Last year's favorites, please!

May 26, 2010 8:18 AM

Can we please include MeFi and AskMe favorites for the past year?

We currently have the ""most favorited" for the last day, week, month, and alltime. I would really love to see the most favorited posts of the last year as well. I sometimes don't read Metafilter for months on end (yes, I realize that's a "my problem"), and I really would like to catch up on the best stuff I've missed. Please and thank you!

posted by antonymous to Feature Requests at 8:18 AM (10 comments total)

I sometimes don't read Metafilter for months on end

I wish I had your willpower.
posted by misha at 9:27 AM on May 26, 2010 [2 favorites]

Yeah, me too. (am I allowed to say "me too" with an AOL accent?)

I check many times per day just so I won't miss an entry.
I was about to write software that's like a 'favorites reloader' or something...
posted by Drasher at 9:32 AM on May 26, 2010

I think Combustible Edison Lighthouse's awesome infodumpster site is a great way to get what you want. You can specify any arbitrary date range you want and then call up a list of the most-favorited posts within that range.
posted by FishBike at 9:48 AM on May 26, 2010 [11 favorites]

And as long as I'm wishing for a pony, it would also be pretty neat to see the favorites sorted by individual year (and/or month). This way, you could look up the most favorited posts from 2003 or even from something as specific as October 2005. I'd settle for my original request, but the power of the archives is undeniable and it would be cool to see the progression of the "best of" metafilter.
posted by antonymous at 9:53 AM on May 26, 2010 [1 favorite]

Thanks, FishBike - that's definitely helpful! Off to meld with the most-favorited parts of the hivemind now...
posted by antonymous at 10:06 AM on May 26, 2010

I like this idea. It's cool that there's something off-site to do this, but as long as it wouldn't be a hassle to make, I think it would be helpful. Now that the site is 10+ years old, there's such a huge gulf between this month's favorites and favorites of all time.
posted by lunasol at 11:13 AM on May 26, 2010

Woah. I didn't realize there was an online infodump filter. Thanks Combustible Edison Lighthouse. I have a new toy to play with now.
posted by yeti at 11:25 AM on May 26, 2010

you could look up the most favorited posts from 2003 or even from something as specific as October 2005

Favorites didn't exist prior to May 2006 so the only favorites that posts older than that are going to have are where people retrospectively went back and read old stuff and favorited it. I'm sure some of the more noteworthy older posts would still stand out compared to their contemporaries in terms of favorite counts, but they would be nowhere near the kind of numbers that even the most meh of youtube garbage gets today.
posted by Rhomboid at 2:47 PM on May 26, 2010

Favorites didn't exist prior to May 2006 so the only favorites that posts older than that are going to have are where people retrospectively went back and read old stuff and favorited it. I'm sure some of the more noteworthy older posts would still stand out compared to their contemporaries in terms of favorite counts, but they would be nowhere near the kind of numbers that even the most meh of youtube garbage gets today.


This is why we need the back-favoriting project.
posted by Pants! at 4:52 PM on May 26, 2010 [1 favorite]

back-favoriting superstar! would be an awesome sock name.

Of course, the potential for graft is immense. I envision Corleones:

Cortex: There are people in this world who go about demanding to be favorited. You must have noticed them. They quarrel in Sarah Palin threads. They flame out in MetaTalk in a rage. They humiliate and bully people whose capabilities they do not know. These are people who wander through the world shouting, favorite me. And there's always someone ready to oblige to them.

posted by catlet at 7:45 AM on May 27, 2010