with other MeFi member, try #mefi.
posted by monju_bosatsu at 1:17 PM on August 4, 2003

I think that's a little harsh. Are you saying posting 500 isn't quite on topic as post 7?

Yes, it's wandering, and random at times, but overall, I think it attempts to hold together pretty well (in that it generally follows the rules set down in the FPP link).
posted by jpburns at 1:21 PM on August 4, 2003

cult threads happen. they shouldn't be sought after methinks. otherwise there is no serendipity. no spontaneous thought combustion. the point is to not try. like flying, you have to throw yourself at the ground and miss.
posted by th3ph17 at 1:29 PM on August 4, 2003

It's a cult thread. Why would you want to comment in the same manner somewhere else? The only point of the thread is the thread itself.

For the record, though, in a fit of drunk-with-power hubris, coudal (the poster of the original FPP) tried to do just what you're suggesting, taumeson, the very next day, and got smacked down right quick.
posted by soyjoy at 1:46 PM on August 4, 2003

i haven't even looked in that thread, so pardon me if i'm assuming wrongly - but i assume they are playing blogstop in there, aren't they? (ok, ok, i have prior knowledge from some #mefi comments!) i would think that blogstop is the place to play blogstop, and a metafilter thread about blogstop would be a place to discuss the site. this seems to be a point of confusion - jpburns defense of the thread is that it follows the rules of the site! i think it's pretty simple - if you want to play blogstop go to the site. if you want to comment regarding blogstop, do it in the thread, which, regardless of what you may observe or be told, is not subject to the 'rules' of blogstop.
posted by quonsar at 1:55 PM on August 4, 2003

... and therein lies the humor.

Y'see... it's a joke, carried to an extreme and...

Oh...

... Nevermind.
posted by jpburns at 2:05 PM on August 4, 2003

The thread is subject to the rules of blogstop insofar as the participants wish it to be. Just because this gives it a different structure to a 'normal' thread doesn't mean that it doesn't belong on MetaFilter.

taumeson, for a good example of why such threads should not be deliberately emulated or continued past their sell-by-date you may wish to peruse 9622. Similarly to the blogstop thread this started off with everyone taking a basic idea and running with it. Gradually it turned into the wall of a toilet cubicle.
posted by MUD at 2:13 PM on August 4, 2003

Translated as:

"So the blogstop thread is still crap. Has crap like this happened before?

So, is it possible to create more crap? Namely...posting another crap FPP, specifically so that people have somewhere new to crap in, instead of trying to crap in the extant crap?

Surely this place is a FILTER and not a huge pile of crap, but seeing how so many of us love to crap in that thread, I thought it'd be nice to have it "recrapped", so to speak."
posted by y6y6y6 at 2:32 PM on August 4, 2003

Aww, quonsar, always sticking to the rules and insisting everything must be 'just so.' You need to loosen up, fella - here's a Web site that might cheer you up.
posted by soyjoy at 2:33 PM on August 4, 2003

And y6, there's a difference between a thread that doesn't follow the normal rules of MeFi and crap. It has to do with signal-to-noise, and though it's a bizarre signal, that thread is almost all signal. Here's a Web site you might enjoy for this property.
posted by soyjoy at 2:35 PM on August 4, 2003

Yeah. What soyjoy said!

Oh wait. Soyjoy doesn't run this site. Never mind. Proceed.
posted by eyeballkid at 2:40 PM on August 4, 2003

I suggest that a thread with several hundred replies containing nonsensical entries is not signal, but pure noise. (This is signal.)

The blogstop thread could get only noiser if it revolved around puns about cows.
posted by crunchland at 3:18 PM on August 4, 2003

"Here's a Web site you might enjoy for this property."

Yes. And you'll notice I included the BlogStop post. Obviously I think it has non-crap potential. But after a few comments, it stops being signal and turns to pure noise. It's turned to just a bunch of bored wanking. 700 comments extending a meme which the purpose of some other site is noise. A bunch of people singing "99 bottles of beer on the wall" is noise. Would there be any point in reading all 700 comments beyond pure boredom?

And the idea that Metafilter should start MORE noise generating threads is just silly.

[shameless plug and plea for attention which is only slightly MeFi related]
And while we're on the subject, and since someone else brought it up, I really would like to get more people involved in helping decide which posts get linked over at MF Distilled.

It used to be we had four people adding links. But lately, wonderful people though they are, the other three turned out to be lazy good-for-nothings who seem to think they have better things to do than work on my pet project for free. So if you want to have a say in what gets posted over there, please let me know.

I'll happily keep doing it myself, but I think it's much more valuable to have others contribute as well. If it's just *my* opinion about what the best posts are, why would people care?
[/shameless plug and plea for attention which is only slightly MeFi related]
posted by y6y6y6 at 3:21 PM on August 4, 2003

If it's just *my* opinion about what the best posts are, why would people care?

Indeed.

(No offense intended.)
posted by rushmc at 3:31 PM on August 4, 2003

Entertaining noise can still be noise. If the thread is over 500 comments long, I find it hard to believe that comment 501 is strictly necessary, given the depth of the subject matter. I came late to the thread and didn't want to read hundreds of posts, so I just abandoned it, but I assume all you're doing over there is shooting the shit and playing blogstop? It's not really a pressing concern, is it?
posted by Hildago at 3:36 PM on August 4, 2003

What's a "cult thread?" And where can I find examples of these "cult threads?"
posted by adampsyche at 4:13 PM on August 4, 2003

Not that I believe anyone should much notice or care, but one of the reasons I don't comment much or usually even visit Mefi much is threads like the BlogStop fiasco. Through the first 150 comments (which is all I could stand) it was little more than giggly pleas for personal attention to the poster's cleverness. The WarFilter stuff, though the site was born of MetaFilter, doesn't try to reproduce this site. The Sportsfilter doesn't rely on Mefi's community shtick to generate its brand of fun. No one there tries to break the in-crowd bubble by coming up with the next great pancake joke. So why do so many here want to appropriate the coolest new thing, and make it real by mefi-ing it? I really didn't think that MetaFilter existed to parody the Web as much as to chronicle and filter it. That thread is a shadow of what BlogStop was meant to do, yet here are folk twisting it and playing with the toy until it becomes parody; our attempt to emulate becomes an in-joke of itself. For what its worth, I feel the same way about #mefi references and inside jokes.

Kudos to the 9622 crowd, by the way, for not letting ego overlap effort. There's a time and place for everything. Is Mefi the place for BlogStop? Is claiming the efforts of others for our own really what this website is about?
posted by Wulfgar! at 4:18 PM on August 4, 2003

Well said, Wulfgar!, though I think you're a bit harsh on the 27341 crowd—I don't think it's so much "giggly pleas for personal attention to the poster's cleverness" as just word-oriented people having fun being clever with words. No special harm to it, but they should realize that it's really not what the site is about, and rather than request special dispensation they should (if they're too hooked to let it die a natural death) set up a separate site to enjoy their addiction, as the 9622 crowd did.
posted by languagehat at 4:31 PM on August 4, 2003

As long as it represents no performance issue to the site (from the number of records accessed each page load) and people realize they're supposed to be doing this on BlogSpot (not here) and the rest of us agree not to call them dinguses (even though they are) where's the harm?

(Dingi?)
posted by scarabic at 4:41 PM on August 4, 2003

Whatever, page hits are buck$, baby.
posted by the fire you left me at 7:10 PM on August 4, 2003

What's a "cult thread?" And where can I find examples of these "cult threads?"

Some listed examples.
posted by dgaicun at 7:25 PM on August 4, 2003

Whadda buncha curmudgeons. You'd think the web had been around for generations and y'all were acting out The Lottery. And, the fire you left me, that bandwidth argument is giving me BBS flashbacks. Cult threads, as it were, build community. I think that a good absurd thread once in a while is good for this place, and I've seen most of you cut the rug many a time. Try to remember that the web is less than ten years old and forgive those who, in the name of fun, may harmlessly traipse over into dinghiosity.

Thanks for the link, gaicun.
posted by squirrel at 8:43 PM on August 4, 2003

Metafilter - Serious, pedigreed folk discussing sober topics, issues of substance...............

* urp.... *
posted by troutfishing at 9:30 PM on August 4, 2003

I don't think it's so much "giggly pleas for personal attention to the poster's cleverness" as just word-oriented people having fun being clever with words.

And given the ridiculous pace at which that thread accumulated its first 300 comments or so, successfully posting there became a real obsession if, God help you, you decided you wanted to do it. That thread was basically a web game. Fun to play but not what you'd call riveting for the audience.
posted by furiousthought at 10:25 PM on August 4, 2003

Wulfgar!: I really didn't think that MetaFilter existed to parody the Web as much as to chronicle and filter it.
I don't think one can chronicle and filter something yet refrain from parody and humor without becoming pretentious. Let's not start taking ourselves too seriously, or we'll become a parody of ourselves.
taumeson: one cannot stage the unexpected.
posted by talos at 2:06 AM on August 5, 2003

Would there be any point in reading all 700 comments beyond pure boredom?

The point was to PLAY, not to read the whole thing from start to finish in one sitting. Jesus. Gauging that thread by the comment count is irrelevant: it was up to 400 within 24 hours, and the posting rate has dropped off enormously since then, because most of us who enjoyed the game in its first few hours have long since moved on. And it wasn't all 'nonsense'; much of it was indeed related to the post itself and to this very site, within the constraints of the blogstop format.

Talk about inventing a problem where there is none. It's one thread. When it reaches the one year mark like 1042 or 9622 did, then there'll be a problem. (But wait, isn't there a 30-day limit nowadays? And didn't Matt himself link the thread in the sidebar, and can't he remove said link if it ever becomes a server issue? Oh.)

I can't believe I'm reading this snootiness about such a harmless diversion. Half a dozen words building on an acronym is a "giggly plea for personal attention to the poster's cleverness"? Then what the hell is half a screen of pointless rantage about Iraq, cut and pasted every damn day into the next applicable thread?

Do we seriously believe that what we're doing here is writing the MetaFunk and Wagnell's Encyclopedia of Everything, where every page must be perfect? That people referring back to our collective wisdom to find the Truth about George W Bush will be unable to cope with one thread out of 24,000 playing around with words?

This place is, among other things, a collective conversation where we're dealing with actual people, not Reuters newsfeeds or Blogdex bots. Sometimes it's fun to have a laugh with other people. Sometimes you get to have a laugh with lots of other people at once, for a while. If you missed the party, bad luck for you; if it's not your bag, move on. Don't just stand outside glowering through the window.
posted by rory at 3:09 AM on August 5, 2003

Yeah, I'm a little amazed at the degree of venom some here have for 27341 and its cultish ilk. It's already scrolled off the front page, so those who are offended by its very existence may no longer be led into temptation, while those of us (myself definitely included--I probably posted in it twenty times or so) who enjoyed it can always--or at least for the next three weeks--click the sidebar link or type "metafilter.com/mefi/27341" into our address bars. I'll readily concede that word games and such aren't what this place was built for, but I fail to see the harm in the odd free-for-all. (Need I point out that, per dgaicun's link, the last cult thread was over 10,000 threads ago?)

And if that makes me a dingus, well, dammit I'm a dingus.

p.s. What rory said (at even greater length!)
posted by arto at 3:23 AM on August 5, 2003

I suspect that the existence of a link to the thread from the sidebar is an indication of the site owner's opinion on the matter.
posted by MrMoonPie at 6:38 AM on August 5, 2003

"Sometimes it's fun to have a laugh with other people."

And sometimes it gets taken too far and needs a smack down. Namely...posting another FPP, specifically so that people have somewhere new to go to comment, instead of trying to comment in the extant thread.

Which is what we're talking about. Try to keep up.
posted by y6y6y6 at 7:14 AM on August 5, 2003

MetaTalk: Put THAT into your MetaFunk and Wagnalls.
posted by Vidiot at 7:25 AM on August 5, 2003

It's already scrolled off the front page

It's still on mine; in fact, there are a couple dozen below it. Are there different front pages on different browsers or something?
posted by languagehat at 7:34 AM on August 5, 2003

Different customisation settings on different browsers, more like.
posted by walrus at 7:42 AM on August 5, 2003

(as in my settings and your settings and arto's settings if s/he knows about them)
posted by walrus at 7:43 AM on August 5, 2003

I presume that's the royal 'we', y6?
posted by rory at 8:51 AM on August 5, 2003

(Meaning, just because I quoted a line of yours to kick off my rant doesn't mean that every word of it refers to that line and/or your posts in this thread. Sure, you addressed the start-an-overflow-thread question. You also talked about the original thread; and so did others. FWIW, I think an overflow thread is an unnecessary prolongation of the original too.)
posted by rory at 8:59 AM on August 5, 2003

You can tell I was in rant mode because I even got the thread number for 1142 wrong...
posted by rory at 9:10 AM on August 5, 2003

"I presume that's the royal 'we', y6?"

No. Just me being a total asshole.

I seem to have an incredible problem staying on topic. Even in my own comment I'll forget what I meant to say and then veer off into something dumb. The irony of my babbling like this after bitching about noise isn't lost on me.

The point I was trying to make was that the post was good, the comments were iffy, and the idea of another thread to extend the iffy-ness was dumb.

But this thread has devolved into petty, playground style bickering, so what's the point of trying to stay on topic? Irony. What fun.

Want more irony? I've been thinking lately that MetaFilter was sort of created as an alternative to Slashdot. Slashdot was too noisy to be useful. But Slashdot now seems to be a better filter of "interesting things on the web most people haven't seen" than MetaFilter. So as MeFi becomes more noisy, Slashdot becomes less.

How strange.

And no, it's not the royal "we". My vision for what MeFi should be is a) just one jackass's opinion, and b) clearly at odds with Matt's. I have no misconceptions about how relevant or important my voice is here. But I haven't been banned, and "stomping off in a huff" didn't seem to work well. So I think you can expect to be irritated by what you see as my pompous presumptuousness for years to come.

Got it dipshit?

(and I only end with nasty name calling because someone accused me yesterday of being a kind and good-hearted person - an idea I obviously need to work harder at disproving)
posted by y6y6y6 at 9:24 AM on August 5, 2003

by what you see as my pompous presumptuousness

You presume that I presumed you were being pompous. I was merely pointing out that other people in this thread were not just talking about what you said "we" were talking about; therefore, by "we" I presumed you meant "I". That's the royal "we". I didn't mean that you're angling for the MeFi throne, or laying down rules from on high, or anything like that.

The point I was trying to make was that the post was good, the comments were iffy, and the idea of another thread to extend the iffy-ness was dumb.

I know those were your points. I was picking up on one of your asides, not your main points; asides which in turn echoed points made by Wulfgar! and others. The bulk of my rant was not in direct response to your comments, as I said above.
posted by rory at 10:30 AM on August 5, 2003

i continue to be amazed that there are frequent posters who haven't got a clue about customization and don't know that virtually everything, from the colors, to the text size to the number and order of posts on the front page is up to them. click. explore. learn. be amazed.
posted by quonsar at 12:42 PM on August 5, 2003

You presume that I presumed you were being pompous.

Say that one five times, real fast.
posted by adampsyche at 1:10 PM on August 5, 2003

Sometimes y6 is my hero.
posted by eyeballkid at 1:14 PM on August 5, 2003

He earns respect often.
posted by caddis at 9:08 AM on August 6, 2003

oh, fuck this egregious noise.
posted by quonsar at 9:12 AM on August 6, 2003

He farts too much.
posted by y6y6y6 at 9:40 AM on August 6, 2003

No, others infer stinky effluviums...
posted by jpburns at 5:09 PM on August 6, 2003

Everytime funky Fark-isms load under voluminous image uploads MetaFilter screams...
posted by wendell at 2:52 AM on August 7, 2003