I would like a small formatting pony. [more inside]
posted by boo_radley on Feb 5, 2009 - 67 comments

Can we more strongly encourage posters to make their first link their most important one? [more inside]
posted by washburn on Jun 29, 2008 - 70 comments

Can we fix the <pre>formatted text bug where the live preview looks perfect, but the actual post ends up double-spaced? [more inside]
posted by knave on May 25, 2008 - 124 comments

What happened to put quotes in italics?
posted by nax on Feb 23, 2008 - 128 comments

Regarding the AskMe RSS feed formating - Currently there is no line break between the question and the [more inside]. Sometimes this makes for an odd run-on and repetitive paragraph that isn't what the poster intended. Since screen real-estate isn't a problem in the feed, might the powers-that-be consider throwing a paragraph between these sections? I use google reader but it's also formatted the same way in bloglines if this helps.
posted by FortyT-wo on Jan 24, 2008 - 5 comments

You know those little MP3 or PDF tags on Wikipedia external links (see last external link), informing users they are about to click on a special file along with the file size? That would sure be nice for MeFi.
posted by stbalbach on Dec 15, 2007 - 26 comments

It's pretty annoying that inserting carriage returns shows line breaks as typed in the "preview" window, but the final result is breakless (after all, what's the point of the preview?). I've had unpredictable results manually adding "BR" tags and "P" tags...they seem to sporadically interact with the typed carriage returns and yield vast white space. If anyone can point me to a workaround, I'd be appreciative. But, really, it'd be fitting if postings posted per the preview, no?
posted by jimmyjimjim on Dec 10, 2007 - 29 comments

A quick formatting request for the contacts lists: "links to" and "linked by" as vertical lists side by side rather than as blocks of inline text. Also, a little icon to indicate mutual contacts, and a little plus sign to add new non-mutual contacts from the "linked by" list. I have the del.icio.us contacts list in mind.
posted by brownpau on Nov 7, 2007 - 8 comments

When this post shows up in Recent Activity, the long small-text quote gets truncated, the <small> tag is never closed, and the rest of Recent Activity is rendered small.
posted by flabdablet on Sep 21, 2007 - 19 comments

Why does this question lose all formatting even though it is formatted in my RSS reader? Doesn't appear to have happened to other questions nearby.
posted by vacapinta on Sep 20, 2007 - 12 comments

Can the “« Older” and “Newer »” links at the bottom of post pages use the post titles of the adjacent posts rather than the first few words truncated with an ellipsis?
posted by stopgap on Sep 13, 2007 - 7 comments

Small inconsistency. On members' posts/comments pages, < newer / older>> point opposite to all the regular pages, which are < older / newer>>. Not terribly annoying, but easy to fix, no?
posted by weapons-grade pandemonium on Aug 31, 2007 - 15 comments

Flagging a post as "too long."
posted by bardic on Jun 16, 2007 - 59 comments

Could the "Post" button on new AskMe questions trigger a script to check that the first part of the question ends either in a "." or a "?"? This would bring an end to the [more inside] "witticisms" (e.g. Assuredly there's [more inside]). I realise it is minor, and that I have also once been guilty of propagating this lame disruptive meme.
posted by roofus on May 11, 2007 - 105 comments

Is there a bug in this question? Looks fine on its own page, but on the main AskMe page it starts with the second sentence: "But this time...". Perhaps something to do with the fact that the first sentence is identical to the title?
posted by allkindsoftime on Apr 17, 2007 - 2 comments

What's the proper method for quoting a commenter in a thread? For years, I had taken to just posting the thought in italics and nothing else. More and more however, I notice people pulling out the quote with the post date/time and user name. Are both methods acceptable? Neither? Better to link to the comment in question and not quote it at all? Please hope me.
posted by psmealey on Mar 21, 2007 - 103 comments

The tiny text that some posters tend to use as asides (example here in miss lynsters comment) is truly hard to read in anything longer than a sentence, particularly for those of us born to the mole people. This seems to be the best place as any other to ask that people consider that [small] font is rather difficult to read in chunks! ( I realize that yes, the actual answer is to Ctrl-+ on FireFox read it and reverse, but then everything else goes huge. )
posted by canine epigram on Mar 19, 2007 - 91 comments

So despite reading the MeFi Wiki and crunchland's profile, I managed to screw up my FPP ( this one ) and it now appears on the home page without a title. Would one of the admins be kind enough to correct the link title of the post? You may also suggest suitable means of atonement for this extremely n00b-ish screwup.
posted by your mildly obsessive average geek on Mar 14, 2007 - 22 comments

Dear Mefi. What is the proper etiquette for the [via]? Some go inside, others on the front.
posted by dabitch on Mar 10, 2007 - 27 comments

Is it just me, or did my autoformatting buttons vanish with my last Firefox update (I assume this is the cause, as the two coincided)? If I have to start hand-coding hyperlinks again I will probably just go into an unresponsive fugue state instead.
posted by nanojath on Feb 24, 2007 - 17 comments

Is there be a better way to automate links in comments and answers?
posted by SteveInMaine on Feb 18, 2007 - 23 comments

A suggestion for Youtube (music video) posts: playlists. [how-to inside]
posted by Eideteker on Jan 2, 2007 - 11 comments

FPP question.

In making up an art centered post, I'm finding lots of great images with data that describes the particular piece of art. However, the art and data about it is on a web page with other pictures (sometimes relate, sometimes not)and the specific pieces I want to use do NOT have anchers. The data about the images is important, because the images are part of a storytelling genre/style and the data helps shed light on the images (which are at least 100 years old usually).

So would it be better to link to just the images or link to the web page and just mention that you have to scroll?
posted by Brandon Blatcher on Dec 14, 2006 - 26 comments

Is this the first time someone has linked to videos with the playing time in superscript? Am I the only one who finds it really annoying?
posted by chunking express on Dec 4, 2006 - 91 comments

In askmefi, I occasionally see some posts where the first question field ends with "of course ..." as if the rest of the sentence is cut off. In older posts, though, that phrase usually ends with "... there's more" as in "of course there's more." Is it because it's an askmefi cliche and that metafilter users are perpetuating it as a joke, or if it's because that particular sentence is automatically truncated by admins who deem it unnecessary because of the [more inside] denotation?
posted by i8ny3x on Nov 30, 2006 - 16 comments

Since you're already stripping out the image tag code (like on this post), why not either change it to a link or drop the whole line entirely? The code that's left is unsightly.
posted by mr_crash_davis on Nov 18, 2006 - 53 comments

Early Sunday morning I made two minor changes to my user page (added my new blog's address, changed the text in the location line), and when I saved the changes and viewed my user page again, it and every other page of MeFi suddenly appeared as white with black text. And so it has remained. If I delete cookies and log out, I see it in blue, grey and green, but not otherwise. Why has this happened and how can I fix it? I dislike the white so much I can't stand to read the site.
posted by orange swan on Nov 14, 2006 - 5 comments

Tags: I hate how they have to be crunched into one word. What's the policy/ettiquette about using underscores? Does it break the database? Or should I avoid them just because they're not convention, therefore no one will know to search for them?
posted by Eideteker on Nov 13, 2006 - 53 comments

This huge thread kills Safari/OmniWeb. I'd like there to be a preference that allows me to see massive posts broken up by 100s of comments or something. Alternatively, is there a different CSS file that can be loaded for these that will keep Safari/OmniWeb from crashing?
posted by onalark on Nov 6, 2006 - 17 comments

Matt or Jess, could you de-linkify the word "nationwide" in this post? I moved it to be the initial link for the post, but neglected to clean up my HTML.
posted by WCityMike on Nov 5, 2006 - 1 comment

I made a FPP (Stern Review of global warming) linking to Wikipedia using the ^ - for stylistic reasons, I wanted to emphasis the second link in the FPP and not the Wikipedia link, which is the first link, and so wanted to keep it small and unobtrusive. Someone< ?> then changed it and made it a full link. Is there a style-policy? Is it documented anywhere?
posted by stbalbach on Oct 30, 2006 - 51 comments

Smart Quotes Ahoy! Love 'em or hate 'em, they turn up awful weird in my RSS reader.

Not a major crisis, I was just surprised to see Word-style formatting passing through after the very recent thread on blocking entities.
posted by gimonca on Oct 17, 2006 - 31 comments

Would everyone please cut it out? Pretty please?!
posted by The God Complex on Oct 14, 2006 - 102 comments

I was using My Comments to locate a previous post via my comment. Wots up with the My Comments page only lists the past 7 days?!!?

Ok, Maybe I should post more often. Then, I use search, and using my user ID I get nada. Then I used google site search with time limit of 3 months and I get posts from 2004. Oddly, this Google results page is missing the "sort by date/relevance". Same for Yahoo; no date on results sort.

Regardless, this leads me back to a simpler question. Why does the My Comments page limit the results to 7 days? Now I can't rememebr what the post was to begin with, but I would like to hear why the forced limit on this page.

-Long Time Lurker
posted by xtian on Oct 8, 2006 - 9 comments

Can the favorites pages be tweaked so comments retain their formatting and links? Also, when the page displays the whole of a comment, there shouldn't be an ellipsis after it. TY HUGS
posted by riotgrrl69 on Sep 24, 2006 - 15 comments

I would just like to point out that the way in which louigi formatted his multi-question post to AskMe is superb, and should be a model for future questions of this nature.
posted by c:\awesome on Sep 22, 2006 - 61 comments

Metafilter: Unhelpful link text. Extra links added for padding that have little to do with the main topic of the entry. Are extremely loaded rhetorical questions the only thing that can save us now?
posted by onalark on Sep 6, 2006 - 44 comments

Couple questions:

1) If I go to the AskMeFi "New Question" page, I do not see buttons for bold, italics, link and spell check. It appears that only plain text is allowed (or html, which I don't know). However, if I go to someone else's question, the comment area has all of the above. Does my browser/setup have a problem? I'm using Firefox 1.5.0.4, I've got various extensions (NoScript, Mouse Gestures, FoxClocks, ScrapBook, del.icio.us and ScreenGrab).

2) What is the easiest way to include a picture in the question? Posting it to flickr (or equivalent) and linking to it?

I've read the FAQ and performed searches on both topics, but could not find answers.

Thanks!
posted by eebs on Jul 18, 2006 - 31 comments

Is there a way to paste formatted (e.g. indented) code into an AskMe response? If not, could such a feature be added? It would really help out threads like this.
posted by grumblebee on Jun 29, 2006 - 46 comments

@mathowie: Why are people starting to put commercial at signs before usernames when they are directly addressing other MeFites? Is this a convention from Digg or something? Am I the only one who finds this annoying, even more annoying than putting other usernames in boldface? Even more annoying than Todd Lokkenning? Can we make it stop?
posted by grouse on Jun 9, 2006 - 99 comments

I like the look of Metafilter. It is an attractive site. The only part of it that I hate with a passion is the "You just flagged something, good for you" page. It is an eyesore. I hate its whiteness and the lack of words on 90% of its surface. Let's make it a pretty color and spread the words out some. What do you say?
posted by ND¢ on Jun 5, 2006 - 33 comments

I've noticed that AskMefi has a high turnover rate these days, and some questions don't get answered because they age too quickly.

Suggestion: how bout we have two columns of questions instead of one? So that older questions show up next to the newest one - and have a longer life?
posted by mammary16 on May 30, 2006 - 155 comments

As I scroll through a page I would prefer to have the masthead, with its useful navigation links, stay in place at the top of my screen. Is there any way I can make this happen?
posted by jamjam on May 23, 2006 - 6 comments

Can some sort of rule/guideline/something be considered, stating that FPP's shouldn't have a bajillion links, one in each individual word?

I know it's not a serious thing, and a programmatic solution isn't the way to go, but when I see posts like this it drives me nuts. Am I the only one?
posted by pdb on Apr 29, 2006 - 57 comments

Cleanup on aisle 50764.

While I appreciate what a fun fireball the thread might turn into, the subject of the FPP is miffed by syntax in the FPP which might be construed as attributing a quote to her (when in fact it is a quote by someone else whom she is disagreeing with), and the FPPer has also said he/she has no problem changing the syntax, so in the name of avoiding nuclear fallout, could Jessamyn or Matt edit the FPP?
posted by Bugbread on Apr 9, 2006 - 44 comments

Problems Posting Code To Ask yet again.

I really wish AskMeFi handled code better. As in, handled HTML, JavaScript, Perl, whatever, with linebreaks and indenting preserved. Some people are smart enough to use the PRE tag, but they still need to escape the HTML brackets, and their code gets extra linebreaks added.

When I need to post code I pre-process it with a script now but the average person isn't that obsessive.

The "regular expressions are overkill" guy has a problem in his code, please note, as does the "screw the dom" guy.
posted by AmbroseChapel on Mar 27, 2006 - 25 comments

This is about linking style.

Many folk on MeFi and other, somewhat geek-identified sites like kuro5hin have a linking style as follows:

1. Placing multiple links such that several consecutive words in a sentence each link to a different page
2. (somewhat following from #1) Links that bear no relation to the text they mark.

Here is a (made-up) example: "Best Buy stocks several brands of electronics."

What is wrong here? The first link is well placed, but all the others are terrible. Firstly, logically, there is no reason why the word "several" should link to anything other than a page about the word "several". But what is worse than this is that the casual reader has no way to parse this sentence for information without clicking on each link. In this case the URLs are obvious, when hovering over the link in question, but many times the URLs are not so obvious.

Why not just use the much plainer, better style: "Best Buy stocks several brands of electronics such as Sony, Samsung, Mouser, and LG."

Or if it's not intended to give the linked websites so much importance, you could simply say: "Best Buy stocks several brands of electronics (examples 1, 2, 3, 4)."

Either of these would be a vast improvement. Discuss.
posted by splitpeasoup on Mar 13, 2006 - 91 comments

Ponyfilter: It'd be really nice if the 'Comments' entry box could be the full width of the browser. MeFi does an excellent job in handling widescreen monitors in all respects but that one. [bit more inside]
posted by Malor on Mar 4, 2006 - 17 comments

Formatting changes made sometime on February 7th or 8th have broken MeFi Remixed. Just thought you might like to know.
posted by monju_bosatsu on Feb 21, 2006 - 3 comments

A couple of things:

1) When people view your profile and links to answers posted on mefi and such, it looks more like you've posted the question - this seems a little odd, could the actual comments be linked instead (I know they're accessible by clicking on the date, it just seems a slightly unintuitive way of doing it).

2) Mefi and ask.mefi have some GREAT posts on there that I'd love to be able to bookmark within Metafilter (part of my profile maybe?). An example, lots of ask.mefi questions are just damned useful, and I'd like to have a place where I could go and you could see "BishopsLoveSciFi's favourite questions / answers / FPPs".

If it makes it any clearer, think of it working like memories on LJ. (See this FAQ item if you're not an LJer.)
posted by BishopsLoveScifi on Feb 14, 2006 - 8 comments