Birthday pony! December 13, 2010 12:58 PM   Subscribe

In my profile I can see a list of users who are located near me geographically. I think it would be neat if I could click on the birthday I have listed and see a list of users I share a birthday with. Perhaps including the year they were born, if they have it listed.

I realize sharing a birthday with someone tells us nothing more than in what months our parents had sex, but I’ve just had my second Metafilter birthday-related coincidence and it got me wondering who else I might share the day with. It’s fun to find out what we have in common with MeFites.

The only downside (other than the work involved, of course) I can see would be a privacy concern, but plenty of people opt out of listing their birthdays so they wouldn’t be on the list. Problem solved.

I suppose I could do this with the infodump easily enough, now that I think of it, but is there any reason it can't just be there in the profile? I can see who favorited what, who lives where, who posted what to Twitter, all the profile pictures of all the users, and any other number of “look at all this stuff from everybody” pages.

If this can’t be done, shouldn’t be done, or has been done but I don’t know of it, then please share your favorite holiday cookie recipe or, you know, close it up.
posted by bondcliff to Feature Requests at 12:58 PM (134 comments total) 1 user marked this as a favorite

I suppose I could do this with the infodump easily enough, now that I think of it

I can't see where extra profile information is located in the infodump. User info only contains a "list of user id, username entries".
posted by zamboni at 1:05 PM on December 13, 2010


Is it your birthday today, too? It actually is my birthday
posted by oinopaponton at 1:05 PM on December 13, 2010 [3 favorites]


I can't see where extra profile information is located in the infodump.

Ahh, so maybe I can't. To be honest, I haven't ever dumped the info myself. I just assumed I could do this because "check the infodump" seems to be the answer to a lot of these types of questions.
posted by bondcliff at 1:10 PM on December 13, 2010


That's a cool idea.

pb! To the bit mines!
posted by mathowie (staff) at 1:12 PM on December 13, 2010 [26 favorites]


Happy Birthday oinopaponton!
posted by nomadicink at 1:15 PM on December 13, 2010


zamboni: “I can't see where extra profile information is located in the infodump. User info only contains a "list of user id, username entries".”

bondcliff: “Ahh, so maybe I can't. To be honest, I haven't ever dumped the info myself. I just assumed I could do this because "check the infodump" seems to be the answer to a lot of these types of questions.”

And thank god it's not. It'd make me more than a little nervous to have a nice handy list of Metafilter usernames, often real names, even addresses for some, and birthdates floating around. I have my birthday listed, because I don't mind having my birthday visible to people on the internet, but I do mind having it in a nice, handy list for marketing companies to use. And there are more nefarious things you can do with a list of names and birthdates.

I think MeFi is pretty good about not publishing those kinds of lists, though. Thanks, guys.
posted by koeselitz at 1:22 PM on December 13, 2010


You have to remember 365.25 is not such a big number - I'm guessing you share a birthday with ~100 Mefites. Having spent about 40 seconds doing rigorous statistical sampling, I estimate about 50 of those will have a birthday in their profile page. Fifty people is quite a big bunch, makes your birthday look less special.

Happy birthday to everybody though!

Will there be cake?
posted by Dr Dracator at 1:22 PM on December 13, 2010


pb! To the bit mines!

Oh, Mr. Haughey, how you make me laugh.
posted by ocherdraco at 1:23 PM on December 13, 2010


I like this idea!
posted by patheral at 1:36 PM on December 13, 2010


This isn't going to end well. I just know this is going to make it easier for you guys to stalk me.
posted by marxchivist at 1:38 PM on December 13, 2010


I suppose I could do this with the infodump easily enough, now that I think of it

Yeah, we don't publish any profile info in the dump and it's unlikely we ever would. I may do one-off analyses of profile stuff if there's a specific and suitably anonymizable question worth looking at (like the gender field thing recently), but that's about as far as it goes.

So no help on the birthday thing there, sorry.

On a related note, I just figured out I've written at least 1.72 million words on Metafilter over the years. Jess has clocked 2.26M. Matt's only done 1.07M.
posted by cortex (staff) at 1:40 PM on December 13, 2010 [2 favorites]


So no help on the birthday thing there, sorry.

Oh no, that's quite ok. I'm actually glad the answer had nothing to do with combing over a bunch of database tables. And I'm glad that sort of info isn't in the infodump.

Matt's only done 1.07M.

Does that include the code?
posted by bondcliff at 1:43 PM on December 13, 2010


Anyone else have Sept. 27th? I'm running an informal survey to see if we're all gossipy lushes.
posted by The Whelk at 1:46 PM on December 13, 2010


On a related note, I just figured out I've written at least 1.72 million words on Metafilter over the years. Jess has clocked 2.26M. Matt's only done 1.07M.

Awesome. For comparison, The Lord of the Rings clocks in at 454,000, the King James Bible at 930,000 and Infinite Jest at 479,000.
posted by ricochet biscuit at 1:46 PM on December 13, 2010 [2 favorites]


To be fair, none of those books revolved around explaining moderation decisions to a large userbase. Well, except maybe The Lord of the Rings.
posted by yaymukund at 1:49 PM on December 13, 2010 [10 favorites]


Lush? Yes. Gossipy? Look, if you don't have anything nice to say, come sit next to me.
posted by Cool Papa Bell at 1:49 PM on December 13, 2010 [2 favorites]


March 3 represent!
posted by Mister_A at 2:05 PM on December 13, 2010 [1 favorite]


This isn't going to end well. I just know this is going to make it easier for you guys to stalk me.

Fine!

*throws creepy stalkercake to ground, marches off your porch in a huff*
posted by joe lisboa at 2:05 PM on December 13, 2010 [2 favorites]


On a related note, I just figured out I've written at least 1.72 million words on Metafilter over the years. Jess has clocked 2.26M. Matt's only done 1.07M.

What percentage of said words was devoted to explaining that "deletion" is not the same as "censorship"?
posted by googly at 2:06 PM on December 13, 2010 [3 favorites]


It was a very cool coincidence, bondcliff. December birthdays ftw!
posted by royalsong at 2:09 PM on December 13, 2010 [1 favorite]


Maybe we could get an email, like Facebook?

/do not want email, do not want like Facebook.
posted by Artw at 2:12 PM on December 13, 2010 [1 favorite]


It's my unbirthday today!! Who else is having an unbirthday?
posted by IndigoRain at 2:33 PM on December 13, 2010 [3 favorites]


And I'm guessing anyone who shares a birthday with mathowie gets a special prize, correct?
posted by hijinx at 2:36 PM on December 13, 2010


What percentage of said words was devoted to explaining that "deletion" is not the same as "censorship"?

Realistically? Most of them.
posted by jessamyn (staff) at 2:36 PM on December 13, 2010 [6 favorites]


pb! To the bit mines!

Most importantly, if this could be an opt-in feature the way the OP suggests, that would be nice.
posted by zarq at 2:38 PM on December 13, 2010


Heh - bondcliff, that's my birthday too. And I am also in the Boston area. =)
posted by maryr at 2:39 PM on December 13, 2010


throws creepy stalkercake to ground, marches off your porch in a huff

I hope it wasn't chocolate... I've been craving chocolate cake all day.
posted by patheral at 2:40 PM on December 13, 2010


if this could be an opt-in feature

Filling in the birthday field is already an opt-in feature.

We're in this weird place where many of these features were built for a "show on your profile page" sort of site and can now be repurposed as a more aggregated form [see recent discussion about locations and IRL notifications]. Having too many on and off switches in the profiles is sort of confusing for users and a pain for grinding at the database every time it hits a profile page. While we don't plan to have information that you put on your profile page ex[ecting it to be private made available to the open web, we may need to not get too granular as far as how/where this stuff is available to MeFites.

So, I'm not sure exactly how this is going to play out as a feature [and I like the idea] just letting you know how we're feeling about some of this stuff generally.
posted by jessamyn (staff) at 2:44 PM on December 13, 2010


none of those books revolved around explaining moderation decisions to a large userbase.

Wait, what? Isn't that exactly what the bible is?

Moderation = smiting
posted by supercres at 2:54 PM on December 13, 2010 [4 favorites]


Filling in the birthday field is already an opt-in feature.

Yes, and I used to have it filled.

But in the past, someone would actually have to go the effort of looking at my profile to see my birthday. It's a distinction that makes a difference to me wrt how comfortable I am putting that information in my profile. If one's birthday does become data that other MeFites can see without actually clicking on my profile, I'd like the ability to turn that feature off.

We're in this weird place where many of these features were built for a "show on your profile page" sort of site and can now be repurposed as a more aggregated form [see recent discussion about locations and IRL notifications]. Having too many on and off switches in the profiles is sort of confusing for users and a pain for grinding at the database every time it hits a profile page. While we don't plan to have information that you put on your profile page ex[ecting it to be private made available to the open web, we may need to not get too granular as far as how/where this stuff is available to MeFites.

Which is fine. If that's what's decided, then I won't put it back in my profile. Or much other personal information.
posted by zarq at 2:58 PM on December 13, 2010


But this will cut down on the number of free birthday cakes I can scam!
posted by klangklangston at 3:02 PM on December 13, 2010


Yeah Mathowie, change your name to Zuckerberg already, you user hating douche!

/sticking it to THE MAN.
posted by Artw at 3:03 PM on December 13, 2010


in what months our parents had sex

LA LA LA LA LA LA LA LA LA LALALALALALALALALALALALALALALALALALALALA
posted by shakespeherian at 3:04 PM on December 13, 2010 [13 favorites]


Hijinx, I hope so!
posted by MadamM at 3:04 PM on December 13, 2010


throws creepy stalkercake to ground, marches off your porch in a huff

It's spelt b-a-n-j-o.
posted by zamboni at 3:04 PM on December 13, 2010


LA LA LA LA LA LA LA LA LA LALALALALALALALALALALALALALALALALALALALA

ObXKCD.
posted by kmz at 3:09 PM on December 13, 2010


It's spelt b-a-n-j-o.

I am old and do not understand this reference.

*weeps mightily whilst stalking zamboni on his/her front porch*
posted by joe lisboa at 3:13 PM on December 13, 2010


Lacking a birthday, I just put in the day I was accidentally summoned to this earth in a bizarre voodoo ritual that was, if I understand correctly, to improve the growth of some hedges in a back-yard.

Hey, not everyone can have a cool origin story.
posted by quin at 3:17 PM on December 13, 2010 [1 favorite]


So, I'm not sure exactly how this is going to play out as a feature [and I like the idea]

I think you'd just make the current text output of someone's birthdate on their profile into a link, and that would load something like metafilter.com/birthday/month/day/ as a page of everyone sharing that day (and make the URL easy to hack to see if people share yours, etc).
posted by mathowie (staff) at 3:17 PM on December 13, 2010 [1 favorite]


My birthday is New Years Day. Born a minute after midnight.

Secretly, I like to imagine the New Years Eve celebrations are about all New Years' babies, and not about getting fit, saving money, or other unlikely things. Mentally, it's some enormous, extended birthday party.

+1 vote for this feature.
posted by fake at 3:39 PM on December 13, 2010 [2 favorites]


Wait, so is mathowie granting all pony requests today? Is it his daughter's wedding day or something?
posted by katemonster at 3:40 PM on December 13, 2010 [5 favorites]


Secretly, I like to imagine the New Years Eve celebrations are about all New Years' babies, and not about getting fit, saving money, or other unlikely things. Mentally, it's some enormous, extended birthday party.

At my high school graduation, the one and only huge ovation was right after my name was announced. I chose to believe that it was all for me.

Never mind that my last name starts with a Z, and I happened to be at the very tail of the alphabet in my high school graduating class. And that the audience was supposed to save all their applause for the end of the ceremony so it wouldn't drag on forever with 600+ students. Those were mere incidental facts.
posted by kmz at 3:47 PM on December 13, 2010 [2 favorites]


It would also be nice if our profiles could have status updates telling us when our parents are having sex.
posted by mannequito at 3:51 PM on December 13, 2010 [2 favorites]


My parents did not have sex. I sprung fully formed from Zeus' forehead.
posted by deborah at 4:25 PM on December 13, 2010 [1 favorite]


I am old and do not understand this reference.

Danger Will Robinson, danger!
posted by griphus at 4:33 PM on December 13, 2010 [1 favorite]


mannequito, your mom was just having sex. with me.
posted by mathowie (staff) at 4:33 PM on December 13, 2010 [8 favorites]


...and holy shit, that post was a year ago yesterday!
posted by griphus at 4:35 PM on December 13, 2010


Heh - bondcliff, that's my birthday too. And I am also in the Boston area. =)

Awesome. At the next meetup you, me, and not_on_display can get hammered and complain about how our birthday gifts were always wrapped with Christmas paper and often combined with Christmas into one gift that never quite added up to the same value as the two gifts our brothers got for Christmas and their mid-year birthdays.

But I'm not bitter. Really.

I'm glad most people are in favor of this idea and I'm glad there is an easy opt-out solution should this be implemented.
posted by bondcliff at 5:02 PM on December 13, 2010 [1 favorite]


marxchivist: "This isn't going to end well. I just know this is going to make it easier for you guys to stalk me"

Fear not. I have already killed all of the other stalkers. You Are Mine!
posted by Splunge at 5:16 PM on December 13, 2010


deborah: "My parents did not have sex. I sprung fully formed from Zeus' forehead"

Orly?
posted by Splunge at 5:18 PM on December 13, 2010


Okay new rule: Everyone on the entire internet is familiar with XKCD and either reads it all the time or hates it. Linking to XKCD is therefore a meaningless enterprise.
posted by shakespeherian at 5:22 PM on December 13, 2010 [3 favorites]


Okay new rule: Everyone on the entire internet is familiar with XKCD and either reads it all the time or hates it.

I'm sure there is a perfect XKCD strip that I could use as a polite way of saying "go pound sand, some of us like XKCD and we'll post whatever the hell we feel like posting" but I'm too lazy to look for it right now.
posted by bondcliff at 5:27 PM on December 13, 2010


Yeah but then if you like XKCD and then you see someone post a mystery-meat link in response to a quote like above you probably (like I did) go 'Oh I'll bet it's to that one XKCD strip' and then it is and then you go 'huh.'
posted by shakespeherian at 5:35 PM on December 13, 2010


I own a domain that is only one letter different from XKCD. Surely I can turn that into Big Internet Cash!
posted by maxwelton at 5:45 PM on December 13, 2010


The thing to do is to stop linking to the strip or in any other way elaborating on the issue and just type "XKCD###" for the appropriate url and everybody who cares can laugh quietly to themselves and then that's the end of it. Arguing further either way would be slouching into XKCD386 territory.
posted by cortex (staff) at 5:49 PM on December 13, 2010 [2 favorites]


Omigod cortex this is totally Dinosaur Comics #1598 territory now.
posted by shakespeherian at 5:54 PM on December 13, 2010


mannequito, your mom was just having sex. with me.

ah, thanks for the heads up! get it?
posted by mannequito at 5:56 PM on December 13, 2010


Some guys just don't know how to tell a joke.
posted by griphus at 5:56 PM on December 13, 2010


I can't be the only one who checked which one 386 was and then smacked myself because I should have been able to guess.

Also, I posted that one to Facebook a couple weeks back and I was surprised by how many people hadn't seen it. I don't mean my Farmville-addict cousins, I'm talking real internet-savvy nerds.
posted by bondcliff at 5:57 PM on December 13, 2010


I only wish I had had to look it up.
posted by cortex (staff) at 6:15 PM on December 13, 2010


Heh - bondcliff, that's my birthday too. And I am also in the Boston area. =)

You know, someone's been complaining that we haven't had a Boston meetup in an age. And now that he knows so many people in the Boston area WITH THE SAME BIRTHDAY I think it would behoove him to call a celebratory meetup.
posted by backseatpilot at 6:22 PM on December 13, 2010


I'm out here in the 'burbs, man. If you all want to have a meetup at a mall food court or Olive Garden I'll be happy to plan it.
posted by bondcliff at 6:31 PM on December 13, 2010


maryr: "Heh - bondcliff, that's my birthday too. And I am also in the Boston area. =)"

bondcliff: "At the next meetup you, me, and not_on_display can get hammered and complain about how our birthday gifts were always wrapped with Christmas paper and often combined with Christmas into one gift that never quite added up to the same value as the two gifts our brothers got for Christmas and their mid-year birthdays."


I never had a sibling, so I didn't have to share. And, eight days of Hanukkah!

I WIN THE BIRTHDAY GAME!

...That means you goys goyim guys people will be buying me the drinks! I WIN AGAIN! WIN WIN WIN WIN WIN oh and happy burthday maryr & bondcliff! does maryr have the same first and middle name as us, too?
posted by not_on_display at 7:14 PM on December 13, 2010 [1 favorite]


...and yes i will take olive garden drinks thank you, do they serve alcohol?
posted by not_on_display at 7:15 PM on December 13, 2010


klangklangston and I share a birthday, although he's a year older than me.
posted by IndigoRain at 7:54 PM on December 13, 2010 [1 favorite]


how our birthday gifts were always wrapped with Christmas paper and often combined with Christmas into one gift

Gah I hate this when it happens. I don't mind the Christmas paper so much though.
posted by royalsong at 7:54 PM on December 13, 2010


Fake, me too! Though it would really be great if you stopped stealing my birthday thunder. It's bad enough the Baby Jesus celebrates a week before.
posted by sugarfish at 8:26 PM on December 13, 2010 [2 favorites]


I'm another December baby (15th hint hint), but I was lucky. Mum always made sure to keep xmas separate and didn't put the tree up until after my b-day. It was only when I was older that the offer was made to have fewer but better combined gift(s) rather than separate gifts.
posted by deborah at 8:37 PM on December 13, 2010


If it's your birthday, go to Benny's Burritos on Jane and Greenwich. They will give you a free tequila shot, and margaritas are only $3 anyway. You don't even know how hard it was to physically type this comment out. Oh, Benny's Burritos is in New York, so sorry if you don't live here (for that and many other reasons).
posted by oinopaponton at 9:10 PM on December 13, 2010


Dr Dracator writes "You have to remember 365.25 is not such a big number - I'm guessing you share a birthday with ~100 Mefites. Having spent about 40 seconds doing rigorous statistical sampling, I estimate about 50 of those will have a birthday in their profile page. Fifty people is quite a big bunch, makes your birthday look less special."

cortex how many people have a filled in birth date? Either total or percentage of accounts.
posted by Mitheral at 10:16 PM on December 13, 2010


Yeah, I never got Christmas/Birthday squished, but I solved that by having my birthday party in January. Happy Martin Luther King, Jr Day! Here, have a sleepover!
posted by maryr at 10:24 PM on December 13, 2010




Let's add birth minute! Everyone get out your birth certificates.
posted by TwelveTwo at 10:47 PM on December 13, 2010


How about something special for those of us not of woman born?
posted by maxwelton at 10:55 PM on December 13, 2010


March 3 represent!
posted by Mister_A


Hey Mister_A, I'm March 3, too!
posted by a humble nudibranch at 11:32 PM on December 13, 2010 [1 favorite]


Lacking a birthday, I just put in the day I was accidentally summoned to this earth in a bizarre voodoo ritual that was, if I understand correctly, to improve the growth of some hedges in a back-yard.

Lacking a birthday, I always list February 29, 1976 as my DOB, which makes me...

...8?

What are all you people talking about? I don't understand these words! Can we watch cartoons?
posted by toodleydoodley at 7:13 AM on December 14, 2010


So me, Royalsong, maryr, and not_on_display are all members of the "Day Before Pearl Harbor Day and also the Day That Dude Was Stabbed At Altamont" club.

This is why we need this feature. We need to have 366 exclusive clubs and then all fight each other until we determine which is the best club.

(though we all know DBPHDaatDTDWSAA is the best club)
posted by bondcliff at 7:25 AM on December 14, 2010 [2 favorites]


May 31.

*waits for her ~100 birthday-sharers to show up*
posted by tzikeh at 8:12 AM on December 14, 2010


cortex how many people have a filled in birth date? Either total or percentage of accounts.

I'll tell you that, and more! Birthday stats! Come and get your birthday stats!

That's a file I just generated that lists anonymous aggregate birthday field data distribution stuff for a few different situations:

- Year of birth
- Month of birth
- Month and day of birth

Note that folks filling in the field on their Preferences page are not required to provide the year; alternatively, folk can choose to provide only the year and omit the month and date. So we have three possible cases to deal with.

To quote the header stats from the file:
Total birthdays entered: 3575
Full birthday displayed: 2337
Birth year only: 313
Month and day only: 925
So something like 7% of active accounts (which is in the neighborhood of 50K or so) list a birthday of any kind. Of those 3,575 folks, 65% provide a full birthdate, 26% provide no year, and 9% provide the year only.

The birthdate field was first provided (and I had forgotten this was so recent!) on April 10, 2008. I have not looked at how use of the field is distributed across users, but I would expect a trend toward more use by folks who joined after that date than by folks who joined before.

(That's the same day we launched the dropdown "status" field for relationship status, which we recently changed to a free-form field.)
posted by cortex (staff) at 8:26 AM on December 14, 2010


Month and day only: 925
Month and day only: 926

I just added mine, as it was recently and I feel that I received insufficient presents.
posted by theredpen at 8:58 AM on December 14, 2010


It was recent, I mean
posted by theredpen at 8:59 AM on December 14, 2010


This should be a Mefi Birthday Histogram, if everything went to plan.

the google charts wizard is rather unintuitive, and possibly buggy. If someone wants to have a go at adding intervals on the x axis, be my guest.
posted by zamboni at 11:12 AM on December 14, 2010


Birthday year histogram, even.

Here's birth month.
posted by zamboni at 11:44 AM on December 14, 2010


Wow. I'm surprised at the number of December birthdays. I suspect Carson really phoned it in on those April shows.
posted by bondcliff at 12:01 PM on December 14, 2010


9/11. Where's my posse, 100 MeFites strong?
posted by catlet at 12:48 PM on December 14, 2010


And a very big HAPPY BIRTHDAY to the 102 year old user born in 1908, no matter when their birthday is.
posted by maryr at 1:15 PM on December 14, 2010


Shared birthdays are go! Click on a birthday month/day in a profile to see other users with that birthday. And you can fiddle with the URL to see a specific day.
posted by pb (staff) at 1:28 PM on December 14, 2010 [10 favorites]


25 hours from request to implementation. You guys rule. Seriously.

Thank you for honoring my silly little request.
posted by bondcliff at 1:44 PM on December 14, 2010


I love how my birthday is now a link I can click and see who shares my ridiculous birthday. In case I'm incompetent at the moment of clicking, a little note by my name helpfully chirps, "That's you!"
posted by toodleydoodley at 6:58 PM on December 14, 2010


In case I'm incompetent at the moment of clicking, a little note by my name helpfully chirps, "That's you!"

That is why every day working with pb is like a dream come true. Such attention to detail. So friendly.
posted by jessamyn (staff) at 7:06 PM on December 14, 2010 [1 favorite]


And it's true! That *is* me!
posted by The Whelk at 7:10 PM on December 14, 2010


what I'm saying is that the very pretty pony has pretty hair.
posted by The Whelk at 7:10 PM on December 14, 2010 [2 favorites]


User Zombie Jesus, born Dec. 25. Hm.
posted by maxwelton at 7:13 PM on December 14, 2010


pb writes "Shared birthdays are go! Click on a birthday month/day in a profile to see other users with that birthday. And you can fiddle with the URL to see a specific day."

Whoa! When did interest areas come back to profiles?

The "That's you" made me LOL.
posted by Mitheral at 7:48 PM on December 14, 2010


That's you! And you're sitting!
posted by maryr at 8:14 PM on December 14, 2010


I really should think about putting my real birthday in the field instead of Elvis' as it appears Matt doesn't have anything nefarious planned with the info.

Why the spike at 1908? Was it a default at one point?
posted by Mitheral at 8:16 PM on December 14, 2010


Not the default, but the farthest date available when we launched the feature. Drop down gives you a hundred years going back. So those 1908ers are a lucky crew; the best you can do right now is 1910, and in a few weeks you'll be stuck with 1911.

Fun fact: if you decline to store your birth year in the database, it's stored as 1900, which had me thinking during my initial peek at the birthdate stuff that there were a lot of people entering jokey years just for the hell of it.

By the same token, it looked like there were a lot of January 1st birthday jokesters until I gathered that we store year-only folks as 1/1/birthyear.
posted by cortex (staff) at 8:49 PM on December 14, 2010


Ok, now I'll have to add birthday to my incognito profile. I (completely irrationally) feel a connection with people who share my date of birth (like Big Boi).
posted by Go Banana at 9:23 AM on December 15, 2010


I keep bouncing back and forth on whether I want my birthday in my profile. I turned it on temporarily, to see who else was the same day, and found one person that both lives in the same city and went to the same school as me. Small world... (Yeah, yeah, not really, mathematical proof bla bla.)
posted by inigo2 at 9:50 AM on December 15, 2010


And for reference if you want to look up a date:
http://www.metafilter.com/contribute/birthday/MONTH_WRITTEN_OUT/DAY/.

Eg.
http://www.metafilter.com/contribute/birthday/march/15/
posted by inigo2 at 9:52 AM on December 15, 2010


Hey, flatluigi is my birthday buddy.
posted by Plutor at 10:47 AM on December 15, 2010


I love when a MeTa thread turns out nice like this. Happy Birthday Everyone!!
posted by not_on_display at 12:12 PM on December 15, 2010


I just popped in to say that I have the same birthday is shakespeherian - so yay!

\o/
posted by Jofus at 1:30 PM on December 15, 2010


Besties!
posted by shakespeherian at 1:31 PM on December 15, 2010


I like to think that this feature brought some of us closer together. I'm pretty happy about that.

(I'm talking about the ten of us born on the same day as me, not those other filthy Non-Dec 6thers.)

posted by bondcliff at 1:37 PM on December 15, 2010


i am not the only easter baby!
posted by janepanic at 2:05 PM on December 15, 2010


I have no idea if any of the mods are still reading this thread, but if you are, could I ask a question?

Until this moment, I was under the impression that all personal information entered into a member's profile other than their email address and the "Story behind your username" field was viewable by non-members.

What profile fields are viewable by someone who is not a Metafilter member? I've been trying to figure this out by clicking through to random profiles while logged out, but I'm not quite sure I've figured it out.
posted by zarq at 2:06 PM on December 15, 2010


Great new feature. I was also to verify very quickly that Ben Vereen and David Lee Roth are not MeFi members... too bad.
posted by hijinx at 2:07 PM on December 15, 2010


zarq, if you go to your preferences you'll see this note at the top of the page: "note: Items with a highlighted background are only shown to other logged-in members, and won't be seen by the general public or search engines." So most of what you enter there is only viewable by other members except for Full Name, Picture, Homepage URL, and Blurb about you.

It's good to keep in mind that the $5 paywall isn't high security, so I'd still only put things you're comfortable sharing online there.
posted by pb (staff) at 2:18 PM on December 15, 2010


What profile fields are viewable by someone who is not a Metafilter member? I've been trying to figure this out by clicking through to random profiles while logged out, but I'm not quite sure I've figured it out.

I believe the stuff viewable to folks not logged in is:

- Name
- Also on links (but only if you have the visibility there set to "Everyone")
- Joined date
- Flickr and Twitter (and maybe last.fm, I don't use it) widgets at the bottom, possibly also contingent on an "Everyone" setting)
- About blurb
- Picture
- (website)

Everything else is members-only. Also, email is only visible to members if you've elected for it to be so.
posted by cortex (staff) at 2:23 PM on December 15, 2010


I'll add this to the FAQ, it's easy enough to explain there?
posted by jessamyn (staff) at 2:29 PM on December 15, 2010


Thank you, pb, jessamyn and cortex. Very, very much appreciated.

Even at this late date I'm still trying to find a happy middle ground wrt what I should keep private and/or share online. Have a number of friends who have been fired from journalism and PR jobs over the past few years for oversharing online -- a fate I must avoid. So lately, I'm erring on the side of caution. Or trying to, at least. But I still don't quite know where to draw those lines.

That's why I was asking about the possibility of a linked up birthday field being opt-out. Although I guess in hindsight it seems like a pretty stupid data point to be worried about. And having just now re-read my comments, I apologize if I sounded grouchy about it. I wasn't, but I can see that it might have sounded that way.
posted by zarq at 2:48 PM on December 15, 2010


omg the whelk and i have the same birthday. explains so much....
posted by lazaruslong at 3:05 PM on December 15, 2010


I wonder if we could use this newfound knowledge to start some kind of birthday card swap. I am not sure how someone would go about organizing something like that, though. It was just an idea I had.
posted by janepanic at 4:43 PM on December 15, 2010


omg the whelk and i have the same birthday. explains so much....

Maybe.

*checks profile*

Ha Asheville. We're probably 7-degrees friends of a friend.
posted by The Whelk at 5:12 PM on December 15, 2010


Hooooooraaaaayy! I share a birthday with languagehat!! :D
posted by IndigoRain at 8:45 PM on December 15, 2010


I only share a birthday with seven mefites. Thought it would be more. xD
posted by biochemist at 11:32 PM on December 15, 2010


I'm going to add all my birthday buddies as contacts.
posted by pracowity at 4:10 AM on December 16, 2010


So, which day has the most birthdays on it?
posted by rebent at 7:08 AM on December 16, 2010


rebent: "So, which day has the most birthdays on it?"

Technically, December 25, but a number of those are jokesters.
posted by Hargrimm at 7:42 AM on December 16, 2010


My birthday is shared with 13 others, but the dates on either side only have three people each. It's random but still makes me feel a little special.
posted by fixedgear at 8:02 AM on December 16, 2010


janepanic: "i am not the only easter baby!"

Since Easter is a moveable feast, and the date can vary between March 22 and April 25, wouldn't it follow that about 9.6% (35/365) of people are potentially Easter babies?
posted by Plutor at 8:03 AM on December 16, 2010


I know; I was just being dramatic. I am pleased to learn I share a birthday with Asparagirl!
posted by janepanic at 12:37 PM on December 16, 2010


11 members share my birthday and I only recognize *one* username.

I guess I don't have to buy cards for the other 9.

Also sharing my birthday: Beyoncé Knowles. Dick York. The 3rd Republic of France.
posted by sonika at 12:44 PM on December 16, 2010


There are 13 of us sharing my birthday, don't we need a rabbit named Harvey if we have dinner together? cool feature, thanks!
posted by arcticseal at 6:09 AM on December 17, 2010


I share sonika's birthday, but I'm not expecting any cards so it's OK.
posted by jtron at 8:14 AM on December 17, 2010


It looks like that if your birthday happens to fall on January 1, you are approximately twice as likely to report that fact on social media sites.
posted by Curious Artificer at 8:25 AM on December 17, 2010


On social media sites I am as likely to put January 1 as my real birthday because I can remember it. I bet other people do similar things.
posted by jessamyn (staff) at 9:11 AM on December 17, 2010


Back in the twentieth century I used to work for a membership-based organization and while I was not the membership coordinator, I had a better understanding (apparently) of statistics than the gently misguided individual in that job.

Once he had to prepare a presentation which included some info on the demographics of our members which he did by using the Access database to generate reports. He remarked on how much older the average user was than he had expected. I considered the unusual figure for about four seconds and asked him how many members had been born on January 1, 1901.

Shortly thereafter he revised his figures.
posted by ricochet biscuit at 9:23 AM on December 17, 2010 [1 favorite]


My seventh and eighteenth birthdays were on Easter!

But it won't happen again until my 80th.
posted by SpiffyRob at 9:35 AM on December 17, 2010


Awesome! I share a birthday wïth jessamyn! And here I thought I wouldn't recognize any names on the list.
posted by timepiece at 7:20 PM on December 17, 2010


Only 5 other Mefites share my birthday?!
posted by sarcasticah at 12:10 AM on December 27, 2010


Only 5 other Mefites share my birthday?!

I have four and two of them are the same person.
posted by griphus at 10:06 AM on December 27, 2010


WOOT! I just clicked through all the days of the year to verify this (though there is probably a faster way). There are 22 people on Metafilter with my birthday (including me). That's more people sharing the day than any other birthdays listed on Metafilter!

I am delighted to have some scrap of evidence in support of my long-held belief that my birthday is particularly popular.

Happy birthday 1/11ers!
posted by aniola at 12:55 AM on January 12, 2011


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