Pony Request: Can we have a page that aggregates the user profiles for the 100 newest users (or the new users in the past month)?
[more inside]
posted by OmieWise
on Apr 13, 2011 -
45 comments
There are a lot of new people on MetaFilter and I want to make a Welcome to MeFi page on the wiki. Can you help me out with some things you wished you'd known when you were new here?
[more inside]
posted by jessamyn
on Jul 26, 2010 -
236 comments
Not sure why, but my first post was deleted. It was about the News Corp discussions with Microsoft. Definitely not spam, so I'm not sure what happened.
posted by JD Rucker
on Feb 3, 2008 -
55 comments
IdleCuriousityFilter: What media mentions of MetaFilter have generated significant numbers of new accounts?
[more inside]
posted by lalex
on Oct 10, 2007 -
17 comments
I'm too newbie to post to the front page, but would like to know: is anybody gonna give a shout to Tony Wilson?
posted by Myeral
on Aug 11, 2007 -
29 comments
With AskMe getting lots of press (as in
here) as a unit seperate from Metafilter (meaning, blue, grey, white, mauve, etc.), there should really be a message on ask letting the droves of new users know that it is a part of a larger community, with other features, a resource for post discussion and discourse, and a user base not completely dedicated to the green. People who enter through Angel Island should know New York exists. /metaphor)
posted by potch
on Jun 13, 2007 -
32 comments
So I found two cool sites, dealing with entirely separate things that could make meaty FPPs. I just don't have the time to do the research to flesh them out right now. Should I make a pair of posts, or one post connected in a jokey or left-field way? Should I just make follow-up posts in my own thread as I find more stuff, or would you prefer the style of my previous posts, in general, even if it means I forget about stuff that may potentially be cool? I see a massive variety of styles, but I figure I may as well sound the hivemind out. Please feel free to ignore me if I'm being too n00bish.
posted by StrikeTheViol
on May 23, 2007 -
41 comments
This is a spammy self-link in the comments of the green, from a shiny new user. The poster almost asked permission in the gray (the
thread just below this one), but I suspect that this isn't quite what #1 had in mind when he said to go ahead and make the post.
posted by toxic
on Nov 16, 2006 -
9 comments
With the increasing number of stupid call outs on MetaTalk of late, the general lowering of the standards of debate in MeFi and seemingly more and more attacks on #1 and #292 for their admin decisions, I respectfully and tentatively suggest that now may be the time to close off new user sign-ups for a while.
posted by Effigy2000
on Mar 23, 2006 -
130 comments
Encouraged by
one supportive comment here, I am proposing the MeFi Mentorship program for new users. The idea is to ease new users into the MetaFilter community and avoid the kind of ugliness that happens when newbies don't understand how MetaFilter works. [more inside]
posted by JMOZ
on Jan 20, 2006 -
38 comments
If you close signups for a couple of years it will lend an air of prestige and exclusivity to Metafilter.
posted by The Jesse Helms
on Dec 1, 2005 -
55 comments
Just so I, as a relatively new user, can understand: how exactly is
this not a self-link, but
my question was?
(No hard feelings - I really would like to know.)
posted by ToasT
on Nov 4, 2005 -
17 comments
I have some ideas about getting rid of religious fundamentalism, winning the War on Terrorism, and inoculating our nation against ever electing anyone like George Bush to the White House again -- all at the same time and using nothing more lethal than words and a few diagrams.
I'm new here, and I would appreciate suggestions on what I should particularly avoid doing in discussing such matters in this group.
I am also from an older generation, and I am extremely upset about the current atmosphere in Washington, if any of this helps to explain the kind of answers I need.
posted by jhilton
on Feb 17, 2005 -
55 comments
Attention first-time posters:
hpsell recently made a
hideous front-page post that violated just about every possible rule. Inevitably, he was greeted with a barrage of negative responses: [bad bad bad], "I'm not going to make fun of you because I strongly suspect that you're retarded," and the like. Did he whine, counterattack, or curl up into a ball and hide? No, he said "i didnt mean to ruffle any feathers... ill try to do better with the grammar." [more inside]
posted by languagehat
on Dec 30, 2004 -
83 comments
About today's
earthquake/tidal wave post : today I read the New York Times site before Metafilter, but I dismissed the possibility of posting about it because of the recent snarking against linking to current news articles in front page posts.
Then I clicked on my Mefi tab to discover somebody had posted about it, and nobody's posted any "NewsFilter" gripes yet. Is it that the 0ldB33 Snarkers Committee really means "...to news articles we don't like (and you have to read our minds)", or is there a policy of ranking the human costs of natural disasters somewhere above
doggie dildos after all?
As for that thread's content, I was little dismayed about the comments where people's big concern was for
one dried-up (and never very good) Sci-Fi author (the
movie "2001" was Kubrick's doing, y'all), but I withheld my remarks about that failure of etiquette and (as I see it) morals from the Blue -- as, as of this typing, so has everybody else.
But then of course I'm still a "n00b".... Are concerns like those I've expressed here today okay, or should I first submit my MetaTalk thread ideas to some MetaCognoscenti as well?
posted by davy
on Dec 26, 2004 -
159 comments
Can we close the door now? I'm genuinely happy to have some new blood, but here's the problem. Pretty much everyone who's been reading the site with their noses against the glass has been let in. Hereafter, we're going to get a bunch of
folks who happen to be wandering by, and know nothing of how things are done around here. (I don't know if that's the case with notmtwain, I'm only using his/her post as an example because it glares so.) We can always open it up again later, but can we have a moratorium on new users? Just for now? Please?
posted by jpoulos
on Dec 1, 2004 -
129 comments
I am new. There is a lot of
MetaTalk about politics.
Apparently, "
The quickest way to get a label you'll never be able to shake here is to engage in political threads."
For a long time, I couldn't figure out why people freaked out so much about mentions of politics, but I've been reading
this thread, and I'm almost three-quarters through, finally, and it looks like the consensus is:
MetaFilter is not a soapbox, and your primary subject should be
links, not opinions.
That's cool with me, I'm just curious if I've got it properly nailed down.
posted by blacklite
on Nov 28, 2004 -
271 comments
A few words to our new users, from someone hardly qualified to give them. [more inside]
posted by y6y6y6
on Nov 18, 2004 -
116 comments
I believe this has been discussed before, though my clever attempts at searching MetaTalk yielded no aid in framing a picture for reference. (The thread I seem to recall was in response to Kuro5hin toying with the same concept I wish to put forth for discussion.)
It is a seemingly accepted dogma that MetaFilter may be better off with new members, although prior attempts at acquiring new friends have proved to be problematic. So we've thought of using invitations from existing members as a means to introduce new points of view. ?
posted by tenseone
on Sep 8, 2004 -
19 comments
Matt - speaking curiously,
what is the system bottleneck that makes new users a bad thing? I presume it's database load, because the logged-in user enjoys comment counts and other database-intensive features that are demanding to serve. The static, logged-out homepage is easy to serve, even to a large number of visitors, by comparison, right? The real danger number to watch is the pageviews by logged-in users (please correct me if I'm wrong, I'm totally guessing). Are there features we could sacrifice for the sake of an open reg? What are you all willing to give up to open the gates? User comment history? Custom timezones and comment previews...?
posted by scarabic
on Aug 6, 2004 -
83 comments
Did anyone else noticed the membership count changing in the blue? It seemed like it dropped from the 17000's down to 16896.
posted by phyrewerx
on Aug 6, 2004 -
28 comments
“Much as I hate to admit it, I like Metafilter and I wish that I could become a member so that I could participate in yet another failed attempt to acheive concensus in our grand extended mediated public conversation thing we got going on here (or, from a different perspective, this fantastically successful attempt to foster fractious contention).”
“Listen, not everyone is meant to be ‘With It,’ right. Long ago I decided that the least I could do to stand up for all that divides us is to refuse to be the kind of person who milled in line in front of the club whose cache was primarily granted by the fact that you (and the likes of you) couldn't get in. The rest of us have two choices. We can mill around in the line, playing the fools to justify the chosen types, or we can go it alone.”
“And thus
meta-meta-metafilter is born. Metafilter already has a meta-Metafilter, Metatalk, so I had to take the next step down.” [more inside]
posted by Steve_at_Linnwood
on Jun 11, 2004 -
87 comments
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
on Apr 13, 2004 -
72 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
on Apr 3, 2004 -
67 comments
"One day everyone will rely on
Dong Resin's Joint and MetaFilter". Along with other, less interesting sources. This seems to be the gist of this recent
Online Journalism Review column by Mark Glaser. And it sounds good to me. So the question is: what danger is there of what we take to be parochial and almost private actually going mainstream? Is MetaFilter still a secret? What is lost and what is gained if it suddenly goes mainstream on us?
posted by MiguelCardoso
on Sep 4, 2003 -
41 comments
I am a true newbie, but I do have a request. I was inspired by
this and in particular, his mention of auto-focusing cursors. Can we do that with MetaFilter? Most obviously on the login screen, but I'm sure it has uses in posting.
posted by ajpresto
on Jan 18, 2003 -
15 comments
50% of comments on MetaFilter are by people who first joined in 2002. In my Mefi wanderings, I got the feeling that there were not many low-digit users posting on MetaFilter anymore. Everyone seemed to be a 14xxx! I decided to seek the truth..
posted by wackybrit
on Jan 17, 2003 -
77 comments
Hi,
I'm new. Been here a month or so. I'm not even sure if it's appropriate for me to post this here, now, but damn the torpedoes, or whatever. I bought my account, because I had been reading metafilter for almost a year and wanted to join in the discussion.
I'm seeing a lot of discussion about too much news, too many links posted to the front page.
But, I thought MeFi was *about* the news. If it's not, what is it, then?
And it occurs to me that the whole point of having loose guidelines with anyone being able to post to the front page is so that the site can grow and change.
That's organic, and that's the point isn't it? That it's not plastic with karma whores and it's not a newsgroup with trolls and spammers.
Do you want the group to evolve over time or not? And if not, what do you want? I think I've read all the faqs and things I'm supposed to read, but apparently I still don't get it. Because I don't understand what the oldtimers are upset about.
And this isn't to stir up controversy, but I'm looking to be enlightened. Have the few things I posted to the main page been out of place? How about some new guidelines for us newbies?
posted by nyxxxx
on Oct 4, 2002 -
74 comments
Can't well all just get along? To an extent I can accept the 14k+ crowd misbehaving for awhile — at least till they pick-up on 'Metaquette' — but others should know better than to feed the trolls or fan flamebait.
posted by nathan_teske
on Sep 9, 2002 -
74 comments
I'd like to suggest that there might be a bit of a danger these days of stripping some potential away from the site. A lot of new users are being called out (or belittled) rather promiscuously for posts or comments that are often no different than what they have been accustomed to seeing from Metafilter elders pre-14k (as well as post-14k). Vigilance is worthy and needed in order to protect the integrity of Metafilter, but I suspect that there is a risk of creating an atmosphere of paranoia in which many promising new members will be afraid to post anything that they are not absolutely certain will not reap condemnation. (more inside...)
posted by taz
on Sep 7, 2002 -
67 comments
Since sign-ups were turned back on the thread count has been growing rapidly. With September 11th coming up, we'll almost certainly see thread 20,000 within the week.
The last base-ten rollover passed with little fanfare. Should we ignore the significance of #20k? Use it for elitist ego stroking? Perhaps pancakes are in order...
posted by nathan_teske
on Sep 5, 2002 -
10 comments
For all the new members struggling to come up with a witty name,here are some
suggestions.
Can I change my login to "GSV Just Another Victim Of The Ambient Morality"?
posted by signal
on Sep 2, 2002 -
13 comments
Okay.
I asked it in a thread, and only got
one response. My question for the masses (without an agenda) is this....we've obtained about 1500+ new users in the last 4-6 weeks. When do we start talking about turning sign-ups off again?
posted by Ufez Jones
on Aug 29, 2002 -
42 comments
Hello, I am a brand new member, and I have been waiting to become a part of this for a very long time. Who else has been waiting for a space, and whats your story on how you got involved into metafilter? -Mine inside!
posted by Keyser Soze
on Aug 10, 2002 -
59 comments
20 neophytes a day - and I'm one of yesterday's crop. Fresh-faced, clean-skinned...
As a Content Editor at
Everything2, I'm intimately acquainted with the stickiness inherent in introducing new people to an online community (especially a content-oriented community, as opposed to activity-, hobby-, or interest-oriented ones). There seems to be a dearth of documentation. I guess this site is pretty self-explanatory, which is refreshing - I've been an E2 user for two and a half years and I still occasionally scratch my big, fat head. Also, after such a long, long time with no new users (I know it was a long time because I spent a long time checking the new user page), you guys must be experiencing something of a shock, too.
Any ideas as to what could be done to ease the transition for newbies and allay the angst, if any, of the old guard?
Feel free to kill this if I'm out of line, long-winded or otherwise. I'm a new at this.
posted by bingbangbong
on Aug 2, 2002 -
86 comments
Is metafilter membership currently open or closed? There seems to be some confusion. Could Matt please clear this up by issuing some sort of official statement? Please?
From what I understand, ostensibly it's closed, but I looked and found the
most recent user profile I could, which shows this user is new as of July 24, 2002. Uh, that's pretty recent in my book.
Yes, this is Matt's fiefdom and he can do as he damn well pleases, but frankly some of us think that this "it's closed / no wait, it's really open but only on my terms (which are secret)" kind of thing is uncool, to say the least. Maybe that's not how it is, but it's how it may appear to some people.
Care to clue us all in on what the official word is, Matt?
posted by beth
on Jul 25, 2002 -
102 comments
"
Jul 16 The new server is up and running. I'll re-enable signups sometime this week."
that week has come and gone... does anyone know if this is ever going to happen...?
posted by t r a c y
on Jul 22, 2002 -
53 comments
I'd use the word
troll in this case, but it has some connotations that are a bit loaded given the subject.
posted by briank
on May 1, 2002 -
33 comments
My first post here on Metalk so please excuse me if this is (has been) covered elsewhere. While I understand how to make a "basic" post, how can I add other links in the post (within the description text). I have no idea. Any help?
posted by sharksandwich
on Feb 9, 2002 -
4 comments
Is it important for Metafilter to grow its membership? Is it important for feature requests to be implemented? If the answer to either is yes, isn't it then the membership's challenge ( or responsibility?) to contribute more cash, or to contribute more time to help figure out how more cash can be generated. More inside.
posted by Voyageman
on Nov 14, 2001 -
44 comments
After/Upon the deluge. I feel somewhat self-conscious writing this since I only discovered Mefi in March. Nonetheless, I wonder if Matt has considered how to re-open Metafilter to new members. At this point, the pent-up demand is likely quite large, which could cause a kind of chaos. So I would suggest the when the gate re-opens, it be done in phases: maybe a certain number of posters per-day or per-week for a certain number of weeks; it's how we would do things back in Paramus. Just a thought.
posted by ParisParamus
on Jul 10, 2001 -
26 comments
"Of course not, dayvin, but thanks for ruining the excitement of posting my first link."
Link content aside, does this happen too often? Does MetaFilter need to be a nurturing environment? Could we maybe have "rookie" stripes that let the jaded know to cut the newbies some slack?
posted by machaus
on Jun 28, 2001 -
15 comments
It was mentioned on another thread that the waiting period to post is now one week (up from 24 hours). This is a very good idea.
As further "crowd control safety" measures, perhaps some mechanism could be developed whereby membership had to be confirmed after one week (in some window of time)? This way, the most casually curious would not be able to post, and would not go into the membership figure total.
In addition, how about some period (6 months?) after which membership would expire?
These features might keep a certain minimal level of seriousness to members and their posts; also, it would be fun to see the "tote board" go down as well as up!
posted by ParisParamus
on Apr 11, 2001 -
10 comments
So, it seems like Metafilter's getting pretty crazy lately? This might be the reason: the userbase has been growing at a
near-exponential rate. (I wrote a little script to plot the number of users over time to a graph. Hope you like it.)
posted by waxpancake
on Apr 9, 2001 -
20 comments
