Me too! August 31, 2007 7:51 AM Subscribe
Along the lines of the "favorite" button, I suggest adding a "me too" button to appear alongside comments. A list of the people who have clicked "me too" would appear after the comment.
Rationale: I get the impression that a lot of people use favorites not so much as bookmarks, but to endorse or "vote for" a comment. Particularly on AskMe, where the point is not so much to discuss a topic as it is to answer a question, it could be useful to indicate "I have nothing to add to soandso's great comment, but want to let it be known that I endorse this answer."
I suppose that a "me too" button also invites a "you've got to be kidding" button, but that's a lazy form of argumentation, and would be served just as well by clicking "me too" on a rebuttal comment or writing your own.
posted by adamrice to feature requests at 10:51 AM [1 favorite] [2 concur] [1 dangerous/illegal] [!]
posted by smackfu at 7:55 AM on August 31, 2007 [10 favorites]
posted by smackfu at 7:55 AM on August 31, 2007 [10 favorites]
You've got to be kidding.
posted by jack_mo at 7:55 AM on August 31, 2007 [1 favorite]
posted by jack_mo at 7:55 AM on August 31, 2007 [1 favorite]
I'm—
What—
I—
No. Really, really no. Extremely no.
posted by cortex (staff) at 7:58 AM on August 31, 2007 [7 favorites]
What—
I—
No. Really, really no. Extremely no.
posted by cortex (staff) at 7:58 AM on August 31, 2007 [7 favorites]
I wish to say that I agree [wholeheartedly][more than somewhat] with the sentiments expressed by the previous poster.
posted by patricio at 8:00 AM on August 31, 2007 [2 favorites]
posted by patricio at 8:00 AM on August 31, 2007 [2 favorites]
I think the more deliciously vague favorites are, the better off we are. The best argument about them turning mefi into a popularity contest is that no one knows what they mean. They could mean, "me too!" Or they could mean, "You ignorant motherfucker, I want to remember this comment so one day I can make you eat your words." Or they could mean, "LOLOLOLOL." Having comments that are, for one reason or another, noteworthy is a dubious distinction to have, and I like my distinctions dubious.
posted by hermitosis at 8:04 AM on August 31, 2007 [19 favorites]
posted by hermitosis at 8:04 AM on August 31, 2007 [19 favorites]
I am totally in favor of this! This is the only way I use favorites.
posted by phrontist at 8:12 AM on August 31, 2007 [5 favorites]
posted by phrontist at 8:12 AM on August 31, 2007 [5 favorites]
I think we should just go for the whole nine-yards and allow freeform tagging of comments. That's bound to satisfy all the pony requests about flagging/favoriting comments, I'm sure.
FREE TAGS!
posted by splice at 8:14 AM on August 31, 2007 [3 favorites]
FREE TAGS!
posted by splice at 8:14 AM on August 31, 2007 [3 favorites]
I agree with hermitosis.
posted by ThePinkSuperhero at 8:18 AM on August 31, 2007 [2 favorites]
posted by ThePinkSuperhero at 8:18 AM on August 31, 2007 [2 favorites]
Me, too!
posted by Plutor at 8:22 AM on August 31, 2007 [1 favorite]
posted by Plutor at 8:22 AM on August 31, 2007 [1 favorite]
I think there should be a "me too, but with the following caveats", and then there's a auto-generated drop-down list that covers all the points made by the OP and you can tick the individual items that you agree with/ disagree with and add dynamic branching commentary that can then be tagged and edited by other users in color-coded text indexed to their join date, geographical location, and number of "me too"s received in the last 36 hours. And every time you click, you should get a dollar.
posted by ormondsacker at 8:24 AM on August 31, 2007 [14 favorites]
posted by ormondsacker at 8:24 AM on August 31, 2007 [14 favorites]
Hey, then we could add filters, so that nobody below a certain number of favorites would even show up in the thread.
Oh, but then we'd get people who abused it, and we'd have to monitor those people, so we'd need some kind of metametoo system. We could have a pool of points, allowing anonymous smackdowns from antisocial teenagers, obvously the most important feature of a ranked comment system.
(looks for the post-as-anonymous-coward button).
Ok, more seriously: a "that's good advice" button might work well for AskMe. I don't think it would be a good idea for any of the other subsites.
posted by Malor at 8:24 AM on August 31, 2007
Oh, but then we'd get people who abused it, and we'd have to monitor those people, so we'd need some kind of metametoo system. We could have a pool of points, allowing anonymous smackdowns from antisocial teenagers, obvously the most important feature of a ranked comment system.
(looks for the post-as-anonymous-coward button).
Ok, more seriously: a "that's good advice" button might work well for AskMe. I don't think it would be a good idea for any of the other subsites.
posted by Malor at 8:24 AM on August 31, 2007
How about we do this except people can use the favorites system for "me too" votes instead of adding a new system.
posted by grouse at 8:28 AM on August 31, 2007
posted by grouse at 8:28 AM on August 31, 2007
I suggest only having Metatalk open one day a week.
posted by Brandon Blatcher at 8:29 AM on August 31, 2007 [2 favorites]
posted by Brandon Blatcher at 8:29 AM on August 31, 2007 [2 favorites]
I suggest we have pie. Lemon meringue or Key Lime?
posted by dirtynumbangelboy at 8:30 AM on August 31, 2007 [1 favorite]
posted by dirtynumbangelboy at 8:30 AM on August 31, 2007 [1 favorite]
Take your pick of pie, you damn dirty numbangelboy.
posted by Brandon Blatcher at 8:38 AM on August 31, 2007
posted by Brandon Blatcher at 8:38 AM on August 31, 2007
Oh good God.
I started out liking favorites but now they've made the place look like a popularity contest. (I don't mind using them internally but most times I'd rather not see them.)
And this? Discourse is one of the better aspects of Metafilter; why undercut it?
posted by Tuwa at 8:41 AM on August 31, 2007
I started out liking favorites but now they've made the place look like a popularity contest. (I don't mind using them internally but most times I'd rather not see them.)
And this? Discourse is one of the better aspects of Metafilter; why undercut it?
posted by Tuwa at 8:41 AM on August 31, 2007
I have a much better system than this! What if we altered the favorites system so that you could click the [me too] button, and then append your own notes or commentary to their comment, and it would show up under their comment. And just so that the order of people [me too]ing a comment would be preserved, we'd have the new notes and commentary added at the bottom so the list or thread of comment commentary would grow downward from the first comment. BUT, then the [me too]s for that one comment would all come before the next root level comment and force people to scroll past that before continuing on to the actual thread, which doesn't seem fair. So what if the [me too] commentaries and notes were put at the bottom of the THREAD instead of just under the comment you're [me too]ing? And then, to avoid confusion, we could put a little line under the [me too] notes that would say what user made the note or commentary at what time and date. Ooh! And then we could favorite those [me too] notes!
Here's a mockup of what I think it would look like.
posted by shmegegge at 8:42 AM on August 31, 2007 [5 favorites]
Here's a mockup of what I think it would look like.
posted by shmegegge at 8:42 AM on August 31, 2007 [5 favorites]
Only if we can have 'no way!' and 'way!'
posted by athenian at 8:50 AM on August 31, 2007 [1 favorite]
posted by athenian at 8:50 AM on August 31, 2007 [1 favorite]
How about a Tivo style Thumbs Up/Thumbs Down? Come on Matt!
posted by togdon at 8:54 AM on August 31, 2007
posted by togdon at 8:54 AM on August 31, 2007
Personally I would like to see the displaying of favorites go away. One can still favorite a post or comment for whatever reason they like (bookmark, agreement, etc) but everyone else doesn't need to see them.
posted by terrapin at 8:54 AM on August 31, 2007
posted by terrapin at 8:54 AM on August 31, 2007
I think we should have the ability to respond to posts and previous comments in thread with a text field that we could then use to express complex ideas.
posted by It's Raining Florence Henderson at 8:56 AM on August 31, 2007 [1 favorite]
posted by It's Raining Florence Henderson at 8:56 AM on August 31, 2007 [1 favorite]
I want that panacea that Cortex was talking about. In button form.
posted by Jofus at 8:57 AM on August 31, 2007
posted by Jofus at 8:57 AM on August 31, 2007
I like your work, shmegegge. But what's with the color scheme?
posted by ourobouros at 8:58 AM on August 31, 2007 [1 favorite]
posted by ourobouros at 8:58 AM on August 31, 2007 [1 favorite]
I suggest we have pie. Lemon meringue or Key Lime?
I do not favorite those choices. Please include some sort of means that I could add my own comments.
Oh, right. Well, anyway, the nectarines are awesome this year. I vote for cobbler.
posted by desuetude at 8:59 AM on August 31, 2007
I do not favorite those choices. Please include some sort of means that I could add my own comments.
Oh, right. Well, anyway, the nectarines are awesome this year. I vote for cobbler.
posted by desuetude at 8:59 AM on August 31, 2007
posted by adamrice to feature requests at 10:51 AM [1 favorite] [2 concur] [1 dangerous/illegal] [1 stupid] [3 whatever, dude] [7 WTF] [12 monkeys] [2 hearts beating in just. one. mind] [3 willy] [3.14 pie] [8 the pie, sry] [!]
posted by goodnewsfortheinsane at 9:24 AM on August 31, 2007 [8 favorites]
posted by goodnewsfortheinsane at 9:24 AM on August 31, 2007 [8 favorites]
Perhaps you're looking for this site?
Hey, that site rocks. Hold on, I'll post it to reddit. Thanks chundo!
posted by goodnewsfortheinsane at 9:25 AM on August 31, 2007
Hey, that site rocks. Hold on, I'll post it to reddit. Thanks chundo!
posted by goodnewsfortheinsane at 9:25 AM on August 31, 2007
I suggest we have pie. Lemon meringue or Key Lime?
Finger, please.
posted by PeterMcDermott at 9:26 AM on August 31, 2007
Finger, please.
posted by PeterMcDermott at 9:26 AM on August 31, 2007
it could be useful to indicate "I have nothing to add to soandso's great comment, but want to let it be known that I endorse this answer."
I agree, that would be useful to indicate. But other ideas would also be useful to indicate, so instead of a simple button, I suggest we develop a mroe complex set of symbols for representing sounds, and then a mapping of those sounds to ideas, and then provide a means of sending those symbols to one another. Then we can reconstruct the sounds from the symbols and connect them to the ideas.
This may be going overboard, but I think we could maybe even use this system of transfering ideas between people outside AskMe.
posted by scottreynen at 9:32 AM on August 31, 2007 [2 favorites]
I agree, that would be useful to indicate. But other ideas would also be useful to indicate, so instead of a simple button, I suggest we develop a mroe complex set of symbols for representing sounds, and then a mapping of those sounds to ideas, and then provide a means of sending those symbols to one another. Then we can reconstruct the sounds from the symbols and connect them to the ideas.
This may be going overboard, but I think we could maybe even use this system of transfering ideas between people outside AskMe.
posted by scottreynen at 9:32 AM on August 31, 2007 [2 favorites]
Y'know those websites where the signature line is cluttered with all manner of fuckall and the user's name ends up looking like the full name and title of the British monarch?
I hate those websites.
posted by OmieWise at 9:44 AM on August 31, 2007 [2 favorites]
I hate those websites.
posted by OmieWise at 9:44 AM on August 31, 2007 [2 favorites]
I'm all for a button like this, as long as it's secretly a trap that instantly bans anyone sufficiently braindead to click on it.
posted by Wolfdog at 9:57 AM on August 31, 2007
posted by Wolfdog at 9:57 AM on August 31, 2007
How about a big "I disagree" button, but only on this post?
posted by Gary at 9:59 AM on August 31, 2007
posted by Gary at 9:59 AM on August 31, 2007
[1 meh]
posted by matildaben at 10:09 AM on August 31, 2007
posted by matildaben at 10:09 AM on August 31, 2007
I want fractional favorites, 'cause sometimes I only half-agree.
posted by bonehead at 10:11 AM on August 31, 2007 [1 favorite]
posted by bonehead at 10:11 AM on August 31, 2007 [1 favorite]
I actually liked smackfu's mockup idea.. whether it was sarcastic or not I'm not sure...
posted by twiggy at 10:38 AM on August 31, 2007
posted by twiggy at 10:38 AM on August 31, 2007
I heartily endorse this event or product.
posted by Pope Guilty at 10:40 AM on August 31, 2007
posted by Pope Guilty at 10:40 AM on August 31, 2007
I agree that this would be really useful in AskMe. Favorites don't work there. I use favorites as bookmarks. There are plenty of times I look at a question and see that it has already been answered sufficiently by someone else. I'm not going to favorite it, because I never want to see it again. And I don't necessarily think the comment is a super-great favorite of mine, just that it answers the question. I would like to let the asker know that, but I don't have anything else to add, so it's not worth a comment. It would be totally useful for the asker to see "15 people agree with this answer".
And it doesn't have to be any ZOMG POPULARITY CONTEST!!! It would be less so than the current favorites, because you can leave out all the tracking. No "team lowkey has been agreed with 123 times", no "your contacts recently agreed with", and no "most agreed with in the last week". The only place you would see the people who agree would be clicking the link in the question itself. That seems like a very useful feature to me, with very little room for abuse. Answers already have to be on topic in AskMe, so it's not even like you could karma whore for agreement points (as useless as that would be). And while you could game it (like always agreeing with someone, or sockpuppet agreement with yourself), there's really nothing to gain from it, if there aren't any methods for people to see that you are right all the time. All in all, it's just another data point for the asker when weighing different answers. Sounds good.
posted by team lowkey at 10:50 AM on August 31, 2007
And it doesn't have to be any ZOMG POPULARITY CONTEST!!! It would be less so than the current favorites, because you can leave out all the tracking. No "team lowkey has been agreed with 123 times", no "your contacts recently agreed with", and no "most agreed with in the last week". The only place you would see the people who agree would be clicking the link in the question itself. That seems like a very useful feature to me, with very little room for abuse. Answers already have to be on topic in AskMe, so it's not even like you could karma whore for agreement points (as useless as that would be). And while you could game it (like always agreeing with someone, or sockpuppet agreement with yourself), there's really nothing to gain from it, if there aren't any methods for people to see that you are right all the time. All in all, it's just another data point for the asker when weighing different answers. Sounds good.
posted by team lowkey at 10:50 AM on August 31, 2007
and then you could put like, an arbitrary limit on it to solve the problem it doesn't create!
posted by quonsar at 11:10 AM on August 31, 2007
posted by quonsar at 11:10 AM on August 31, 2007
I think the more deliciously vague favorites are, the better off we are.
I take the same approach towards the comments I post.
posted by Stynxno at 11:10 AM on August 31, 2007
I take the same approach towards the comments I post.
posted by Stynxno at 11:10 AM on August 31, 2007
Rather than a Me Too, I'd prefer to see something like this:
posted by quin at 1:35 PM on August 31 [+] [!] [?]
Where the question mark stands for; "What the fuck were you thinking when you posted this? Were you high? Are you trying to alienate yourself and piss off everyone else? Christ, you are an asshole!"
Amazingly concise, that little [?].
posted by quin at 11:41 AM on August 31, 2007
posted by quin at 1:35 PM on August 31 [+] [!] [?]
Where the question mark stands for; "What the fuck were you thinking when you posted this? Were you high? Are you trying to alienate yourself and piss off everyone else? Christ, you are an asshole!"
Amazingly concise, that little [?].
posted by quin at 11:41 AM on August 31, 2007
I say we kill the favorites, close membership for another two or three years and let all the newbie chaff shake out, have Matt start taking week-long vacations where he shuts down the site (like he used to), bring back the img tag, get back to the old school server setup (regular PC tower sitting in someone's closet limping along on a dsl line), spin off axme and mufi to completely different urls getting us back to just the blue and the grey, invite the camgirls for a nice Meta thread, sign all posts with "rcb" instead of Todd Loken, reopen 1142 and 9622 (the only threads that matter) and promote more daily posts about whether or not King Kottke's site is up or down or changed colors.
posted by eyeballkid at 11:47 AM on August 31, 2007 [10 favorites]
posted by eyeballkid at 11:47 AM on August 31, 2007 [10 favorites]
I take pride in the fact that people barely favorite me. It proves that only a very few are bright enough to understand and appreciate my singular wit.
A "Me Too!" flag would only serve to demonstrate this further, and so I'm all for it.
posted by splice at 11:48 AM on August 31, 2007
A "Me Too!" flag would only serve to demonstrate this further, and so I'm all for it.
posted by splice at 11:48 AM on August 31, 2007
Why not just flag with the drop-down menu that's already there?
posted by Carol Anne at 12:01 PM on August 31, 2007
posted by Carol Anne at 12:01 PM on August 31, 2007
I agree, but it needs to read "Teh Me 2 LOL." This is the INTERNET, people.
posted by ORthey at 12:02 PM on August 31, 2007
posted by ORthey at 12:02 PM on August 31, 2007
We do not talk like "Teh Me 2 LOL" on the INTERNET. Only on the INTARWEB.
posted by adamrice at 12:04 PM on August 31, 2007
posted by adamrice at 12:04 PM on August 31, 2007
I think there should be a filter that automatically changes the word "favorite" in any metatalk post to cake or something like that.
posted by ODiV at 12:17 PM on August 31, 2007
posted by ODiV at 12:17 PM on August 31, 2007
We need one button for cake and one button for pie. And maybe one more button for the fresh fruit our moms tell us we should be eating instead.
posted by wendell at 12:30 PM on August 31, 2007
posted by wendell at 12:30 PM on August 31, 2007
*mashes hand into full stack of pancakes*
syrupy button, yum!
posted by carsonb at 12:34 PM on August 31, 2007
syrupy button, yum!
posted by carsonb at 12:34 PM on August 31, 2007
Ooo, I've been itching to do this! Finally my chance!
posted by majick at 2:21 PM on August 31, 2007 [14 favorites]
Your post advocates a:
[ ] community moderated
[X] technical
[ ] social
[ ] legislative
[ ] economic
[ ] authoritarian
[ ] free-for-all
solution to crappy MetaFilter posts.
I'm afraid it won't work due to:
[ ] the King of the Shitpile problem
[ ] the "It's only a web site" problem
[ ] it's been tried and it doesn't work
[ ] people who practice willful ignorance
[ ] MetaFilter should be less like Slashdot, not more
[X] Digg actually sucks a lot
[ ] The Kuro5hin model didn't work at Kuro5hin either
[ ] Matt doesn't have time
[ ] there aren't enough hours in the day to police that
[ ] the code doesn't work that way
[ ] technology doesn't work that way
[ ] MetaFilter runs on very limited hardware
[ ] wishing doesn't make things better
[ ] asshats don't respond well to finger-wagging
[X] scoreboards don't fix anything, they just get gamed
[X] overestimating the intelligence of people
[ ] five bucks isn't real money to some people
[X] it doesn't prevent shitty posts from appearing
[X] it will let too much crap get through anyway
[ ] nobody ever agrees what a shitty post is
[X] requiring cooperation from asshats
[ ] most people don't take tags seriously
[ ] when you outlaw shit posts, only outlaws will post shit
[ ] the word "deletion" doesn't mean what you think it means
[ ] it makes life harder, not easier
Furthermore it seems you might not realize:
[ ] Removal of stupid posts is a good thing
[ ] User numbers don't consume bandwidth or CPU time
[ ] Matt, jessamyn, and cortex actually know what they're doing
[ ] If an algorithm existed to do that, everyone would already be using it
[X] There is a small but loud contingent that thinks such crap is "good"
[ ] Some people think "important" means "postworthy"
In summary:
[X] Yours isn't the worst idea I've ever heard, but it's not good.
[ ] That's a pretty dumb thing to do.
[ ] Do you even understand the words you're using?
[ ] Die.posted by majick at 2:21 PM on August 31, 2007 [14 favorites]
I'd go for tubular, awesome, righteous, bitchin', gettafugouttahere, bitch-slap yourself with your own damn hand-puppet, it'th FAB-u-LOUUUUUUSSSS, and zounds.
posted by The Deej at 4:36 PM on August 31, 2007
posted by The Deej at 4:36 PM on August 31, 2007
I would've "me too'ed" Cortex's comment if we'd had this feature
Hmmm -- http://metoofilter.com It has a kind of ring to it...
posted by Devils Rancher at 4:56 PM on August 31, 2007
Hmmm -- http://metoofilter.com It has a kind of ring to it...
posted by Devils Rancher at 4:56 PM on August 31, 2007
I think the best way of solving the favorites obsessing is for matt to email each user and say, "Please don't tell any of the others, but you're the poster I like best. Don't worry about the number of favorites you have, darling. On a page only I can see, there's your face superimposed on a massive rotating gold star and that automatically loads 'Always and Forever,' and several times a day I stop what I'm doing and just gaze at it a while. In conclusion, I'll love you forever, I'll love you for always, as long as I'm living, my baby you'll be."
It's a lot of work for one man, I know, but that we now have a thread along these lines every two days signals that we are edging toward some kind of mass nervous breakdown on a scale of neediness not seen since The Great KU Honors Dorm Self-Esteem Crisis of 1994. I know people who were there and they still can't talk about it sober. Don't let that happen to us, I beseech you.
posted by melissa may at 5:21 PM on August 31, 2007 [6 favorites]
It's a lot of work for one man, I know, but that we now have a thread along these lines every two days signals that we are edging toward some kind of mass nervous breakdown on a scale of neediness not seen since The Great KU Honors Dorm Self-Esteem Crisis of 1994. I know people who were there and they still can't talk about it sober. Don't let that happen to us, I beseech you.
posted by melissa may at 5:21 PM on August 31, 2007 [6 favorites]
Wait, wait, wait. Are you suggesting that the photocopied form-letter from HaugheyCo International where Matt told me that I was his favorite might not have been completely honest?
I framed that, and hung it on my wall. I replaced my wedding photos to make room for it.
I think you are just jealous and making stuff up because you all know that Matt loves me best. At least I think it was Matt, the signature was kind of hard to read, kind of like it had been stamped. But whatever, I know the truth.
posted by quin at 5:48 PM on August 31, 2007 [1 favorite]
I framed that, and hung it on my wall. I replaced my wedding photos to make room for it.
I think you are just jealous and making stuff up because you all know that Matt loves me best. At least I think it was Matt, the signature was kind of hard to read, kind of like it had been stamped. But whatever, I know the truth.
posted by quin at 5:48 PM on August 31, 2007 [1 favorite]
matt to email each user and say, "Please don't tell any of the others, but you're the poster I like best
he's been sending me those for years. surely everyone else has rec'd them?
posted by quonsar at 7:08 PM on August 31, 2007 [2 favorites]
he's been sending me those for years. surely everyone else has rec'd them?
posted by quonsar at 7:08 PM on August 31, 2007 [2 favorites]
This thread got me thinking... would it be possible to have a tagging system for favourites, a la google mail? Kind of like MuFi playlisting, I suppose. People could see your own categories and you'll know which ones are "good snarks" vs. "useful info", etc.
posted by Phire at 7:15 PM on August 31, 2007
posted by Phire at 7:15 PM on August 31, 2007
matt to email each user and say, "Please don't tell any of the others, but you're the poster I like best
he's been sending me those for years. surely everyone else has rec'd them?
Yep, once every other week since '00. But not since my Email Kerfuffle, for obvious reasons.
posted by wendell at 8:19 PM on August 31, 2007
he's been sending me those for years. surely everyone else has rec'd them?
Yep, once every other week since '00. But not since my Email Kerfuffle, for obvious reasons.
posted by wendell at 8:19 PM on August 31, 2007
And I, I would like a frozen margarita with extra salt.
posted by LobsterMitten at 9:06 PM on August 31, 2007
posted by LobsterMitten at 9:06 PM on August 31, 2007
Yep, once every other week since '00.
Dammit. All he sends me is a check.
posted by cortex (staff) at 9:39 PM on August 31, 2007
Dammit. All he sends me is a check.
posted by cortex (staff) at 9:39 PM on August 31, 2007
Well, mathowie said I could use one of his pictures.
s/ Special Snowflake
posted by Cranberry at 11:09 PM on August 31, 2007
s/ Special Snowflake
posted by Cranberry at 11:09 PM on August 31, 2007
What, you don't get paid via Paypal? In $5 installments?
posted by blasdelf at 2:19 AM on September 1, 2007
posted by blasdelf at 2:19 AM on September 1, 2007
Can we have a button next to the poster's user name that asks 'Cunt?' please.
Thx.
posted by PeterMcDermott at 4:25 AM on September 1, 2007
Thx.
posted by PeterMcDermott at 4:25 AM on September 1, 2007
Actually I think what we need is the ability to 'mark up' other people's posts by highlighting in green for agreement, and red for disagreement. People would, of course, be able to modulate their demarcation by intensity and cognitive approach angle. Uses could then view metafilter with an overlayed heatmap and could strech and expand comment threads in a method similar to Image resizing by seam (the heatmap would be similar to the energy function used by Avidan and Shamir). Think of it like auto-summarize on meth.
This would allow uses to read threads in however much (or little) detail as they'd like
Rather then free form tags, we should get free form "channels" where people can demarcate how "awsome", "favorite", "illegal", "wrong" via the same method. That would allow users to chose whichever energy function (or channel) or even composite view. Users could view only the most awsome and best advice, for example, or the most disagreeable and illegal, or even the most awsome and illegal.
Finally, we could apply machine learning techniques and driftnets to learn what users like and automatically mark up threads for them, so no one will have to do any work at all.
It will be totally awsome.
posted by delmoi at 10:32 AM on September 1, 2007 [1 favorite]
This would allow uses to read threads in however much (or little) detail as they'd like
Rather then free form tags, we should get free form "channels" where people can demarcate how "awsome", "favorite", "illegal", "wrong" via the same method. That would allow users to chose whichever energy function (or channel) or even composite view. Users could view only the most awsome and best advice, for example, or the most disagreeable and illegal, or even the most awsome and illegal.
Finally, we could apply machine learning techniques and driftnets to learn what users like and automatically mark up threads for them, so no one will have to do any work at all.
It will be totally awsome.
posted by delmoi at 10:32 AM on September 1, 2007 [1 favorite]
Actually I think what we need is the ability to 'mark up' other people's posts by highlighting in green for agreement, and red for disagreement. People would, of course, be able to modulate their demarcation by intensity and cognitive approach angle. Uses could then view metafilter with an overlayed heatmap and could strech and expand comment threads in a method similar to Image resizing by seam (the heatmap would be similar to the energy function used by Avidan and Shamir). Think of it like auto-summarize on meth.
Actually—I mean, mefi and practicality aside, of course—that might be really neat. The heatmap thing, in particular, as an aggregation of agreement/disagreement demarcations:
You could allow each reader to select any contiguous portion of a given comment, and assign, say, a 1-6 value [wholly disagree, strongly disagree, somewhat disagree, somewhat agree, strongly agree, wholly agree]. That information gets coded as a color value on a gradient from one pole to the other—red and green, as you suggested, or black and white, or whatever.
Then you could have both a colormap and a heatmap, to capture both aggregate sentiment and contentiousness: the colormap would be an colored average of all inputs across the comment, capturing the straw-poll sum reaction to the comment's arguments; and the heatmap would display the comment with all selections (regardless of assigned value) summed, capturing the overall picture of what was notable regardless of stance.
I'd love to see someone set that up somewhere. It'd have to be damned simple to operate—the reader selecting text with a click-and-drag could automatically pop up a dialog box with a "select a value" slider and OK and CANCEL buttons, simple as that.
posted by cortex (staff) at 10:46 AM on September 1, 2007 [1 favorite]
Actually—I mean, mefi and practicality aside, of course—that might be really neat. The heatmap thing, in particular, as an aggregation of agreement/disagreement demarcations:
You could allow each reader to select any contiguous portion of a given comment, and assign, say, a 1-6 value [wholly disagree, strongly disagree, somewhat disagree, somewhat agree, strongly agree, wholly agree]. That information gets coded as a color value on a gradient from one pole to the other—red and green, as you suggested, or black and white, or whatever.
Then you could have both a colormap and a heatmap, to capture both aggregate sentiment and contentiousness: the colormap would be an colored average of all inputs across the comment, capturing the straw-poll sum reaction to the comment's arguments; and the heatmap would display the comment with all selections (regardless of assigned value) summed, capturing the overall picture of what was notable regardless of stance.
I'd love to see someone set that up somewhere. It'd have to be damned simple to operate—the reader selecting text with a click-and-drag could automatically pop up a dialog box with a "select a value" slider and OK and CANCEL buttons, simple as that.
posted by cortex (staff) at 10:46 AM on September 1, 2007 [1 favorite]
Everyone is so lazy. Why does Mathowie's Junior Deputy Quality-Police Kids Club need a fancy esoteric system of toggles and alerts? Why not just say whatever you like in response to what other people post?
posted by hermitosis at 11:32 AM on September 1, 2007 [1 favorite]
posted by hermitosis at 11:32 AM on September 1, 2007 [1 favorite]
Why not just say whatever you like in response to what other people post?
Wow, that's so crazy it just might work!
posted by Devils Rancher at 11:54 AM on September 1, 2007
Wow, that's so crazy it just might work!
posted by Devils Rancher at 11:54 AM on September 1, 2007
I'd love to see someone set that up somewhere. It'd have to be damned simple to operate—the reader selecting text with a click-and-drag could automatically pop up a dialog box with a "select a value" slider and OK and CANCEL buttons, simple as that.
What I would do if I was creating a realistic version (no "cognitive approach angles", no channel tags :P) would be that pressing a number on the keyboard would automatically highlight the word under the current mouse pointer. Essentially using the keyboard as a 10-button mouse. Of course it would take a ton of work to really mark up a comment, so either a ton of readers or a few very dedicated ones.
The basic idea is to break up the comment as an atomic moderation/favoriting unit.
I would really love to be able add 'personal tags' to meta filter comments and posts, though.
posted by delmoi at 6:53 PM on September 1, 2007 [1 favorite]
What I would do if I was creating a realistic version (no "cognitive approach angles", no channel tags :P) would be that pressing a number on the keyboard would automatically highlight the word under the current mouse pointer. Essentially using the keyboard as a 10-button mouse. Of course it would take a ton of work to really mark up a comment, so either a ton of readers or a few very dedicated ones.
The basic idea is to break up the comment as an atomic moderation/favoriting unit.
I would really love to be able add 'personal tags' to meta filter comments and posts, though.
posted by delmoi at 6:53 PM on September 1, 2007 [1 favorite]
automatically highlight the word under the current mouse pointer
As you note, though, that'd be a real pain to mark up if their reaction was to a phrase, which is where I think the real meat is anyway. It'd be one thing to collect data on the offensiveness or awesomeness of 'nigger' vs. 'cromulent' (respectively, one presumes), and something else entirely (and more rich) to measure reactions to 'Hitler had some really good ideas, genocide aside' or 'We have cameras' or whatever.
I had a really perverse notion the other day about a hyper-metric website where every user behavior was trackable, including viewing behavior, out to several steps of recursion—so that e.g. a viewer could see who had looked at their comments and posts and user page; and a user could see who looked at that information; and so on outward well past the limits of reasonable patience.
This was inspired by a tussle in another thread about viewing-of-favorites—the idea of information being contained in the potential for a person to view who had favorited something—because it occurred to me that such a thing was fundamentally unmeasurable (except when said viewer then commented explicitly about it), and, heck, isn't the fact that such granularity in antagonistic behavior-tracking both a really good thing and yet simultaneously sort of a damn shame?
posted by cortex (staff) at 8:00 PM on September 1, 2007 [2 favorites]
As you note, though, that'd be a real pain to mark up if their reaction was to a phrase, which is where I think the real meat is anyway. It'd be one thing to collect data on the offensiveness or awesomeness of 'nigger' vs. 'cromulent' (respectively, one presumes), and something else entirely (and more rich) to measure reactions to 'Hitler had some really good ideas, genocide aside' or 'We have cameras' or whatever.
I had a really perverse notion the other day about a hyper-metric website where every user behavior was trackable, including viewing behavior, out to several steps of recursion—so that e.g. a viewer could see who had looked at their comments and posts and user page; and a user could see who looked at that information; and so on outward well past the limits of reasonable patience.
This was inspired by a tussle in another thread about viewing-of-favorites—the idea of information being contained in the potential for a person to view who had favorited something—because it occurred to me that such a thing was fundamentally unmeasurable (except when said viewer then commented explicitly about it), and, heck, isn't the fact that such granularity in antagonistic behavior-tracking both a really good thing and yet simultaneously sort of a damn shame?
posted by cortex (staff) at 8:00 PM on September 1, 2007 [2 favorites]
*Registers MetaPanopticon*
posted by Alvy Ampersand at 8:27 PM on September 1, 2007
posted by Alvy Ampersand at 8:27 PM on September 1, 2007
As you note, though, that'd be a real pain to mark up if their reaction was to a phrase
I don't think it would be any more difficult then marking that comment of yours before copying it to the clipboard. It would be hard to make 'instantly intuitive' but if users invested a little time it would come naturally.
I had a really perverse notion the other day about a hyper-metric website where every user behavior was trackable, including viewing behavior, out to several steps of recursion—so that e.g. a viewer could see who had looked at their comments and posts and user page; and a user could see who looked at that information; and so on outward well past the limits of reasonable patience.
Actually you could implement this pretty easily to allow infinite recursion. Just make every view of something an 'action' and every object would have a link to view actions taken. The objects would only be created the first time someone viewed something, so the database wouldn't get flooded. I don't think that would be very useful, though.
If you created a token economy to reward users you could probably get the kind of behavior you wanted. If you introduced new kinds of tokens slowly people would obsess over them the same way mefites now care about favorites.
One thing I've noticed about community sites, first with slashdot, kuro5hin, and now metafilter, admins are worried about people 'gaming' any sort of user-metric system. But I once thought, what would happen if rather then trying suppress this, embrace it? Just go crazy and let users earn points for doing everything. Hell, you could even have prizes.
I think it would be interesting to see what happened.
Actually, if I were a grad student I would probably want to be studying this stuff. Rather then human-computer interaction at an individual scale, mob-computer interaction on a massive scale.
posted by delmoi at 1:29 AM on September 2, 2007 [2 favorites]
I don't think it would be any more difficult then marking that comment of yours before copying it to the clipboard. It would be hard to make 'instantly intuitive' but if users invested a little time it would come naturally.
I had a really perverse notion the other day about a hyper-metric website where every user behavior was trackable, including viewing behavior, out to several steps of recursion—so that e.g. a viewer could see who had looked at their comments and posts and user page; and a user could see who looked at that information; and so on outward well past the limits of reasonable patience.
Actually you could implement this pretty easily to allow infinite recursion. Just make every view of something an 'action' and every object would have a link to view actions taken. The objects would only be created the first time someone viewed something, so the database wouldn't get flooded. I don't think that would be very useful, though.
If you created a token economy to reward users you could probably get the kind of behavior you wanted. If you introduced new kinds of tokens slowly people would obsess over them the same way mefites now care about favorites.
One thing I've noticed about community sites, first with slashdot, kuro5hin, and now metafilter, admins are worried about people 'gaming' any sort of user-metric system. But I once thought, what would happen if rather then trying suppress this, embrace it? Just go crazy and let users earn points for doing everything. Hell, you could even have prizes.
I think it would be interesting to see what happened.
Actually, if I were a grad student I would probably want to be studying this stuff. Rather then human-computer interaction at an individual scale, mob-computer interaction on a massive scale.
posted by delmoi at 1:29 AM on September 2, 2007 [2 favorites]
But I once thought, what would happen if rather then trying suppress this, embrace it?
Generally the problem isn't the user metrics, it's what they're used for. Like on this site, you can see popular Favorites, or on slashdot you have comments sorted by score. If people game the system to put junk on top, that's not really that fun or interesting.
And generally, it's not very hard to game a system. You just get a few people each with several sock puppets, and you have a larger block of users than most websites do naturally.
posted by smackfu at 8:03 AM on September 2, 2007
Generally the problem isn't the user metrics, it's what they're used for. Like on this site, you can see popular Favorites, or on slashdot you have comments sorted by score. If people game the system to put junk on top, that's not really that fun or interesting.
And generally, it's not very hard to game a system. You just get a few people each with several sock puppets, and you have a larger block of users than most websites do naturally.
posted by smackfu at 8:03 AM on September 2, 2007
"But I once thought, what would happen if rather then trying suppress this, embrace it?"
You'd get Slashdot and Digg and K5. All of which, it's worth noting, suck largely because of the point systems being used in preference to deleting noise and secondarily because of active gaming of the point systems. The reason admins of such sites worry about gaming is twofold: not only does it actually happen, but it reduces the quality of the site.
posted by majick at 8:52 AM on September 2, 2007
You'd get Slashdot and Digg and K5. All of which, it's worth noting, suck largely because of the point systems being used in preference to deleting noise and secondarily because of active gaming of the point systems. The reason admins of such sites worry about gaming is twofold: not only does it actually happen, but it reduces the quality of the site.
posted by majick at 8:52 AM on September 2, 2007
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posted by AwkwardPause at 7:54 AM on August 31, 2007 [2 favorites]