5 posts tagged with sociology.
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The beauty of average?

I'm looking for a MeFi post from a few years ago about a tool/sociological experiment where you could select any number of portrait photos from a predetermined set of photos, and the tool would combine the features of these photos into one final result. [more inside]
posted by Phire on Jul 8, 2010 - 4 comments

Smile/Tilt Head/Favorite/Move On/Come Back/Smile Again

Has anyone ever mark favorite on a post in an AskMe thread in hopes that will light the way for the OP to mark it as Best Answer? [more inside]
posted by parmanparman on Mar 25, 2009 - 40 comments

"Capital and Stratification within Virtual Community: A Case Study of Metafilter.com"

After much discussion, debate and support, here my defended (and revised) thesis: "Capital and Stratification within Virtual Community: A Case Study of Metafilter.com". [mi]
posted by Quartermass on Jan 8, 2006 - 131 comments

Is "best of the web" policy written? Where?

Best of the Web?
I am writing a paper for my Sociology of Cyberspace class and in it, I am referring to Metafilter. Don't worry, nothing sinister, it's just a paper on "How I use the Internet." Anyway, I want to refer to metafilter holding itself to the standard of "Best of the Web" but I can't find that explicitly stated anywhere. Am I missing something? Am I just google-challenged? Or is it just not explicitly stated?
posted by arcticwoman on Sep 27, 2005 - 30 comments

The Natural Life Cycle of Mailing Lists and MeFi

Do you think this applies to metafilter?

The Natural Life Cycle of Mailing Lists
Kat Nagel - KatNagel@eznet.net



Every list seems to go through the same cycle:
1. Initial enthusiasm (people introduce themselves, and gush a lot about how wonderful it is to find kindred souls).
2. Evangelism (people moan about how few folks are posting to the list, and brainstorm recruitment strategies).
3. Growth (more and more people join, more and more lengthy threads develop, occasional off-topic threads pop up).
4. Community (lots of threads, some more relevant than others; lots of information and advice is exchanged; experts help other experts as well as less experienced colleagues; friendships develop; people tease each other; newcomers are welcomed with generosity and patience; everyone -- newbie and expert alike -- feels comfortable asking questions, suggesting answers, and sharing opinions).
5. Discomfort with diversity (the number of messages increases dramatically; not every thread is fascinating to every reader; people start complaining about the signal-to-noise ratio; person 1 threatens to quit if *other* people don't limit discussion to person 1's pet topic; person 2 agrees with person 1; person 3 tells 1 & 2 to lighten up; more bandwidth is wasted complaining about off-topic threads than is used for the threads themselves; everyone gets annoyed).
6a. Smug complacency and stagnation (the purists flame everyone who asks an 'old' question or responds with humor to a serious post; ne
posted by mecran01 on May 8, 2002 - 33 comments

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