The day has come.

cortex — Wed, 01 Apr 2009 08:00:29 -0800

We're going to be experimenting with some gentle scaling back of Metafilter's scope and services. For budgetary reasons, it's become clear that we need to find a way to streamline how the site operates to keep the LLC functioning in the black. While we don't want to make any fundamental changes to the site we all love, we are going to be rolling out a few incremental tweaks that after long behind-the-scenes discussion we've concluded will make a workable compromise between our desire to preserve the character of the site and our need to keep Metafilter viable in the long run. A few of these will be fairly visible: 1. AskMe will be switching to a pigmentless layout in order to save on dye and, we hope, attract a more professional, revenue-friendly crowd. 2. To save on Flash licenses and limit our liability against future IP claims from legitimate talents, Metafilter Music is going to be stripped down considerably and will henceforth be known as Metafilter Tuneless Idle Humming. 3. Projects will have its posting requirements tightened somewhat—from now on, we'll only be accepting projects that (a) are revenue-generating and (b) guarantee Metafilter, LLC a 30% share in gross, retroactive. 4. Given the current employment landscape, Jobs is being replaced with Hobbies, For Now, But Who Knows What'll Happen In A Couple Years, Right? That's the big stuff. We're also going to try to reclaim some bandwidth costs by reducing the footprint of Metatalk threads, but that's more of a technical issue re: text compression than anything. Though it's been suggested that the protocol we're switching to may actually reduce the animosity on this part of the site as a side effect, which, I'll believe it when I see it, but it's worth a shot. If you've got any thoughts on all this, please let us know in this thread. Thanks very much for running with us on these decisions.

MetaTalk posts tagged with cruella_devowel

The day has come.