MetaTalk

Sorry for the downtime today. We had to restring our network, and it took longer than expected.
posted by evhead to Uptime at 2:36 PM PST - 0 comments

I can't get user info when I'm previewing a comment. After I enter a comment and hit preview, I've tried twice (2 different threads) to click on a users name (opening the link in a new window) and both times I got a 404 Error. The URL I end up trying to use looks like this http://www.metafilter.com/contribute/user.cfm?user_ID=993
posted by sudama to Bugs at 12:42 PM PST - 1 comment

The comment preview works kind of weird for me now. When I hit the back button after seeing a comment preview (in IE 5.01), my form is empty. I could have sworn when I built and tested it, this didn't happen.

Is it just me, or is it happening to anyone else? Is anyone getting data in the comment form when they go back?
posted by mathowie to Bugs at 12:27 AM PST - 2 comments

Just to let you know, in response to a lot of requests, I'm working on a personalized version of metafilter. No two members will see the same entries because it's going to start catering to your needs. If you like member A's links and comments, they'll get floated up. If you don't care for member B's argumentitive tone, they'll disappear from sight, and their comments will be hidden from view.

Once it's done, it's going to rock.
posted by mathowie to Feature Requests at 11:33 PM PST - 15 comments

The crazy post from last week about the narcissism site has been removed. Apparently, in the spirited discussion that followed, there were people being impersonated and connected with incriminating events that may or may not have happened.

Since I, as site owner, control the data and have no connection to anyone associated with the sites mentioned in the story, I decided it was better to remove it.
posted by mathowie to MetaFilter-Related at 5:36 PM PST - 8 comments

no one requested it, but I always wanted to do random images on the main page. The following image shows all the current taglines that popup randomly. They're not all gold, but some of them will be around forever (especially the crack one). Can you think of others? Go ahead and suggest one.


posted by mathowie to MetaFilter-Related at 2:02 PM PST - 38 comments

Oops.
posted by baylink to Feature Requests at 9:26 PM PST - 0 comments

Um, I never remember having heard any thoughts on either of the following two (three) ideas: so I'll repost them en banc:

IWBNI: you could limit the front page in three ways:
1) Threads that I have not read yet
2) Threads that I have read, but not posted on, with comments newer than my last view
3) Threads I have posted on, with comments newer than my last post.

I think those three subsets exhaust the set, no?

It wopuld seem to me that that is all timestamps in cookies, but I don't speak CF...
posted by baylink to Bugs at 9:24 PM PST - 2 comments

Can I live here? It's so peaceful and quiet away from the pointless arguing of mf.

"white is the color of paper"

"who says so? youre wrong!"

"shut up, youre stupid, im going to whip you with my penis"

"why don't you two stop fighting"

mt > mf

//relaxing.
posted by sikk to Feature Requests at 5:38 PM PST - 1 comment

Using micropayments + weblog to fund an indie film. I've been floating this idea around and wondered what you folks thought. Donating a dollar via paypal would result in 1 "share" of the profits from the film... could this work?
posted by owillis to General Weblog-Related at 1:32 PM PST - 1 comment

Will the future of weblogs be due to the issues people have with the current ones, or will it take an entirely new breed?

One problem always given is that there are too many. Too many what? Thoughts? Opinions? Are people supposed to read a certain select set of weblogs and agree to disagree because they don't have more options? Or is it just a popularity issue? Maybe it is just the people involved are concerned because since it is spread so thin, there is a lesser chance of someone reading their weblog. Maybe it is just an issue of categorizing them. If I want a weblog where the author posts often about horror movies, how do I know how to find it? Right now, I don't have the facility to find it, except for word of mouth. Right now all I have are weblog directories that either have a one sentence marketing blurb, or have generalized posting categories. Bleh.

One problem brought up recently is infinite recursive linking. Is everyone in the world truly linking to the same things, or is it just the circle of weblogs you happen read? Maybe it's time to explore new places. Personally, I think it is that weblogs are too generalized. When 10 people start their own weblog and have the same interests, they are bound to find and like the same kind of content many many times in the future. When 10 of those weblogs' readers then make their own weblog on the same topic, they may have a new perspective on the same links, but not actually different links. Don't complain about the person who just posted the same link you saw elsewhere and didn't comment on it. Don't read their log. Read and celebrate and discuss and argue with the people that have actually written a perspective on that same link.

Unless the issues people have with the current state of weblogs are rectified by some magical app or system or person or computer, &c., it will take a new breed. I think the future of weblogs will lead towards specialization. I hope it will be with lengthier, better writing. It will be hiking weblogs, cooking weblogs, c++ weblogs, rocket from the crypt weblogs, &c. Two of my current favorite weblogs are xblog and goodexperience.com. Why? Because I know exactly what kind of topics will be covered, and I won't have to wait a week for a topic I like to finally crop up.

Oh, and they won't be called weblogs.

posted by magnetbox to General Weblog-Related at 8:50 AM PST - 1 comment

so if there were a limit on front page posts, what should it be? 1? 3? 5? no limit?
posted by mathowie to Etiquette/Policy at 8:51 PM PST - 18 comments

Kottke offers a good critique of online discussions (like MeFi), and he makes some excellent suggestions on how to improve them. He quotes an unnamed source: "The problem with online forums is that those who have very little to contribute participate the most while those with valuable information to share participate the least." Now, let's try to keep the conversation cordial...
posted by ericost to Etiquette/Policy at 8:44 PM PST - 44 comments

It looks like affiliate links will be the next no-no that goes in the guidelines. Does anyone have any objections to that?

(I know my original paypal post was straddling/crossing an etiquette line already, but grumblebee's "gimmie $5" post was a bit too much)
posted by mathowie to Etiquette/Policy at 2:10 PM PST - 3 comments

ugh. Server is slow/dying for no known reason. I'll be trying to get the new server up as soon as I can this week.
posted by mathowie to Uptime at 2:06 PM PST - 0 comments

Oh - I just added permalinks to MetaTalk posts (since someone asked in another thread).
posted by mathowie to Feature Requests at 1:35 AM PST - 1 comment

I finally, finally, finally did the preview-before-comment-posting.

I should have done this a year ago. Sorry everyone. It should cut down considerably on the spelling/grammar/HTML errors.
posted by mathowie to Feature Requests at 1:24 AM PST - 14 comments

Matt--

As near as I can tell, the sort-to-top on the Metatalk front is by new threads, not new comments. Which is fine. However, I would like some kind of flag to know if a category (such as "weblog grab bag) has new comments since the last time I was here. It wouldn't have to be detailed. I'm thinking along the lines of a "new comments" column next to each category on the front page, with a yes/no value.

Or whatever, you're the designer I'm the one who thought black and neon green was a good color scheme.
posted by mrmorgan to Feature Requests at 4:21 PM PST - 1 comment

Someone already suggested the ability to preview posts (comments as well as new threads), so I'll second that. If it annoys people, you can make it an optional preview (preview button next to the post).

Related: MetaFilter inserts
tags on carraige returns blindly, and I tend to forget this and put them in myself. I was wondering if, after interpolation, more than two br tags could automatically collapse to just two, maybe with intelligent handling of paragraph tags as well. Maybe I'm the only one that makes mistakes like that, but nobody needs anything more than two line breaks anyway.

But the post preview would probably be sufficient.

posted by dan_of_brainlog to Feature Requests at 10:40 AM PST - 1 comment

What's with the fascination with "Web Celebs" (aka "The Web Elite") here? Why do we all worship them? Why do we all hate them?

I want this out in the open and settled. It's been brewing with the angry trolls for waaaaay too long.

Anonymous posts are unwelcome.
posted by EricBrooksDotCom to MetaFilter-Related at 9:25 AM PST - 16 comments

I'm sure it's been mentioned before, though I couldn't find it in the "view all days" view---even so I'd like to renew any request for a "don't ever bother me with this user's posts again" toggle. Much as I hate it I think comments should be left alone for continuity inside a thread, but blocking links would be good. There's no way to *make* people stop messing with the s/n, but if I don't have to see them doing it I can pretend.

(It's so easy to make these requests, it's not MY time and I don't even know Cold Fusion. heh.)
posted by Sapphireblue to Feature Requests at 5:59 PM PST - 5 comments

A suggestion for you, Matt. You might consider adding some easy way for you to move topics lock, stock and barrel, comments and all, from MetaFilter to MetaTalk. Then politely leave a link behind saying you've done it.

And having an enormous ego and desire for self-aggrandizement, I think you should have a section here in MetaTalk for people to post things about their websites. I have some things coming up I wouldn't mind the entire universe knowing about (as opposed to both people who come to my site), but I won't be so rude as to drop it into MetaFilter.
posted by mrmorgan to Feature Requests at 4:41 PM PST - 2 comments

May I humbly suggest a timer for individual posts. Err, that isn't very clear. Lately there's been a rash of people posting 2 or three small items in a row which, imho, really thins out the collective attention on MF which leads to more sparse threads.

What if each user was only allowed to post one new topic per 20 minutes? Or any arbitrary time period really...

Perhaps this should be a feature request?
posted by bryanboyer to Etiquette/Policy at 4:30 PM PST - 7 comments

The death of MetaFilter - A rambling comment about off topic comments.
posted by y6y6y6 to Etiquette/Policy at 5:46 AM PST - 73 comments

I think it would be cool if Metafilter was themeable. It might be a little difficult to program, but I know it's doable. I would like to see something other than BLUE when I come here.
posted by y0bhgu0d to Feature Requests at 11:28 AM PST - 0 comments

I think it would be neat if you could program the side floating panel- to be configurable- so that we could choose the links that we wanted in their or add our own- via the configuration page. I'm not a coder by any means, so I don't know how difficult it would be, but I wanted to air my idea.
posted by TuxHeDoh to Feature Requests at 2:14 PM PST - 0 comments

Moderation
I've been working on the image upload part of the site, and realized there's no way to limit what type of content gets uploaded.

So I've come to the conclusion that the only way to keep out off-topic scans & stories (like porn or pictures of your cat) is to induce a moderation process. Pretty much anything resembling a story along with an image of something that looks like a ticket stub will get through and posted (guidelines will be posted along with the site so this is clear).

Do you have any objections to such a setup? It would induce a bit of lag, but I don't know if submissions would be that substantial on a day-to-day basis. Also, I'll set it up so I get an email the instant something is submitted and after a simple glance at it, will approve it with a single click.

I know metafilter has always been wide open, but since this site is starting from scratch, I don't think it will affect the growth too much. Do you think it's a good or bad idea? why? Is there possibility that human intervention (i.e. me or some other possible moderators) would spoil the growth? Or would it ensure a quality site?
posted by mathowie to Ticketstub Project at 1:15 PM PST - 17 comments

How should the site be arranged and navigated? Personally, I want to see ticket stub stories of all kinds, and not have it bound to just rock concert show reviews. But that begs the question, should the first page you see have a list of entries by last posted? by category? (thinking generally here, like movies, concerts, etc), or list by author?

Since it's all in a database, the list can be any or all of them, depending on what the user wants to see, but I'm still wondering what the default arrangement should be.

What do you think?
posted by mathowie to Ticketstub Project at 11:51 PM PST - 6 comments

Ok, so it's no longer late May, and the site's not up. Wanna know why? read here...
posted by mathowie to Ticketstub Project at 11:45 PM PST - 2 comments

The floating 'other blogs' palette does not work well at all in MSIE 5.0/Mac. When the home page first loads, it shows up on the left side of the page, obliterating much of the text of the links. Only when the page is finished loading does it move to its proper place on the right side.

Then, when paging up and down, the palette only draws down to about halfway through the "kottke" link. Yuck.
posted by aaron to Bugs at 10:26 PM PST - 1 comment