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April 2004 Archives (all archives)
April 30
There's a weird textad in the sidebar with no title, just a blurb that says something about militiamen and no Unabombers. Since it has no title, it has no link.
posted by brownpau to Bugs at 12:30 PM PST - 13 comments
April 29
Would it be possible to add usernames to the spell checker? Misspelling someone's name is insulting, and it would be nice if the Spell Checker did its bit to help us all get along.
posted by Capn to Feature Requests at 10:17 AM PST - 32 comments
I'd like to remind everyone that we have some new users, and we really ought to encourage them as much as possible. While I agree entirely with the
Q-man's sentiment, name-calling is counterproductive to the site, especially when it's a user's first FPP.
This isn't so much a call-out on quonsar, but a reminder that discouraging the new users is detrimental to the health of the site.
posted by jpoulos to Etiquette/Policy at 8:22 AM PST - 93 comments
April 27
An interesting #mefi-debate prompts the following question: what is the average monthly traffic moved by MeFi/MeTa/AskMe every month? Any outstanding recent monthly highs/lows?
posted by Ryvar to MetaFilter-Related at 6:28 PM PST - 33 comments
April 26
April 25
Is Mefi talking to
Kinja? I just checked my Kinja feed page and it hasn't been updated much, but I visited the blue and ten new threads have appeared. Is it because Kinja isn't updating properly or something else?
posted by feelinglistless to Bugs at 9:29 AM PST - 5 comments
April 24
April 23
I'm wondering if anyone's considered a sort of "MeFi Resources Pool". By that I mean a site where members can go and list things that they have access to and then when another member needs something they can check the pool to see if anyone else can help. For example, if someone needed a new X and someone else worked in an X store then person A could get X for a good deal and person B helps out another member. And, it just so happens that person A owns a book store, etc etc. Is this just a ridiculous idea because the person who owns the electronics store is gonna have 50 people asking for a good deal on a television or is this something that may be useful and if so, what's the best way for something like this to work?
posted by dobbs to MetaFilter-Related at 10:14 AM PST - 27 comments
I just had an idea, it's just an idea, let me know if I'm nuts or this has any merit. Let's say around June 1, when the US presidental campaign gets into its full stride, I setup two sub-metafilter sites, one at BushIn2004.metafilter.com, the other at KerryIn2004.metafilter.com for fans of either to blow off their steam and keep MeFi proper largely free of the campaign-squabble-of-the-day posts we're likely to see? (yeah, and I'm curious how a bush supporter blog would go over too)
posted by mathowie to Feature Requests at 9:42 AM PST - 141 comments
10 Best Metafilter post titles of all time? mr_crash_davis' recent post, "You just knew that as soon as gay marriages were legal they'd be screwing in the trees,
and damned if it didn't happen.", seemed like a zinger to me - what's your favorite?
somehow, this didn't seem like an AskMefi question to me....it's a yackity yack question
posted by troutfishing to MetaFilter-Related at 9:14 AM PST - 20 comments
What is this new Kinja toy, and why hasn't it processed all the fun sites (including MeFi) that I've added to my favorites yet?
There's a bug too: "The weblog addresses listed below are not valid. Please enter URLs in the form" it reads when I press the cute button here on MeFi.
posted by dabitch to Bugs at 7:04 AM PST - 15 comments
April 22
Not worth starting a new MeFi thread for, but gmail is up and running. Previous discussion
here. Active
Blogger users are being asked to join. I did, and have sent and received my first emails. The service is pretty slick, and has a nice interface, as far as I've discovered so far.
posted by quarantine to MetaFilter-Related at 3:06 AM PST - 62 comments
April 21
Follow-up to the recent photoshop/"Boudreaux killed my dad"
thread: the lance corporal's mom, who runs a computer store and has been living in fear,
says the original was "Boudreaux saved my dad."
posted by ajr to MetaFilter-Related at 10:21 PM PST - 9 comments
Why the downtime? For the last week or so, Metafilter goes down at late morning GMT, and doesn't spring back to life until Late afternoon GMT. It seems too regular to be anything other than a deliberate act. Is it going to be a regular thing? How are us European MeFites going to waste time at work?
posted by seanyboy to Uptime at 9:16 AM PST - 38 comments
In the tradition of
asking questions about items in the sidebar of MeFi, I can't get the Kinja link to work in either Mozilla (preferred) or IE. Both attempts result in "The weblog addresses listed below are not valid. Please enter URLs in the form www.example.com" Granted, I could be un-lazy and type in www.metafilter.com, but I thought I should point it out.
posted by ajpresto to Bugs at 3:26 AM PST - 10 comments
April 20
April 19
I have a question I think I want to Ask Metafilter, but I want to do it anonymously. (How) should I do this?
posted by weston to Bugs at 11:27 AM PST - 71 comments
April 18
I'm trying to find a site I remember visiting (over a year ago) from Metafilter. It was a local government/organisations site (perhaps for New York) on road maintenance with photos of different kinds of problem pothole etc. and a form for submitting the location of a problem to the site owners. I've tried searching Metafilter and Google without success. Does anyone remember this?
posted by atom71 to MetaFilter-Related at 6:17 AM PST - 8 comments
April 17
The "my comments" "most recent comments" etc. box does not show up when this site is viewed with the opera browser. Or does it, and I just don't have mine set right? I struggled with it for a while, thinking I hadn't actually logged in. However, I was logged in. I could post comments. I accepted all cookies.
posted by bingo to Bugs at 8:28 PM PST - 20 comments
Okay, so I know there was a tangentally related thread posted
here a while ago, but that was 2 years ago and it bears a new update. I am a member of both MeFi and the infamous LJ community. Most people would agree, myself among them, that the majority of lj is crap. Most of MeFi, however debatable, is not crap. So I was hoping to add a bunch of you insightful MeFi folk to the old friends list and vice versa. Post inside if you have an active lj account and would like to share and read some lj posts that don't suck.
posted by lazaruslong to MetaFilter-Related at 7:49 PM PST - 24 comments
April 16
How many licks does it take to get to the center of a Toosie Roll Pop? How many chicks can a woodchick chuck?
How many hits does a front-page MeFi link give the linked site? More inside...
posted by Shane to MetaFilter-Related at 9:39 AM PST - 16 comments
April 15
Meetup.com tells me that International MetaFilter Meetup day is in 19 days. I'm actually willing to leave the compound and venture forth to the Dallas meeting...who's with me? Where else are gatherings planned? Anyone have any idea how we could wirelessly do our gatherings together?
posted by dejah420 to MetaFilter Gatherings at 10:49 AM PST - 33 comments
April 14
a confession: I didn't use Google because a) I'm a lazy, lazy man b) I was curious to see how fast this site "works" for lazy guys like me (7 minutes) and c) I wanted to get the commentary from a generally smart, funny audience
posted by trharlan to Etiquette/Policy at 11:08 AM PST - 130 comments
April 13
Yesterday I said jokingly "I'm not a big fan of gatherings -- it seems when you get enough people together in one place, the chances of one asshole ruining it for everyone goes up exponentially." and someone went and proved it.
This is why letting new users can be problematic.
posted by mathowie to MetaFilter-Related at 4:11 PM PST - 72 comments
CLEVELAND MEETUP, DAMMIT!
THIS Saturday, April 17th, 7:00 p.m.!
University Circle Arabica!
(This has been a gentle reminder.)
(More inside.)
posted by Shane to MetaFilter Gatherings at 9:42 AM PST - 10 comments
April 12
Altering the web in real time. Lately there have been some interesting examples of how a post on metafilter has caused change to the source immediately after it was posted. Millionforchrist made changes to it's stated privacy policy within an hour after
being mentioned. Someone speculated a domain out from under
this ask.me question, and also the whole real-time
debate with LGF thread. What are some other recent examples of this kind of thing?
posted by milovoo to MetaFilter-Related at 10:39 PM PST - 29 comments
April 11
Matt, didn't deleted threads used to be removed from the index?
I ask because a certain recent thread which got some attention webwide remains on the www.metafiler.com page.
I used to go to lofi.mefi only to see the deletions...now I don't need to? When did that change?
posted by dash_slot- to MetaFilter-Related at 4:28 PM PST - 19 comments
This is how AskMetafilter works. Also, I thought it would be nice to call someone out for something positive, I don't know about anyone else but it's posts like this that keep me coming back. Thanks, chrismear.
posted by cedar to Etiquette/Policy at 6:32 AM PST - 8 comments
April 10
Nearly a year and a half ago, number 1 gave us customizable time zones for Metafilter. I love it. I have innumerable cookie issues regarding resetting it all the time. But, that's not what I'm complaining about. (I'm not really complaining, either, just making a point, I guess..) In his original
post, mathowie said, "MetaTalk, I'll eventually get to." As far as I can tell, it hasn't been gotten to yet. A quick search of Metatalk threads hasn't yielded results and I can't get the time zone to change even with a cookie reset. In addition, since AskMeFi is a subsection or something of MeTa, perhaps I could remind our fearless leader that that could be done as a part of the planned, future, wonderful AskMe upgrade. Just a thought.
posted by ajpresto to Feature Requests at 6:28 AM PST - 13 comments
April 9
I don't mean to be prick (okay, maybe, but a funny one), but what's "MetaFilter Matt" doing making ponies for
Boing Boing, when we have a million things for him to do here?
posted by wendell to MetaFilter-Related at 9:44 PM PST - 48 comments
Just curious, is there some reason Ask Metafilter is linked to from MetaTalk, but not from MetaFilter? MeTa and MeFi are both linked from AskMe.
posted by beagle to MetaFilter-Related at 8:55 AM PST - 15 comments
April 8
With all the huff and puff about quality, how about a facility in the blue for viewers of threads to rate them? This would have the benefits of indicating examples of quality (to newbies, oldbies with bad memories, etc..) and perhaps the possibility of searching for only threads rated over 7.0 or something. Whaddayasay?
posted by boneybaloney to Feature Requests at 5:16 PM PST - 79 comments
Why not have some kind of "recent posts" sidebar, or the like? As it is, ongoing conversations fade out in mid-thought as they go down then off the page, as people stop checking them. No doubt someone will remark that that would be bringing Mefi closer to some kind of message board, but is that really such a bad thing?
posted by abcde to Feature Requests at 3:11 PM PST - 14 comments
After so many months of effort, repression and downright self-censorship in order to post less, occasioning not a little (deserved) abuse from fellow members for my prolixity, I note
with a happy heart there are now no less than five friends with a higher contribution index than me. This after many months with an embarrassing index of over 11. "There's hope for all", I think is the lesson. For the benefit of these over-eager newbies, what would be the perfect contribution index for the perfect user?
posted by MiguelCardoso to MetaFilter-Related at 10:02 AM PST - 56 comments
April 7
I can't post to AskMe. On preview, the textbox displays lot of HTML code. Hitting 'Preview' or "Post' at this point leads to "User Name undefined in element form" or some such. Log-out -> log-in doesn't help.
posted by Gyan to Bugs at 6:11 PM PST - 6 comments
Have trackbacks been disabled? Or is it just that nobody wants to link back to Metafilter anymore?
posted by anastasiav to Bugs at 11:07 AM PST - 7 comments
Ask MeFi is returning a "File not found: /index.cfm" error. The blue and the grey seem to be fine though.
posted by terrapin to Bugs at 10:51 AM PST - 1 comments
April 6
I'm not trying to make a personal callout, nor am I Chicken Littling, but I wonder if
this thread is of the more interesting variety of political threads, or if it is more of a simple "gotcha." For those who don't think that all politics FPP's are necessarily noise, is
this thread signal?
posted by Ignatius J. Reilly to Etiquette/Policy at 10:37 AM PST - 56 comments
Hi everyone, longtime lurker, first time poster. During my days in the wilderness poking my nose in here and reading religiously, I've always wondered if there had ever been a "metapoll" conducted of the membership. If there has, please excuse my ignorance (I couldn't find any mention of it). If not, I think it would be the greatest thing ever! Politics, favourite music, movie, country of origin, languages spoken. I'd love to know more about the gang in a non privacy-violating way...Not that I'd know how to go about doing it. Any suggestions?
posted by loquax to MetaFilter-Related at 7:44 AM PST - 36 comments
Can all of y'all stop apologizing in the first post of a thread, please?
People shouldn't have to feel as if their contribution is any less because of subject matter than any other post. It's extremely annoying to read an interesting fpp and then have a sniveling self-deprecating post within. Grab some balls people!
posted by drgonzo to Etiquette/Policy at 7:18 AM PST - 32 comments
Matt, there appears to be a coldfusion error in
one of my old threads, which I found when I tried to post it as a link in the current thread on lottery winners.
posted by yhbc to Bugs at 5:17 AM PST - 2 comments
April 5
While I'm guessing this has been discussed before, I feel it might be good to go over again, given the n00bs -- like me. Are there any policies/guidelines/unspoken rules regarding the inclusion of personal information, and specifically the details of less than legal or moral behavior, in threads, comments, and AskMe answers?
[more inside]
posted by ChasFile to Etiquette/Policy at 11:17 PM PST - 11 comments
In asking my HTML question, I was attempting to post the representation of an HR tag inside angle brackets using character entity references, and somehow I managed to post
a real-live horizontal rule instead. But it looked fine on Preview. Brackets and ampersands and semicolons, oh my! (testing inside)
posted by brownpau to Bugs at 3:05 PM PST - 10 comments
This may be the first ask.mefi thread where someone starts to answer a question only to realize he dislikes the person who asked it and therefore stops. Wacky.
posted by gwint to Etiquette/Policy at 2:15 PM PST - 96 comments
April 4
I had a pretty interesting link for a fpp but I found out the hard way that I have to wait a week (5 days? 7 days?) before i get to to post on the big blue. Isn't is safe to assume that the new members aren't just people that wandered in to mefi and joined, but rather lurkers who've been dying to post for quite a while?
Also, I was able to post a question in askme as well as this thread, so I'm thinkin maybe we need some policy revision
posted by bob sarabia to Etiquette/Policy at 11:55 AM PST - 88 comments
April 3
Okay, so I found a collection of NSFW sites....like, some "classics" of the "shock site" genre. I know there have been NSFW posts in the past, but those were just for nudity. I don't think there's been any pornography, nor do I think there's been anything like this posted either.
I think a lot of people (like myself) have never heard of many of these sites, and might be interested to know what some of them are (i.e. tubgirl...never heard of her until that MeTa post a few weeks back). It's....fascinating like a train wreck.
And the good part is that the site I want to link to is safe for work itself. It just lists a bunch of awful sites to go to, and because of that, I'm a little leery of posting. Thoughts?
posted by taumeson to Etiquette/Policy at 8:18 AM PST - 39 comments
Question: if new user signups were limited to twenty new users a day, why did we end up with 140 new members in the span of a two-day period? Could this account for the excess strain on the server today?
[I thought about just sending Matt an e-mail but thought some others might be interested in the response.]
posted by The God Complex to MetaFilter-Related at 2:29 AM PST - 67 comments
April 2
Reminder: Toronto MeFi meetup tomorrow, Dora Keogh, 8pm. Previously discussed
here. You will know us by the camera and, yes, the MeFi-Maple-Leaf-blue
tuque on the table.
posted by stonerose to MetaFilter Gatherings at 10:30 AM PST - 16 comments
April 1
I note from the sidebar that a number of people have been
inspired by Ask Metafilter. Did you know that even more people have been
killed by Ask MetaFilter? Or that, for every two people inspired, there has been one person who has had
sex with Ask MetaFilter?
posted by dg to MetaFilter-Related at 5:22 PM PST - 11 comments
Ok, funs over, the wiki code was totally killing the box. I just might keep it up for shits and giggles at a different location.
posted by mathowie to MetaFilter-Related at 10:33 AM PST - 25 comments
Okay, so we're having fun with the Metafilter April Fools Wiki, except, uhm, it doesn't work. :) At least not for me. I click 'Edit Page' and edit the page, but my edits are not saved. Or is it just that the db behind it all is just getting so hammered for all the junk and spam posts?
posted by metaxa to Bugs at 1:22 AM PST - 40 comments
