MetaTalk

I've come to the conclusion that I need to step away from running MetaFilter. I'm still figuring what the totality of that will look like, but the initial steps include handing over day to day business administration processes to loup, mod duties to the existing mod staff, and working to set up a steering structure that incorporates community members. My goal is this transition shouldn’t disrupt day-to-day member experiences on the site. Come on in and I'll go into some preliminary detail. [more inside]
posted by cortex on Mar 29, 2022 - 194 comments

Is there a really good logistical reason why websites including Metafilter use such small compose windows (I mean physically small on the screen, not window as in time window)? I feel like it makes it hard to avoid mistakes while you're composing (yes I know about preview, it's not the same as seeing a larger window while you type). [more inside]
posted by twoplussix on Mar 12, 2019 - 45 comments

tl;dr: is there anywhere i can see every post I've ever "added to activity", or does the record of such posts get deleted at some point? [more inside]
posted by Cozybee on Oct 2, 2018 - 9 comments

Important site updates, folks:

1. The site is running at a significant deficit and we urgently need to make that up. Part of that is through additional direct community funding; you can help here.
2. We're looking at—and inviting community input on—several big-picture questions.

Today I want to lay out our budget and income streams, to explain where we're at and what we need to accomplish. I'll also talk a bit about how the community is doing, and what's coming up in the future. [more inside]
posted by cortex on Jun 13, 2018 - 1003 comments

It's a new year and there will soon be a new, and very different government here in the U.S. This will be a shift of a magnitude that many have never seen. Some people feel that this new world shouldn't be entered into, by individuals or groups, without a bit of advanced thinking and planning. My question is: Has leadership here at MetaFilter given any thought as to a need to change how the site handles moderation, security, or any other aspect of our lives here, in light of the inevitable upcoming social, cultural, or governmental changes?
posted by HuronBob on Jan 3, 2017 - 45 comments

A Google search just turned up a "This site may be hacked" result for a Metafilter post. They recommend against visiting the website until this message disappears from the search result. I disobeyed their recommendation, and nothing jumps out as looking wrong. [more inside]
posted by artistic verisimilitude on May 8, 2015 - 31 comments

It seems that http://userscripts.org has been down for an extended period of time, although the site is currently available on an alternate port ( http://userscripts.org:8080/ ). I would like to suggest if you maintain scripts there, that you make them available at another location (perhaps the mefi wiki?) out of an abundance of caution.
posted by boo_radley on May 22, 2014 - 54 comments

Is there a way to access the mobile site on a non-mobile device? [more inside]
posted by Lucinda on Feb 23, 2011 - 37 comments

Thanks everyone for trying out IRL during our alpha test and for putting up with the awkward dual MeTa/IRL posts for a while. We're ready to unveil new features and a new approach to meetups. [more inside]
posted by mathowie on Aug 5, 2010 - 128 comments

As you might have noticed from looking at the very top of AskMetafilter today, AskMetafilter is the Cool Site of the Day. [more inside]
posted by Jaltcoh on Aug 2, 2010 - 106 comments

Look, I'm really embarrassed that I am posting this to meta, where it doesn't belong, and I have tried the direct to the mod approach, but it hasn't worked. So I have a bit of a personal emergency, I'm coping, but I need some galant person to post this to Ask for me? Any takers? I'm really not trying to break the rules, I rarely post to Ask, but I need some help, and I carelessly have asked a question in the last week. . Question below. [more inside]
posted by bystander on Jun 13, 2009 - 4 comments

Anyone else see that Neatorama linked to the oval office desk post? Though they don't really give credit where credit is due. link [more inside]
posted by Toekneesan on Jan 29, 2009 - 23 comments

Anyone else having intermittently 'freezes' while loading, or generally slow behavior? [more inside]
posted by fogster on Aug 7, 2008 - 30 comments

Thank you, MetaFilter, for being the fastest site to load over a dial-up internet connection. [more inside]
posted by scblackman on Sep 29, 2007 - 26 comments

Uptime and performance have been awesome for me lately. In particular the days of long downtimes when the admins are asleep seem to be over. On behalf of UK mefites, thanks.
posted by teleskiving on Jun 4, 2007 - 20 comments

In the past couple of weeks, whenver I load a fresh copy of the Blue it takes a couple of seconds for all the links (in posts, profiles, etc.) to start 'working'. Once or twice I've gotten an error message that says "Scripts are taking a long time to load, do you want to continue loading them?". What's going on? I'm a Vista user, but as I said it's only been for the last couple of weeks, and it doesn't happen in AskMe or MetaTalk. I ask here vice in an email in the event it's happening to others...
posted by matty on Apr 4, 2007 - 43 comments

I thought I was posting a question on AskMe, instead I posted it to the blue. Can my question be moved? Pretty please?
posted by edverb on Dec 25, 2006 - 127 comments

I don't mean to sounds like a complete luddite, but is there advantage to the new ajaxy front page other than being cool and web2.0-ish?
posted by twine42 on Oct 23, 2006 - 82 comments

Is MeFi protected against CSRF? I know the logout link isn't (should be a form button anyway) and could be triggered by displaying an image to a MeFi user, but if the forms are vulnerable things could get nasty (imagine someone posting a link that changes your prefs, or makes you create a post, etc.). Just askin'...
posted by malevolent on Oct 22, 2006 - 97 comments

My boyfriend remembers a link to a guy who had drawn a multipage picture of loads of fictional characters, real people, landscapes etc. He eventually sold it on ebay. Can anyone remember this link/metafilter post? I'd like to see it and not being able to find it is driving my boyfriend insane!
posted by Lotto on Jul 16, 2006 - 10 comments

Hey Matt: There's a new coldfusion ajax tutorial out today, if you're looking for one.
posted by empath on Feb 15, 2006 - 8 comments

MeFi is weirdly halting and slow whenever I load the site, or click into a thread. So, noticing my status bar, what I does is, I adds js.spellcheckthis.com to the 'Block retrieval of URL' list in my favorite local-proxy-crud-removing app, and fazowie, it's snappy again. I know some people love their spellcheckers, but if it's having the same effect on everyone, it seems like a... suboptimal solution.
posted by stavrosthewonderchicken on Jan 3, 2006 - 14 comments

The metafilter.com domain name seems to be dying. It resolves if I access the internet one way, but not if I use my other connection. Here's proof it's not just me.
posted by cillit bang on Oct 2, 2005 - 7 comments

page rendered in: connection failure ms
posted by quonsar on Dec 3, 2004 - 20 comments

So. Jay-Run was smacking me around earlier when I tried to visit the site. Enough post-election traffic to cause problems or something else? Just curious, the site was really speedy last night when I was checking the huge election threads.
posted by bargle on Nov 3, 2004 - 12 comments

A while back (months) there was a site posted that was basically an interactive flash app that had a whiteboard, webcams, and chat. I've tried searching for it, but I'm just coming up blank. Anyone remember what it was and have a url handy?
posted by angry modem on Sep 3, 2004 - 2 comments

Is there any way we unfortunate non-Californians can help to ensure that MetaFilter becomes a 24-hour operation once more? [More inside.]
posted by MiguelCardoso on May 6, 2004 - 36 comments

Linking the temporary absence of a site is silly.
posted by Pretty_Generic on Jul 13, 2003 - 56 comments

Surely I am not the only one noticing an unusual number of errors when trying to load pages from the blue side:

The request has exceeded the allowable time limit Tag: cfoutput


The error occurred in C:\metafilter sites\www.metafilter.com\header.cfm: line 189
Called from C:\metafilter sites\www.metafilter.com\front.mefi: line 149
Called from C:\metafilter sites\www.metafilter.com\front.mefi: line 290
Called from C:\metafilter sites\www.metafilter.com\index.cfm: line 28
posted by briank on May 15, 2003 - 9 comments

Anyone else having problems with the scroll bars on mefi & meta? I tried clearing my cache, logging out, checking preferences, but to no avail. I'm not having this issue on any other site. advice appreciated...
posted by mdn on Mar 27, 2003 - 5 comments

Success! (I think)

Thanks to some in-person help, I remotely did a backup of the old, corrupted hard drive's web folders and deployed everything onto the new drive. Now that everything's back up, it all seems to be working again (disturbingly smoothly if I must say). If you find any problems, let me know here.
posted by mathowie on Jan 12, 2003 - 49 comments

How to turn off broswer colors (for those wanting to modify MefI to be more work friendly, a thread that pops up here occasionally). More inside...
posted by internook on Sep 6, 2002 - 7 comments

Considering the exponential growth of online community sites like Mefi and Blogger, do you think that one day Metafilter will be (or should be) cloned as localized versions of the site? nyc.metafilter.com, etc.
posted by kv on Jan 7, 2002 - 34 comments

So how's ColdFusion5, Matt? Curious because the last couple of days have been very slow, and I'm getting lots of timeouts.
Or is it that you've been in there tweaking stuff? Has there been another huge surge in traffic?
posted by Su on Oct 3, 2001 - 5 comments

Is it just me, or is the site slow today?
posted by briank on Jul 16, 2001 - 4 comments

Stats for April show average daily pageviews over 25,000 now, with nearly three quarters of a million pages served for the month. A typical day I grabbed at random from last week shows about 30k views on weekdays by about 5k different IPs.
posted by mathowie on May 3, 2001 - 12 comments

We seem to be experiencing some slow sledding here. Any ideas?
posted by Avogadro on Apr 17, 2001 - 25 comments

Is the 5k affecting MeFi this morning? I keep getting timeouts and server too busy messages.
posted by iceberg273 on Apr 11, 2001 - 14 comments

Just so you all know, I'm getting pretty sick of MetaFilter. Changes are coming very soon.

Big. assed. changes.

Call me mr. crankypants, but the level of discourse here is approaching an eighth grade level. Seriously. A lot of old timers say "it used to be so much better when..." and I hate to say it, but it's true. A long time ago*, people used to be a lot more respectful to others, people didn't attack each other, people of opposing viewpoints could bring their perspective to a topic and not just point out knee jerk political viewpoints and philosophies. Everyday I see the place getting more and more "mainstream" with all the closed minds and inflexible opinions that come with that.

Be prepared for the upcoming experiment at MetaFilter.

(I know I should just take a vacation from the site, but really, this place doesn't run on its own. I'm spending more time everyday here cleaning up self-posts, watching people attack each other, and banning IPs and accounts. So instead I'm making some huge changes.)

* - and don't go back into the archives and show me a year old thread that got ugly. I know the place used to be better overall, and you're not going to convince me of otherwise, okay?
posted by mathowie on Apr 5, 2001 - 85 comments

January stats, in case you were wondering.
posted by mathowie on Feb 14, 2001 - 15 comments

Is Metafilter totally data driven, partially data driven, or are new posts sort of tacked onto the end of text files? It seems like every feature request that I see involving views (language, filtering, etc.) could be easily solved with a fully data driven site and a couple of competent software engineers.
posted by internook on Nov 10, 2000 - 8 comments

Why is the home page so slow to build? When I go to http://metafilter.com, I have a 7-10 second wait before I start getting any data. Is it just Cold Fusion churning? Link detail pages come over after just a 1 or 2 second pause.
posted by Nic on Aug 16, 2000 - 2 comments