Comments on 8531 | MetaTalk

It seems like it ought to be more complicated, considering the amount of haranguing that goes on about it.

Also, apparently, anything goes in comments to threads, and so one can always make a post and then comment further to it if one has more to say or opinions to share. -- Although some people really seem to freak out when someone mentions politics even in comments.

I'm just trying to figure this stuff out. I apologize for spamming MeTa with more metametapolitics, because I'm sure some people will be unhappy about that.
posted by blacklite at 10:16 PM on November 28, 2004

i am unhappy about that.

(just so quonsar doesn't say it first, because i know he wants to)
posted by The God Complex at 10:17 PM on November 28, 2004

but in all serious degrees of seriousness, you'll never get it nailed down entirely. then we'd have nothing to harangue about.
posted by The God Complex at 10:18 PM on November 28, 2004

... meta metatalk? This has been hashed, rehashed, and hashed some more --- does it really need to be reiterated again?
posted by nathan_teske at 10:19 PM on November 28, 2004

It takes hours to go through all those goddamn threads.

I just thought I would attempt to clarify and summarize it on the front of metatalk so the people like me who might not always have time to read the seven million comments and threads about the nature of communities and dildos and ukraine and politics can see what seems to have arisen from all the discussion.

Maybe I don't have the same mental wiring as the people who live and breathe 200-page threads; I like to see some kind of concrete, concise result from it all, and so I tried to come up with one.
posted by blacklite at 10:28 PM on November 28, 2004

It seems like it ought to be more complicated

As I understand it, these are the reasons not to post politically charged posts:

1) They're divisive. People can agree to disagree most of the time, but confronted with a really partisan post, the conversation tends to follow suit. It's a low level of discourse with a high degree of polarization that makes for lots of pain all around. Most folks here want to foster a diverse community with many types of voices. Staying away from perennial lightning rods like abortion helps with that.

2) Frequently they're not "best of the web" in any way except for their support of somebody's agenda. A news link isn't good content. A shoddy hack-job op-ed isn't good content. But sometimes people get confused about this, because they desperately want to hear what the piece is saying, so they think it's actually great content. It's not.

3) There are better places for it. Don't post news headlines here because news sites are a dime a dozen. Don't post partisan links here because political blogs are a dime a dozen. MetaFilter is a hand-made website with something special going on. Don't just replicate what other sites already do better than we can. And yes, that includes getting your own blog if you have an agenda to push.

4) I guess I covered this, but time has just shown that we can't do these threads very well. With notable exceptions, political threads don't fit our format. Another way to say it is that if you could craft an excellent political post, it still might devolve into festering swamps of shit once loosed unto 20K members. #4 isn't a logical point of reasoning, it's just the voice of experience.
posted by scarabic at 10:30 PM on November 28, 2004

Blacklite, you're pretty much right on, imo. As a new member, I would recommend you avoid making political FPP (but I'm someone who recommends political FPPs are no nos for anyone so take that with a grain of salt).

As others have said, no matter how you think you have it sorted, someone will call you out for something. You're never 100 percent safe. The biggest piece of advice I can give beyond making sure you're FPPs lead to interesting things on the web (not interesting topics) is this: don't get mad when people do take you to task for something. Try not to respond angry or it'll snowball. Most of the people who'll condemn you for such and such (and I may just be one of them) are jerks and in the end what goes on here has little to do with outside/real life. It's just a web site though plenty of people (again, myself included) occasionally forget that.
posted by dobbs at 10:33 PM on November 28, 2004

Kudos to you as a newbie for reading all those threads. Aside from a few silly things here and there, considering there are three-thousand new users, a good portion of them seem like you and are well-intentioned and relatively knowledgable about mefi.

I'd say, however, that a post can represent the poster's opinion as long as expressing that opinion isn't pretty much all there is to it. And, really, a post should always ultimately be judged on its links. They should stand on their own.
posted by Ethereal Bligh at 10:58 PM on November 28, 2004

I would recommend you avoid making political FPP

Oh, I'm not posting this so I can go ahead and make one. I don't think I'll be doing that for a good long time, unless I find something really earth-shattering.

And thanks, EB.
posted by blacklite at 1:26 AM on November 29, 2004

I think that's a good summation, blacklite - for me, alarms start going off whenever people try justifying their political posts with "I was only trying to inspire a discussion". That's probably the main confusion people have about Metafilter - "discussion" of issues is not the primary purpose. Obviously, we're supposed to discuss the cool links, but it should never be about discussion for discussion's sake.

Just because a lot of intelligent, opinionated, political people hang out here doesn't mean the purpose of the site is political debating. A lot of intelligent, opinionated, political people probably hang out at your local bar too, but most of them are just trying to relax and enjoy themselves, and possibly try to get laid, not listen to people on soapboxes. And, as others have said, just because you think the opinion of some hack journalist is the best thing you've read all day, doesn't mean 20,000 other people will feel similarly inspired. YMMV.
posted by Jimbob at 4:27 AM on November 29, 2004

I dispute 3 of the 4 items on scarabic's list.
posted by rushmc at 7:42 AM on November 29, 2004

some kind of concrete, concise result from it all

Ooh, that's a mistake. Most MetaFilter arguments return to the victor, if one is even generally acknowledged, a benefit best measured in femtorobesons. (The "robeson" is a unit of personal accomplishment.) By contrast, every hour spent reading threads reduces your lifetime total by anywhere from ten to thirty millirobesons.

In fact, only Matt has gleaned even as much as one centirobeson from his efforts here. I therefore wouldn't look for much in the way of "results."
posted by adamgreenfield at 7:47 AM on November 29, 2004

The quickest way to get a label you'll never be able to shake here is to put needless multiple paragraph breaks in your posts.

Well, a label from me, anyway.
posted by soyjoy at 7:52 AM on November 29, 2004

We haven't had to ramp up this many people on our little learning curve before. I'm fine with the patience thing.

We're going to have a few more threads asking "stupid" questions about the finer points of Metaquette, and frankly, I'd rather that than the ignorant alternative.

I'm welcoming new viewpoints, but this joint is popular because of the semi-spoken ground rules we've got. They now have to be a little more spoken. It's cool.

Do not stop asking stupid questions. Ever. Try to ask different stupid questions every time, but don't let the sneering varsity class intimidate you.
posted by chicobangs at 8:16 AM on November 29, 2004

...but don't let the sneering varsity class intimidate you.

And if you get invited to their parties, watch out for roofies, and remember, "No" means "No".
posted by amberglow at 8:44 AM on November 29, 2004

What chicobangs said. I think you're doing fine, blacklite. (And special kudos for filling out the "What's the deal with your nickname?" section on your userpage; the rest of you n00bs -- go and do likewise! We like knowing something about you so we can ~~put the boot in more effectively~~ interact with you with greater understanding.)
posted by languagehat at 8:55 AM on November 29, 2004

I agree with 4 of the 4 items on scarabic's list.
posted by timeistight at 8:56 AM on November 29, 2004

That's the idea, and #1 has repeated it over and over, but there's a segment of the population that still thinks firing spitballs at the teacher is cool.
And likes to give atomic wedgies to perceived teacher's pets.
posted by darukaru at 8:58 AM on November 29, 2004

Can we please stop calling people "n00bs" and get on to the important business - Dividing the new users into new folks we like, and the complete morons? "n00bs" isn't even close to being an accuarate classification.
posted by y6y6y6 at 9:40 AM on November 29, 2004

I dispute 3 of the 4 items on scarabic's list.

Well, that's what they're there for. Please elaborate, or at least clarify which ones you disagree with.

There's nothing set in stone about political posts. Even Matt rarely articulates any kind of "rules," so I have to consider this one still open for debate, as is newsfiltering. In the absence of clear rules, we grasp after some kind of loose consensus according to which people can be flogged here.
posted by scarabic at 9:46 AM on November 29, 2004

"Also, apparently, anything goes in comments to threads" - No, that's not true. Comments can be - and are - deleted. The 8495 should have been a few comments longer. Those are lacunae only I notice - for that, I've dramatically scaled back my involvement on this venue - 'cept for this, but this is along lines I would pursue anyway.

A road to nowhere : on the discrete charm of Metafilter ( apologies to Bunuel )

There are - and probably always will be - excellent, thought provoking posts and good commentary here on Metafilter. But the discourse is - of necessity, for political reasons - circumscribed to the bounds the lukewarm : as a warm sitz bath of the pleasant, the titillating, and the safe. Truth - in all of it's discomfiting glory - is elsewhere : as all who favor the heat and flash of truth-telling should be.

Here, to be lukewarm is a virtue and - if that contradicts the spirit of this Biblical verse from Revelations (chapter 3, verses 15 and 16) - "I know thy works, that thou art neither cold nor hot: I would thou wert cold or hot. So because thou art lukewarm, and neither hot nor cold, I will spew thee out of my mouth.", the contradiction illustrates the differing and sometimes diametrically opposed imperatives and logic of the sacred and the profane. Here, too concentrated or too much truth telling leads to a sort of collective indigestion - as a sourness of belly and an acidic biliousness of spirit.

Here you would do well to heed the practically minded advice of Aristotle and pilot the vessel of your posts and commentary away from the shoals of extremity - even when the truth lives there : or, your ship will founder on the shoals of Mathowie.

The truth is and always has been a flashpoint of conflict and so a judiciously light seasoning of truth - here on this chautauqua's moderate, well balanced and urbane daily fare of curiosities and ruminations that is Metafilter - seasons the mix and improves digestion.

Gently graze on this valley's sweet clover of moderation : only surly goats gnaw the scrub and thin alpine flora of the high hills and peaks.

As far as guidelines, think of it this way : this is a forum for posts and discussion on everything except that which is contentious. Don't even think of the "political" - for what is or is not "political" ? "Political" posts here - too many or too strong - are frowned upon by many members ( though, for a lack of empirical data, it is impossible to tell whether this is a majority or a minority sentiment ) and, more to the point, by Matt. But to even use the term "the political" is to miss that "the political" can be defined, quite simply, as all that is contentious.

( A creeping erasure : a bit on the "contentious" and it's slide - into taboo, the inconceivable, and the forgotten )

Definition of the "contentious" is inherently political - played out in linguistic and media struggles, culture wars in general, and in armed conflicts, invasions, mass conversions, slaughter, inquisitions, and genocide....and, finally, in the Damnatio Memoriae that was not invented by imperial Rome but has been carried out by conquering peoples and armies throughout known history - as the erasure of Pharoahs, whole peoples, cultures, histories, artifacts and ideas. Eventually, as one side or other prevails in those conflicts, the contentious can become true taboo - as too incendiary to be brought up in polite discourse : or banned, or even extinguished and eventually forgotten unless later stumbled upon, exhumed, and pieced back together from remaining fragmentary evidence by devoted archeologists.

Now taboos - although those who hold them are not aware of them as such - can be, of course, offended ( routinely even ). They are, by definition, deeply felt and their violation typically provokes strong visceral response. But, there is an additional category to note : the unthinkable, those ideas which have actually disappeared from mass public consciousness (if they were ever there) or even from elite discourse for being engulfed or rendered invisible by shifts in underlying societal assumption. Regardless, neither taboo or the unthinkable can be truly political except insofar as they can be be challenged in a public space. In the case of taboo or sometimes the inconceivable (which, stated aloud, can be deeply unsettling even if barely understood) that guarantees majority reprisal, in riots, mobbing, Pogroms and inquisitions to tear the blasphemers limb from limb and cleanse the heresy by fire and sword :

As history of religious "heresy" demonstrates quite well, in all of the dreary chronicles of the savagery of war there is nothing to compare to the studied, savage, grotesque methods of the Inquisition and the religious war. For common criminals or mere dissenters and foes of power there has always been imprisonment and execution, yes - but for those who challenged the Papacy or practiced heretical forms of Christianity, the Inquisition reserved the slow delights of the Maiden and the Pear*.

Now Metafilter is overt - text, and links - so no inquisition, even a nascent or coded one, lurks here ; and, though of course one could deconstruct the text itself or hypothesize secret cabals and insider cliques ( and though the latter might exist to a slight degree) there is no underlying, secret parallel narrative inherent in the blue. Metatalk - the closest thing to an insider narrative - is also open. Inquisitions, here, are neither necessary nor even possible - except by way of mob justice. But - in the end - even that has no force except when backed by the agreement of executive fiat.

Parallels to the Inquisition can be made, yes, in terms of mobbing (also common, along with pogroms, to the Spanish Inquisition) or for a lack of due process. But the closest parallel lies in the manner by which truth - or heresy - can be selectively made to vanish. In the historical Inquisitions, this was by way of great societal conflagrations of torture and burning which sought to root out and extinguish all deviance ( and, in the Spanish Inquisition, most ethnicities ) and dissent by way of the agonized deaths of hundreds of thousands of individuals - crushed, burst, burnt and pierced - as an obliteration of the literal embodiment of truth, or heresy*.

And, that evokes another type of erasure - perhaps an even more extreme type of erasure of public memory, and even of history itself - Damnatio memoriae : "Damnatio memoriae (Latin for "damnation of memory", in the sense of removed from the remembrance) was a form of dishonor which could be passed by the Roman Senate upon traitors or others who brought discredit to the Roman Empire. The sense of the expression and of the sanction is to cancel every trace of the person from the life of Rome, as if he had never existed....The first emperor to be so condemned was Caligula (reigned 37-41), followed by Nero.....Upon passage of the damnatio memoriae, the person's name was stricken from any rolls of honor he may have appeared on (some of them were called memoriae), and in the case of the Roman Emperors so condemned, their statues were destroyed and their name removed from public buildings....A famous example of the concept of damnatio memoriae in modern usage is the "vaporization" of "unpersons" in George Orwell's dystopian novel Nineteen Eighty-Four ("He did not exist; he never existed").....More modern examples of damnatio memoriae in actual practice was the removal of portraits, books, and any other traces of Stalin's opponents during the Great Purge."

( Back to Metafilter )

Here on Metafilter nothing so ghastly is needed - the extirpation of heresy can be done with a mere keystroke.

What speech here risks such annihilation ? How could we possibly define such speech and so avoid it ? Well, one could view the boundaries defining problematic speech on Metafilter as an amalgamation of liberal sensibilities concerning the politically correct* together with all speech that causes people here to shout and curse.

So : that which incites conflict. It matters not at all that manipulative members can, therefore, chose to selectively shut down avenues of discourse simply by yelling loudly enough - the transgression of yelling is not a mortal sin, and the opprobrium and punishments meted out to miscreants who yell are generally minor. There are extreme exceptions, yes, to define the bounds of the rule. But - on the balance - a steady stream of polite but blunt truth telling runs far more risk of censure, perhaps, than a continual torrent of carefully calibrated yelling, moderate strength insults, biliousness, and snark :

Even though, nonetheless, Metafilter can be regarded as a museum of the pleasant, the thought provoking, the bizarre, curious and novel : the "best", except insofar as that "best" is not excessively controversial.

One could also consider the metaphor of the highway : far from the madding, mobbing crowds, away from that crush and din : in the slow stillness of the wilds and the hinterlands : in the desert, even, that gives birth to prophets and visions. There, one is untrammeled, free to crash the SUV of the mind through the guardrails of probity and, barring the notice of cops and state troopers, the penalty will be slight ( if annoying ) - scratched paint and dinged headlight cages.

There one can range widely - to the top of mesas, across brooks, past bears and deer - and yet not much risk crashing into or clashing with fellow expeditioners.

But in the city, the press of buzzing, scrabbling humanity demands subservience to manners, to an etiquette that defines the guardrails and sidewalks that delineate the boundaries of the pale.

Drink more than just a little of the passion for truth and your inebriation will cause a crash - you, and others, will surely suffer - your car impounded and seized, your license revoked, your insurance cancelled. Should you later regain your motoring rights, your sober recognition of appropriate discourse will be monitored every moment by the breathalyzer of group policing and groupthink - and, as a convicted troublemaker, you will be fined through interminable Metatalk chastisements for each and every indiscretion that smacks even a little of departure from the traffic lanes of orthodoxy.

Thus : the contentious. Contentious posts make people yell, and Matt doesn't approve of yelling nor, it would seem, of reasoned argument which remains polite but which causes others to yell in response. So remember this - the demands of truth here are subservient to the overall requirements of tone : the tone of Metafilter is thoughtful, yes, and reasoned - but reason and logic - per se - is not the sine qua non here. Comments and posts stand only insofar as they do not incite outbursts of anger, bile, and profanity (whatever that is). Outbreaks of collective rioting tarnish this site's reputation and impede it's acceptance by a wider audience, and they poison the overall atmosphere for many members who - though holding left leaning and non-mainstream political sentiments - feel that Metafilter should be a refuge of sorts, a sanctuary away from those uncomfortable truths which - even though they are not actually present anywhere in mainstream societal and media discourse or on the internet but for a few sites - nonetheless ( or for that very reason ) shatter the tranquility of the blue.

Blue, after all, IS the color of tranquility, and if Matt Haughey had designed Metafilter with politics in mind, he would have chosen a more energetic background color - #660000 or #990000 perhaps.

And, of those here whose ostensible political leanings would otherwise suggest a more welcoming attitude towards uncomfortable societal truths, those who have not devolved into a Ochsian liberalism, those who elsewhere or in real, meatspace life really do practice what they preach but loath the intrusion of the nakedly political here on Metafilter - could we call those Lotus-Eaters ? Perhaps, but then again - all humans need refuge from the noise and clash of daily struggle, a place that is gently soothing - a place where everyone knows your name. A "Cheers" bar of the internet where professors and those who profess, coders and hacks, professionals and autodidacts, blogerati and aspirants, and the earnest and the jaded, can interact and discuss posts that have been carefully parsed from the set of the political, and the contentious, from taboo, which nonetheless somehow range beyond the highways of mainstream orthodoxy - as long as those do not plunge even a little into the dreaded tinfoil forest ( that is tinged with madness and peril, rumor holds) or ascend any further than the foothills that lead upwards to the jagged, treacherous mountains of perspective.

Remember this : safety, and the good life, is to be found not on the peaks or in the wilds but here, on the mild rolling hills and verdant valleys of moderation - where the clever, the wise, the prudent, and the moderately curious come to flock together and graze their minds on a sweet grass that is tender and blue-green.

And that is good.

________________________________

* ( Footnote 1) For the zealotry of the inquisitor, recantations are not enough - though they are a precondition. In the first of the great Inquisitions, that deployed against the Cathar heresy, the inquisition ranged far beyond mere torture - to the methodical rooting out of the heresy through methods which some have argued were the true forerunner of the modern police state. Lists of heretics - extracted by torture - were cross checked with other lists : and the individuals whose names appeared most often were then seized and tortured in order to generate new lists. As with the treatment, by the contemporary American "War on Terror", of suspects apprehended for questioning, the Inquisition held creative torture to be the most expeditious road to the truth - and, as in the "War on Drugs", agents of the Inquisition could seize at will the property and wealth of apprehended suspects or order their families to pay for the costs of subsequent torture. Lack of due process, secret trials, and routine torture - these things are not modern inventions and - although the scale of modern state scientific research into the efficacy of torture methods surely has no earlier historical precedent, this was surely the case for the Papal and Spanish inquisitors only for a lack of comparable resources and insofar as the scientific method had not yet been ( or not yet fully ) defined, nor it's astonishing explanatory power truly understood.

* ( Footnote 2 ) : these have deep historical roots, as those middle class mores and taboos over that which constitutes "polite" speech - which the poor would disdain and the rich, though well schooled in the finery of the social graces, are quite willing to dispense with as necessary ( but usually in private ) when political contingency demands the iron fist.
posted by troutfishing at 10:03 AM on November 29, 2004

troutfishing - We begged you to get counseling. Please, for your friends and loved ones if not yourself, see a doctor. They have medications which can help you. You don't have to live this way.
posted by y6y6y6 at 10:10 AM on November 29, 2004

SHUT THE FUCK UP, SON OF BLIGH!
posted by quonsar at 10:12 AM on November 29, 2004

OOPS, THAT WAS FOR TROUT, NOT Y6.
posted by quonsar at 10:12 AM on November 29, 2004

Gently graze on this valley's sweet clover of moderation

Like limiting comment length to under 5,000 words, for instance?
posted by DrJohnEvans at 10:15 AM on November 29, 2004

y6y6y6 - If I needed your advice, I would have asked. I urinate in your general direction.
posted by troutfishing at 10:17 AM on November 29, 2004

.
posted by troutfishing at 10:24 AM on November 29, 2004

I got about to paragraph three before I realized that I was reading trout and skimmed over the rest. (Anyone make it further than me?). What I took from it was that he wants to be able to "speak the truth" (as he sees it), and people who ask that he preach elsewhere apparently want to live life as despots of lies always avoiding trout's bringing of the truth. Like Prometheus with the fire, so trout brings enlightenment to Metafilter, but us unwashed masses are too deluded/frightened/unwilling to accept it. (If he had put some time or thought in the post, he could have brought out Plato's allegory of the cave which clearly makes his point.... and maybe he wouldn't have pathetically misappropriated a Biblical passage).

Or, in other words, trout just textually masturbated while whining that his rants are frowned upon.

I think scarabic's list a good one, and I think he hits on the reasons. Metafilter doesn't do political issues well. Other sites exist for that. Nobody is going to change anyone's minds. All that comes from political posts is one of two responses: (1) me too or (2) you're stupid. Beyond that, higher discourse of ideas, where respect is given both to the opposite side and the right of the opposite side to have a reasonable differing opinion, just never happens here. If we could have enlightened debates, where both sides are given equal time and respect, then perhaps we could do politics better.

Most of the time, equal time and respect to opinions is not offered, so what you get is a cacophony of "me toos" and slanders upon those who disagree with the issue. This is a site full of loud, dogmatic people who thickheaded about their beliefs. So why talk about it? It doesn't add any value to the site (beyond the value garnered by those that get off to this kind of crap). When the point of the site is to allow those diverse and creative people to share something new and interesting, why add in petty political crap? If people are looking for that, then they go read Kos. They don't need it mixed in here.

Things can have purposes. One doesn't need a website to be everything. Let Metafilter be what it is: a place where new and interesting things on the web can be brought to everyone's attention.
posted by Seth at 10:25 AM on November 29, 2004

"'n00bs' isn't even close to being an accuarate classification."

Fuckwits-in-training?
posted by mr_crash_davis at 10:27 AM on November 29, 2004

Maybe Matt should implement a preview function so we can check for typos. Then maybe I could have caught some of my typos.

Or something.
posted by Seth at 10:27 AM on November 29, 2004

Maybe Matt can implement a function by way of which I can smack you upside your head, Seth. By what right do you of all people have to insult troutfishing?

Trout is obviously going through some difficult times, but he's at least offered things to us in the past. What the fuck have you ever brought but your own sense of entitlement?
posted by adamgreenfield at 10:31 AM on November 29, 2004

All that comes from political posts is one of two responses: (1) me too or (2) you're stupid.

Only when you and your ilk are involved. Many of us are able to discuss and disagree calmly and rationally more often than not.

But don't let me stop you...wank on!
posted by rushmc at 10:32 AM on November 29, 2004

rush. I'd love to see any examples where a balanced and respectful discussion occurs. And something that occurs only 1 out of 100 times doesn't show that it is something we can work towards.
posted by Seth at 10:36 AM on November 29, 2004

Maybe Matt can implement a function by way of which I can smack you upside your head, Seth. By what right do you of all people have to insult troutfishing?
posted by adamgreenfield at 10:31 AM PST on November 29

Rights? Where does rights come into this? And why are my rights the most limited?

And if there are rights to be rude, do you have some greater right to be rude to me than I to trout? Do you miss the inherent irony of your post?
posted by Seth at 10:40 AM on November 29, 2004

Seth - since you seem to know a bit from the Bible, chew on this : "false witness".

"....he could have brought out Plato's allegory of the cave which clearly makes his point" - I thought of that but decided it was inappropriate to the task and a bit of a cliche. I'm not holding myself up as any standard bearer of truth - though I do think a few of my points there may have gone over some heads : at least yours, I'd say.

I fart in your general direction.

adamgreenfield - I feel great - How are you ?
posted by troutfishing at 10:53 AM on November 29, 2004

keep in mind that anyone who makes a list of acceptable behavior on any of the MetaSites is really only expressing their wishes. They are tips, not hard and fast rules. Unless it's Matt expressing his preferences. Those are rules. But he is a relatively benevolent dictator and otherwise very busy person, which is where the community's self-policing comes in.

Questions like these, along with the "it's my first post, go gentle on me" pleadings indicate two things:

We pile on too much. Call someone out politely and succinctly, then let it be.
To our new users, and probably to the rest of the world, we come off a lot meaner than we really are. Realize that the overwhelming majority of nastiness and vitriol you read in the comments and here at MetaTalk is the result of some long standing grudges.

I am as full of crap as anyone else here and have just "expressed my preferences" as well, but please take it in the spirit intended. By all means, post and comment when you've got something to say. The only ones "keeping score" about who's been deleted or said a few dumb things are assholes anyway. Here's a cliche I haven't heard for a while, but it definitely applies here: it's just a fucking website.
posted by whatnot at 10:56 AM on November 29, 2004

Trout, are you okay? That was... unusual. Is there something we can do to help?
posted by five fresh fish at 11:24 AM on November 29, 2004

Yeah, Seth, I do. I do because I speak only on my own behalf, and I have 100% authorized myself to be a snide, obnoxious prick to you, because in my opinion that is all you deserve.

You, on the other hand, have neither sought my authorization nor that of anyone else, and yet you claim to speak for all. Or some aggrieved "silent majority."

Newsflash, bucko: you don't. So include me out of your asides mocking troutfishing, and everything else while you're at it. Any side, perspective, viewpoint or tendency you're a part of I want nothing to do with.
posted by adamgreenfield at 12:24 PM on November 29, 2004

Sethfilter: I fart in your general direction
posted by quonsar at 12:26 PM on November 29, 2004

Spoken like a real fundamentalist, Trout.
posted by scarabic at 12:27 PM on November 29, 2004

Seth, I'd be more inclined to give creedence to your constant complaining about political threads, if you'd do something besides complain.

You want a wider variety of opinions in threads? Terrific. Grow some balls and wade in and post your own. You're like some bleacher creature heckling the ballplayers who's too chickenshit to pick up a bat.
posted by jonmc at 12:40 PM on November 29, 2004

All that comes from political posts is one of two responses: (1) me too or (2) you're stupid or (3) several comments by Seth.

Not counting 143 examples of gratuitous personal attacks and generic histrionics--all politics related--made in Metatalk, he has made 198 comments in the blue with about only 25 made in not overtly political threads: that's close to an 8:1 ratio of the political to the nonpolitical.
posted by y2karl at 12:45 PM on November 29, 2004

If I were Matt, I'd be barring my freakin' windows.
posted by stavrosthewonderchicken at 12:52 PM on November 29, 2004

I think he's relaxing by fireside, feet up in an easy chair, munching on paprika-dusted popcorn.
posted by adamgreenfield at 12:58 PM on November 29, 2004

…counting thousands of five-dollar bills.
posted by timeistight at 1:21 PM on November 29, 2004

…counting thousands of five-dollar bills.

Maybe he sewed them into a cape and is whooshing around his house like a superhero.
posted by jonmc at 1:23 PM on November 29, 2004

I know I would be.
posted by adamgreenfield at 1:24 PM on November 29, 2004

Actually, the quickest way to get a label you'll never be able to shake here is to self link your own product in a FPP.
posted by page404 at 1:29 PM on November 29, 2004

Holy fucking shit. I missed that one. That's absolutely the worst thing I've ever seen here. Worse than homepage goatse.
posted by scarabic at 1:34 PM on November 29, 2004

Wow. He really tried to pull it off, didn't he, with some "I think"s and a "supposedly".
posted by DrJohnEvans at 1:43 PM on November 29, 2004

scarabic - well I'm not that - although my father was in fact a minister (methodist). But I do try to notice fundamentals. For me, at this moment, one of those involves a growing conviction that I'm being an idiot for wasting my time here - and my own take on the phenomenon of Metafilter as well.

fff - I appreciate your offer, but I'm fine. It was a friggin' essay (and a heavily stylized one at that) and not a cry for help, OK ? - a sort of ironic swan song of my "Metafilter period", a meditation on deletion throughout history, and my own take on the phenomenon of Metafilter as well.

But I suppose that - rather than post such an exercise in obliqueness - I should have just clearly spelled out what was bugging me.

Let me be a bit more blunt then - I wanted to offer a correction to blacklite's assumption that "anything goes in comments to threads" : from my recent experience, that's not true even on Metatalk. That's why in the end why I'm chilling out on my participation on Metafilter. Having what I considered to be a quality post of mine deleted ? - that was a judgement call : one I'd argue with (and did), but still well within the pale. It's Matt's site, and it's his judgement call on what sort of post mix will improve Metafilter.

What sent me over the edge and really blew my trust or interest in this site was when - on that Metatalk thread ( Metatalk 8495 ) that I posted (concerning my deleted post in the blue) in which I asked for clearer posting guidelines - two consecutive comments of mine there got deleted ( they would have been around comment 201 ). It seemed a bit bizarre to me, a bit much. Matt can do whatever he wants - It's his site. But, from my end, I felt that as a basic violation of trust.

I guess I made the mistake of assuming that there were some basic guidelines for comment deletion, that such an extreme measure was reserved for extreme language, threats, or other such illegalities. I was wrong. My mistake.

Still, I wasn't so much sad about the loss of the comments ( even though one took probably an hour and a half ) : in the grand scheme that's nothing, and around the world people are needlessly starving and dying from disease and war. My puny complaint doesn't rate - by at least several orders of magnitude. Rather, the deletions wiped out my sense of trust and pretty much killed whatever residual sense of belonging I had for this faux-community and also felt - at the time - sort of like being urinated on from a distance for the lack of respect implied. In the end it was an insignificant thing but for the symbolism and - yet - it certainly did communicate to me, quite clearly, that it's high time for me to move on.

Is there something you can do to help ? - no, not really. I'd say that Matt Haughey just did me a favor and, were I not still busy washing the piss off my shoes and pants, I'd thank him - at least his site was, for a while at least, beneficial for me.... As compared to the rather dubious contributions of a number of other Metafilter members I might cite - who seem to get their jollies from snark and insults - Matt's a pillar of the community. But, I've been properly disabused of any remaining fantasies I might have had concerning the Metafilter "community" . True communities entail boundaries, limits, ties involving reciprocity and obligation - and, I'd maintain, above all human contact and trust. Metafilter might be much more aptly likened to a cult but for Matt's wise refusal to play into that role. So the site amounts to, in the end, a moderately successful business model which probably generates a revenue stream less than many carwashes, KFC's, or clam-shacks.

But it's not my business model, and so I need to stop wasting time here - and, I probably needed to be properly pissed off to do that. My Mefi time would be exponentially better spent finishing off an absurd number of accumulated unfinished writing projects neglected for the vague, cheap thrill of Metafilter discussion that's come to feel more and more, for me anyway, like a pointless exercise in wankery which eats time and returns snark.

Plus, my typing still sucks.

Well, duh! - Or d'oh! - Compensation isn't in the contract, and I signed on the dotted line of my own free will. What a business model for an internet clamshack! Playing off people's vanity, and for some probably a need for a simulacrum of belonging, it parlays those motivations into an often decent read and a minor cash flow. I've been an unpaid commentator running with a howling, snarling pack of other unpaid commentators who - when a fellow member drops from illness or exhaustion - are all too happy to devour their own.

Whatever. I think I'll go walk my own dog - after that maybe I'll start to clean my basement - it's long overdue. Then, I'll lay some insulation in the attic. Heat's expensive this year. Fundamentals - but without any attached "isms" .

On the balance, I still think Metafilter exerts a positive influence. But no longer for me. The new howling pack will attend to business with all the bounding enthusiasm of one or two years - or more - spent just longing to post and comment in the blue! Good for them. No doubt the site will benefit. For my part - well, my life's mission is not to post more links than Matt or more commentary than Dan Hartung. I've spent far too much time here and perhaps overstayed my welcome. Well then........

Oh - one more thing then, a quote :

"Death told me this:
He razors off 11 days of your life for every MetaFilter minute.
On your deathbed, in a dream, he dangles them in front of you, And offers to reimburse you, if you'll just click 'Accept'.
And when you do click 'Accept' (and everyone always does)
The screen flashes fire, turns black, and says
'Error 404: File Not Found'......."

( Opus Dark )
posted by troutfishing at 2:40 PM on November 29, 2004

Dude, hurry up and leave already.
posted by Stan Chin at 2:57 PM on November 29, 2004

Jesus, Trout. You say that it's a judgement call and you disagree but you can live with the fact that it's Matt's call to make. Then you say it's a violation of trust and pissing on you for him to exercise that call. You finish with an overall condemnation of the community en toto- which must be *ALL WRONG* to the core, because certainly, there couldn't have been anything in your comments that led them to be deleted. You're talking a lot about scaling back your participation and/or leaving. Sheezus. Just try to post a comment under 500 words for starters.
posted by scarabic at 3:02 PM on November 29, 2004

"quite clearly, that it's high time for me to move on."

Which, quite clearly, you are totally incapable of doing. Which is what we're getting at.

I've seen quite a few MeFi flameouts, as have you. But this one is the first (even counting bunnyfire's) where I felt the person should get some medical attention for their own good. Either this is a truely epic troll, or you've gone bonkers. The other option is that you're an idiot, and I don't believe that one bit.

I've been following this all along , yes? Well, I agree with five fresh fish - It *sounds* like a cry for help.
posted by y6y6y6 at 3:06 PM on November 29, 2004

troutfishing is scaring the n00bs! (yes, that's me...)
posted by rooftop secrets at 3:07 PM on November 29, 2004

I, for one, will miss Trout.

Have a nice rest, then come back and scare what will by then be a whole new generation of n00bs!
posted by Quinbus Flestrin at 3:28 PM on November 29, 2004

You say that it's a judgement call and you disagree but you can live with the fact that it's Matt's call to make.

correct, regarding FPP's.

Then you say it's a violation of trust and pissing on you for him to exercise that call.

incorrect. he said this regarding a metatalk discussion about the deletion of the FPP's, in which two of his comments were deleted.
posted by quonsar at 3:34 PM on November 29, 2004

Trout is obviously going through some difficult times

Indeed, and anyone who's been here long enough to remember his better days should avoid piling on and let the man do what he feels he has to do. Trout, if I may -- I'm obviously not going to dissuade you from posting epic comments or feeling ill-used or going off in a huffmobile -- but if you're still here reading -- could you at least try to avoid putting an apostrophe in possessive "its"? That will be one good thing that comes out of all this turmoil.
*whistles "Danny Boy," watches troutfishing zoom off towards his secret underground ice-walled cave*

Come back, Shane!
posted by languagehat at 3:35 PM on November 29, 2004

Bye! Y'all come back now, y'hear?
posted by stavrosthewonderchicken at 3:41 PM on November 29, 2004

Holy-schmoly Batman.

I've seen some pretty far out last gasps, but trout, you have truly raised the bar. I second (third? fourtherly?) the suggestion to talk to someone -- if I read your recent posts on my sons blog I'd be drinking up all the booze, hiding the ammo and having a good long sitdown with his teachers.

My son is eleven.
posted by cedar at 3:59 PM on November 29, 2004

(Anyone make it further than me?).

I read the whole thing, and thought it was really nice. Have fun storming the castle.
posted by norm at 4:00 PM on November 29, 2004

i expected something much longer/crazier from what i was told about this thread. i have posted longer messages than that on usenet groups. i have posted messages three times that long about dreams that i had or random thoughts that i had after not sleeping for a few days. see ya later, trouticus.
posted by bargle at 4:44 PM on November 29, 2004

As the first author you cited I say go for broke. Matt will mop up. He has no choice.
posted by Cryptical Envelopment at 4:53 PM on November 29, 2004

Trout knows what I think of him from private correspondence. Lengthy, detailed posts and comments: we can all skim those as necessary.

But you can't skim a comment that's been deleted.

Matt: when a comment is deleted, why don't you insert a placeholder? At least, then we'd know that you did it - as opposed to now, when it's gone - and we don't even know it's gone. Or why.
posted by dash_slot- at 5:14 PM on November 29, 2004

wow, not sure what to make of this thread.
So will say; WTF troutfishing :) Bye \!!!/
posted by thomcatspike at 5:15 PM on November 29, 2004

( *per scarabic's comments, Metafilter as community ) stavros - Are you in my community too ? Can I borrow a cup of sugar and a stick of butter ? - I'm going to bake a pie for the church dinner. And, are you going to the hoe-down tonight ? Rita Mae's been asking after you, you know.

stan - are you a part of my community ? Well then, fellow community member, why don't you just shuffle on back to your snark-encrusted lair ? It would be appreciated.

quonsar - good read.

languagehat - I'm not going to engage you now - I like you, and I don't want to vent any irritation your way. But.... an apostrophe ? I know, it's your job - but remember that I'm my own (inexpert) proofreader. You know how well that works. I'm not exactly in a huff - as I said, Matt bestowed on me the gift of annoyance : I need to write in a more structured fashion and not engage in such pointless dalliance on Metafilter or Metatalk (regardless of it's combative and bracing interactive quality) .
_________

scarabic - On bad days here, or on bad post discussions, I see precious little real community ( by usual definitions ). Friendliness, charity, compassion, basic civility ? - those sometimes seem in short supply. If this is indeed a community, wel then, it can at times behave more like that described by Colin Turnbull in "The Mountain People".

" survival becomes a personal affair. Food is no longer shared. Men hunt what they can and eat it far from the village and women collect only for themselves. ...As starvation sets in children and old people die as they are not fed, the tribe becomes known for its cattle thieving among the neighbouring groups. "

Ick. ( and Ik, too )

Metafilter is usually not so comparatively bleak - there are more communitarian, friendly, civil days and posts as well. Still, people like Stan (and he presents a watered down example compared to some ) illustrate my point. Rudeness and snark, common here, is not a community value. In fact, a lack of civility is a corrosive to communities and speeds their breakdown.

[ meanwhile - to address another of Scarabics points - I haven't commented on the Blue in a number of days, more than a single line perhaps. I'm here on this post because it directly cited Metatalk 8495 - and that post of mine addressed much the same overall issue. ]

1) How closely did you read that comment ? I guess it was a lot of text and so an eyestrain. Not very closely, I'd say - you seem to be conflating two very distinct cases of deletion I discuss. One wasn't absolute. My deleted post still lives : as a deleted post, but it's still accessible. But my deleted comments were just wiped, and I considered that uncalled for, and rather uncool. ( quonsar caught this too )

2) "You finish with an overall condemnation of the community en toto- which must be *ALL WRONG* to the core, because certainly, there couldn't have been anything in your comments that led them to be deleted." - You're confusing the "community" with Matt Haughey. The "community" did not make that decision, and moving to the court of popular appeal, I see no empirical evidence presented to show that community opinion was either for me or against me there - although I could argue that a few people with grudges were trying to work the ref.

3) Where is this "*ALL WRONG*" you mention ? I didn't write that - or anything close. I did challenge the notion that a functional community exists. But to doubt it's existence - certainly as something comparable to flesh and blood community - is not to call whatever sort of community Metafilter might actually be "*ALL WRONG*".

Do my comments present such a threat that you feel the need to distort what I'm writing - or don't you see the distortion ?
_____________

y6y6y6 - "It *sounds* like a cry for help." - It sounds almost as if you're salivating over the prospect of a flameout. What curious behaviors will accompany it ? Will I start posting random photographs from my personal life or start talking about how my beloved pet Cockatiel died when I was 9 and so left me forever emotionally scarred ? ( the bird! the bird! *sobs* )

Sorry to disappoint.

Ah, but maybe you're right : by being patronizing you are in fact giving me that help I'm crying out for ! - Because I need to stop pouring energy into this medium - which will be quite fine without my participation - you're reinforcing my conviction and strengthening my self control. Thanks.

[ *must. finish. essays. short creative works. mustn't. fart around. on. metafilter. must.......* ]

rooftop secrets - well, go back to the blue and stop paying attention to the crazy uncle here in the Metatalk closet.

Quinbus Flestrin - thanks. But for me, the scary stuff ( or scary, possibly true stuff ) is not really scary. It's kind of dreary actually. Boo!

norm - you know, you'd think, for such a nominally literary crowd, that people here would better understand stylized nonfiction : think Lem, Borges (but I'm no Borges). Swift....nobody picked up on the Bunuel reference either - oh well. What the heck do people here read and watch anyway ?

I thought my title gave a lot away - I guess only if one knows the reference. I probably have a weird sense of humor too - first draft Encyclopedia Brittanica boilerplate grafted to slightly surrealist metaphoric illustration is not for everybody.....but - the comedic, satiric touches - Metafilter as the "Cheers bar" ? What's not to get ? Or this :

"There, one is untrammeled, free to crash the SUV of the mind through the guardrails of probity and....range widely - to the top of mesas, across brooks, past bears and deer - and yet not much risk crashing into or clashing with fellow expeditioners." - I guess I need to be more hamfisted and blunter with my satire ?

It's not as if I haven't written weird stylized material before on Metafilter. I guess the idea that I might express a serious concern through a somewhat less than straight narrative - and that I might weave odd humor, sarcasm, and metaphor into the mix as part of the overall package and merely as a stylistic experiment! is just inconceivable to most here.

But, I don't really know why - somewhere between ten and twenty percent of all my Metafilter commentary, I'd guess, amounts to some sort of stylistic exercise or other.

cedar - Well, as a father I'd be pretty concerned to find the sort of material I've written here as a post on a blog by an eleven year old boy too.

But I'm not an eleven year old boy, and I'm not your son - what's your point ? Have you not really not encountered that sort of nonfiction style, or similar styles, before ? Should I start scanning stylistically analogous nonfiction text chunks and posting them here for reference, to demonstrate that people actually do write in similar fashions ? Are you unfamiliar with that sort of peripatetic, historically informed narrative ?

Perhaps you're reading more into my text than is there ( a common trap ). Does my concatenation of themes of metafilter deletions, the Inquisition, and of the "Damnation Memoriae" throw you ? I believe the stylistic device is called something like "advancing/illustrating an argument by hyperbole". ( although the delimiting of the discourse is very real, and the 2004 election is very clearly off-bounds. )

Did you notice the satire I mention, in my comment to norm, above ?

And, surely you know that writers generate material and get inspiration in odd and highly idiosyncratic ways (some odder even then this) ?

Hmmm....
____________

Cryptical Envelopment - I'm confused by that comment (maybe).

Anyway - if all my comments were to disappear from this post (I made a point of saving them this time), or just the part of it contaminated by the disruptive outburst of troutness, that would amount to a weird type of performance art : as a deletion of comments, on a Metatalk post, that reference the deletion of comments, on another Metatalk post, about the deletion of a Metafilter post.

That would be really strange - possible though. Probable ? I don't know, and that wasn't my original intention here. But, what can I do, a poor humble boy from the sticks, do about it ? Not a whole lot except do the laundry, feed the cat, and take out the garbage.

I could type into the wee hours of the morning - but, I'm kind of hungry, and I have to ~~visit my muse~~ go to the bathroom.
______

bargle - ( thanks) I can imagine : "Come on - Ya gotta see! Trout's flipping out and it could be the meltdown of the year!" ( come, see the dancing bear! step right up !......the alligator man!....the painted lady! )
posted by troutfishing at 5:23 PM on November 29, 2004

I will miss the trout. I like the trout. I will say, however, that the solution to Matt's sometimes seemingly arbitrary deletion of comments (it's happened to me in metatalk probably ten times when I go off-topic, which is pretty normal fare here, but I digress) is to put metafilter back into the proper perspective: mostly interesting website that provides some good links and commentary with an overabundance of people who value themselves and their meagre contributions far too highly (this group may include the both of us).
posted by The God Complex at 5:29 PM on November 29, 2004

Also it helps not to think of metafilter as a community, despite the tagline. It's a community only in the strictest, most impersonal sense.
posted by The God Complex at 5:31 PM on November 29, 2004

trout didn't namecheck me, even in 5,000 words. snif.
posted by adamgreenfield at 5:33 PM on November 29, 2004

(for examples of the impersonal nature of the community, see how something as inane as Miguel's chatiness is treated)
posted by The God Complex at 5:33 PM on November 29, 2004

MetaTalk will eat itself.
posted by stinkycheese at 5:37 PM on November 29, 2004

I don't have the time right now to read that entire comment, trout, but fwiw - I am getting that one incident was in the Blue and the other in the Grey. Without rehashing each in entirety, it's possible you were tied off at the end and muzzled at some point. It's also possible that you'd tiptoed over the deep end, as you are dangerously close to doing here, now. I apologize for not giving you a closer reading, but I don't understand what gigantic difference there is between the Grey and the Blue. My point is that if you don't fit here, you shouldn't take it as a personal fault. But you don't necessarily need to fault Matt or the rest of the membership either. You have levelled accusations of violated trust, political lukewarm-ness, illusions of community, etc. At what point do you take responsibility for your own role in any/all of this?

Part ways amicably, if you must. Is that what you think you're doing?
posted by scarabic at 5:51 PM on November 29, 2004

trout didn't namecheck me, even in 5,000 words. snif.

me either. let's go get liquored up and chase broads.
posted by jonmc at 5:52 PM on November 29, 2004

jonmc, I believe you meant "likkered" there. I think that the correct spelling is always "likkered" when the past tense is followed by the preposition "up".
posted by Sidhedevil at 5:57 PM on November 29, 2004

yeh, yeh, trout, and *BSD is dying.
posted by bonaldi at 6:01 PM on November 29, 2004

MetaTalk will eat itself.

after it gags on a finger and brings itself back up.
posted by quonsar at 6:01 PM on November 29, 2004

don't go, trout.

Metafilter: you can't skim a comment that's been deleted.
posted by amberglow at 6:08 PM on November 29, 2004

As a long time reader of post 8495, I'm curious what posts were deleted. There were a few posts where troutfishing ignores the discussion at hand (whether or not the deletion was justified) and instead continues the topic of the deleted post itself (using the grey as the blue, as it were). I suspect those were the ones that got axed, but don't remember enough detail to be sure.

Troutfishing, you seem like a nice guy. Generally polite, non-snarky, with a strong sense of responsibility. So I say this as a pure expression of opinion, with no intended snark or bile or anything else: reading the paragraphs above gives me the impression of a cry for help. I realize it wasn't intended to come across that way, but it does.
posted by bugbread at 6:28 PM on November 29, 2004

don't let the door hit you on the ass on the way out.
posted by angry modem at 6:43 PM on November 29, 2004

MetaFilter: Textually Masturbating
posted by Steve_at_Linnwood at 6:49 PM on November 29, 2004

Also it helps not to think of metafilter as a community, despite the tagline. It's a community only in the strictest, most impersonal sense.

Sadly this is utterly true. What pains is that, at various moments over time, there have been flashes of something more, but fie on those who permit themselves to come to expect them, for there are too many haters who delight in orneriness and destruction.
posted by rushmc at 7:04 PM on November 29, 2004

C'mon, rushmc. Hate is good. Hate is clean. Hate is honest.
I always know *exactly* where I stand around here, unlike in the "community" of Kips Bay, or Manhattan, or New York, or America.

I mean every word of the above.
posted by adamgreenfield at 7:13 PM on November 29, 2004

I don't equate community with people being nice to each other (although that is certainly the most enjoyable way to experience it). The shared interests, shared space, and shared experiences here do the trick well enough for me to apply the term. I've met new friends here, invited some of my best old friends to join, learned, laughed, grown a little.

I have family members who don't know what "LOL" means. There's something lacking in that "community" as well, but I don't devalue them for it. Nor do I devalue the cameraderie of MetaFilter because no one here has ever jumped my car for me. My neighbor could loan me a cup of sugar tomorrow and it wouldn't turn him into a wonderchicken.

This thread is totally fucked. Now we're getting down on online community in general because one person is bitter enough to shove off.
posted by scarabic at 7:15 PM on November 29, 2004

Hate is good. Hate is clean. Hate is honest.

True. But only if you mean this Hate.

As far as community goes, after awhile this site can make you feel a bit like Hiro Protagonist in Snow Crash: a high-living legend in the "Metaverse" but living in a storage locker in the real world. Yes the connections and opportunities for expression and conversation are great and I wouldn't trade 'em away, but let's not mistake it with reality.
posted by jonmc at 7:19 PM on November 29, 2004

I mean that Hate too, yes. Color me Stinky.
posted by adamgreenfield at 7:31 PM on November 29, 2004

Sorry about your suicide. I, obviously, am Buddy.
posted by jonmc at 7:33 PM on November 29, 2004

Obviously.
posted by adamgreenfield at 7:42 PM on November 29, 2004

Sadly this is utterly true. What pains is that, at various moments over time, there have been flashes of something more, but fie on those who permit themselves to come to expect them, for there are too many haters who delight in orneriness and destruction.

Yes/

I don't equate community with people being nice to each other (although that is certainly the most enjoyable way to experience it). The shared interests, shared space, and shared experiences here do the trick well enough for me to apply the term. I've met new friends here, invited some of my best old friends to join, learned, laughed, grown a little.

Perhaps, then, my problem is that it mimicks actual community far too succinctly, from joy at the ostracizing of others to the sometimes mindless application of arbitrary accepted rules, even those that have little purpose. In addition, unlike a normal community, here you are forced by some degrees to interact on a regular basis with those you find most distasteful.

I am no disputing the ability of metafilter to teach, to expand horizons, or to bring interesting and obscure information to light. Or to make you laugh. I'm simply suggesting that the community experiences you cite are mostly cursory intellectual sparring, and when someone appears to be somewhat distraught over any recent events, he/she is met more often with jeers than sympathy. On the internet, however, this is almost inevitable.

troutfishing may indeed have taken his admonishment to heart a little too enthusiastically, but he's not some annoying troll we've all been secretly wishing away for some time. You may or may not agree with his version of metafilter (politically active, etc.), but I find it hard to believe anyone could discount the tireless effort he put into crafting his comments and his posts. The man is (was?) a link machine and put a lot of care into what he did here, enough to at least deserve, I think, more than the responses here indicate.

But, again, that's why I suggested to him not to expect much in that regard from this place. I agree with rushmc on that.
posted by The God Complex at 7:49 PM on November 29, 2004

(none of which is to say I don't like this place, only that I know what to expect from it and what not to expect. also, excuse the spelling mistakes: i'm in a bit of a rush.)
posted by The God Complex at 7:52 PM on November 29, 2004

I agree troutfishing probably shouldn't be getting the thrashing that he's getting, but: MeFi, while not being a board of likeminded members, is at least supposedly united by the idea that people are here because they find the conditions for being here to be acceptable, and joined of free will. Nobody joins MeFi to swap furry porn or warez, because that's not what it's for. And that's not what it's for because the founder determined the purpose to be for something other than porn/warez. Just as one should not be disappointed with Mefi for not being a warez swapping ground, or disappointed with Fry's electronics for not selling hotdogs, one should not join Mefi and then decry the fact that it isn't a political discussion forum. It's perfectly fine not to like it because your interests don't match, but the normal response in those cases is to not join. Troutfishing may be a great guy, but seems to be unable to reconcile the fact that this is not a political forum, and instead of realizing "I'm in the wrong place", or even "I'm in the right place for my non-political interests, but this isn't the place for my political interests to be discussed", he seems to be focussed (lately) on decrying everyone for not wanting to change Mefi's charter to something he thinks is more important.

I dunno, maybe some people are discounting his efforts, or the quality of his posts. But in 8495 it seems that the majority of people who addressed the quality of his posts evaluated them positively. It's the appropriateness of the posts that's being taken to task.

As such, I am ambivalent about Trout leaving. If Trout wants to continue to use MeFi as an extension of his political blog, I welcome his departure. If Trout wants to address his other interests (besides politics), I welcome his staying. I would hope that's the case with others here as well. The problem isn't who Trout is, it's what he's doing, and if his behavior changed, his presence would hopefully be welcomed.
posted by bugbread at 8:10 PM on November 29, 2004

Metafilter is better than my real-world community. At least I can tolerate some of you fuckers.
posted by mr_crash_davis at 8:16 PM on November 29, 2004

Yeah, well said, bugbread. I can understand some of what trout's feeling and why he feels and thinks this way but, in the end, I think he's wrong. What really bothers me, though, is the glee many people seem to have in encouraging his flameout. There's a variety of things that rightly annoy many people about trout, but, come on, can't we all see the difference between his good intentions, his thoughtfulness, and, well, that from people who show neither?
posted by Ethereal Bligh at 8:23 PM on November 29, 2004

"I agree troutfishing probably shouldn't be getting the thrashing that he's getting"

Bullshit. He peed on the homepage after being asked not to. Then he brought his pitty party into three MetaTalk threads. We asked if he was fucked up, he claims he's fine. Which means he's being a jerk on purpose.

Users who insist on using the site as their personal soapbox get trashed here. No matter what the topic. Those that flip off Matt get an extra dose. And troutfishing knows that.

Hell, I got trashed for trying to be helpful too often. And I don't have any problem understanding that. How can troutfishing be so clueless about his shit being deleted? Answer - He's not. He knows exactly what the deal is, but he lacks the character to take it like an adult.

He absolutely and fully should be getting the trashing he's gotten.
posted by y6y6y6 at 8:35 PM on November 29, 2004

He's being willfully contrary. But he's not doing it out of mean-spiritidness or a desire to be disruptive for its own sake. And he's not grandstanding, either, in the sense that it's really all about getting attention. I believe that he sincerely believes the arguments he's making. I think his argument is faulty, and I think he's exhibited some errors in judgment, but he's not a troll. He's not someone who deserves to be loudly condemned and gleefully ostracized. He has done nothing to earn real malice.
posted by Ethereal Bligh at 8:42 PM on November 29, 2004

Y6: I'm going to take troutfishing at his word when he says he thought the proscription against political junk was about political "junk", not well put together posts. So the post referred to in 8495, while it deserved to be deleted, would not count as peeing on the homepage. Maybe he did know what he was doing, but I'm going to give him the benefit of the doubt and assume that he really believed the word "junk" was being used to mean "worthless stuff", as opposed to just being a synonym for "stuff". If so, then it was a misunderstanding, not pissing on the blue. He then started a grey post to discuss the gap (which, again, is fine). The only problematic stuff I really see is the repeated insinuation within 8495 and a few other places (including, kinda, here) that the problem is that us sheeple don't want to face important issues, instead of that we want to face the important issues, but not every day at Mefi (in this thread he phrased things a bit more carefully than before, so it reads more like interpretation 2, while feeling more like interpretation 1).

So, yes, he's done some bad stuff, and is getting trashed, but, at least from where I'm standing, he's getting a bit more trashed than he deserves.

Then again, while I'm a long-time reader, I didn't start paying attention to individual posters' names until I joined, so his past post history may justify the trashing. If so, please disregard what I said above.
posted by bugbread at 8:46 PM on November 29, 2004

Blacklite: How's this thread for a massive derail? Doncha love the grey?
posted by bugbread at 8:48 PM on November 29, 2004

I find it hard to believe anyone could discount the tireless effort he put into crafting his comments and his posts.
Are you kidding? His stuff reads like it was generated by an excessively verbose version of MegaHAL, set on 'self-pitying conspiracy theorist'. It's the textual version of the schizophrenic cat paintings.
posted by darukaru at 9:01 PM on November 29, 2004

"If so, then it was a misunderstanding, not pissing on the blue."

No. There was no room for misunderstanding. Matt deleted several of his posts on the same topic, and gave his reasons clearly. Namely, one post about election fraud was enough, and please don't post another one. How could anyone misunderstand that?

1) Matt says - troutfishing, don't post another election fraud post

2) troutfishing posts another election fraud post

3) The post gets deleted.

Where is the misunderstanding? Seriously.
posted by y6y6y6 at 9:11 PM on November 29, 2004

EtherealBabble: "What really bothers me, though, is the glee many people seem to have in encouraging his flameout."

It figures you would see it this way. Your all big on that pop-psych new age babble -- take a look at 'projection' in the official sensitive male (start with the, 'why does Alan Alda get laid and I don't,' section) dictionary. This was you not too long ago. Hell, it is you. Go get in a bar fight or something -- you'll feel better. You'll be bruised and bleeding, but it will be better in the long run. Trust me on this. I do it all the time.

Your (and many other people) being trolled. Quite well. Ain't just trout on that boys hook.

TGC:"I find it hard to believe anyone could discount the tireless effort he put into crafting his comments and his posts."

Oh, so he's a hard working troll, busting his ass day in and day out to bring us the best of the web? You may see it that way. I don't.

The guy is carrying on (at length) all over the place after being asked not to. It's suicide by Matt. He can't just walk away, that would deny him the whole martyr thing so he's going to push it until he has no choice. That's kind of sad.
posted by cedar at 9:14 PM on November 29, 2004

It's the textual version of the schizophrenic cat paintings.
You got a problem with this?
posted by sophie at 9:26 PM on November 29, 2004

Really, though, it'd be nice to have a policy that when someone says they're leaving metafilter, their account is disabled.

One less long-winded paranoiac who seriously equates a college level prank inciting random people to crash a meetup as being fascist can't really be that bad of a deal. Pass the champagne.
posted by angry modem at 9:32 PM on November 29, 2004

SILENCE, ANUS!
posted by adamgreenfield at 9:33 PM on November 29, 2004

Oh, come here, you.
posted by angry modem at 9:42 PM on November 29, 2004

Aside: I would like to take this aside to pat Ethereal Bligh on the shoulder and thank him for learning to make pithier, to the point comments that aren't 8 paragraphs long.
(And I actually mean that in a non snarky way. I've rewritten that sentence a couple of times and it still comes out all snarky. We'll blame y6 for that, ok?)

Not that we can't be long winded in here, and sometimes to good purpose, but damn, trout, at least stop streaming those suckers out with extra spaces and paragraphs and - geez! You may not call what you're doing a flameout but it sure reads that way. It also reads as "Yet Again I Shall Take A MeTa Thread and Make It All About ME and My Issues!" by yet another user. It's been done before. And it always does seem a cry for....well, something, specifically focused on one user who feels their needs above all else aren't being met/understood/focused on. At one level it is something that makes us worry at the person (what's wrong with X? X doesn't normally act like that)....and then makes us also suspect some narcissism is in play (maybe X is really ok but wants to troll us into all talking about him)....

Ah for the days when someone would say "smock" or claim that their mother was a hamster and we would all dissolve into silliness...
posted by batgrlHG at 10:06 PM on November 29, 2004

Metafilter is better than my real-world community. At least I can tolerate some of you fuckers.

What he said. Also, this is good -

Metafilter: suicide by Matt.
posted by stavrosthewonderchicken at 10:24 PM on November 29, 2004

Just to recap : You all were worried about us n00bs ?
posted by A dead Quaker at 10:25 PM on November 29, 2004

Smock.
posted by Vidiot at 10:32 PM on November 29, 2004

dead is right - behind the bike racks at 3 - YOU!

you may find, sir sleuthy n00b, that rushmc and I disagree 3/4 of the time across the board
posted by scarabic at 10:48 PM on November 29, 2004

No worries. Pedro offered me his protection.
posted by A dead Quaker at 10:59 PM on November 29, 2004

batgrlHG - you choose to participate in this thread. why ?

I'm talking, and you're responding. So : don't reply to this, and I won't reply in kind to your response.

Simple, right?

Otherwise you're invested and carrying an agenda.

[ more in the EST AM ]
posted by troutfishing at 11:13 PM on November 29, 2004

posted by angry modem at 11:44 PM on November 29, 2004

Aside from the fact that batgrlHG was being nice to me, it seems like she was trying to be nice to you, too, troutfishing.

Why don't you get some perspective on this?

First and foremost, while Matt and many people here have a problem with some of your posting behavior, there's been almost no condemnation of the content of your posts. That really damages your "I'm being silenced because of my views" argument.

Second, a buttload of people have expressed how much they like you.

Third, and related to the previous point, while some people are being mean-spirited about your apparent flameout, there have been far, far fewer angry, personal attacks on you than there would have been for anyone else doing what you're doing. Imagine if it were me.

Added together, this paints a picture of someone who's relatively well-liked by the community that's taken a rebuke far too personally and as a result seems determined to ignore—nay, scorn—the manifest good-will displayed to him in the process.

Cedar was right in some respect, wrong in others. As you know from private correspondence, while I have strong opinions and do believe that what I say in public makes a difference, I don't share your obvious firm belief that proselytizing as you do here is important or effective. Your desire to make MeFi your primary platform for expressing your civic opinions, especially as FPPs, is the problem. Your civil behavior, your earnestness, your good-intentions, your erudition and insight...these are not problems. They are welcome, even cherished. that's seven paragraphs, batgrlHG, okay?
posted by Ethereal Bligh at 2:15 AM on November 30, 2004

You have a lot to offer, trout, and you have talent, but I believe that you are suffering from narcissism in the clinical sense to some degree. This has become a bigger problem in the last few months, and it's unfortunate because it is has cast a shadow over your contributions here. You have taken over this thread which was originally a legitimate question by blacklite, to stage a performance, and you subverted your own thread asking about the deletion of your post to repeat your views from the deleted thread, saying yourself " For all the words I've spent here, I could have a nice frame for a 20-30 page journalistic essay." The failure to understand why this is inappropriate is perverse and your defense is delusional. You have said "Old testament prophets were just guys with strong religious convictions and, sometimes, desert visions born out of hunger and deprivation., and I'm just a man.... And. my opinions are nothing except insofar as they are connected to a world of facts and consensual meaning - truths that I can gesture at in a way such that others can follow my thought process.

This image of yourself as someone (a prophet, in fact, despite the negation, because that is how your chose to frame your reference) who brings us Truths that we just can't handle or even barely grasp at understanding is grandiose and delusional, which is why people are asking you to get help. You have not been crucified for our sins. Matt is not Pilate, and MeFi members are not a collective Judas. I hope that a break from MetaFilter will help to restore your perspective, and I really do wish you the best.
posted by taz at 3:29 AM on November 30, 2004

1) Matt says - troutfishing, don't post another election fraud post

2) troutfishing posts another election fraud post

3) The post gets deleted.

Y6, I'm a bit confused, but it may be because I'm missing background on the whole troutfishing issue. The way I saw it develop was:

1) Matt says "Don't post political junk".

2) Troutfishing posts something he thinks is good about politics.

3) Matt deletes it.

4) Trout says "I thought you just deleted junk, not good stuff too."

5) Matt says "Trout, don't post anything else about politics. Some other people may, but you've far exceeded a reasonable amount."

6) Trout complains. A lot.

If I read your post right, Trout posted another FPP after Matt told him specifically not to? Or when Matt told him individually not to in 8495, that was the second time Matt said it to him?

And for reference, I realize that Matt has made his views on polifilter (luckily, views I heartily agree with) known several times. But the way your timeline looks to me, it appears that Trout posted an FPP after he was told not to by Matt in 8495. Is this correct?
posted by bugbread at 6:28 AM on November 30, 2004

No. I can't find the post now. But Matt specifically talked about not wanting any more election fraud posts before Trout posted the last one. He was referring to the previous election fraud posts he'd deleted.
posted by y6y6y6 at 6:40 AM on November 30, 2004

I googled every post by Mathowie in metatalk with the words "election" and "troutfishing", and couldn't find anything. Unless he said it on the blue, or, inexplicably, Google didn't catch it (which would be surprising, as even 8495, relatively new, shows up in Google), I don't have enough evidence to hold it against Trout. Perhaps someone said it immediately before or after mathowie's post, and in your memory you put them together?

Regardless, unless you can link me up, I have no reason to believe that Trout was maliciously ignoring a directive, but just that he may have been ignoring it.

Sorry, a bit of a digression. This thread is not about what I think about Trout. I just wanted to determine if what I said was accurate, apologize if wrong, defend my statement if correct. I'm kinda anal.
posted by bugbread at 7:04 AM on November 30, 2004

Well, either trout is a raving madman, or I'm a liar, or the whole world is going to blow up and we'll all die slowly in agony.

Between the trouter babbling on at length, me peeing all over him, and you diligently going CSI on this pile of shit, I think we're all three pretty much morons, yes?

As long as everyone realizes that I don't, in fact, give a rat's ass, and I just like making fun of people too crazy to be responsible for their own actions, it's all good to me.

"I'm kinda anal."

Well, welcome to the shithouse Mr. Anal.

I already said I couldn't find it. And someone else in one of the other trout pitty party MeTa threads paraphrased it earlier. So I feel confident I didn't imagine the whole thing. Believe what you want. It seems obvious to me that troutfishing is clearly a jerk, and possibly crazy. It also seem obvious to me that I'm an asshole. As in obvious. But you have fun with your careful investigation.

Look, it's the Internet. People bullshit you all the time here. For all you know Trout and I are the same person. Try not to get too invested in this crap. That path leads to Miguel.
posted by y6y6y6 at 7:26 AM on November 30, 2004

First and foremost, while Matt and many people here have a problem with some of your posting behavior, there's been almost no condemnation of the content of your posts.
Does anyone remember a guy called Steven Den Beste, perchance? Because there are a lot of parallels between his situation and this one. Guy continually posts about the same two or three axe-grinding topics. Overly moderates his own threads and any that he participates in. Is politely asked to stop and get his own blog. Acts alternately excessively self-effacing and martyred in Talk. Eventually storms off in a huff to go eat worms. Hell, there's even a happy ending for both parties--no one here ever has to hear from him again, and he becomes the darling of the he-man macho woman-and-Islam-haters club part of the blogoblob.
Granted, troutfishing never wrote anything quite so pathetically revealing as "Anglo Women are an Endangered Species".
posted by darukaru at 7:33 AM on November 30, 2004

blacklite - I'm sorry to have hijacked your thread, but I think it might have much more vividly illustrated the dimensions of the problem. Still - my apologies.
________

taz - regardless of the truth value of your claim, it amounts - in functional terms - to a "shoot the messenger" approach or, alternately, to a tactic of misdirection :

"Look over there! Over there! At the flying pterodactyl!...."

( don't look at the pitiful state of American Democracy )

I can honestly say that I don't know anyone who isn't a little nuts. It's the human condition.

You know, the medicalization of dissent had a long and nasty history in the old USSR - dissenters were defined as "insane" and shot up with drugs, given electroshock, etc. By the time the system was through with them, they often had been rendered crazy : really one of the more vicious types of state repression.

The kinder, gentler version of that - as shown here on Metafilter - is the "you're crying out for help" tactic. Some - I'm sure - actually do believe it too : but it's also a way of discrediting (if not shooting) the messenger.

Returning to the actual course of events -

1) I made a post on Metafilter. It got deleted.
2) So, I made a post on Metatalk asking what the guidelines were. That generated a lot of controversy and - around comment 200 or so - I responded to the "Trout, you're grinding an axe" criticism in this way :

After 9-11, Metafilter became, for a time, "9-11 Filter". People were posting repeatedly about the general issue for months and months. Were they "axe grinding" ? If so, why not ?

Think of the varying magnitude of importance of events : imagine that a comet has been discovered barreling in on a collision course with the Earth, due to hit in two weeks. What happens to Metafilter ? - It becomes "Cometfilter", of course. Axe grinding, or not ?

Now, take things to the utter opposite end of the scale - imagine that I start posting nothing but posts about ingrown toenails, from many different angles (any I can dig up). Maybe I have an ingrown toenail and talk about it at length in comments as well. Axe grinding - Certainly, although a different, analogous name might be appropriate - "fetish grinding", maybe

OK - two opposite ends on the scale of significance. Now : toward which end does discussion of the 2004 election fall ?

There's no objective way to accurately assess significance. The only way is to gesture at known facts :

: given that a) belated, tacit recognition that vote fraud and/or vote suppression swung the 2004 election was made by most major print media publications ( Florida's voter purge list - widely acknowledged as illegal - was, in the end, enough for that ) : about 3 years after the fact. b) even the NYT, in a number of stories and editorials, warned - in early 2004 - that widespread election fraud was likely or even inevitable unless the national electoral process was cleaned up ( they were referring, specifically, to E-voting ). c) widespread circumstantial evidence - statistical, testimonial, etc. - suggesting the strong possibility of pervasive fraud/vote suppression.

[ I also noted that - while the post Nov. 2 election story might be newsfilter, it wasn't "axe-grinding" for the simple fact that, pre. Nov. 2, the election had not happened and posts about possible fraud concerned hypotheticals, and possibilities. Post Nov. 2, real data started to come in. There's a difference - THAT's new, and also news. You can call that "newsfilter" if you want, yes, but it doesn't amount to the "same old" pre-Nov. 2 story. In fact, the significance is perhaps higher - so it's a shame discussion of that is forbidden here. ]

Now - if this IS a significant story, my concern can still be dismissed with the handy, all purpose - "That's just newsfilter" retort. True enough, I suppose. Matt doesn't want a repeat of "2004 electionfilter" or even, maybe, "9-11 filter". OK, fair enough.

So, then significance is irrelevant and we're back to some vague "best of the web" definitions - with, also, the unspoken but clearly enforced mandate : "And don't post on politics.... ESPECIALLY don't post on the 2004 election" . I asked Matt for explicit guidelines on this (even if I were banned, in particular, from political or 2004 posts) - he refused and tried to personalize the matter. So : no guidelines.

Now, Salon - for example - is running a front page piece, by J.K.Galbraith, on the exact topic of my last deleted metafilter post : that's still - some would argue - "newsfilter". Well, maybe.

In the end, what gives posts on Metafilter "juice" (or not) is their ability to grab the reader's attention. Matt Haughey could decree henceforth that all posts on Metafilter must be about origami. That's his right : but readership would fall off very fast (except among the origami crowd).

Different people come to Metafilter for different reasons. In my deleted Metatalk comment, I also suggested, to Matt, that he could attach mini-polls to certain posts to begin to get some actual empirical data on what drew readers ( and members to ) to the site and to specific posts.

That would be work, yes, but also would be a rational approach to get at the question "does x post help or hurt Metafilter"? Right now, we've just got a bunch of clashing opinions on the question.
__________

Ethereal Bligh - more later. But as for your " there's been almost no condemnation of the content of your posts"

(?!) Umm...... are we living in the same reality ? Start here :

http://www.metafilter.com/mefi/36774

(there was little flack on my 2nd to last post. That was rather unusual for the subject.)

There was a dense barrage of critical flack on the 8495 Metatalk thread. You didn't read it ? Do I need to round up actual comments for you ?

Also - It's hard to discuss subject material which has been erased, eh ?
posted by troutfishing at 7:36 AM on November 30, 2004

trout - you know very well enough about logic to recognize "Look over there! Over there! At the flying pterodactyl!.... ( don't look at the pitiful state of American Democracy )" as a textbook False Dilemma. Just because people are imploring you to get a grip on your behavior at MetaFilter doesn't mean we're ignoring the breakdown of American Democracy or anything else. Your seemingly knee-jerk dismissal of even the most sincere attempts to help you see what you're doing to your reputation here are disturbing to those of us who generally appreciate your personality and contributions.

That said, I would only add that many of the recaps by people who aren't troutfishing seem to keep missing the fact that what he says sent him over the edge was not a deleted FPP, but deleted comments, an entirely different phenomenon since those can never be retrieved and yes that practice (deleting without a marker) does indeed smack of totalitarianism.

Also, angry modem arguing for anyone's forcible exit from MetaFilter is teh laff riot.
posted by soyjoy at 8:05 AM on November 30, 2004

Maybe we should give trout a break since according to the contribution index he's "been a member for 6675 days", which is more than 18 years! Seniority!
posted by Ethereal Bligh at 8:10 AM on November 30, 2004

8495
bugbread, pal, you're on a slippery slope. Referring to threads by number is...scary.

trout, you're a good man and I love you. But I don't think you've been martyred, and I don't think your viewpoints have been marginalized. I honestly do not know what you want or expect at this point except attention, given that most people hereabouts agree with the substance of what you're trying to impart in these screeds.

I first started tuning out Eternal Blight because of his logorrhea, and though it was his other charming idiosyncracies that really nailed the coffin shut, not knowing when to shut up remains the crux of my loathing for him. You don't really want to go there, do you?

So, lissen, put down that bible and go for a walk in the woods. Air's lovely today in these parts - crisp, sunny, a scattering of high clouds racing before the wind. Do you a power of good.
posted by adamgreenfield at 8:48 AM on November 30, 2004

But.... an apostrophe ?

Trout, that was pretty much a joke. The truth is, I don't know what to say to you anymore. I agree with taz and others that you sound very much like you're experiencing some bout of... something... (I Am Not a Psychologist...) that leads you to become increasingly wordy and monomaniacal and paranoid, unable to distinguish between attempts at suppression of ideas and attempts to run a community weblog and unable to rein yourself in so that whatever genuine insights you have might actually get attention; your long rambling comments do seem (in a pop-psych sense) like a cry for help, as condescending and reductive as that must sound. Surely you realize that, as EB says, anyone else in your place would be getting ten times the abuse and very little of t

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