MetaTalk

Please give a hearty hello to our newly-hired members of the MetaFilter moderation team: travelingthyme and loup! I'll let them introduce themselves a bit below, but I wanted to let folks know that they'll both be working part-time as of now so you can expect to see their names around the site. [more inside]
posted by cortex on Jun 1, 2020 - 214 comments

It is. Please join me in a tradition stretching back to 2007 and help me thank the undeniably world-class moderators of MetaFilter Industries, LLC for all they do for our community. [more inside]
posted by Rock Steady on Jun 13, 2018 - 45 comments

Well, not much has happened over the past year, and things have been pretty easy for the mods, so I hesitate to even make a post to celebrate Moderators' Day this year. It seems a bit off to thank the mods for all their hard work, thoughtfulness, excellent communication skills, and infinite patience when they have basically been lounging by the pool at MetaFilter World Headquarters eating bonbons and /hamburgers all year. [more inside]
posted by Rock Steady on Jun 13, 2017 - 99 comments

After 16 years of doing a bit of everything under the sun here, I’m stepping away from the day to day of running MetaFilter and moving into the background. Never fear, I’m leaving it in the best of hands and things are looking good for the future. [more inside]
posted by mathowie on Mar 4, 2015 - 944 comments

We celebrate Moderators' Day 2014 with a slightly heavy heart, as this marks the first celebration of the holiday (which dates back to 2007) when we have fewer moderators than we did last year. Still, MetaFilter's recent "grassroots fundraising drive" demonstrates that the community and the website are in excellent health going forward, in no small part due to the efforts of our Best Of The Web moderating team, past, present and future (I for one, welcome our robot moderator overlords). [more inside]
posted by Rock Steady on Jun 13, 2014 - 68 comments

Today I need to share some unfortunate news: because of serious financial downturn, MetaFilter will be losing three of its moderators to layoffs at the end of this month. What that means for the site and the site’s future are described below. [more inside]
posted by mathowie on May 19, 2014 - 1667 comments

Five years ago I put forth a humble suggestion that June 13th be celebrated each year as Moderator's Day. We've celebrated it more or less enthusiastically over the years, and I just wanted to take this opportunity to specifically thank mathowie, jessamyn, cortex, vacapinta, restless_nomad, taz, LobsterMitten, goodnewsfortheinsane, and pb for their hard work and dedication. Thanks, guys. You can take the rest of the day off. We'll be good, I promise. [more inside]
posted by Rock Steady on Jun 13, 2013 - 113 comments

It's New Mod Monday! (actually they'll filter in over the next two weeks, but anyway ...semantics!) [more inside]
posted by mathowie on Oct 1, 2012 - 201 comments

I remember a blog post somewhere advocating for strong moderation, with the theme 'users are the problem.' But now I can't find it. [more inside]
posted by the man of twists and turns on Aug 9, 2012 - 6 comments

Ah, here I've let time get away from me, and I've missed Moderator's Day. mathowie, jessamyn, cortex, vacapinta, pb, and now restless_nomad, each of you is more on the ball than I've ever been. Cheers. [more inside]
posted by SirNovember on Jun 13, 2011 - 102 comments

mathowie, jessamyn, cortex, vacapinta, and pb, thanks for all you do. This place is incomparable. [more inside]
posted by SirNovember on Jun 13, 2010 - 126 comments

Hey Matt and Jess, how's about promoting a mod from Europe, or dare I say Australia, so we can kill crap like this before we give the self-promoting little jerk a soapbox? (I'm only half kidding.)
posted by Jimbob on Sep 22, 2006 - 125 comments

There seems to be no clear way to contact the administrators for users who are not familiar with the site. Could we add a contact link up in the top nav section, or somewhere obvious?
posted by spaghetti on May 31, 2006 - 23 comments

In this thread, cribcage mentions that " ... blogrrrl has no way of identifying jessamyn (or mathowie, for that matter) as an admin ... ", which seems on its face to be silly because everyone knows that, of course. Right?

Anyway, it got me to thinking that perhaps Matt and Jess' remarks could be highlighted with something to indicate that they're the admins. Maybe a different color, a gold star a'la Stan Chin that's clickable and leads to a page with email/AIM/contact info? Something along those lines could help the filthy five-dolla noobs with their acclimatization to the site.

Just a thought.
posted by mr_crash_davis on Jan 19, 2006 - 122 comments

Could we have a new category for MetaTalk for Oopsie! One day I swear I'll actually learn to type slowly enough to coordinate the output from my fingers with the output from my brain, or maybe just shut up, but in the meantime I've done something amazing even for me. In this thread, I mangled the anchor tag in my comment badly enough that I can't link to it here and refreshing the page will crash my browser. It's probably going to make messes for others, as well, or I'd just hide my red face in shame. Any friendly, helpful moderators looking for gratitude?
posted by dilettante on Nov 21, 2005 - 6 comments

I'd be remiss after publicly joining in the criticism of silent edits by the admins if I didn't publicly thank jessamyn for demonstrating that she does listen to complaints. Thanks jessamyn!
posted by orthogonality on May 7, 2005 - 11 comments

Admin for a day: To raise money (and give himself an occasional break) mathowie could occasionally auction off 24-hour admin rights. These temporary admins could delete posts, suspend miscreants and maybe even manually register new users.
posted by timeistight on Nov 10, 2004 - 57 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 on Jun 4, 2000 - 17 comments