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February 2002 Archives (all archives)
February 28
">More and
more, I'm seeing posts here in MetaTalk that really should be in MetaFilter proper. I thought MetaTalk was supposed to be for meta-discussions about MetaFilter that would be distracting from the main site. Was I wrong?
[ more inside ]
posted by fraying to etiquette/policy at 2:22 PM PST - 33 comments
Recently I needed to do some research and began to use the
Ajeeb translation site. You need to be registered to use it, so on a whim I used username and password: mefi. To my surprise, they worked. I know the NYTimes has a MeFi login, what others are out there? A list would be nice.
posted by cell divide to MetaFilter-related at 12:34 PM PST - 14 comments
Another MetaFilter reference, but this time there seems to be some kind of time travel involved:
"Another community in which I reside is the Metafilter / Blogger Developers / A-List community. The pillars of this community include Jason Kottke, Meg Hourihan, Evan Williams and Cam Barrett. These bloggers do most of their discussions on Metafilter and generally have beautiful blogs. I am not sure if any of them would list me as a member of their community, but I don't think that they would kick me out if they knew I had joined."
From Mike Saunders at
Keep Trying. Am I the only person to whom this rings oddly?
posted by rodii to general weblog-related at 11:53 AM PST - 65 comments
This is the
second front page post in a week ridiculing bad small business design. A bad precedent, and today's post is aggressive to boot. (inside)
posted by liam to etiquette/policy at 11:09 AM PST - 14 comments
February 27
So, okay, what's the in-joke on this thing popping up in all and sundry weblogs yesterday: "
What is real? 415 564-1347". I assume this is some new Jason- Kottke- as- Laurence- Fishburne thing (
I've never met him, but I get such a 'David Wooderson' vibe from that guy).
posted by hincandenza to general weblog-related at 6:12 PM PST - 37 comments
From the I Don't Know If This Is Possible Dept.: Could MeFi be coded so that when hitting the preview button on a new post, the next page only lists any posts made to the thread since the person last loaded the page? I'm just thinking in terms of lightening server load, since on some of those active, >100-post threads, the server's having to reload and resend the entire thread just so the poster can confirm his/her response looks right before hitting "post."
posted by aaron to feature requests at 4:09 PM PST - 7 comments
Discussion? Bigotry? Over the past few days, several threads seem (to me at least) to have degenerated from discussion to all out Muslim bashing (
1,
2,
3). I'm not here to name names, point fingers or tattle on anyone for specific comments, rather to ask at what point do we say "enough is enough?" People have a right to their opinions (prejudices), but when those opinions are stated without some modicum of respect/even-handedness, we have to wonder why they are tolerated in a public forum.
posted by hipstertrash to etiquette/policy at 1:00 PM PST - 33 comments
Webpig of
IG got fired because he ran IG. Now Heather Hamilton of
dooce.com gets fired because she posted not so nice things about her job and co-workers (though kept all names out of the picture). Is it wrong that people be fired because another employee sends an anonymous email to the boss about these things?
posted by thebwit to general weblog-related at 6:31 AM PST - 50 comments
Just a small thing. I've a section in my favourites for Mefi threads I'm following so that I can consult them easily later. Is this just me? Anyway, whenever they appear there, they are listed as 'Metafilter Comments on [insert number]'. How easy would it be to have something more identifiable so I don't have to remember the thread number (for example those little post summaries which appear on the top of the posting boxes)?
posted by feelinglistless to feature requests at 4:59 AM PST - 20 comments
February 26
Perhaps I'm seen as a soft touch or something but people keep emailing me with requests for posting links, comments or just general attitudes. Mostly they're honest reactions to discussions here. Or interesting suggestions.
There certainly seems to be a lot of occasional readers who feel strongly about the issues discussed here. Could there be the equivalent of a
Letters category on MetaTalk, for readers who aren't members to react to the threads that exercise them? At least until registrations are open again? As a fan of letters sections in newspapers and magazines, my opinion is that it would make MetaFilter even livelier.
posted by MiguelCardoso to feature requests at 7:31 PM PST - 21 comments
O'Reilly discussion betwen Steven Johnson, David Sims and Rael Dornfest
touches upon MeFi.
Sims. A blog tribe.
Johnson. Yeah
Dornfest. Metafilter comes closest to that of the things I've seen. It still has a personality, but it's very much a group dynamic.
posted by gen to MetaFilter-related at 2:42 PM PST - 10 comments
February 25
In an old MeTa thread, there is a comment by WIL WHEATON (just below this
one) that has an invalid timestamp/comment link, and when I try to get his member info, it sends me
here. Is this some sort of masterful cloaking on wil's part, just a bug, or is he part of the cabal of mefi users who cannot be traced by their user profiles?
posted by rorycberger to bugs at 4:51 PM PST - 28 comments
I have trouble sometimes telling posts apart when people use multiple paragraphs. How about subtly altering the color of every other post to improve readability?
For example alternating white and light grey.
posted by phatboy to feature requests at 12:54 PM PST - 32 comments
Clicking on the "Donate" link brings me to the Amazon donation page, then kicks out to the home page. I'm using MSIE 5.5:
Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 5.5; Windows NT 5.0; T312461)
posted by eamondaly to bugs at 11:46 AM PST - 1 comments
Ok, I know this is gonna sound really weird, but I guess I got totally involved in
this thread, because when I went to bed last night, I dreamed that Matt asked me to take over his admin/moderator duties for the day. It was a bizarre dream, I tells ya. There's no way I'm qualified to do that, I don't even know how to code! Anyone else ever dream about Metafilter?
posted by Lynsey to MetaFilter-related at 10:54 AM PST - 14 comments
Random idea re "Celebrity guest" front page posts - perhaps invite Dvorak (or other chosen person) to become a guest for a day (or permanent member), brief him on how its all works, allow him to front page post anything he chooses, and have all the ensuing commetary with his participation. Other choices might be Colin Powell (oops this isnt MTV), Tom Friedman of the NYT (so often linked to), even Andrew Sullivan, etc etc. Just a thought.
posted by Voyageman to MetaFilter-related at 8:26 AM PST - 30 comments
February 24
Lame, lame, lame. Something just occured to me, and it is worth mentioning. thebwit is the guy that
owns the domain bigblogtool and is a big supporter of his pal
ruzz' creation. In
the previous thread, he poo-poo'd Blogger Pro to hype BigBlogTool, which I called him on, but it turns out he doesn't run the service. Now, he posts a thread about hacking a competing product, greymatter. Ruzz
says it's a good post, and shits on the community while doing it. I know this time around, they're not working together to openly push BBT, but they are dissing greymatter in arguably the biggest weblog community they could. And look,
here's the same post, but with a plug for BigBlogTool. thebwit also used the ever-impartial WeblogReview to
post about the hack, and conveniently the footer of every message reminds all that the post was made with BBT.
Here's a tip ruzz and thebwit, don't use MetaFilter to shill your product or shit on your competitors, and your current marketing practices are a bit transparent, to say the least.
posted by mathowie to general weblog-related at 9:37 AM PST - 60 comments
[Mistakenly posted this on MetaFilter - apologies for category error]
Is Metafilter a Boyzone? Was recommending MeFi to one of my girl-pals, and she came back to me with the following: "interesting...but it's a bit of a men's room, isn't it?" When pressed she cited postings like
sex classes,
gross-out cartoons,
nerdish obsession,
flimsy pretexts for nudity, and
whiny self-pitying threads about failing manhood. Somewhat surprised, and in mild defense, I cited back postings on
the horror of honour killings,
drag queens talking about false breasts and
male self-parody. Now she's actually v. pro-men, and no knee-jerk feminist, so she's got me wondering: Are we? And if so, does it matter?
posted by theplayethic to etiquette/policy at 6:23 AM PST - 148 comments
February 23
Maybe a little notice that closed threads are closed. I keep checking to make sure I'm logged in when I run into them.
posted by skallas to feature requests at 4:13 PM PST - 9 comments
Is there a way to include the
TITLE attribute in front-page post links? Obviously it's trivial to add this to any hand-coded hrefs you include in your description, but not in the main link via the submission form. And what's the word on pimping the site where you found the link? Should we manually give credit in the description, or should a
VIA field be officially added?
posted by johnnyace to feature requests at 5:29 AM PST - 2 comments
February 22
Is suicidegirls the first porn textad ever on MetaFilter? It is certainly good to see such a liberal editorial attitude being displayed. Money does not corrupt. I wonder what their click through rate is, with the promise of naked girls and all? BTW I only clicked on it because I'm interested in goths and punks, and wanted to read their blog...obviously.
posted by RobertLoch to MetaFilter-related at 6:45 PM PST - 71 comments
What do people think about creating some kind of Metafilter chat forum? It's been suggested by at least one other person, and might be just what Metafilter needs right now. Mefi long ago grew into a community with its own in-jokes, celebrities and infamous posters; in lieu of a chat forum in which to have casual discussions, a lot of the 'off-topic' stuff has spilled over into Mefi and MeTa, arguably decreasing the quality of many threads.
posted by adrianhon to feature requests at 12:04 PM PST - 40 comments
at the emailed advice of a fellow mefier, i need to say something to all of you. no, this isn't a stunt for attention, or yet another thread to stir it with a stick...he tells me that my entry back into mefi has been rude, and he questioned why i did it the way I did. when I told him, he said i should tell the rest of you . more inside...
posted by bunnyfire to etiquette/policy at 12:04 PM PST - 14 comments
February 21
I couldn't find a link to
this anywhere, and I think it's a great tool, if, like me, you are crap at web design (in the limited sense of making all the pretty colours harmonize) but still like to fiddle around a bit with it. Hope you find it useful.
posted by stavrosthewonderchicken to general weblog-related at 9:20 PM PST - 13 comments
Front page:
Take a Virtual Hajj Tour (via beliefnet)...
posted by adnanbwp at 8:42 AM PST - 4 comments
Inside:
Take a Virtual Hajj Tour (via beliefnet)...
posted by adnanbwp at 8:42 AM PST (3 comments total)
posted by lbergstr to bugs at 12:35 PM PST - 3 comments
MoFi4MeFi (MoneyFilter for MetaFilter): Last September,
Matt asked the following:
What if I killed [MeFi] sometime in the future, and brought it back, but you had to pay a small membership fee or some other 'high' barrier to entry? That'd keep the crowd small, manageable, and only those that really cared to discuss things would contribute. Would that make things better? Worse?
The discussion that followed did not necessarily address the question (a few positively responded to a subscriber-based MeFi). Maybe, this idea needs to be reviewed again.
[more inside]
posted by jacknose to MetaFilter-related at 11:44 AM PST - 48 comments
My br0wz0r is 0wnz0r3d. I can access Metafilter & Metatalk but nothing else. No yahoo, no google, etc. etc. etc., none of the links.
posted by EngineBeak to MetaFilter-related at 2:41 AM PST - 21 comments
February 20
The Ticket Stub Project still looks like
an excellent idea. Apart from the personal stories who wouldn't enjoy, for instance, capsule reviews written by fellow MeFis of concerts, plays, sports events, etc? Is there any chance of it taking off soon? Would each "ticket stub" capsule stand on its own or would there be comments and queries allowed? Is anybody else intrigued by this project?
posted by MiguelCardoso to ticketstub project at 11:40 AM PST - 29 comments
February 19
All this recent
navel gazing has me wondering--is there any way to see how many people actively participate in MetaTalk? An informal count of the front page posts just now puts it at about a 1/3 who may not even know there's all this discourse going on behind the scenes (based purely on if they have posted any comments or links, they may be lurking). No ponies needed, mathowie! Just curious if any of the MeFi Coder Brigade has come up with anything to generate that sort of info. Thanks!
posted by thc to MetaFilter-related at 4:07 PM PST - 8 comments
The Kafster's
comment got me thinking. Anyone want to join me in refraining from posting anything "hot button" or anything so far left or right that all it will get is a bunch of flames? Come with me and take on the Mefi burden.
posted by geoff. to etiquette/policy at 3:42 PM PST - 36 comments
February 18
An appeal: "
I've stopped posting to the front page" is increasingly said by our most experienced and respected posters, sometimes with an absurd sense of pride. Various reasons are given - usually to do with some decline in standards or overcrowding.
What would happen, though, if everyone stopped posting links? What would be left? Surely quality can't be promoted by inactivity. It's easy to criticize and go on about how MetaFilter is going downhill. So why don't critics
lead by example? Would it kill them to post good links a little more often? This would probably be the best way to quickly raise the standard here and restore the "glory days". As it is, not to be rude or anything, it looks more and more like a "put up or shut up" situation.
posted by MiguelCardoso to MetaFilter-related at 4:59 PM PST - 95 comments
February 17
Eureka! A couple of weeks ago in
this thread I pleaded for some help in setting up my browser so that it would load a random website each time I started it up. Now that I've cracked it, I thought I'd share the link with you as a thank you to all those who pitched in ... it loads
mostly weblogs completely at random ...
posted by feelinglistless to general weblog-related at 4:31 PM PST - 15 comments
How come, when I click on a link to a specific comment in a MetaTalk or MetaFilter post or comment--like evanizer's in the polarization discussion linking two specific comments in the
Compassionate Conservatism Anyone? thread--I get sent to the top of the thread each time? The same happens when looking at comments in user profiles--is this on my end or is this something that happens to everyone now?
posted by y2karl to bugs at 1:57 PM PST - 13 comments
I think it would be nice if today's Palestine/Israel thread didn't vanish (as per mathowie's recent MeTa post, stating that he is going to delete them all until further notice), at least not before the name-calling starts. The post itself is a bit of a bait, but so far the responses have been well-thought-out, even-handed, and intelligent.
posted by bingo to etiquette/policy at 10:44 AM PST - 1 comments
February 16
Is there some easy/efficient way to check for replies to your posts (e.g. your nick mentioned in a new post), so that you don't have to look at each individual thread you've posted to, checking for respsonses? (more inside)
posted by bingo to feature requests at 4:22 PM PST - 25 comments
Has there ever/will there ever be a Los Angeles MeFi gathering? I did a search but all I found was
this. Did anything happen there? Is there another thread about this I'm missing? I've been seeing the posts about the NY gathering and I'm jealous.
posted by bingo to MetaFilter-related at 1:47 PM PST - 65 comments
everything is italics (except for links), both on the front page and in here. or is it just me?
posted by modge to bugs at 7:41 AM PST - 9 comments
February 15
What about somehow allowing members to choose their most and least favorite front page posts in profile page as a way to add some metafilter-specific editorial personality to each profile page?
posted by Voyageman to feature requests at 1:30 PM PST - 12 comments
The large penis thread got me thinking -- along with going bowling with nine guys during MeFiSea -- what's the gender breakdown on MeFi, for those that have a stated gender?
posted by jessamyn to MetaFilter-related at 1:02 PM PST - 22 comments
A Metafilter option to sort posts/threads by a given Member's contributions (as that Member can by "My comments") Sort of like Being John Malkovich.
posted by ParisParamus to feature requests at 11:40 AM PST - 7 comments
A few months ago there was a thread which discussed the famous hoax image of a supposed Taliban BMP getting blown up by US forces. Someone who should really know better just sent me this photo, essentially saying Go USA!, and I'm trying to find that thread to gently explain that it's untrue. I've tried a bunch of searches and couldn't find it. Does anyone remember the thread or have any information on the image?
posted by Karl to MetaFilter-related at 7:50 AM PST - 13 comments
February 14
If a post is pulled because it is deemed inappropriate(I assume mine went because the subject matter was too close to one you don't wish discussed) are we still subject to the 24-hour rule? Just wondering.....
posted by bunnyfire to etiquette/policy at 1:06 PM PST - 67 comments
Preview is badly broken, at least under IE 5.1 on Mac OS X. Details inside.
posted by nicwolff to bugs at 8:19 AM PST - 5 comments
February 13
A FPP was posted today, regarding Comcast, but seems to have been 'disappeared.' Anybody know why? [my first post to MetaTalk, and I can't seem to find a tool for embedding a link, so here it is:]
http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&u=/nf/20020213/tc_nf/16316
posted by yesster to etiquette/policy at 10:53 AM PST - 10 comments
In my dotage, I sometimes find it difficult to identify italicized quotes in longish threads, specially when they're short and there are a lot of comments between the excerpted comment and the rejoinder. So I do a lot of scrolling up and down looking for the original comment. Would it be too much, just for time-saving purposes, to ask ourselves to add a quick attribution to our quotations, when they're difficult to locate?[
Here's an example from the Pazz and Jop thread, where eyeballkid's recent excerpt of a post by almostcool was not easy to find.]
posted by MiguelCardoso to MetaFilter-related at 3:07 AM PST - 14 comments
February 12
I've been tempted lately to request that people 'take it to sportsfilter.com' with the olympic posts. Since sportsfilter is a spawn of metafilter...it seems like doing so would help Both, but i'm not sure. It just seems like an excellent opportunity to reduce the number of posts here while helping build up sportsfilter.
posted by th3ph17 to etiquette/policy at 4:31 PM PST - 13 comments
Sometimes, if it's late enough, even the best amongst us
gets cranky -- while I would never suggest emoticons outright, some kind of 'poster mood indicator' might smooth out a lot of misunderstandings and help MeFi in it's scale up problems.
posted by victors to feature requests at 9:45 AM PST - 25 comments
February 11
February 10
Someone sent me an email saying he hadn't any posting privileges and wanted to add his comment to a thread I'd started. I posted it by proxy. I now have severe misgivings, expressed in
that thread, reacting to mr_crash_davis's objection. What should I have done? The comment, by Thom Carlson, was intelligent and cogent and did provoke some lively responses. He's now sent me a second email, backing up his first comment.
I remember rebeccablood's thread about posting a link for someone and how most people felt it wasn't OK to do so. What about a single comment? Do the same principles apply? Please advise as I'm at a loss...
posted by MiguelCardoso to etiquette/policy at 7:19 PM PST - 30 comments
Last night I was wandering around
DeviantArt
downloading a few Winamp skins, when I realized that noone had ever made
a MeFi themed Winamp skin. With all the programmers and graphic designers
among the MeFaithful, I woulda thought someone would've thrown something
together. I'd do it myself, if my complete lack of artistic talent wasn't
an issue. so who'll rise to the occasion?
