My job is not to worry about those threads October 16, 2012 9:29 PM   Subscribe

The Sarah Palin thread has been surpassed. this is now Metafilter's longest thread. Happy Election Season everyone!
posted by Artw to MetaFilter-Related at 9:29 PM (147 comments total)

The what? And I still can't load the Mittster thread on my home computer, so stop linking it, mmkay?
posted by Curious Artificer at 9:31 PM on October 16, 2012 [1 favorite]


and may the odds be ever in your favor.
posted by The Whelk at 9:32 PM on October 16, 2012 [12 favorites]


They should have sent a poet
posted by jokeefe at 9:36 PM on October 16, 2012 [5 favorites]


The Motherthread, may she ever live in our hearts and memories.
posted by winna at 9:39 PM on October 16, 2012 [3 favorites]


It's too bad she won't live.
posted by Artw at 9:41 PM on October 16, 2012 [3 favorites]


...but then again, who does?
posted by Artw at 9:44 PM on October 16, 2012 [17 favorites]


Just for you, jokeefe:

Romney is honest,
Mother Jones rises again.
Palin is erased.
posted by jaduncan at 9:44 PM on October 16, 2012 [4 favorites]


Longest Threads - needs an update.
posted by Artw at 9:46 PM on October 16, 2012


The day before this video broke, I was still so sad about the Libya attack and deeply angry about Romney's little speech on it. I thought, hey, maybe the way he exploited the event would expose him as an asshole.

And then I saw this video and laughed for like 15 minutes because Romney was just so royally fucked. Everything about it was pitch perfect, including the little "clinking fancy people silver on china" noise in the background. "My job is not to worry about those people," indeed. It won't ever be your job now!
posted by sallybrown at 9:47 PM on October 16, 2012


Oh God please can a moderator put a noun in the first sentence of this post. I don't know why it's bothering me so much omg
posted by tzikeh at 9:52 PM on October 16, 2012


MOTHERLANDTHREAD.
posted by Phire at 9:53 PM on October 16, 2012


The the has been surpassed.
posted by Nomyte at 9:54 PM on October 16, 2012 [1 favorite]


*
*
*
*
* pours one for the motherthread *

LONG LIVE THE 47%
posted by liza at 9:54 PM on October 16, 2012 [3 favorites]


Mod note: fixed the post typo, carry on
posted by jessamyn (staff) at 9:56 PM on October 16, 2012 [2 favorites]


the Palin thread

Clearly time for me to take a nap.
posted by Artw at 9:56 PM on October 16, 2012


This record will stand for a thousand years. My name is gerryblog, MeFite of MeFites; look upon my works, Ye Mathowie, and despair.

The winning retort has already been made. Thank you for your submissions.
posted by gerryblog at 9:56 PM on October 16, 2012 [4 favorites]


Keep Calm
and
Bury Rom
posted by cashman at 9:57 PM on October 16, 2012 [17 favorites]


I wonder what the longest thread is by word count, rather than comment count?
posted by Chrysostom at 9:57 PM on October 16, 2012 [1 favorite]


That Preddit one has got to come close...
posted by Artw at 9:58 PM on October 16, 2012


I was just about to point to the Predditors one as well. I know I've certainly contributed a few thousand words....
posted by Phire at 9:59 PM on October 16, 2012


He has binders full of women too.
posted by Artw at 10:00 PM on October 16, 2012 [5 favorites]


We should really commission paintings of these threads to commemorate them.

Or maybe Time magazine style covers.
posted by mccarty.tim at 10:00 PM on October 16, 2012 [2 favorites]


The frightening thing is that we can probably expect a further record-eclipsing wit the 2016 election campaign. But by then Matt will have hired 32 moderators...
posted by oneswellfoop at 10:03 PM on October 16, 2012 [1 favorite]


Or you know what: Exclusive shirts for participating in notable threads. Or merit badges, that are actually embroidered and not a stupid gamification gimmick.

I really want a mefi sash now.
posted by mccarty.tim at 10:05 PM on October 16, 2012 [6 favorites]


Think it'll take another four years to surpass that record? Are we going to have a new thread for every debate? Is the pace of hardware development fast enough to allow for ever-increasing records?
posted by the man of twists and turns at 10:12 PM on October 16, 2012 [1 favorite]


Bury Rom

Rom?
posted by homunculus at 10:28 PM on October 16, 2012 [3 favorites]


Okay, good job! Definitely some valuable ore down those bore holes.

I have to wonder, though, if all references to becoming/surpassing/celebrating being the longest thread were deleted from both the Palin and 47% threads, which one would actually be the winner...?
posted by batmonkey at 11:25 PM on October 16, 2012 [2 favorites]


if all references to becoming/surpassing/celebrating being the longest thread were deleted from both the Palin and 47% threads, which one would actually be the winner...?

It wasn't clean.
posted by homunculus at 11:40 PM on October 16, 2012


I've been known to complain about over-moderation of politicsfilter but I have to say most of the decisions this season have been spot-on.

plo chops for everyone!
posted by bardic at 12:19 AM on October 17, 2012


Wow. It took forever to load that thread up.
Oh, it just finished.

Now I can see if anyone's mind was changed by said thread.
posted by Mezentian at 1:32 AM on October 17, 2012 [1 favorite]


Rom?

Rum. We must bury the rum.
posted by daniel_charms at 2:33 AM on October 17, 2012


Or maybe just drink it. Drink all the rum.
posted by daniel_charms at 2:35 AM on October 17, 2012


The thread! It's full of binders! Full of women!
posted by fearfulsymmetry at 2:59 AM on October 17, 2012


"I put women in binders when my tea is served cold!" was hilarious on the Twitterz.
posted by Mezentian at 4:09 AM on October 17, 2012 [1 favorite]


macbook + chrome, both threads load in a couple seconds. AT ONCE!

yay i love my computer.
posted by insectosaurus at 4:57 AM on October 17, 2012


I'd like to congratulate the mods for what seems to me at least to be a very well-struck balance this US election season between having spaces for electionfilter (which, as this thread and others show, there is an intense desire for on the site) without letting it overwhelm and compromise the normal character of MetaFilter.
posted by Horace Rumpole at 5:02 AM on October 17, 2012 [7 favorites]


It's surprising, and good, that the number of large threads hasn't diminished the responsiveness of the entire site. There were a few stutters here and there, but no big deal.
posted by Brandon Blatcher at 5:07 AM on October 17, 2012


9622 4EVER!
posted by ColdChef at 5:24 AM on October 17, 2012 [11 favorites]


It's kind of irritating to have so many active threads... it's difficult to navigate to and parse, and Long thread Is Long and gives my iPad and Android an unhappy,
posted by Slap*Happy at 5:28 AM on October 17, 2012


Has there ever been any discussion about pagination if a thread goes over, say, 2000 comments or something? So people browsing on their phones/tablets* can load/participate in those threads? Just curious**.

* - or in my case, my stupid slow work computer, which, by the way, is "new" and I got two weeks ago, and it STILL can juuuuuust barely handle that thread, and is much slower than my FOUR YEAR OLD home PC

** - And complainy about my "new" work PC, apparently

posted by Grither at 5:37 AM on October 17, 2012 [2 favorites]


My plan was to watch only the first 10 minutes of the debate. Hah! There was no leaving that runaway train. The only problem I had was by the time I had written something, 64 more comments had been posted. If I hit "post" I would then have to scroll up and read the comments that I missed. If I read them first before hitting "post" by the time I got done reading, 32 more comments had been submitted and I would have to erase what I had written because by that time it seemed antiquated.
posted by Secret Life of Gravy at 5:41 AM on October 17, 2012


Rom
posted by desjardins at 5:41 AM on October 17, 2012 [5 favorites]


Has there ever been any discussion about pagination if a thread goes over, say, 2000 comments or something? So people browsing on their phones/tablets* can load/participate in those threads? Just curious**.

Dozens and the reply was no, for reasons that made sense due to not wishing to overtly encourage super long threads.
posted by winna at 6:06 AM on October 17, 2012 [1 favorite]


Rom was the nicest Ferengi, with a moral center and everything. He was far more empathetic than Mitt.
posted by winna at 6:10 AM on October 17, 2012 [4 favorites]


Epic thread, gets epic accolades and epic word of mouth mythologizing.

I remember one time I came on that big beautiful 47%-er thread, and I found a glade full of beautiful...elves....the were dancingand drinking rum..
posted by Skygazer at 6:26 AM on October 17, 2012 [1 favorite]


I find it very satisfying that the Palin thread topped out at 5555 comments. It would be just perfect if the Romney 47% thread topped out at 6666.

Romney: One Number Six Better than the Beast.
posted by Kattullus at 6:32 AM on October 17, 2012 [1 favorite]


A threado about how a thread1 is longer than another thread2, notably featuring a concertedly boring flood of comments in the thread1 talking about how close it was to being longer than the previous thread2 until it actually was.

I'd really rather not see that again.
posted by psoas at 6:34 AM on October 17, 2012 [2 favorites]


Somewhere Violet Blue is sobbing.
posted by Artw at 6:37 AM on October 17, 2012 [2 favorites]


The Motherthread was long, and more than a little meta, and gosh, it could really push your buttons sometimes (hey, that's a Mom for you), but it was fun. And at least it convinced me to try Chrome more often and to disable some of my Greasemonkey scripts on Firefox.
posted by maudlin at 6:37 AM on October 17, 2012


I'm going ti start calling these QAMS - Quad Annual Mefi Stress-tests.
posted by Artw at 6:41 AM on October 17, 2012


Rom was the nicest Ferengi, with a moral center and everything. He was far more empathetic than Mitt.
posted by winna at 6:10 AM on October 17 [+] [!]



Even as a Republican I can't get over just how much Mitt Romney really does resemble Gul Ducat.
posted by St. Alia of the Bunnies at 6:50 AM on October 17, 2012 [13 favorites]


But I (sort of) liked Gul Ducat.

You must mean some other spoonhead.
posted by Mezentian at 6:54 AM on October 17, 2012 [2 favorites]


Mefite reaction to the news
posted by drezdn at 6:58 AM on October 17, 2012


Now I can see if anyone's mind was changed by said thread.

My mind is definitely in a different shape than it used to be. Sort of a throbbing pretzel.
posted by cortex (staff) at 7:06 AM on October 17, 2012 [9 favorites]


Hey, Throbbing Pretzel were a GREAT industrial band. Nothing to be ashamed of there, cortex.
posted by maudlin at 7:11 AM on October 17, 2012 [8 favorites]


Sort of a throbbing pretzel.


Ditto. Except mine has a bit of mustard which makes it a little more palatable.
posted by lampshade at 7:12 AM on October 17, 2012


It's surprising, and good, that the number of large threads hasn't diminished the responsiveness of the entire site. There were a few stutters here and there, but no big deal.

Remember way back in the day when the site would routinely be down because of Error 217 or whatever it was ?
posted by Pogo_Fuzzybutt at 7:45 AM on October 17, 2012 [1 favorite]


Just out of curiosity, is there a handy Metafilter Way to find out what older threads are still active? I was looking for that thread earlier, and after checking back a few days gave up.
posted by Phredward at 7:45 AM on October 17, 2012


JRUN!!!
posted by edgeways at 7:57 AM on October 17, 2012 [3 favorites]


We keep acting like we're entering an era of bigger and bigger threads.

But nobody is asking the real questions: Are returns diminishing? Do the comment counts reflect actual value creation? Are we commenting out of legitimate need/desire, or are we just speculating?

When the comment bubble bursts, it'll burst hard, and we need to have a safety net ready for when that happens. I don't want to see users out on the street begging for favorites, or worse, a run on the e-points banks that cause the Favorite to collapse as people convert theirs to Diggs, Upvotes, and Likes.

Anyway, until I see some real action at the top, I'm stocking up on pinterest pins and canned goods.
posted by mccarty.tim at 8:06 AM on October 17, 2012 [12 favorites]


Also, a part of me wants to create an open decentralized favorite system that lampoons Bitcoin, complete with a client that mines favorites by churning out memes/macros with markov generated text.

But that'd require me being smart enough to wrap my mind around decentralized systems.
posted by mccarty.tim at 8:16 AM on October 17, 2012


is there a handy Metafilter Way to find out what older threads are still active?

The Recent Comments tab.
posted by Horace Rumpole at 8:16 AM on October 17, 2012 [1 favorite]


Also, a part of me wants to create an open decentralized favorite system that lampoons Bitcoin, complete with a client that mines favorites by churning out memes/macros with markov generated text.

But that'd require me being smart enough to wrap my mind around decentralized systems.


Also you'd get all your comments deleted. Trust me on this. The thread diehards know what drunken incident I'm talking about.
posted by jaduncan at 8:20 AM on October 17, 2012 [3 favorites]


Think it'll take another four years to surpass that record?

It definitely will in 2016, when the next GOP nominee will be a coin-operated monster truck towing a plough attachment used to turn poor neighborhoods into combo church/golf courses dedicated to alien gods wearing Jesus's face. Confederate flag stickers have been recently slapped all over the candidate. It doesn't debate, it revs its triple jet engines until your eardrums burst and your throat is sore from screaming. Its proprietary fumes give you recurring headaches for the rest of your life. It is even in the polls.
posted by fleacircus at 8:28 AM on October 17, 2012 [24 favorites]


It definitely will in 2016, when the next GOP nominee will be a coin-operated monster truck towing a plough attachment used to turn poor neighborhoods into combo church/golf courses dedicated to alien gods wearing Jesus's face. Confederate flag stickers have been recently slapped all over the candidate. It doesn't debate, it revs its triple jet engines until your eardrums burst and your throat is sore from screaming. Its proprietary fumes give you recurring headaches for the rest of your life. It is even in the polls.

But a sticker on it says the economy will grow enough that 1% tax rates will pay for all social provision for white people! Who am I to believe?
posted by jaduncan at 8:32 AM on October 17, 2012 [2 favorites]


Go with your liquified gut.
posted by fleacircus at 8:37 AM on October 17, 2012 [1 favorite]


JRUN!!!

*Shudder*
posted by drezdn at 8:42 AM on October 17, 2012


Go with your liquified gut.

Sadly it was ripped out by some kind of errant plough blade.
posted by jaduncan at 8:48 AM on October 17, 2012


Also, and frankly this has swayed my vote, people keep on trying to make putts into my now-detached belly button.
posted by jaduncan at 8:49 AM on October 17, 2012


I now have the need to be able to right click and drag to select a group of comments to favorite them as a whole.
posted by cashman at 9:07 AM on October 17, 2012 [1 favorite]


Artw: "Longest Threads - needs an update."

I have posted an interim update until tomorrow, when we will have the final comment count.

Also, a reminder: the wiki is open for anyone to edit. Those of us who do so on a regular basis are happy to do so. But if you see something that needs changing, please feel free to pitch in!
posted by zarq at 9:22 AM on October 17, 2012


Artw: I'm going ti start calling these QAMS - Quad Annual Mefi Stress-tests.

KEEP QAM

---- and ----

CARRY ON




{Thank you...thank you...please..no applause...please folks no need to get up and applaud....aww...thanks....}


posted by Skygazer at 9:23 AM on October 17, 2012 [1 favorite]


I've got a throbbing pretzel andOH MY GOD I HAVE GOT TO GET TO THE HOSPITAL!
posted by Tell Me No Lies at 9:27 AM on October 17, 2012


Just out of curiosity, what does the moderation bandwidth look like for these sorts of liveblog threads? I know that once the event is over and people get into wonk-y analysis there's always a lot of derails and heated argument back and forth, but it seems to me like--and correct me if I'm wrong--that the first 1,000-1,500 comments of the liveblog threads are always fairly uneventful because everyone is too busy watching to really snipe at each other.
posted by Phire at 9:31 AM on October 17, 2012


Yeah, that's been my impression as well. Things are literally too fast and chatty and sort of collectively write-only to foster any kind of coherent inter-user argument. I noted as much in a comment here on Flickr last night; it's quite a thing.

Not really a model of great discourse, of course—liveblog stuff remains in my mind more a "once in a while, because people like goofy fun" outlier thing for Metafilter—but it's an interesting side effect.

They payoff is sort of crappy, though: loading a bigass thread to check on a flag later on is a bit murder.
posted by cortex (staff) at 9:35 AM on October 17, 2012 [1 favorite]


oh I love that thread.
posted by sweetkid at 9:35 AM on October 17, 2012


Greg that is such a BLATANT ATTEMPT to restart this old fight.

i salute you sir
posted by elizardbits at 9:35 AM on October 17, 2012


also did vikings sit or stand to wipe their butts

DISCUSS
posted by elizardbits at 9:36 AM on October 17, 2012 [4 favorites]


also did vikings sit or stand to wipe their butts

The seawater they squatted over took care of that, and any remaining debris was dug out with a helmet horn.*
*This is not intended to be historically accurate.
posted by jaduncan at 9:40 AM on October 17, 2012 [1 favorite]




Also, a reminder: the wiki is open for anyone to edit. Those of us who do so on a regular basis are happy to do so. But if you see something that needs changing, please feel free to pitch in!

Heh. Given the stupid typos and other errors I made last night before getting much needed Zs my not touching it is probably for the best.
posted by Artw at 9:44 AM on October 17, 2012


Heh. Given the stupid typos and other errors I made last night before getting much needed Zs my not touching it is probably for the best.

No worries! Just trying to encourage participation. :)
posted by zarq at 10:06 AM on October 17, 2012


In the name of the most holy and individual Trinity: Be it known to all, and every one whom it may concern, or to whom in any manner it may belong, That for many Years past, Discords and Elections being stir'd up in the United States, which increas'd the Count of Users to such a degree, that not only 74487, but also the neighbouring Threads, and Debate Threads particularly, have been involv'd in the Disorders of a long and cruel War.

The Straight Talk Express had to set the record straight.
posted by ersatz at 10:10 AM on October 17, 2012 [1 favorite]


Cortex: Not really a model of great discourse, of course—liveblog stuff remains in my mind more a "once in a while, because people like goofy fun" outlier thing for Metafilter—but it's an interesting side effect.

Completely disagree with you. You're too mod-centric to see the value of the live-bloggy thing, IMHO, Cortex.

Here's the big positives:

1.) It's a shared community experience with on the fly annotation going on lots of times as people clarify issues or provide context, and that adds to the knowledge level of an issue.

2.) The establish a very solid "all on the same page" for later discussions after the "live-bloggy event "takes place leading to very precise discussions on many granular level, including quite detailed and nuanced issues, and leads to a better understanding and from a greater variety of political POV's.

3.) They provide an awesome real time historical record of the event allowing asynchronous experiencing of the event in conjunction with video footage, and acting as a sort of a collector or even more users having the opportunity to take place in the after-event discussion.

4.) TBD

5.) They're fun as all fuck, especially in real-time.

6.) Thanks.
posted by Skygazer at 10:22 AM on October 17, 2012 [3 favorites]


Don't misunderstand me; I like and enjoy the livebloggy stuff for what it is, possibly more than the other mods here (I'm certainly a bit more guilty of participating in them historically at least). I agree that they're fun, and I think as community artifacts they have an interesting set of features as far as comparative/collective reaction to unfolding events.

But a lot of what I like about Metafilter, not as a mod but as a user, is the way conversation unfolds here. I like interchange and interplay, I like discourse as a back-and-forth rather than a simultaneous transcription, I like how people can puzzle out the angles of a topic or event or a discussion over time and with room to breathe in such a way that everybody gets a chance to think carefully about what everybody is saying.

A liveblog like what we've had in the debate threads this month is a firehose; a fast reader might be able to keep up in real time if what they're doing is just sitting and reading, but they have no chance to get into a serious discussion in the middle of that. If there's going to be serious analysis and discussion, it's all going to happen after the fact when the event ends, the storm of comments dies down, and the thread starts to behave once more like a more normal or normal-busy Metafilter thread.

Again, that's not a bad thing in and of itself, but it's also not the normal model of mefi discourse and I would be really, really worried if it became so. Not as a mod but as a reader and mefite.
posted by cortex (staff) at 10:31 AM on October 17, 2012 [8 favorites]


Guys were moving away from viking poop here
posted by The Whelk at 10:40 AM on October 17, 2012 [1 favorite]


When the 47% (or Predditor) threads were getting hot and heavy, I found myself looking at the name of the poster before reading a comment. This is always a clue to me that I need to close the tab.
posted by These Premises Are Alarmed at 10:44 AM on October 17, 2012


Pretty sure at one point cortex was drunk. OR DRUNK ON POWER???
posted by Artw at 10:44 AM on October 17, 2012


It definitely will in 2016, when the next GOP nominee will be a coin-operated monster truck towing a plough attachment used to turn poor neighborhoods into combo church/golf courses dedicated to alien gods wearing Jesus's face. Confederate flag stickers have been recently slapped all over the candidate. It doesn't debate, it revs its triple jet engines until your eardrums burst and your throat is sore from screaming. Its proprietary fumes give you recurring headaches for the rest of your life. It is even in the polls.

So you're saying Mitt Romney's going to win.
posted by briank at 10:45 AM on October 17, 2012 [2 favorites]


Pretty sure at one point cortex was drunk.

One glass of red wine, and Jessamyn had already tagged in at that point.
posted by cortex (staff) at 10:50 AM on October 17, 2012


A liveblog like what we've had in the debate threads this month is a firehose; a fast reader might be able to keep up in real time if what they're doing is just sitting and reading, but they have no chance to get into a serious discussion in the middle of that.

At one point I left the page to fact check something and post a link to twitter, came back to find the page had gained 120 comments in about 5 minutes.
posted by zarq at 10:52 AM on October 17, 2012


Lightweight.
posted by Artw at 10:53 AM on October 17, 2012


Jessamyn had already tagged in at that point.

He speaks the truth! I commented only a single word in that thread but I was sober and busy winning a scrabble match during most of the post-debate.

You're too mod-centric to see the value of the live-bloggy thing, IMHO, Cortex.


Well and I think he's also seeing the "If we, as a site are going to support and encourage this thing as a thing this site does more often than a few times a year maybe and a bunch of times leading up to the election we have to build some mechanisms for this sort of thing" and it's going to be more than just paginated threads. This community cohered and continues to cohere around a lot of things that aren't liveblogging and so now the occasional liveblog is something that they do together that the site tolerates decently well. But when we get to the point where people are like "Let's build stuff so we can do this more often!" we're at the point where we're diverging from what we see as the purpose of the site and unless there's a huge groundswell of users saying that this is what they want the site to become, we're unlikely to put resources in going that direction.
posted by jessamyn (staff) at 10:57 AM on October 17, 2012


I commented only a single word in that thread

Look not all of us speak Interrupting Cow so I wish you'd just made your point in English.
posted by shakespeherian at 11:10 AM on October 17, 2012


And yet, for me, the Palin thread still took longer to load.
posted by asnider at 11:12 AM on October 17, 2012


And not a mention of a fedora ANYWHERE.

Unless you count the comment by JauntyFedora, that is.
posted by THAT William Mize at 11:22 AM on October 17, 2012


A liveblog like what we've had in the debate threads this month is a firehose; a fast reader might be able to keep up in real time if what they're doing is just sitting and reading, but they have no chance to get into a serious discussion in the middle of that.

This actually one of the reasons I liked live blogging in this thread. One literally could not post quickly, so it left more time to focus on watching and thinking about the debate, instead trying to be the first one with a zinger or to note something 10 other people will also note.

This community cohered and continues to cohere around a lot of things that aren't liveblogging and so now the occasional liveblog is something that they do together that the site tolerates decently well.

Somebody should totally build a Mefi offshoot just for live blogging.
posted by Brandon Blatcher at 11:26 AM on October 17, 2012 [1 favorite]


All the good in those live-bloggy things tends to get drowned out by the sheer volume of inane repetition.
posted by Alvy Ampersand at 11:30 AM on October 17, 2012 [2 favorites]


Lightweight.
posted by Brandon Blatcher at 11:39 AM on October 17, 2012 [1 favorite]


this is now Metafilter's longest thread. Happy Election Season everyone!

Reached for comment, Governor Romney said ...
posted by octobersurprise at 12:42 PM on October 17, 2012 [1 favorite]


and unless there's a huge groundswell of users saying that this is what they want the site to become, we're unlikely to put resources in going that direction.

Unless I missed it, I don't think anyone is saying more resources should be going in that direction.

Or are you guys trying to say that other than something as big as a presidential debate or it's equivalent, the live-bloggy thing isn't really something one should expect too often, or really at all?
posted by Skygazer at 1:02 PM on October 17, 2012


Unlike That William Mize I am disappointed that the Fedora thread is not crushing all other threads underneath its well clothed feet.
posted by bswinburn at 1:21 PM on October 17, 2012


...I can't get over just how much Mitt Romney really does resemble Gul Ducat.

Mitt Romney for Forehead Alien
posted by y2karl at 1:33 PM on October 17, 2012


I think the stance has been live blogging is not really what Metafilter is for, but is easily tolerated for things that are a Big Fucking Deal. As to what constitutes a BFD...
posted by edgeways at 1:34 PM on October 17, 2012


Bah humbug!
posted by laconic skeuomorph at 2:19 PM on October 17, 2012


It may now be the longest thread, but I don't see any official certificate for being one long-ass thread, yet.
posted by charred husk at 2:23 PM on October 17, 2012


"They payoff is sort of crappy, though: loading a bigass thread to check on a flag later on is a bit murder."

You know, there was just a MeTa where various solutions for this were discussed :p
posted by klangklangston at 2:30 PM on October 17, 2012


Someday, I hope to have the world's longest thread.

And it'll be longest by virtue of there being much to discuss, not liveblogging a developing event.

I'm thinking I should do a balloon boy retrospective since it is that time of year.
posted by mccarty.tim at 2:48 PM on October 17, 2012 [1 favorite]


oh man, balloon boy. that thread was glorious.
posted by elizardbits at 2:51 PM on October 17, 2012


The call balloon boy came from inside the house.
posted by arcticseal at 2:52 PM on October 17, 2012 [1 favorite]


Mitt Romney for Forehead Alien

Romney/Brak 2012.

Normal view. Normal view! NORMAL VIEW! NOOOOR MAAAAL VIIIIIIIIIEW!
posted by maryr at 2:53 PM on October 17, 2012 [2 favorites]


GOD DAMMIT. I was going to let my cat participate in MeFi history, but I pushed his paws to the keyboard literally seconds too late.
posted by COBRA! at 4:03 PM on October 17, 2012 [4 favorites]


This thread has been archived and is closed to new comments

It's over....*sigh*
posted by SweetTeaAndABiscuit at 4:03 PM on October 17, 2012


Final count is 5817 comments. Nice work, folks.
posted by zarq at 4:04 PM on October 17, 2012 [1 favorite]


Playing Stone Rollin' on air just for that thread..
posted by edgeways at 4:05 PM on October 17, 2012 [2 favorites]


The wiki has been updated.

And now, I'm off to watch the end of Tinker Bell, Secret of the Wings with my kids. :)
posted by zarq at 4:07 PM on October 17, 2012 [3 favorites]


syzygy time traveling on a magic pony
posted by fleacircus at 4:08 PM on October 17, 2012


This thread has been archived and is closed to new comments

It's weird seeing that at the bottom.

But now that it's done, let the analytics begin!
posted by TwoWordReview at 4:12 PM on October 17, 2012


The wiki has been updated.

And now, I'm off to watch the end of Tinker Bell, Secret of the Wings with my kids. :)


That's out already?

/scrambles

Includes Pixie Hollow Games!
posted by Artw at 4:14 PM on October 17, 2012 [1 favorite]


What year will Balloon Boy be eligible to run for President? He's already got my vote.
posted by perhapses at 4:19 PM on October 17, 2012


There was something rightly discordian about the Palin thread having a count of 5555, though.
posted by Pogo_Fuzzybutt at 4:31 PM on October 17, 2012 [3 favorites]


That's out already?

In a few days. I downloaded it via torrent last night. :)
posted by zarq at 7:28 PM on October 17, 2012


Sacre Blu. I feel so lost without the Motherthread.

Now where will I practice my terrible Francaise?

posted by Skygazer at 7:41 PM on October 17, 2012


zarq: "And now, I'm off to watch the end of Tinker Bell, Secret of the Wings with my kids. :) "

I've actually seen two of those Tinker Bell movies (adult, no kids, sue me). They're, surprisingly, not bad.
posted by deborah at 10:34 PM on October 17, 2012


John Lassiter, executive producer, probably counts for something.
posted by Artw at 10:54 PM on October 17, 2012


So, Tinker Bell is the next My Little Pony? Will we see herds of Brinker Bells roaming the great planes next summer?
posted by edgeways at 6:31 AM on October 18, 2012


Doubt it - those films have been coming out for a while without picking up any nerd cred. Pity, it would have been funny watching people flip out about the hilariously anti-science third film.
posted by Artw at 6:35 AM on October 18, 2012


ok, who here ever drove an AMC.
posted by clavdivs at 8:07 AM on October 18, 2012 [1 favorite]


I've actually seen two of those Tinker Bell movies (adult, no kids, sue me). They're, surprisingly, not bad.

Until last night, I'd only seen the second one. It's pretty decent. My daughter is suddenly obsessed with "Tink," and couldn't stop talking about the new one last night. Will have to pick up the others when I have a moment.

There's a huge difference between the stuff I used to watch at their age and what's available to them now, and it allows us as parents to really tailor what they're watching. When I was a kid, I used to watch ultra-violent shows, like Tom and Jerry, Looney Tunes and 'heroic' shows/cartoons (Popeye, Superman, Iron Man, Batman, etc.,) My kids don't watch a ton of tv, but the shows on Nick Jr., are completely devoid of violence. The most violent movie they've seen so far is probably Brave, with Beauty and the Beast coming in a close second.

I have a nice collection of Roadrunner cartoons I want to show them this weekend or next, but I also wonder how they're going to react to the violence. Should be interesting.
posted by zarq at 9:03 AM on October 18, 2012


For over four years, I possessed the final comment in the longest thread on MetaFilter. That torch is passed to MrVisible now. Make me proud, son.
posted by Faint of Butt at 9:59 AM on October 18, 2012 [4 favorites]


Looney Tunes is "ultraviolent?".
posted by spitbull at 10:57 PM on October 18, 2012


There was me, that is Bugs, and my three toons, that is Porky, Sylvester and Daffy and we sat in the ACME milkbar trying to make up our rassoodocks what to do with the evening.
posted by SpiffyRob at 5:18 AM on October 19, 2012 [4 favorites]


spitbull: "Looney Tunes is "ultraviolent?"."

Compared to Dora the Explorer? Sure. Suicides. Gun violence. Explosions. People falling off cliffs, etc. And that's the stuff they didn't cut.
posted by zarq at 10:14 AM on October 19, 2012


Thanks ti the magic of Clone Wars my child now knows about Biologucal Warfare and Genocide.
posted by Artw at 10:51 AM on October 19, 2012 [1 favorite]


Well, yeah. You need something lighter to refresh the palate in between the times Jar-Jar is on the screen.
posted by radwolf76 at 11:07 AM on October 19, 2012




I had the last comment in the longest thread on Metafilter for just under a month.

My brush with history was brief, but full of favorites.
posted by MrVisible at 1:58 PM on November 7, 2012


homunculus: We have a new champion

How appropriate that gerryblog was reelected.
posted by Kattullus at 2:26 PM on November 7, 2012 [1 favorite]


The best part is the latest thread doesn't even have any "will we break the record?" padding.
posted by drezdn at 2:40 PM on November 7, 2012


No, but there is a LOT of WOOOOOOOOO! padding, from drunks.

Which, you know, is okay.
posted by Mezentian at 3:01 AM on November 8, 2012 [2 favorites]


There's always someone ready to go longer.
posted by Neale at 3:26 AM on November 8, 2012


Little do you all know that a corollary of Moore's Law is that the increase in processing power also increases the ability to handle long political threads. This means that the volume of political threads will double every eighteen months.

If you are thinking, "But a 6000+ comment thread isn't exponentially bigger than 5555", consider the number of huge mutherfuckin threads we've had this election. I mean, there were a series of big ones four years ago but this is just stupid.
posted by charred husk at 8:35 AM on November 8, 2012


It's a good thing the election is over. The tubes were starting to clog.
posted by drezdn at 9:09 AM on November 8, 2012


So that thread now crashes my phone browser to the point where I have to do all kinds of mucking about to get it back.

I dunno, maybe we SHOULD paginate after the 3000 comment mark if these monster threads become common in the inbetween years.
posted by Artw at 11:53 AM on November 8, 2012


I'd prefer no pagination if only because that for me, to make sense of big huge threads, requires a lot of going back and forth and reading what people have said before, sometimes to figure out who's being quoted, or to better understand where a commenter is coming from. The best tool for doing that is the ctrl+f function, which becomes less useful with pagination. That said, I've recently started reading MetaFilter regularly on my iPod, and big threads crash all the time. Ideally I'd like a way to make huge threads somehow less resource intensive, but if pagination every 3000 comments turns out to be the best technical solution, I'll learn to live with it.
posted by Kattullus at 12:50 PM on November 8, 2012


consider the number of huge mutherfuckin threads we've had this election

Between the motherthread, the 4 debate threads and the election thread itself I think I've read every one of about 25,000 comments. Madness!
posted by TwoWordReview at 1:13 PM on November 8, 2012




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