Back, back, back into time

October 30, 2008 10:00 AM

I know we're all excited about tags at the moment but this comment got me looking at the 'MetaFilter gatherings' category.

Upon arrival you are given a further optional time period option (7 days, 30 days, all days). If you select 'all days' you go back in time, but not all the way back.
I know I can manually manipulate the URL [&lastweek=n] to return a complete 'all days', but that's not what I'm asking. Is there a reason why the 'all days' dropdown doesn't actually return 'all days'? [NB all categories]

posted by tellurian to Feature Requests at 10:00 AM (12 comments total)

I'd bet that at the time that it was set up, "all days" went back far enough with a too-big-to-matter fixed value that it was, in fact, all days.

Then: time passed, and it was no longer too big to matter. I've done the same url hacking myself to get around that.
posted by cortex (staff) at 10:06 AM on October 30, 2008

So the meetups category goes back to Feb 2006 and that's not the beginng of that category, is that what you're saying? I presume there's some limited though it does get 969 posts which seems like an odd limit. Maybe these views need pagination?
posted by jessamyn (staff) at 10:06 AM on October 30, 2008

After clicking post I see:
[will be posted in metafilter >> feature requests]
I don't think I'm posting in metafilter. I'm damn sure I'm posting in MetaTalk. Where does this software come off telling me where I'm posting to and from (and being wrong about it at the same time)?
posted by tellurian at 10:12 AM on October 30, 2008

Yeah, the category page is ANCIENT, built in 2000 and barely touched since. We'll put it on the todo list to redo and bring up to today's more modern standards.
posted by mathowie (staff) at 10:15 AM on October 30, 2008

LEED certification, here we come!
posted by Plutor at 10:21 AM on October 30, 2008

LEED gold! It'll be more inline with ask mefi's category pages, which have clean URLs and pagination to go back in time 50 posts at a time.
posted by mathowie (staff) at 10:25 AM on October 30, 2008

Jeez! It's 5:38AM here in the (Sydney) casino; last hand. I've pulled three aces, I only need a pb and a vacapinta to get a full house. All in.
posted by tellurian at 10:44 AM on October 30, 2008

Obviously people don't want you to be able travel back in time to go to meetups that you had no business being at. In order to facilitate this restraint-of-travel, they've constructed a technological terror that shows you only what it thinks you should see.

You may have fooled it this time with your URL hacking scheme, but mark my words, they'll think up something even more dastardly, more obtuse, and more... pure.... evil.
posted by blue_beetle at 11:03 AM on October 30, 2008

"I presume there's some limited though it does get 969 posts which seems like an odd limit."

Two of the numbers are upside down...
posted by Effigy2000 at 3:29 PM on October 30, 2008

Two of the numbers are upside down...
996 also seems like an odd limit
posted by martinX's bellbottoms at 6:39 PM on October 30, 2008

969 isn't an odd limit
posted by fantabulous timewaster at 7:34 PM on October 30, 2008

MetaFilter: up to today's more modern standards
posted by Meatbomb at 6:00 AM on November 1, 2008