#WomensMarch February 24, 2015 6:48 PM Subscribe

I'm issuing a #WomensMarch* Challenge - can we add 100 extra FFPs by women in the month of March?

#JulyByWomen was a huge success, thanks to viggorlijah who gave us the idea. To quote her:

"What's the goal?
More posts by women.

Do posts have to be about "women's issues"?
Nope. Great posts on any subject."

I want to specifically invite women who are marginalized along more than one axis to participate if they want to - women of color, trans women, women with physical and/or mental disabilities, indigenous women, poor women, lesbians and bisexual women, and other groups I may have missed.

It would be wonderful if people who want to act as supports/mentors to women apprehensive about making a first or a first-in-a-while post would please comment below if you're open to getting contacted through MeMail. This can also be a place for asking questions about posting an FFP, discussing what makes a good FFP, and getting that extra support one might need.

People seeking support for making an FPP can find it at the chatter forum, in the WomansMarch subforum.

*Name courtesy of Miko.

posted by Deoridhe to MetaFilter-Related at 6:48 PM (328 comments total) 56 users marked this as a favorite

Hear here!

Pulling another conversation from the previous thread:

nadawi: i would support julybywomen again. i think we can get some excitement by referencing last year's success and the tags would match would be a cool way to scroll through it.

me: I like nadawi's point about scrolling through old posts, though. What if we requested to put a new tag on the JulyByWomen posts along the lines of "MonthByWomen", so that different months when people thought this was an important initiative could be individually searched but you could also look at the continuity of the whole thing?

What do people think about that? I do like the idea of tying #womenMarch to #JulybyWomen in a historical sense, and making those sets of posts easy to find. I think it would help preserve the momentum of the thing.
posted by sciatrix at 6:53 PM on February 24, 2015 [1 favorite]

Why does it matter who does the posting? There are a lot of people here who don't even say what their gender is.
posted by Chocolate Pickle at 6:54 PM on February 24, 2015 [12 favorites]

Excellent. Julybywomen was fabulous - even though I was lazy, I really enjoyed all the new posters and stuff.

/gonna whistle right past CP's comment because NOPE on the derail NOPE
posted by rtha at 6:59 PM on February 24, 2015 [89 favorites]

Nice.
posted by Joseph Gurl at 7:00 PM on February 24, 2015

Chocolate Pickle: it's not "marchONLYbywomen." Anyone may post, as usual. No bad can come of encouraging more women to participate, and much good can.
posted by Joseph Gurl at 7:01 PM on February 24, 2015 [26 favorites]

I am so in. Thank you muchly, Deoridhe, for posting this!
posted by Ruki at 7:02 PM on February 24, 2015

Chocolate Pickle, allow me to suggest you read through the original JulyByWomen post, which hashed through that discussion quite extensively, and the end of the Too Much False Rape? MeTa, wherein a sizeable number of women posters revealed they are feeling silenced and some agree - once again - that more female voices would be grand.

Could we maybe keep this MeTa to discussing the logistics of #WomensMarch instead of the justification, which is more properly discussed in the TMFR MeTa?
posted by gingerest at 7:02 PM on February 24, 2015 [26 favorites]

I am in for posting more.

I am also totally available to anyone who wants some mentoring, advice, previewing, or encouragement. My posts tend to be in the art/history/archaeology/design/culture realm, and I've done both highly researched multi-faceted posts, single-destination posts, and posts combining news stories to reflect a new discovery or idea.

I like to read posts on a wide variety of topics, despite my relatively narrow content posting history, and would be happy to cheer folks on.
posted by julen at 7:03 PM on February 24, 2015 [3 favorites]

I'm in. Expect me to supply a post at the last imaginable minute.
posted by gingerest at 7:04 PM on February 24, 2015 [12 favorites]

This is a great idea. Thanks in advance for your contributions, they're an important part of why I like coming here.
posted by mordax at 7:06 PM on February 24, 2015

Any suggestions on what men should do to help? keep doing what we are doing? make fpps on gender issues? or is this more aimed at getting more women to participate?
posted by MisantropicPainforest at 7:08 PM on February 24, 2015

Chiming in to say that debating the existence of this can happen in the other, angrier thread - please leave this one to logistical discussions, for clarity and sanity.
posted by restless_nomad (staff) at 7:08 PM on February 24, 2015 [15 favorites]

Why does it matter who does the posting?

If it really doesn't matter to you, then surely it doesn't matter if there are more posts by women, and you could've just shrugged and kept walking. Except that clearly it does matter, since you felt the need to say something.

JulyByWomen encouraged me to set new goals for the kinds of FPPs I posted, and I found myself much more inclined to post FPPs in the months after. I don't really have any specific goals I want to reach for this time, so I'm not sure I'll be a posting-participant in the #WomensMarch, but I support the idea. My Memail is always open if anyone (male, female, or nonbinary) wants to hit me up for support/idea bouncing.
posted by kagredon at 7:09 PM on February 24, 2015 [23 favorites]

Great idea! I really liked julybywomen and was just about ready for another one. (I like this tag better, too.)
posted by zeptoweasel at 7:11 PM on February 24, 2015

I've been reading through the old #JulyByWomen thread myself and found it really interesting in a lot of ways--I wish I'd known about it in October when I joined!

I like the notion mentioned by jessamyn in that thread that she often comes up with post ideas by reading about cool things in books and digging around in the Internet for cool pieces that would get people discussing that topic. I've been reading a lot of great history lately and am debating stealing that idea. Julen, have you ever done an FPP along those lines?

I am also toying with the notion of producing an asexuality specific FPP that doesn't have anything to do with "lol asexuals exist!!!" The problem with that is that most (although not all) of the writers I'd cite are currently writing for a group blog I'm the vice-admin of, although I wouldn't necessarily be linking anything that I personally have written. I'm pretty sure that treads heavily on the "do not, do NOT self promote" line, even if it doesn't cross it (which is doubtful). Maybe I could focus more on essays written by people that are not hosted on the group blog.

I'm not even actually sure most of Metafilter would be interested in such a thing. I see asexuality posts now and again but they're always the same old "look these weirdoes exist" sorts of things and not any of the topics that actual asexuals talk about. And I'm not sure I'd be brave enough to sit in on such a discussion myself, because asexuality is one of those things that I really do not expect people to talk well about--hell, even on the recent Wired FPP that referenced one of those "look these weirdoes exist" articles, there was a poster who decided to take the opportunity to go on about how he thought those people were probably lying and behaving differently "at home."
posted by sciatrix at 7:12 PM on February 24, 2015 [10 favorites]

Love it. Will be thinking a lot about what to post!
posted by Hermione Granger at 7:14 PM on February 24, 2015 [1 favorite]

Move the goal posts!

I can't say I tracked posters' gender this past July, but July was an excellent month for metafilter. I look forward to March.
posted by jepler at 7:20 PM on February 24, 2015 [2 favorites]

Any suggestions on what men should do to help? keep doing what we are doing? make fpps on gender issues? or is this more aimed at getting more women to participate?

We discussed in the other thread the idea of collaborative FPPs. Although the original idea was for weary women to get together to post something, I'll make myself available to anyone who wants to advance the ideal of making MeFi more friendly towards women.
posted by Ruki at 7:22 PM on February 24, 2015

Move the post goals!
posted by uosuaq at 7:23 PM on February 24, 2015 [16 favorites]

The problem with that is that most (although not all) of the writers I'd cite are currently writing for a group blog I'm the vice-admin of, although I wouldn't necessarily be linking anything that I personally have written.

Collaborative FPP? This is a topic I'd be interested in.
posted by Ruki at 7:24 PM on February 24, 2015 [1 favorite]

I would be SUPER interested in an asexuality post, sciatrix!!

(I definitely hear you about being concerned about the ensuing discussion, though, so no pressure -- just loads of enthusiasm.)
posted by Westringia F. at 7:25 PM on February 24, 2015 [1 favorite]

As opposed as I am to posts as activism (that is, posts crafted to spread a message or attitude rather than to share something fascinating that the poster has discovered or stumbled across), I don't think this:

>I'm not even actually sure most of Metafilter would be interested in such a thing.

should factor into your decision making in whether or not to make an FPP. I also think people would be interested, though, if that helps.

(on preview: yep, people are interested)
posted by Joseph Gurl at 7:27 PM on February 24, 2015 [1 favorite]

MisantropicPainforest: "Any suggestions on what men should do to help? keep doing what we are doing? make fpps on gender issues? or is this more aimed at getting more women to participate?"

Volunteer to be a mentor! Comment in the posts if you have something good/interesting to say. Favorite them if favoriting is your thing. (Comments or favorites can be great ways to encourage newbies... it's awesome knowing there are 2 or 10 or 25 or 100 or 1000 people who are intrested in X, too).

One of the beauties of this month is that it doesn't have to be about gender issues - topics can be about anything. The goal is to help bring different perspectives to light. We all haunt different parts of the web and have a unique subset of interests; we just want to open the doors a bit more and welcome more sharing.

sciatrix: "I like the notion mentioned by jessamyn in that thread that she often comes up with post ideas by reading about cool things in books and digging around in the Internet for cool pieces that would get people discussing that topic. I've been reading a lot of great history lately and am debating stealing that idea. Julen, have you ever done an FPP along those lines?"

I have! Notably, my posts on traveling librarians came from an off-hand remark in a book I was reading about flappers, and I got obsessed with the idea and tracked everything down. The women and bicycles post came after I read a history of knitting in America. The Goat Gland Doctor/Politician/Radio mogul came out of a book I read about him. Other posts (history of pants, etruscan tomb, first artists, Elizabeth Zimmerman) came out of reading specialized news feeds. I've gotten post ideas from NPR interviews, secondary tv characters, things I love that I don't think are widely popular now, weird discoveries via Google failures (s'mores, endurance contests), weird things my father says, doing image searches, looking up things that my mother and I argue about the origins of, and so much more.
posted by julen at 7:27 PM on February 24, 2015 [10 favorites]

sciatrix, I would be very interested in a hypothetical asexuality post that moves beyond gawking. Though I would be cautiously pessimistic about the ensuing discussion; but just because a thread goes bad doesn't mean the original post isn't good, or appreciated by quieter readers.
posted by byanyothername at 7:28 PM on February 24, 2015 [5 favorites]

I hereby volunteer not to be a mentor, as I've never made an FPP despite nearly 15 years of membership.

Also, as a man, I promise I will not post in March.
posted by Joseph Gurl at 7:28 PM on February 24, 2015 [4 favorites]

Collaborative FPP? This is a topic I'd be interested in.

Maybe, yeah. Hey, mods, what do you think about this? I'd like input--I don't want to be taken as skirting the rules by, like, hiding my self promotion behind another user posting an FPP or something.

Re it not being activism, no, the idea I have in mind has absolutely nothing to do with activism or making a particular argument--I just think some of the topics I know people discussing are interesting, like the intersection of asexuality and rape culture or what it means to be sexually repressed or the intersection of asexuality and religion or how to negotiate relationships as an asexual person.
posted by sciatrix at 7:30 PM on February 24, 2015 [3 favorites]

I don't even really want to read more "women's issues" or "feminism" posts per se ... it's just that people on MetaFilter post what they find interesting. We have a wide diversity of people at MetaFilter with a wide variety of interests and expertise. Sometimes, people's interests and expertise tend to cluster in particular areas that they share with other people. When surfing the web, people think, "Oh, this would be cool for MetaFilter!" when they see something about, say, comic books. But maybe when they see something about embroidery that is equally as interesting, they don't think that, because they've never seen that sort of post on MetaFilter before.

By deliberately asking our female members to consciously try to make posts, we can hopefully expand the idea of what sorts of FPPs are interesting and worthy for MetaFilter, and provide a wider range of interesting, weird, engaging stuff for people to read.

And further:

Regarding topic bias, I just did a quick search, and there are six posts tagged Jack Vance and only one tagged Tamora Pierce. Five tagged Ursula LeGuin, seventeen tagged Isaac Asimov. Twenty-two for J.K. Rowling, twenty-four for George R.R. Martin.

Not that we shouldn't discuss male authors! Those posts are great! I enjoy them and I get a lot out of them! Just that I think MetaFilter is the poorer for only having had one Tamora Pierce post because SHE IS THE BEST EVER, and it's too bad she attracts less popular attention because she writes SFF for young women ... even though she pops up basically like clockwork within the first ten comments of ANY AskMe that's asking for SFF book recommendations.?

Make a FPP on the WEIRDEST niche interest you have that people not specifically involved in that community/hobby/craft/interest will not know about. That is the #JulyByWomen spirit, that helps create a greater diversity of posts on MetaFilter, and makes MetaFilter more interesting! There are five posts on comic books for every one post on fashion, which isn't to say comic books aren't plenty interesting -- but that there's lots more territory to mine on fashion! People see certain topics and thing, "Ooooh, I know MetaFilter likes stories about this." But other topics we don't know we should like yet. Show us the cool stuff we should like!
posted by Eyebrows McGee at 7:31 PM on February 24, 2015 [22 favorites]

Joseph Gurl:

>I'm not even actually sure most of Metafilter would be interested in such a thing.

should factor into your decision making in whether or not to make an FPP. I also think people would be interested, though, if that helps."

I want to emphasize this. Some of the best posts I've made didn't get many comments and/or favorites, but there were still people who liked them. It may not be video of George Clooney petting cats and singing the theme song from the Greatest American Hero while wearing a dragon-shaped water floatie (a guaranteed 1 billion favorites), but some of the best things I've ever seen on MeFi had fewer than 10 (sometimes 5) comments or favorites.
posted by julen at 7:31 PM on February 24, 2015 [5 favorites]

I loved JulyByWomen, so am looking forward to a March filled with excellent posts. I have a limited FPP posting history, but happy to proof read and be a sounding board.
posted by arcticseal at 7:32 PM on February 24, 2015 [1 favorite]

_{Though I would be cautiously pessimistic about the ensuing discussion; but just because a thread goes bad doesn't mean the original post isn't good, or appreciated by quieter readers.

Frankly, cautious pessimism is like, an order of magnitude above where my expectations are right now. If I make this, I'd need to be budgeting some serious time for self care and/or throwing the post out there and fleeing silent into the night. Especially because there are a couple of specific things that drive me nuts about the way that nonasexual people first start discussing asexual issues and experiences where the thing I'd automatically link to is something I wrote, and leaving that out means I'd have to make the same argument again in comments...}
posted by sciatrix at 7:33 PM on February 24, 2015 [3 favorites]

How does mentoring work from the other side of the table? Because I have some deeply weird things probably only like four people on the site would care about that I've been saving for show and tell for over a year, but I don't feel very confident standing in front of the class.
posted by byanyothername at 7:36 PM on February 24, 2015 [5 favorites]

I'm in. I failed to make a post last July despite my best intentions (pretty much due to sheer laziness) but I loved all the posts that month. I rarely comment in threads about rape/sexism/women's issues because of a lack of patience (and there are invariably people in the thread saying what I would, quickly and more articulately) but I've read every single comment so far in the 800+ false rape MeTa, and I can always be found silently favoriting people in those threads. Thank you for getting this rolling!
posted by skycrashesdown at 7:38 PM on February 24, 2015 [2 favorites]

Because I have some deeply weird things probably only like four people on the site would care about that I've been saving for show and tell for over a year, but I don't feel very confident standing in front of the class.

Those four people will be thankful for your post, and you'd probably be surprised at how many other people will be interested.
posted by Ruki at 7:41 PM on February 24, 2015 [25 favorites]

As someone who reads and talks a whole shitload more than she makes fpps, let me say out loud that I REALLY love posts about "this weird thing" or "this very niche thing" etc. that maybe garner four "I had no idea, thanks!" kinds of comments and a bunch of favorites. So, people thinking of posting for the first time, don't think "only tiny number of people would be interested in this" is a reason to not post. It's not!
posted by rtha at 7:44 PM on February 24, 2015 [18 favorites]

Oh my gosh byanyothername, don't be a tease - post on them!!
posted by joseph conrad is fully awesome at 7:45 PM on February 24, 2015 [2 favorites]

Any suggestions on what men should do to help? keep doing what we are doing? make fpps on gender issues? or is this more aimed at getting more women to participate?

what julen said about favoriting, memailing, commenting, supporting. how do posters know if they did a good job or if anyone appreciated their effort? by the response of fellow mefites. and this is definitely about getting women to participate. usually we talk about gender issues on metafilter, this is more about doing gender issues.

there was also a request to sidebar last time, so maybe that's a good idea too?

not directed at Misanthropic but iirc damn near every single aspect of why this thing and what about the men is addressed in the julybywomen thread, it is also an interesting discussion, and as we already know, has a happy ending. if you are curious or even feeling fighty and contrarian i recommend reading it.
posted by twist my arm at 7:45 PM on February 24, 2015 [3 favorites]

March is gonna be a weird, busy month, but I've been thinking about stuff that can be put together ahead of time. JulyByWomen was a blast. Here's hoping WomensMarch is just as great. :) Thanks, Deoridhe and Miko!
posted by Orange Dinosaur Slide at 7:47 PM on February 24, 2015 [2 favorites]

Hey, mods, what do you think about this? I'd like input--I don't want to be taken as skirting the rules by, like, hiding my self promotion behind another user posting an FPP or something.

If someone sees your blog and picks some stuff out to craft a post around, that's fine, but actively working on a post about your own material (or material on a site you work on) is a firm no. It might well work as a projects post, that someone could then link to on the blue, but an FPP really, really needs to come from someone objective about the material, and by definition you're not. Sorry! It's always a trial when you want to talk about the niche-y thing that you're sufficiently invested in that all the good stuff is self-linky.
posted by restless_nomad (staff) at 7:49 PM on February 24, 2015

yay! julybywomen was a fantastic month of posts, and I'm happy to see it come around again.
posted by dhruva at 7:50 PM on February 24, 2015 [1 favorite]

There's a lot of great advice in the #JulyByWomen original MetaTalk thread, and also in some of the follow-ups like this one: What is posting really?, posted by heyho.

You can check out all the posts under the tag. (heh - I'm near the top, "that is unintentional" - said like Alan Rickman in Die Hard)
posted by joseph conrad is fully awesome at 7:51 PM on February 24, 2015

Thanks for the heads up! What about material from other people who now blog on that site, but written before they joined it and hosted elsewhere? Sorry, I just want to feel out where the boundaries are--is this something I should not touch in favor of, IDK, just tossing links at anyone who is interested and letting them take it from there, or is it something I can touch but just make very sure not to involve anything I personally have done?
posted by sciatrix at 7:52 PM on February 24, 2015

Basically the rule of thumb we tell people is, "if you know the writer well enough that they might thank you for posting their stuff to MeFi, it's too close a connection." You're totally welcome to contact us with edge-case stuff if you want, although most of the time the answer is if you have to ask, it's probably a no.
posted by restless_nomad (staff) at 7:53 PM on February 24, 2015 [7 favorites]

ETA: and by "tossing links" I mean "if anyone wants to know more about the specific topics I mentioned, I'd be happy to point them to where stuff like that is and let them make a decision," not "let me just secretly feed you links and like, use you as my sock puppet behind the scenes to self promote."
posted by sciatrix at 7:54 PM on February 24, 2015

Sounds good! I'll leave off on it, then. I don't think I'm distant enough from anyone writing longform stuff right now that I could honestly post anything--I'm quoted at length under this pseud in Julia Decker's new book, even, so I don't think I could even have posted the 101-style OP from September or the recent WIRED article. If someone else is interested in the topic, they're welcome to have a chat with me, but I think this is a topic I need to not post for the time being.
posted by sciatrix at 7:57 PM on February 24, 2015

Make a FPP on the WEIRDEST niche interest you have that people not specifically involved in that community/hobby/craft/interest will not know about.

*begins assembling links for a post on my favorite late 20th/early 21st century Estonian choral composer*
posted by KathrynT at 7:59 PM on February 24, 2015 [35 favorites]

I am already dancing with glee, KathrynT!
posted by winna at 8:02 PM on February 24, 2015

Anything to get us out of this Type 0 civilization status already.
posted by Johann Georg Faust at 8:08 PM on February 24, 2015 [1 favorite]

I have some deeply weird things probably only like four people on the site would care about
I believe this is unpossible. With the number of people that visit here, there is no interest so niche that it would only appeal to four people. Personally, I'm quite intrigued by the deeply weird and can't wait to see what you post!
posted by dg at 8:17 PM on February 24, 2015 [1 favorite]

If anyone is looking for things that would make good posts, I keep a list in my profile that I add to as ideas come.
I only ask that you MeMail me first - not so I can vet you, but because the list functions more like memory triggers than full-fledged post ideas, and so I know to strike one off.
posted by the man of twists and turns at 8:17 PM on February 24, 2015 [3 favorites]

This is a good idea coming at the right time. Looking forward to the posts.
posted by Drinky Die at 8:44 PM on February 24, 2015

Any suggestions on what men should do to help? keep doing what we are doing? make fpps on gender issues? or is this more aimed at getting more women to participate?

I would actually say men who want to support the project should refrain from posting FPPs on gender issues during March, though I am saying this as my individual opinion and I can totally see other women having the exact opposite opinion and I would totally get where they were coming from, too. I just think given the way gender threads have been going, trying to deal with any fallout from a bunch of new gender threads is extremely likely to end up with a bunch of exhausted women, which takes energy away from posting their own threads.

(I don't think this applies to women posting threads on gender issues, since it's more of a situation where the poster already knows their own ability to deal with the potential issues that may come up in comments, and would likely be a better judge of what issues might arise than men might, anyway.)
posted by jaguar at 8:48 PM on February 24, 2015 [3 favorites]

Folks, please don't, here.
posted by restless_nomad (staff) at 9:07 PM on February 24, 2015 [5 favorites]

I am greatly pleased to see this announcement and am looking forward to the month of enjoyable reading and commenting.
posted by Dip Flash at 9:11 PM on February 24, 2015 [1 favorite]

I support this pony and hope it grows into a wonderful mare.
posted by Alterscape at 9:21 PM on February 24, 2015 [1 favorite]

I love, love, love learning about deeply weird stuff that's of interest to four people.
posted by ambient2 at 9:30 PM on February 24, 2015 [9 favorites]

Man, just in a recent thread someone was like, here's this obscure random book and three others of us were like YES IT IS GOOD WE HAVE OPINIONS. Metafilter is great because there is always SOMEONE who shares your particular nerdery.

I did have a super-cool thing happen in my state this month but I reluctantly concluded I knew way too many of the principal actors to make it not self-posting so I'm impatiently waiting for someone else to notice it. :)
posted by Eyebrows McGee at 9:33 PM on February 24, 2015 [3 favorites]

My thesis is due two days before March starts (auughhghh) so I will have ZERO excuses to not participate. Commenting here for public accountability :)
posted by estlin at 9:42 PM on February 24, 2015 [5 favorites]

My posts lean more towards lighthearted material than serious matters but I'm happy to help if I can. Feel free to Memail me!
posted by Room 641-A at 9:55 PM on February 24, 2015 [1 favorite]

Sorry to braintickle without any clues! I guess I just want some kind of feedback/moral support/weird cheerleading on these. I'm not sure if just dropping them here is okay or not, but here we are. Without spoiling too much, what I have on backburner are:

Niche historical thing that would be more appropriate for Autumn (Halloween) than March. This is something I've put off because I'd like to build it up more. It's really cool and deserves a full fancy post. If I post it in October, can I still count it as a WomensMarch thing?

Weird animal posts. I love these when they pop up, but the threads never seem to go well. 99% of comments are, "Icky gross!" and I'm genuinely unsure if that's people saying, "Oh cool!" in a socially acceptable way (in which case, we really need more sincere annelid love) or if you guys just seriously hate weird animals. These are low effort, but I always sit on the fence about taking time to write/post one because the community response is always not great. It probably doesn't help that the weird animals I love and want to post about look terrifying (but are historically and presently abused by humans).

The development history of a series of videogames reviled (though increasingly accepted) in gamer culture and just barely obscure enough to be outside non-games-peoples' vision. Largely headed by a woman who gets 0% credit and 100% blame, so that's kind of thematically apt. It's fascinating to me, but absolutely the most niche thing I could ever post ever.

I'd appreciate MeMails with feedback, general advice or advice for how best to frame things to catch the right kind of interest, and discourage bad discussion. Secret handshakes would be nice too. Of course, knowing me, I'll only post one of these, three years from now, with awful timing anyway.
posted by byanyothername at 10:05 PM on February 24, 2015 [4 favorites]

I like weird animal posts! Will MeMail.
posted by We had a deal, Kyle at 10:48 PM on February 24, 2015

oooh, byanyothername, now you've got me thinking. I really love "here is this super-cool historical figure you've never heard of and all the cool things they did" and have tried to start one about a particular person a few times but it never quite seemed to gel. And doing a quick search, they have an early March birthday, so I guess it's time to try again.
posted by kagredon at 11:21 PM on February 24, 2015 [1 favorite]

٩(◜ᴗ◝ )۶

JulyByWomen was the best--there were so many fun and/or thoughtful FPPs every day that I had to be fairly choosy about what I kept up with off-site. I'm delighted to see something like that happening again.
posted by Monsieur Caution at 11:30 PM on February 24, 2015 [2 favorites]

This is a great idea, thanks for setting it up, Deoridhe!

I loved seeing all the new posters and niche topics that came up in #JulyByWomen, and though I only got it together to post once, it definitely encouraged me to comment more on the Blue. I look forward to more of the same next month.

NB I am genderqueer but, y'know, generally treated as a woman and consider it part of my political identity. Here is the exchange viggorlijah and I had about this in the original #JulyByWomen thread.
posted by daisyk at 11:33 PM on February 24, 2015

byanyothername, I am so so here for weird animal posts and obscure game history posts. I'm not sure I have any specific advice for you, but I'll be there cheerleading in the comments, I promise.
posted by daisyk at 11:35 PM on February 24, 2015 [2 favorites]

Metafilter, prepare yourself for at least one post in March about cardiovascular health, if not several. All kinds of things going on with cholesterol guidelines lately for example. (great idea guys)
posted by supercrayon at 12:04 AM on February 25, 2015 [7 favorites]

#JulyByWomen was an awesome month, with a really visible uptick in interesting, thought provoking and quirky FPPs. It made mefi feel a lot more inclusive than normal (to me, anyway). Which just highlights the harm the ongoing ThatGuyism and tolerance of it is causing to the site as a whole, as a cherry on top of the more insidious and nasty harm it's doing to all the people that are feeling excluded or unwanted here because of it. After the absolute shitshow of the TMFR post, where yet again so many women's voices were attempted to be drowned out by the yammering of the usual suspects and others... well, absolutely seriously, yay #WomensMarch.

I just want to tell you good luck. We're all counting on you.
posted by ArkhanJG at 12:38 AM on February 25, 2015 [1 favorite]

It's Dangerous to go alone! Take this.
posted by Deoridhe at 12:59 AM on February 25, 2015 [5 favorites]

Don't forget to use the tag.
posted by Segundus at 1:33 AM on February 25, 2015

Imma be honest here, I pay no attention to who posts what here. I love me some Metafilter, been here for years, it's the topics I care about, first and foremost. If it's a dude posting, hey, good on you, don't care, is your post interesting? It is? Excellent! Are you female? Same post? Excellent! Do not care. I've only got 3 postings in like, what, 7 or 8 years? Anything that encourages anyone to find that perfect post I am all for. Less work for me. Go forth, women of the world, and find me awesome things on the internet, so that I might be entertained.
posted by gideonswann at 2:25 AM on February 25, 2015 [2 favorites]

We're not doing this for your entertainment. We're doing it for our own representation.
posted by ocherdraco at 4:07 AM on February 25, 2015 [33 favorites]

Great idea, July By Women pushed me into regular posting, looking forward to Women's March!
posted by ellieBOA at 4:17 AM on February 25, 2015

I'm in. I made a post in July, I'll make a post in March. It's not a lot, but if enough of us do it, then it will be a lot.
posted by Too-Ticky at 4:21 AM on February 25, 2015 [1 favorite]

And gideonswann, I hereby grant you permission to be entertained by my future post.
posted by Too-Ticky at 4:22 AM on February 25, 2015 [4 favorites]

I loved #JulyByWomen so much, but why relegate your posts to a single month again. If you want to be visible or show solidarity, perhaps you could adopt a more general #PostByWomen tag and start posting today. (mostly because I can't wait until March)
posted by FreezBoy at 5:00 AM on February 25, 2015

I'd find it most helpful if men did not tell women how to do this.
posted by Too-Ticky at 5:07 AM on February 25, 2015 [29 favorites]

I find a concerted, time-defined effort to be way more motivating for me than a general effort to increase posts by women. It gives you special license to take more risks and also you feel like you're part of a team effort to do something bigger than yourself.

So in this way, having a special "hey post-away!" signal that has a clear end-date is highly motivating for me. And generates more excitement and enthusiasm. YMMV.
posted by joseph conrad is fully awesome at 5:12 AM on February 25, 2015 [17 favorites]

A year-long 'have at it women' approach would not be as effective, is what I'm sayin'.
posted by joseph conrad is fully awesome at 5:13 AM on February 25, 2015 [1 favorite]

I really enjoyed JulyByWomen and am interested in participating in WomensMarch, but I'm definitely still smarting from all the "false rape" nonsense and the associated MetaTalk thread. I strongly support this and look forward to seeing the links, but I don't know if I'll participate as either a poster or a commenter.

(Thanks, assholes, for making me feel like shit and filling me completely with doubt about every word I ever post on this site ever again)
posted by hydropsyche at 5:31 AM on February 25, 2015 [8 favorites]

I'm in favor of #womensmarch. It'll help take my mind off that lousy Smarch weather.
posted by Metroid Baby at 5:34 AM on February 25, 2015 [7 favorites]

Just limbered up for some practice with my first post since July. Thanks for the push to do so.
posted by Stacey at 5:49 AM on February 25, 2015

I'm looking forward to this.

This is likely my only contribution. But I'm making it anyway.
posted by crush-onastick at 6:12 AM on February 25, 2015 [1 favorite]

I'm in. Thank you.
posted by MonkeyToes at 6:14 AM on February 25, 2015

I'd find it most helpful if men did not tell women how to do this.
I'd find it most helpful if you do not assume my gender.
posted by FreezBoy at 6:19 AM on February 25, 2015

FreezBoy's account has been disabled.
posted by Rustic Etruscan at 6:25 AM on February 25, 2015

Sorry to see you go, FreezBoy. I must say, I also assumed you were male, based on the "Boy" in your username, and the way you seemed to be referring to women as "you" rather than "we." If it's a simple misunderstanding, perhaps you might see this, and come back sometime.
posted by ocherdraco at 6:26 AM on February 25, 2015 [7 favorites]

I can beta-read posts if anyone wants, 'cos I'm like a professional-ish writer and stuff.
posted by EmpressCallipygos at 6:27 AM on February 25, 2015 [3 favorites]

God is very quick these days...
posted by joseph conrad is fully awesome at 6:27 AM on February 25, 2015

(Oh I assumed it was the Meta "hand of God", not self-buttoning...)
posted by joseph conrad is fully awesome at 6:28 AM on February 25, 2015

(My previous comment should not be considered an accurate reflection of the typical caliber of my writing, by the way.)
posted by EmpressCallipygos at 6:28 AM on February 25, 2015 [4 favorites]

FreezBoy closed their account. Maybe they'll decide to come back, and if so they'll be welcome.
posted by taz (staff) at 6:29 AM on February 25, 2015 [1 favorite]

Further to joseph conrad is fully awesome's point about the motivational effect of ongoing vs. time-limited challenges -- I think #JulyByWomen has had an effect long after the nominal month, by encouraging activity on the site that people have then kept up since then. It certainly had that effect on me.
posted by daisyk at 6:30 AM on February 25, 2015 [1 favorite]

ocherdraco: I also assumed you were male, based on the "Boy" in your username

Did you just get Marisa Stole the Precious Thing'ed?
posted by gman at 6:30 AM on February 25, 2015 [4 favorites]

Well if you post frequently it really breaks down that anxiety barrier, and once the month's out you've pretty much "faced your fear", as they say...
posted by joseph conrad is fully awesome at 6:38 AM on February 25, 2015 [3 favorites]

Kinda, yeah. But it was the combo of the username, plus pronoun usage, not just the username itself.

But still, FreezBoy is right. We shouldn't assume gender, even if a person's username is "I am a manly man person who is male and masculine." Usernames come from many places, and are not always descriptive of the user.

I, for example, am not a gold-ish dragon.
posted by ocherdraco at 6:39 AM on February 25, 2015 [4 favorites]

I have a feeling there was a WEEEEEE bit more to it than "they thought I was a guy I'M LEAVING FOREVER".
posted by EmpressCallipygos at 6:50 AM on February 25, 2015 [1 favorite]

It would probably be good not to get too far sidetracked by an unfortunate misunderstanding. The misunderstood person isn't here to explain their side.
posted by Rustic Etruscan at 6:56 AM on February 25, 2015

Yeah, folks, can you try to maybe keep this thread about the topic? I would have said so earlier but it's been busy.
posted by taz (staff) at 7:00 AM on February 25, 2015 [2 favorites]

I support this initiative wholeheartedly.
posted by a manly man person who is male and masculine at 7:02 AM on February 25, 2015 [35 favorites]

Hi Blatcher.
posted by gman at 7:07 AM on February 25, 2015 [5 favorites]

Ossum! Why, I fully endorse it, let's try it at once! (That's what came into my head, I'm not imagining myself as the two-faced mayor of Halloween Town.)

Hermione Granger: Will be thinking a lot about what to post!

My tip: don't over-think it. Sure, put thought into your post(s), but don't not post something because you don't think it would make a good post (unless it's something to induce GRAR, or is a thin, jokey "look at this thing" post). Don't forget a significant portion of MeFites support cute animal posts, so it's not like you need to make A Big Statement with your posts. That's what I'm trying to say here.

But if you'd like to post and you're thin on ideas, there's the mostly dusty drafts and collaborations MeFi Wiki page, and of course the man of twists and turns profile page. And I'll offer my services as a sounding board or wall in which to bounce ideas.

Segundus: Don't forget to use the tag.

Or just post and don't use the tag, if you're not comfortable identifying yourself in the gender binary, or if you don't like self-identification, or if you just forget to use the tag. The tags are bonus, the posts are what matter.
posted by filthy light thief at 7:13 AM on February 25, 2015 [4 favorites]

Collaborations page!?? Alright *somebody* had a good idea for a MetaTalk post... not sayin' who... just IT WAS ME.
posted by joseph conrad is fully awesome at 7:18 AM on February 25, 2015 [1 favorite]

Oh, yeaahh!

Wait, no. OK, there we go. Go WomensMarch! I am excite.

It would be awesome if folks wanted to workshop or collaborate on their would-be FPPs over yonder, and I hereby volunteer my services as tireless research monkey to anyone who wants to flesh out a link or two but isn't sure of what sort of tack they'd like to take.

PS I would for real love it if dudes could just maybe try to temporarily refrain from offering their... helpful advice on how women should approach a month of MeFi posts by women. And hey, if you feel like you just can't resist giving your dudely opinion on what we're already doing wrong, you could maybe try giving ocherdraco's incredible comment a look over instead. Bam! #femsplained!
posted by divined by radio at 7:24 AM on February 25, 2015 [8 favorites]

I'm in. Expect some angry posts from me.

I'm totally interpreting this as that we're marching on something. What? I dunno yet, but I've got banners and signs ready!
posted by and they trembled before her fury at 7:30 AM on February 25, 2015 [6 favorites]

I'm not 100% clear on what tags we're using. Someone enlighten me.

(Also, does viggorlijah know of this thread...?)
posted by joseph conrad is fully awesome at 7:43 AM on February 25, 2015 [1 favorite]

> JulyByWomen was the best

No kidding—I hadn't enjoyed MeFi so much in years, and I'm looking forward to March as a respite from all the stuff that's kept me from enjoying the site much lately. Thanks for a great suggestion, Deoridhe!
posted by languagehat at 7:44 AM on February 25, 2015 [8 favorites]

Comment removed. I'm pretty tired of grade school shit being unavoidable just because this is Metatalk; if your sole motivation for commenting in this thread is to take some kind of shitty or snide or yesbutwhatifgenderblindness swipe at the idea of people on the site collectively planning to revisit a positive group project, just make the small effort to close the tab and go elsewhere.
posted by cortex (staff) at 7:55 AM on February 25, 2015 [44 favorites]

OK - I'm going to start working on a few posts - I didn't participate in JulybyWomen, but I wanted to. Now I'm going to commit to at least two posts in WomensMarch!
posted by Sophie1 at 8:02 AM on February 25, 2015 [3 favorites]

joseph conrad is fully awesome: I'm not 100% clear on what tags we're using. Someone enlighten me.

I think it's WomensMarch for posts this March, plus MonthByWomen.

MonthByWomen can be backtagged to the JulyByWomen posts if [[not sure what causes this to happen?]], and we can use it if we do a MonthByWomen again in the future, so all the months' posts' can be found.
posted by daisyk at 8:03 AM on February 25, 2015 [3 favorites]

Okay - thanks daisyk!

I would like to use some of my hamstery energy to back-tag - and I'm a sucker for badges. Could a mod weigh in? Are we now initiating a back-tagging effort on the JulyByWomen posts?
posted by joseph conrad is fully awesome at 8:06 AM on February 25, 2015 [1 favorite]

I can add the MonthByWomen tag to all the posts tagged with JulyByWomen.
posted by taz (staff) at 8:08 AM on February 25, 2015 [3 favorites]

I am available if anyone would like advice / help constructing a post. Will turn memail back on this weekend.
posted by zarq at 8:09 AM on February 25, 2015 [4 favorites]

Just went and backtagged my own JulyByWomen posts to add MonthByWomen.
posted by Stacey at 8:11 AM on February 25, 2015

Yeah, it's a small enough set of posts that setting up a new group of user permissions for crowdsourced backtagging would be more effort than it's worth, I think. It's a small job and pretty easily doable. (And probably we can have pb just do it automagically, for that matter.)
posted by cortex (staff) at 8:11 AM on February 25, 2015 [1 favorite]

Just wanted to say that I somehow missed that this was a thing last July and just assumed the site was having a really good month. So I'm excited!
posted by selfnoise at 8:13 AM on February 25, 2015 [3 favorites]

I started, but pb automagic would be autofabulous.

July by Women was a high point in an an overall pretty super-shitty year. I'm happy to see this revisitation!
posted by taz (staff) at 8:16 AM on February 25, 2015 [8 favorites]

I really enjoyed JulyByWomen, so I'm going to do my best to get over my anxiety and make a post in March. Plus it gives me a great excuse to scour the weirder edges of my internet sphere for interesting post fodder.
posted by specialagentwebb at 8:20 AM on February 25, 2015 [4 favorites]

I've never actually done an FPP before. I will work on something for March.
posted by Lyn Never at 8:24 AM on February 25, 2015 [11 favorites]

I'm looking forward to this. The posts last July were great!
posted by zarq at 8:26 AM on February 25, 2015 [1 favorite]

I'm going to try to contribute more too, I loved July by Women! Thanks for this initiative.
posted by Ziggy500 at 8:27 AM on February 25, 2015

pb has accomplished a backtaggification!
posted by cortex (staff) at 9:05 AM on February 25, 2015 [9 favorites]

Woo! Thanks pb!
posted by daisyk at 9:08 AM on February 25, 2015 [2 favorites]

I'm also happy to pre-read posts and post ideas and to generally cheer people on. it's not as scary as it seems (I know, i was quaking in my boots my first FPP but glad I took the plunge).
posted by Miko at 9:10 AM on February 25, 2015 [1 favorite]

Jesus that was quick.
posted by joseph conrad is fully awesome at 9:18 AM on February 25, 2015 [1 favorite]

yay! i didn't realize the backtagging could be done like that. my plan is to post at least once next month. hopefully i won't wait until the very end of the month.
posted by nadawi at 9:39 AM on February 25, 2015 [1 favorite]

Jesus that was quick.

God is very quick these days... ;D
posted by Celsius1414 at 9:39 AM on February 25, 2015 [1 favorite]

This is so great! I ran across an article I considered posting a week or so ago, but didn't. Now I may flesh it out a bit more with some more links and plan to post it in March.

I really loved JulybyWomen, and it definitely helped encourage me to post FPPs that month and since.
posted by misskaz at 9:41 AM on February 25, 2015 [2 favorites]

I'm a lady-person who closed my account a few years ago and I have been lurking and reading since. I decided to come back today because I deeply appreciate all the women here who have been sharing interesting and heartfelt and important things, even when it's tiring and hard. Anyway, I would like to be part of #WomensMarch.
posted by the turtle's teeth at 9:43 AM on February 25, 2015 [56 favorites]

I never got around to contributing to JulybyWomen, but I will make an effort to do so for WomensMarch (you know, if I can decide upon a decent topic). Thanks for organizing!
posted by cellar door at 9:54 AM on February 25, 2015 [2 favorites]

JulyByWomen went really well last year so I wholeheartedly look forward to this next month!
posted by mathowie (staff) at 9:58 AM on February 25, 2015 [8 favorites]

I will make my first post this month! This is great.
posted by Pardon Our Dust at 10:20 AM on February 25, 2015 [1 favorite]

Welcome back, the turtle's teeth!

For folks who'd like to participate but feel at a bit of loss about where to start, I have these recommendations:

1. I now have a list I keep in a text file on my laptop (and on paper in my purse for when things interest me when I'm not tethered to the laptop) - of topics to investigate more, interesting links, idle questions ("What is the history of X?'" Why does Y happen.") and potential FPPS that aren't quite ready for posting yet. When I have some spare time, I investigate one of those things, look for supporting information, or try to confirm that the original article isn't by a crank. This list also informs the list of books I get from the library ... which often inspire additions to the list, too.

2. Make the posts you want to see. If you like single-link posts that are short, sweet, and pack a punch, do it! If you feel more comfortable researching the heck out of a topic and providing a multi-faceted look, do it! If you are interested in science or cooking or large flightless birds or patterns in sea shell coloration or life hacks or the history of wrenches or city planning in cities 1000 years old or the roles gossip plays in US presidential elections or cats in scanners, make a post about it! We often talk about topics Metafilter "doesn't do well", but there are lots of topics Metafilter does rarely or never before that would be interesting to a lot of people, some of whom don't know it yet.

3. Remember that your FPP is not a reflection upon your worth as a person, site member, or person who is interested in X. A good FPP is essentially saying, "I think this is interesting/cool/fun/mindblowing/useful and I want to share it with this community." It's a positive action (almost always), but it's not the most important thing you will do today.
posted by julen at 10:32 AM on February 25, 2015 [12 favorites]

JulyByWomen was awesome so I'm really happy to see this. Thanks Deoridhe! The only problem in July was that there was so much cool stuff on the front page that I couldn't keep up. Will forewarn my nearest and dearest this time that I won't be speaking to them, replying to texts or generally interested in their lives at all until April.
posted by billiebee at 10:39 AM on February 25, 2015 [4 favorites]

I will commit to making one and maybe two FPPs. But probably one. Let's not get too ambitious here.
posted by corb at 10:52 AM on February 25, 2015 [3 favorites]

I've gone ahead and posted a new topic thread about #WomensMarch over on chatter, so anyone who wants to dig in to specific FPP creation and research tactics in advance of next month's initiative should feel free to swing by and start brainstorming!
posted by divined by radio at 11:00 AM on February 25, 2015 [3 favorites]

I commit to making at least one on a completely new topic I thought of this morning, which I intend to have done by the 1st because I like the idea of juxtaposing the subjects. _{Also I made that project post for those of you who said you were interested in the asexuality stuff. I will now be leaving the subject totally alone for a while.}

FWIW: I've made two FPPs so far, of which one got deleted and one felt to me at the time as a bit of a failure because it got very little discussion and what it got included at least one comment complaining at me because I didn't capitalize Lego right. The reminder to not get discouraged and to try again, and the discussion here and in the July thread about other people's experience of deletions and just letting threads go as they like? That was really important, so thanks collectively to the community for those.

Are we going to use the chatter forum linked earlier as a replacement for glassboard in July? I looked into glassboard and it seems to have been abandoned and shut down in the meanwhile. Or are we going to maybe discuss potential topics and FPPs in progress here? Or... uh, is there another solution I missed this morning?
posted by sciatrix at 11:01 AM on February 25, 2015 [4 favorites]

Ha, jinx!
posted by sciatrix at 11:02 AM on February 25, 2015

Are we going to use the chatter forum linked earlier as a replacement for glassboard in July?

That's fine with me and I can make a sub-forum specifically for it, if that's what people want. I don't want to force anyone to sign up there if they don't want to (but I'm not going to spam you and I think I've got the place pretty bot-locked now) but I'm happy to make a place for it.
posted by Lyn Never at 11:23 AM on February 25, 2015 [2 favorites]

julen: Remember that your FPP is not a reflection upon your worth as a person, site member, or person who is interested in X. A good FPP is essentially saying, "I think this is interesting/cool/fun/mindblowing/useful and I want to share it with this community." It's a positive action (almost always), but it's not the most important thing you will do today.

Ditto this. A little quip repeated around here: once you hit "post," the post is no longer yours, but part of MetaFilter as a whole. Let it go.

Enjoy it at a bit of a distance, and don't take the (lack of) comments, favorites (or worse, MetaTalk) about you personally. You can re-evaluate what you wrote and how it came across, but don't dwell on the "what if's."
posted by filthy light thief at 12:12 PM on February 25, 2015 [1 favorite]

I'm in, although I'll confess I feel totally intimidated by posting.
posted by holborne at 12:19 PM on February 25, 2015 [6 favorites]

I find it's best to post and do other things, then read the comments later that day or the next day, or even the following week. Sometimes I don't read the comments at all, if it's something near and dear to my heart (e.g., I did a post on M*A*S*H that I pretty much stayed away from).

I know some peeps like to sit and watch the first few comments trickle in on their fpps, to give them a chance to flag early if they get reactionary / silly comments, so that the comments can be neatly removed without a cascade of follow-on comments. YMMV.
posted by joseph conrad is fully awesome at 12:25 PM on February 25, 2015 [3 favorites]

Some of my favorite posts were ones that had only a few comments, and few or no favorites. I feel that way about some of my own posts, too. A ton of people read mefi who never join, can't comment and can't favorite. Feedback from members is nice, but we're not the only people reading.
posted by zarq at 12:45 PM on February 25, 2015

Yay! This was really fun last July.

For folks concerned about making a post about something people don't care about, I will present my one-and-only post to make you feel more comfortable with obscurity, about an annual contest held in Australia for the thinnest handspun yarn. It went fine. I'll also say that my favorite posts are about little niche things that I'd never heard of before. I'll try to think up at least one more for this month, and will certainly be spending more time reading and commenting on other folks' posts.
posted by tchemgrrl at 1:38 PM on February 25, 2015 [11 favorites]

It's really the niche things that make MeFi interesting to browse, IMO. Go for it!
posted by Miko at 1:45 PM on February 25, 2015 [2 favorites]

Excellent idea. Last year's #JulyByWomen got us the, well, awesomejoseph conrad is fully awesome posting up a storm, as well as shedloads of other new or returning posters getting into the groove, hopefully Women's March can do the same.

My memail is always open if people want advice or help with crafting a post, in the event that anybody want it, not just during March either.
posted by MartinWisse at 2:20 PM on February 25, 2015 [1 favorite]

I did, by the way, go ahead and make a "Project" subsection and a forum specifically for MarchByWomen.

The board itself is open to everyone, and the golden rule is really that you participate in good faith and in a pro-women and pro-feminism spirit. I think most of us there who have discussed it come from a direction in which we are beyond 101 in some aspects of feminism but extremely new/unexposed to other aspects and want to be better.

Anyone who just wants to use it for the MarchByWomen project is fine, but I am taking volunteers to start more discussion - chatter, if you will - on the main fora as well. It's been really quiet around there since we started up right at the end of December and I don't think is a habitual visit for anyone just yet.

If you have signup/login issues, you can memail me if that's easier than email.
posted by Lyn Never at 2:24 PM on February 25, 2015 [2 favorites]

I'm in, although I'll confess I feel totally intimidated by posting.

You can do it, holborne!! MeMail me if you want random encouragement (that goes for everyone - I'm not so good at FPPs, but I am a pretty good cheerleader).
posted by Deoridhe at 2:36 PM on February 25, 2015 [3 favorites]

I'm going to try and put some extra things on the Music page. Maybe other women have things to post there as well?
posted by daisystomper at 2:49 PM on February 25, 2015 [2 favorites]

We're not doing this for your entertainment. We're doing it for our own representation.

I'm more than a little taken aback, not just by this statement itself, but by the lack of pushback it's gotten. It makes me wonder why I seem to be the only person (who's foolish enough to say so, at least) that finds it unpleasantly close to 'shut up and sit down', which is, it strikes me, the same sort of attitude that women so often get and this posting drive thing is meant to challenge.

I've always been under the impression -- one that seemed supported as far as I could tell by overall administration policy as it has been communicated over the years -- that posting to the front page with any kind of agenda is frowned upon. That's not as clear a line any more, and in terms of this current endeavor, I suppose that change is not a bad thing, entirely.

But if you're not posting to Metafilter for the entertainment (where 'entertainment' is perhaps interpreted a little more broadly than is customary) of other members, it has always been my understanding that one should question why one is posting at all. I mean sure, if you make a post to educate others, or to bring to light something cool or something you find fascinating, or to share something that brings you joy or makes you laugh or makes you angry even or whatever, all good.

But posting to Metafilter and encouraging others of a given group to do so specifically 'for our own representation'? No matter how much the end result of having more people post good stuff to the front page might be laudable, I have to admit, that kind of feels wrong to me.

Not wrong enough to suggest that this isn't a thing that should happen (as it clearly is going to), but given the near universal and mostly unreserved enthusiasm for the idea, it certainly does make me question why I seem to be such an outlier in the matter. Perhaps I'm just overthinking, as I sometimes do, in my slightly muddled way.

Ah well. Carry on, and more power to y'all. I applaud the objective of having more good posts on the front page from a more diverse sampling of the user base, even if I find myself with hard-to-answer questions about the community that are raised for me, at least, in getting there.
posted by stavrosthewonderchicken at 3:41 PM on February 25, 2015 [14 favorites]

Not here for YOUR entertainment isn't the same as not here for anyone's entertainment (edumacation, whatever). And honestly I am riiiight about at the point of not giving a damn whether the stuff I post entertains even a single male community member as long as some of the women who self-identify as community members find it useful or entertaining or interesting.
posted by gingerest at 3:53 PM on February 25, 2015 [34 favorites]

(This also strikes me as perilously close to litigating the existence of WomensMarch, which we have been repeatedly asked not to do in this thread.)
posted by gingerest at 3:55 PM on February 25, 2015 [7 favorites]

Yes, it seems to me you may be overthinking. *said without any snark, and with a smile*
This is not about posting 'for our own representation'. This is about posting in a certain time period, and/or with a certain tag, 'for our own representation'.
The posting itself should be, and as far as I'm concerned: will be, happening for all the usual reasons.
posted by Too-Ticky at 3:56 PM on February 25, 2015 [4 favorites]

This also strikes me as perilously close to litigating the existence of WomensMarch, which we have been repeatedly asked not to do in this thread.

I'm all about the peril! The peril and the litigation!

No, I'm not, not at all. Peril is overrated, and litigation is boring as hell. But I'll admit that I do find those kinds of warnings in a thread about giving a greater voice to folks super ironic.
posted by stavrosthewonderchicken at 4:04 PM on February 25, 2015 [3 favorites]

This is about posting in a certain time period, and/or with a certain tag, 'for our own representation'. The posting itself should be, and as far as I'm concerned: will be, happening for all the usual reasons.

Thanks for that. Looking at it that way helps me work through at least some of the conflicting ideas I'm trying to reconcile about the effort.

Again, to be clear: I'm down with the objectives, here. I'm just trying to work out through conversation why I have the nebulous reservations I can't seem to get rid of. That may be inappropriate, to some extent, I guess, but I dunno where else I could possibly do it, so I beg your indulgence.
posted by stavrosthewonderchicken at 4:11 PM on February 25, 2015

You could do it in the Too Much Rape thread like we've repeatedly asked.
posted by restless_nomad (staff) at 4:17 PM on February 25, 2015 [14 favorites]

You're making a mistake in divorcing ocherdraco's comment from its context, stavros. It was a direct reply to gideonswan's entreaty "Go forth, women of the world, and find me awesome things on the internet, so that I might be entertained." I don't know how gideonswan intended it, but it comes off as glibly dismissive and -- worse -- bears a lot of similarity to the usual demands that women perform for men: smile, cook, be pretty, be polite, be scintillating, &c. Pointing out that WomensMarch is something we're doing for ourselves (where we=people who want to see more women posting on MeFi) seems like an entirely reasonable response to a rather tone-deaf comment.

What's more, this thread reveals a HUGE level of concern being expressed about how potential FPPs will be received. Women in general are more invested, not less, in doing things for others (because we've been socialized that way!), and that enhanced concern & hyperawareness of our audience is displayed here in spades.
posted by Westringia F. at 4:26 PM on February 25, 2015 [35 favorites]

You could do it in the Too Much Rape thread like we've repeatedly asked.

Why on earth would I do that? My comments are entirely on-topic for this thread, and I began by specifically referring to a comment that was made in this thread. That other very long thread is about something else entirely, with a derail at the end suggesting this effort. Would you have me copy the comment I was referencing from this thread, paste it out of context and respond to it there?

Ah, to hell with it. Please feel free to delete my comments in this thread, if that's what you feel is best. All good -- just trying to have a grownup conversation with folks.

On preview:

You're making a mistake in divorcing ocherdraco's comment from its context, stavros. It was a direct reply to gideonswan's entreaty "Go forth, women of the world, and find me awesome things on the internet, so that I might be entertained." I don't know how gideonswan intended it, but it comes off as glibly dismissive and -- worse -- bears a lot of similarity to the usual demands that women perform for men: smile, cook, be pretty, be polite, be scintillating, &c.

OK, good point. I see that. And now I'll try and bow out, and apologize for any offense given.
posted by stavrosthewonderchicken at 4:30 PM on February 25, 2015 [1 favorite]

I am pretty sure that gideonswan was aiming for a sort of Hedonismbot riff rather than trying sincerely to oppress us. But it's one of those things where he might have thought better of it. (Welcome to my world, where the jokes leave my mouth/keyboard and THEN I think, "Oh, dear, that probably isn't worth it for the laffs.")
posted by gingerest at 4:31 PM on February 25, 2015 [9 favorites]

Welcome back.
posted by gman at 4:57 PM on February 25, 2015 [2 favorites]

You could do it in the Too Much Rape thread like we've repeatedly asked.

Just as a tiny note, it's really more the "Too Much False Rape Accusations" thread - there's a difference between survivor-centered and accused-centered threads and I think that thread was very specifically about the latter. Not at all a big deal, I'm just pedantic.
posted by dialetheia at 5:01 PM on February 25, 2015 [13 favorites]

Why on earth would I do that? My comments are entirely on-topic for this thread, and I began by specifically referring to a comment that was made in this thread.

And as WomensMarch was formulated in the Accusations thread, it would also be entirely on-topic there. If you want to have a sincere conversation about it, the other thread is a better place for it, rather than asking for justification here, where the thread is focused on organization and support.
posted by Ruki at 5:13 PM on February 25, 2015 [5 favorites]

I thought JulyByWomen was really sucessful. I'm glad to see this.
posted by His thoughts were red thoughts at 5:17 PM on February 25, 2015 [2 favorites]

A comment deleted. Stavrosthewonderchicken , you do not get to hold forth about your personal feelings when you've been asked specifically to take them elsewhere, to avoid derails in a thread set up to separate a logistical discussion from a theory one, and make a thread not at all about you into a referendum about yourself. If you can't do that on your own, I can help you. I'd rather not.
posted by restless_nomad (staff) at 5:53 PM on February 25, 2015 [14 favorites]

Taking it to MeFi mail, then.
posted by stavrosthewonderchicken at 5:58 PM on February 25, 2015

gingerest and Westringia F. have thoroughly and correctly explained why I wrote that comment.
posted by ocherdraco at 6:16 PM on February 25, 2015 [2 favorites]

Adding to the chorus of support for this project! I'll be making more time to read the blue during what will be a very busy month for me.
posted by immlass at 6:26 PM on February 25, 2015

I was super glad when something productive was coming out of that long, fighty MeTa I started - I could see how people were getting exhausted, and then all of a sudden there was this was all of this positive energy and excitement buzzing once people started talking about this project! Ultimately, I think this project reflects really positive aspects of our community - how people are willing to roll up their sleeves and contribute to solving large systematic problems that seem so awful for any one person to tackle alone. I'll be watching the posts next month with great interest for sure. Thanks to everyone who worked to make this a thing!
posted by Conspire at 6:32 PM on February 25, 2015 [12 favorites]

This isn't to take away from #WomensMarch or any other effort, but sometime it might be interesting to do a First-Time Posters week or month as well, where we're explicitly encouraging those who've never posted.
posted by Miko at 7:16 PM on February 25, 2015 [43 favorites]

Oh I think that's a brilliant idea!
posted by joseph conrad is fully awesome at 7:19 PM on February 25, 2015 [1 favorite]

Yay! One of the things I really enjoyed about JulyByWomen was the different flavor it gave the front page - I'm looking forward to learning about and enjoying some new things!
posted by ChuraChura at 7:24 PM on February 25, 2015 [5 favorites]

If no one minds, I'm just gonna pretend like this is a birthday present.
posted by valkane at 7:48 PM on February 25, 2015 [7 favorites]

JulyByWomen was the very best month. The posts were so much more diverse than usual and all the support shown in Metatalk and the threads themselves made the site a better place to spend time. I made my first and only post that month and nothing horrible happened! Thanks to those of you who found the energy to turn that horrible Accusations thread into such positive action. I'll try my best to make my second post in March.
posted by colt45 at 8:22 PM on February 25, 2015 [5 favorites]

valkane: I had you specifically in mind!
posted by Deoridhe at 8:29 PM on February 25, 2015 [1 favorite]

Very excited about this! I'm an avid lurker who rarely even comments in AskMefi (for some reason I view that as the "safest" spot), but now I'm thinking up potential FPPs.
posted by saturngirl at 8:36 PM on February 25, 2015 [11 favorites]

I've never posted (out of nervousness, feeling out of my depth here, a bunch of other stuff similar to what people above are talking about) but i'm also sitting here feeling really energised and interested in doing it, if I can think of a really interesting topic.

The only problem I foresee is that the most interesting things i'd want to post about are probably things I learned about here on Metafilter to begin with, heh.
posted by pseudonymph at 8:48 PM on February 25, 2015 [5 favorites]

I say MORE POSTS BY WOMEN EVERY MONTH! Hooray!
posted by flapjax at midnite at 9:30 PM on February 25, 2015 [1 favorite]

march is basically the worst month because of wind + pollen + my own idiosyncratic issues regarding my own birthday, so this is great and should help
posted by NoraReed at 10:56 PM on February 25, 2015 [6 favorites]

"This isn't to take away from #WomensMarch or any other effort, but sometime it might be interesting to do a First-Time Posters week or month as well, where we're explicitly encouraging those who've never posted."

I'd like to see a "global voices" month, too, or something in that direction. I think there's a few areas in which a push for a diversity of representation in posts (as in the posters and not necessarily the topics, just as is the case with #WomensMarch) would be very good for the site. This thread is definitely not the place to discuss this, so maybe we could have a MetaTalk post about this later and discuss these possibilities then?
posted by Ivan Fyodorovich at 12:41 AM on February 26, 2015 [13 favorites]

Oh yay, NoraReed, you're back!
posted by daisyk at 1:02 AM on February 26, 2015 [8 favorites]

Oh my, I really should clear this up real quick. Not being dismissive at all. I really do try to not be a *ahem* dick here, or cause trouble, while still being my usual flippant self. I fully support what y'all have got going on with this. I though the first part of my comment really lead into the last. I don't care who posts what, as long as it's a good post. In fact, I rarely notice anyone's username in relation to the post. I want every post on the front page to be an example of WHY Metafilter is so great! Not just newsfilter or gossip central, or any other thing but what it is; a community. Where we can talk, and complain, and whine, and rejoice, and everything else a bunch of strangers can do on the internet while still feeling like home. The first page I load everyday is this one. Same with the last. The amount of assholes I see post here is almost nil, and that counts people I don't agree with. When I say, go forth and entertain me, I say that for every one of us. And it applies to every one of us. Otherwise, why are we here? Every story that gets posted either starts somewhere else or ends up there. We are here, together, because OF each other. That's what makes this place, with all its ones and zeroes, special.
posted by gideonswann at 3:23 AM on February 26, 2015 [3 favorites]

If I could make one request, and I hope that my being a guy doesn't make this a disingenuous one, it would be: please try not to think of the community here as an intimidating and elitist bunch. I completely understand feeling that way, and was terrified the first couple of times I tried to write an FPP, but, MetaFilter is made up of a bunch of goofy people who are all right and wrong about a bunch of different things. What they think about your post doesn't matter if they don't like it, because they're wrong not to like it, and is totally awesome if they do like it, because they are totally right to.

There's no wrong way to make a post. I've posted a ton of really stupid, really inane links to things that I assumed nobody but me would possibly enjoy, I've posted big long posts about things that only a handful of people will ever bother reading, I've posted gratuitous links to hugely-popular articles online about things lots of people get a kick out of and that would've made it here with or without my help. Every post is valuable; no post is truly lost. The beauty of MetaFilter's being a static, linear archive is that sometimes I'll come across posts from six years ago that nobody noticed or favorited or commented upon, and they'll be my favorite new discoveries for the week. Simply taking the time to post results in something valuable and good, and there are really very few exceptions to that rule.

Moreover, I would say that the site benefits from more diversity of post-type, rather than less. The more voices we have contributing to the front page, the more interesting the site becomes — and that includes the sorts of commenters, I feel, because the front page is what draws people in to comment, and a site this old certainly runs the risk of developing a Type of commenter that results in a certain amount of stagnation. (In fact, I think we're well past that risk, and that to a certain extent that has totally happened, but that's exactly why you shouldn't refrain from posting whatever random thing happens upon you during your day that you think somebody else might find worth seeing.)

With all respect to the experienced and venerable posters of FPPs, who put their hearts and souls into every post, I think that this site benefits more than anything from a sense of uncertainty, playfulness, and impulsive fun, and that its reputation as Highly Judgmental and Opinionated and Tasteful (ha! hardly! to that last point) serves to inhibit precisely the things that make it such a good community in the first place. So, seriously, every single person thinking that this might be a fun thing to join in on: go for it! I promise you that your posts will be appreciated, most likely more broadly and satisfyingly than you would think going in. This is a ridiculous place. Don't be afraid to be a part of the general hullabaloo.

(I will save all my more politicized comments for that other thread, as moderators requested; with the rate at which I'm reading it, part two of this comment should be ready to go sometime between 2017 and the heat death of the universe.)
posted by rorgy at 3:40 AM on February 26, 2015 [19 favorites]

I'd like to see a "global voices" month, too, or something in that direction

Just agreeing that this is a great idea and we should indeed have another thread about it sometime, probably in a couple months so this effort can have its day int he sun.
posted by Miko at 5:31 AM on February 26, 2015 [7 favorites]

Slightly tongue in cheek, but I feel that if every use of the word "disingenuous" on this site were auto-replaced by a photo of a kitten we'd be way ahead of where we are now.
posted by Wolof at 5:41 AM on February 26, 2015 [13 favorites]

Late to the party (sorry, sleeping and working) but I just wanted to say that this is a great idea, and that making FPPs can be stressful if you're the sort of person who makes stress for themselves, but they are not that scary, even the ones that don't get much in the way of attention.
posted by GenjiandProust at 6:27 AM on February 26, 2015 [3 favorites]

could this be sidebarred?
posted by MoonOrb at 11:48 PM on February 25 [has favorites −] Favorite added! [!]

It should be! *tries furiously to sidebar*

Nope, I do not have permissions. BUT I KNOW SOMEONE WHO DOES. (Actually all and any staff can sidebar stuff, right?)
posted by joseph conrad is fully awesome at 6:57 AM on February 26, 2015 [1 favorite]

divabat made a MeTa post about trying to do some sort of global voices month like JulyByWomen. It seemed to get bogged down in definitions.
posted by gadge emeritus at 7:04 AM on February 26, 2015

We'll totally sidebar it! Given that the thing goes for a month, seems like it might make sense to put it up right on/around the 1st, to kick things off and give whatever other support/collabo/etc ideas come up in here a chance to gel a little more to be ready for newcomers?
posted by cortex (staff) at 7:12 AM on February 26, 2015 [3 favorites]

Entertain me / I'm as blank as can be / And I've seen it before / And I've done it before / And I think that I like it / But no I don't like it / It just goes on over and over / And over and over and over again (I often think in lyrics, and this one comes to mind often, but I hadn't seen this fantastically silly video until today)

gadge emeritus: divabat made a MeTa post about trying to do some sort of global voices month like JulyByWomen. It seemed to get bogged down in definitions.

Yes she did, and yes it did. Here it is: #GlobalVoices / #NonWestNov / #GlobalSouthSept
posted by filthy light thief at 7:14 AM on February 26, 2015 [2 favorites]

Putting it up on the first sounds good to me!
posted by sciatrix at 7:16 AM on February 26, 2015

It did, it got really bogged down in discussion ISTR. Doesn't mean we can't start a separate Meta for that endeavor, though... (on preview, yep that's the one, on the flt link).
posted by joseph conrad is fully awesome at 7:17 AM on February 26, 2015

Why not put it up now to give people a heads up? Posting on the first seems late to me.
posted by futz at 7:28 AM on February 26, 2015 [1 favorite]

I'm open to suggestions, that's just my first-cup-of-tea spitballing. We can totally sidebar sooner if people feel like that's the more helpful option. My feeling about it not being too late is that it is a month-long thing; someone who sees it on the first and makes their first post on the 15th isn't late at all, they're right on time, since it's a month full of posts, not as many posts on the 1st as we can manage.
posted by cortex (staff) at 7:30 AM on February 26, 2015 [1 favorite]

I think sidebarring it now will likely lead to a bunch of people posting cranky things about it, but sidebarring it once it's a fait accompli will cut back on the cranky comments and up the excited ones.
posted by jaguar at 7:34 AM on February 26, 2015 [5 favorites]

Aw, that tea-drinking is adorbs!

MOAR TEA.
posted by joseph conrad is fully awesome at 7:35 AM on February 26, 2015

Sidebar early and sidebar often.
posted by joseph conrad is fully awesome at 7:35 AM on February 26, 2015 [1 favorite]

sidebarring it once it's a fait accompli will cut back on the cranky comments and up the excited ones

That's a good point, I'm inclined to hold off until the first for the mention welcoming the launch.
posted by mathowie (staff) at 7:36 AM on February 26, 2015 [3 favorites]

Would it also be possible to either edit the OP to contain the Chatter forum link and an explanation or to include that information in the sidebar post? Right now, you have to have read through at least one of two very long posts to find it, and I'd like that to be easy for women who want a forum for support about building FPPs to find.
posted by sciatrix at 7:46 AM on February 26, 2015 [1 favorite]

Would it also be possible to either edit the OP to contain the Chatter forum link and an explanation or to include that information in the sidebar post?

I don't think so, it seems weird to give a kind of official site endorsement of an offsite thing. If the OP wants the link in this post, that's fine though.
posted by mathowie (staff) at 7:55 AM on February 26, 2015

Yeah, that makes sense! I'm just trying to figure out how to best bring people who might have had no idea this was all going on up to speed on what all is happening.
posted by sciatrix at 7:56 AM on February 26, 2015

How was the sidebar done for JulyByWomen? That seemed to work well.
posted by jaguar at 8:31 AM on February 26, 2015

sidebarring it now will likely lead to a bunch of people posting cranky things about it

I don't think "maybe some asshole men will get pissy about it" is a good reason not to sidebar early; don't give them that power. Let them be pissy; let them be deleted.

And heavens, it's only TWO DAYS from the start of March anyway. Why not sidebar now?
posted by We had a deal, Kyle at 8:34 AM on February 26, 2015 [10 favorites]

We had a deal, Kyle, EXACTLY.
posted by futz at 8:36 AM on February 26, 2015 [2 favorites]

I agree. Cranks gonna crank.
posted by Too-Ticky at 8:38 AM on February 26, 2015 [2 favorites]

I'd like to add something to rorgy's splendid comment. Even posts you think might be "bad" can serve a good purpose. Recently I posted what I thought were cute pics of a frog and a beetle. Turns out those critters were probably mistreated during the photo shoot. I felt horrible and thought about asking the mods to delete it, but a few people added a link to a good article about animal abuse in photographs. In the end I decided to leave the post as is because hopefully more people would read that article. No one got mad at me, or if they did they didn't say anything. And I learned something and hopefully others did too.

I'm so sorry, beetle and frog. :(
posted by Orange Dinosaur Slide at 8:40 AM on February 26, 2015 [14 favorites]

I seem to remember the JulyByWomen sidebar as linking to the tag, is the thing, so that clicking the link brought up a bunch of awesome posts and the sidebar announcement was basically "Look at this cool thing in progress! Come be a part of it!" I'm not sure what the call to action would be for a sidebar right now, other than "Come read a MeTa post!", which has historically been a call to come watch and participate in the fightiness.
posted by jaguar at 8:40 AM on February 26, 2015

i think it makes the most sense to wait until the 1st. like you say, it's only two days, might as well have it coincide with the beginning of the event.
posted by nadawi at 8:40 AM on February 26, 2015

(Here is the #JulyByWomen Best-of/sidebar post, FWIW; went up on the 2nd, linked to the MetaTalk.)
posted by We had a deal, Kyle at 8:47 AM on February 26, 2015 [3 favorites]

Something else to encourage those who may be shy about posting, from someone who doesn't post nearly as much as he reads or shoots his mouth off in comments, one thing that I didn't expect to happen and didn't even realize until recently is how PROUD I am of my posts. They are of varying quality and "popularity" (if you want to measure that in favorites/comments/whatever) but years later, I'm glad they are permanently a part of this place.
posted by MCMikeNamara at 9:08 AM on February 26, 2015 [7 favorites]

i don't think there is a wrong time to announce (though agreed, let's not worry about the cranks, the deleting is doing its job, thanks mods!). there could also be a flood at the beginning so a little buffer period for people to get their stuff together won't lead to terrible things.

i think a link to the meta will help people understand the whole deal, and this one is pretty positive and is being moderated to keep it that way. link to the tag too.

"#WomensMarch is an invitation for women to post FPPs in March. We tried #JulyByWomen last year to great success, so if you are a woman and would like to participate, it's as simple as tagging your FPP! Here's looking forward to another great month on the front page."

or whatever modly way y'all have of phrasing these things.
posted by twist my arm at 9:20 AM on February 26, 2015 [7 favorites]

That's perfect.
posted by joseph conrad is fully awesome at 9:26 AM on February 26, 2015

(I'd rephrase to avoid the "we" which suggests too much that this is an Official Metafilter Thing rather than a grassroots movement; otherwise looks great. I'll shut up now.)
posted by We had a deal, Kyle at 9:33 AM on February 26, 2015 [3 favorites]

We had a deal, Kyle: " avoid the "we" which suggests too much that this is an Official Metafilter Thing rather than a grassroots movement"

The communal we instead of the royal we?
posted by boo_radley at 9:36 AM on February 26, 2015

Yeah, no good point - this was very much from the user base, not the top.
posted by joseph conrad is fully awesome at 9:36 AM on February 26, 2015

As a relatively new user, but as someone who's been an avid reader of the community for over a decade I have to nth rorgy's comment.

As a dude, I think this is an absolutely great idea.

And for some reason I love the fact that the first thing I found searching julybywomen was jenfullmoon's post on Juggalos vs. the FBI. I attribute that to needing more Juggalos in my day today.
posted by mandolin conspiracy at 9:37 AM on February 26, 2015 [4 favorites]

I'll shut up now

heh, not at all, i dislike talking all official with capital letters and exclamation points and being positive and weird sounding. that was my imposter voice.

maybe closer to "Last year #JulyByWomen was incredibly successful, so" yadda yadda.
posted by twist my arm at 9:43 AM on February 26, 2015 [1 favorite]

I don't know, I would specifically state "Last year, the user-driven project, #JulyByWomen...". Or something like that.
posted by joseph conrad is fully awesome at 9:45 AM on February 26, 2015 [1 favorite]

Hard to see how anyone could have a problem with this project (I know it's inevitable) and I think twist my arm's draft is great.

I think linking to this thread with the sidebar annoucment will send the cranks here, which won't really matter once the posts are up and running.
posted by spaltavian at 10:11 AM on February 26, 2015

I say MORE POSTS BY WOMEN EVERY MONTH! Hooray!

Shit, I don't see ANY reason why we can't have 100 extra posts EVERY month by women.

Will you people stop? I get you're trying to express great enthusiasm, but "100 posts by women EVERY MONTH FOREVER" isn't a celebration and a move to get new women involved, it's a permanent expectation that I (and I suspect a lot of other women) would feel really pressured about. It's not an impetus to get out there and a celebration and a way to encourage new people who have been meandering along lurking or commenting only to get involved and more integrated into a community. The whole point of this is to give women a leg up on involvement, not to make them climb stairs going upwards forever.

I am much more interested in another month, later on, to encourage other underrepresented voices to speak up than I am ever going to be in "women! you should post more! All the time! With no particular goal or special celebration!"
posted by sciatrix at 12:32 PM on February 26, 2015 [19 favorites]

Seconding sciatrix.

I really like the idea of a "newbie" or "never posted" month - or week - that I think Miko floated above. Don't know who would champion that, but it would be a whole lot of fun, I suspect...
posted by joseph conrad is fully awesome at 12:47 PM on February 26, 2015

I get you're trying to express great enthusiasm, but "100 posts by women EVERY MONTH FOREVER" isn't a celebration and a move to get new women involved, it's a permanent expectation that I (and I suspect a lot of other women) would feel really pressured about.

I disagree that the "women could make 100 posts EVERY MONTH" comments are expressing enthusiasm. I think they're more bordering on "How come we don't get a white history month" territory.
posted by mudpuppie at 12:54 PM on February 26, 2015 [1 favorite]

it might be interesting to do a First-Time Posters

I've been here a long time and never posted to the Blue. Maybe I'll try to figure out something worth posting for March. Usually I figure that everything everywhere has already been posted.
posted by small_ruminant at 1:06 PM on February 26, 2015 [3 favorites]

Maybe we can do an Encouraging First Time Posters MeTa this June/July. The timing worked last year for #julybywomen, and we could offer up advice, tips, and mentoring then? We'd have to shape the MeTa differently, but we can worry about that when pools of chilly ice water hiding under a thin sheet of ice seem almost delightful.

In the meantime, I'm so excited about doing another #MonthbyWomen - July was really lovely, and I found multiple MeFites new to me who are just so awesome from posts and comments.

I also really liked the idea above about getting more women involved in MeMusic, and so I will definitely be keeping an eye open for new stuff on that subsite, too.

I think that - as July went on, some women looked topics and content of the FPPs being posted and felt more comfortable posting their FPPs, too - as if they were saying "Hey, that post on X did well; maybe mine on Y isn't too odd or out-there or girly or not-girly or specialized, after all!"

And if you find that some other awesome person has already posted your FPP link/idea, we've SO been there. Sometimes if you branch off from the original idea, you find a FPP in an offshoot or related idea; sometimes you just have to move on. I usually shake my fist, yell "Why must you be so awesome, [Mefite], Why?" and feel a little better about having been scooped.
posted by julen at 1:09 PM on February 26, 2015 [4 favorites]

mudpuppie: I disagree that the "women could make 100 posts EVERY MONTH" comments are expressing enthusiasm. I think they're more bordering on "How come we don't get a white history month" territory.

I don't read them that way. But I do read them as men telling women how to do this.
Please don't. We got this.
posted by Too-Ticky at 1:23 PM on February 26, 2015 [10 favorites]

And if you find that some other awesome person has already posted your FPP link/idea, we've SO been there

Oh, yeah, please don't let this be a concern! I just made a post a few minutes ago but I think there were four others this week that I started that came up as doubles, and a couple were random things I just stumbled on that had been posted years ago! Also, as long as you really believe it's something worth sharing, I don't think my there's any shame in making your first post an easy one just to get it under your belt. It took me years to make mine, until I found a really well-made stop-motion Lego version of The Wire, which is about as low-hanging fruit on the MeFi tree as it gets. (And yes, I was still nervous, but it turned out okay!)
posted by Room 641-A at 1:27 PM on February 26, 2015 [4 favorites]

...about an annual contest held in Australia for the thinnest handspun yarn. It went fine.

It went fine.
It went fine.

I SEE WHAT YOU DID THERE, TCHEMGRRL.
posted by bitter-girl.com at 2:27 PM on February 26, 2015 [23 favorites]

I think this is a marvelous and inspiring idea, and I can't wait to read the FPPs.
posted by clockzero at 3:21 PM on February 26, 2015 [1 favorite]

Well, I will put my thinking cap on so I can put up my first FPP. After lurking for years and then being a lurking member for years, I should really repay you all for all the hilarious, interesting and sometimes infuriating posts.
posted by kariebookish at 3:32 PM on February 26, 2015 [3 favorites]

I am happy to be a mentor for someone who wants to run a post by someone who has been around a while. Anytime in March (I am out of town now, oh please do not email me now) email it to me and I'll give you my polite constructive opinion.
posted by jessamyn (retired) at 3:41 PM on February 26, 2015 [4 favorites]

Seriously, folks, please stick to the topic and don't go off into rants about why this is important, whether or not they are positive or negative. I know y'all aren't much used to moderated MeTa threads, but we're trying hard here to keep this one useful and not derailed.
posted by restless_nomad (staff) at 3:52 PM on February 26, 2015 [3 favorites]

Whelp I thought a bit and realized that I've been around this site since 2001. Lurked for a long while, then registered, then took a break for a year or two, lost my password, signed up again under another name and have yet to post an FPP.

That's 13 years!

Gah.

I suppose it's about time I posted something.
posted by Jalliah at 6:22 PM on February 26, 2015 [7 favorites]

March will be my 14th year anniversary here, and I've never FPP'ed.

I'm game.
posted by ltracey at 7:37 PM on February 26, 2015 [8 favorites]

March will be my 14th year anniversary here, and I've never FPP'ed.

NOOOOOOOOB!

(I keed, I keed. Looking forward to your first post!)
posted by Joseph Gurl at 9:07 PM on February 26, 2015 [1 favorite]

sciatrix: Would it also be possible to either edit the OP to contain the Chatter forum link and an explanation or to include that information in the sidebar post? Right now, you have to have read through at least one of two very long posts to find it, and I'd like that to be easy for women who want a forum for support about building FPPs to find.

mathowie: I don't think so, it seems weird to give a kind of official site endorsement of an offsite thing. If the OP wants the link in this post, that's fine though.

I would be happy to have an addendum to this post made that includes a link to the chatter forum. Maybe something like: "People seeking support for making an FPP can find it at the chatter forum, in the WomansMarch subforum.
posted by Deoridhe at 10:08 PM on February 26, 2015 [2 favorites]

I'm a dude.

#JulyByWomen was great. So many new topics, and perspectives I was previously (oft through my own laziness) ignorant of.

Like last July, am not going to FPP for the month of March. That'll make for a fraction less "noise" and distraction from #WomensMarch posts.

Other regular dude posters - consider doing the same i.e. have a month off from submitting FPPs? Save any post ideas or drafts for, well, any other month of the year.
posted by Wordshore at 2:59 AM on February 27, 2015

I know y'all aren't much used to moderated MeTa threads

No, we really kind of aren't. Is this a new general thing, community-policy-wise, or does it apply to this thread only? If it is general, given how significant a change it is from Metatalk as Metatalk has been done over the last decade and a half or so, it seems like it might merit an official announcement of some kind, don't you think?
posted by stavrosthewonderchicken at 4:30 AM on February 27, 2015 [2 favorites]

Wordshore: Other regular dude posters - consider doing the same i.e. have a month off from submitting FPPs? Save any post ideas or drafts for, well, any other month of the year.

I really don't like this. I come here for a diverse selection of ~~noise~~ topics that I'm interested in. 100 extra posts by women is great, but those of the other gender shouldn't be asked to post less. You're requesting that males consider not posting for two months out of the twelve we have.
posted by gman at 4:40 AM on February 27, 2015 [4 favorites]

Other regular dude posters - consider doing the same i.e. have a month off from submitting FPPs?

This seems unnecessary.
posted by grouse at 5:08 AM on February 27, 2015 [6 favorites]

more content and links: good

less content and fewer links: bad
posted by Rustic Etruscan at 5:14 AM on February 27, 2015 [4 favorites]

Other regular dude posters - consider doing the same i.e. have a month off from submitting FPPs?

Encouraging women to post is a much better framing of these campaigns than encouraging men not to post. The front page is fairly long, if there are 100 #WomensMarch posts that wouldn't have otherwise been made, that's only 3 more a day; easy enough for the readership to handle, I think.

If men are going to do anything different in March, it should be doing their best to back off on the dismissiveness, "what about the menz?" and general jerkiness in "women's issues" FPPs, but I'm hugely in favor of that as a 24/7/52 kind of aspiration anyway....
posted by GenjiandProust at 5:27 AM on February 27, 2015 [25 favorites]

Wordshore: Other regular dude posters - consider doing the same i.e. have a month off from submitting FPPs? Save any post ideas or drafts for, well, any other month of the year.

Pssst! This isn't about men doing something different. It's about encouraging women to do something. Go about doing things the way you normally do, and just enjoy some extra activity on the site. See how easy that is? You're overthinking it.
posted by heyho at 5:43 AM on February 27, 2015 [19 favorites]

Do MeFi tags recognize the number symbol? If so, then any sidebar announcement probably shouldn't use "#WomensMarch" but should just talk about "the WomensMarch tag" to avoid splitting posts into separately tagged groups.

Also, last July was one of the best months in years for the front page. From the selfish viewpoint of a member who currently mostly sticks to the blue, it's fabulous to see it happening again.
posted by mediareport at 6:12 AM on February 27, 2015

> I know y'all aren't much used to moderated MeTa threads

No, we really kind of aren't. Is this a new general thing, community-policy-wise, or does it apply to this thread only? If it is general, given how significant a change it is from Metatalk as Metatalk has been done over the last decade and a half or so, it seems like it might merit an official announcement of some kind, don't you think?

you coveniently left out the rest of what r_n was saying:

...but we're trying hard here to keep this one useful and not derailed.

As per her first comment in this thread.

Nice try though.
posted by moody cow at 6:17 AM on February 27, 2015 [10 favorites]

Yeah I read r_n's comment as saying *this* thread requires a bit of moderation. That's the only substantial "change" I see right now. Plus, I gather Wordshore's "noise" comment was at least in part intended as self-deprecation, so I'm pretty much ready to say let's shelve that suggestion. I believe I'm not speaking out of turn when I say it's not a serious suggestion under consideration here, so let's not let it stand in the way of the actual conversation going on right now.

mediareport, if I understand correctly "#" is not allowed in MeFi tags at all, so I think that shouldn't be a problem. And all the "JulyByWomen" posts from last year have had the new, generic "MonthByWomen" added to them now on sciatrix's suggestion.
posted by goodnewsfortheinsane (staff) at 6:36 AM on February 27, 2015 [1 favorite]

Also, as long as you really believe it's something worth sharing, I don't think my there's any shame in making your first post an easy one just to get it under your belt.

No shame in making every post an easy one. Not everyone has the time to be a filthy light thief.
posted by cjorgensen at 7:03 AM on February 27, 2015 [5 favorites]

Ha! That guy burns up MetFilter. (With him good posts.)
posted by joseph conrad is fully awesome at 7:12 AM on February 27, 2015

Is this a new general thing, community-policy-wise, or does it apply to this thread only? If it is general, given how significant a change it is from Metatalk as Metatalk has been done over the last decade and a half or so, it seems like it might merit an official announcement of some kind, don't you think?

Depends on whether the handful of guys in here who try to rules-lawyer everything to within an inch of its life would FINALLY STOP ALREADY if there was an official announcement.
posted by EmpressCallipygos at 7:13 AM on February 27, 2015 [17 favorites]

I don't think asking people not to argue about the premise in purely operational threads is a new thing. Nor is it unreasonable!

I do think that seeing a lot of comments getting deleted in Metatalk in general is newish but I think it's also preeeeeetty great.
posted by selfnoise at 7:38 AM on February 27, 2015 [5 favorites]

I registered just in time! I've been lurking for ages but this might push me to be more active in general. It's kind of nuts how many ideas I already have for posts.

It went from "Oh jeez I'd have no idea what to write about..." to "WAIT WHAT ABOUT ALL THESE THINGS!" and it was a glorious realization.

YAY!
posted by erratic meatsack at 1:50 PM on February 27, 2015 [15 favorites]

See? It's working already and we haven't even started! :-D
posted by Too-Ticky at 2:27 PM on February 27, 2015 [9 favorites]

Count me in as another gal who will attempt her first post in March! Also, people who offered revision services... expect to hear from me.

An aside - I mostly stick to the green but I have been lurking in the grey, and big props to everyone who has been sticking their necks out for making MetaFilter a more inclusive place. Fist bumps all around.
posted by Paper rabies at 11:15 AM on February 28, 2015 [4 favorites]

Maybe the mods could reopen the JulyByWomen MeTa to give stav a place to voice his concerns, since he's worried that the thread to which he's being redirected will be derailed. I am not making fun. I don't want to see him get a time out and I don't want him or others who share his concerns to feel silenced, and this is the most logical solution I could think of.
posted by gingerest at 1:55 PM on February 28, 2015

We have an open thread where this stuff is being discussed - opening a year-old thread would be less visible and more confusing, I think.
posted by restless_nomad (staff) at 2:17 PM on February 28, 2015

Oh, stav is using memail to try speaking to smaller audiences, don't worry.
posted by EmpressCallipygos at 3:01 PM on February 28, 2015 [2 favorites]

I don't see any current posts by him, so either he's not posting or the mods are handling it. Is this public derail necessary?
posted by Room 641-A at 3:27 PM on February 28, 2015 [2 favorites]

What do you guys reckon is the best way to compose a post that can be saved prior to posting? Maybe in a word document? Because I just spent the last hour writing a post on the gender differences between men and women presenting with a heart attack and the computer just ate it. :/ Not keen to repeat the experience.
posted by supercrayon at 5:13 PM on February 28, 2015

I've used Google Docs for that kind of stuff in the past, supercrayon. It's nice because even if your machine crashes, your work is still saved. In the same vein, Textedit on a recent Mac will save the contents of an unsaved file across reboots (so long as you don't explicitly quit the program). Not sure if anything similar exists on Windows at the moment, but Word autosaves probably come close.
posted by Alterscape at 5:18 PM on February 28, 2015

Notepad, word, Google docs, Evernote (is what I use, since it follows me around on all my devices), email draft, whatever you have at hand and like to use.

It sucks, sorry.
posted by Lyn Never at 5:19 PM on February 28, 2015

I totally use textedit for my list of ideas, random links, and half-written FPPs. Early on, I'd email partial FPPs to myself, but it just clogged up my mailbox, especially if I over-edited them and have 10 message-long strings.
posted by julen at 5:22 PM on February 28, 2015

notepad++ is my favorite post making software! it can function as just a simple wordpad, but also has options to help with the html portions and auto save. it's a really great program, and it's free!
posted by nadawi at 5:22 PM on February 28, 2015

Oh, lost work is a heartbreak.

I don't think choice of editor is super important there so long as you pick something that can save your work; I write my short posts in the post form itself but anything longer or more complicated I'll use whatever text editor is ready to hand (so usually TextEdit on the mac I usually work from) and save frequently.

The one anti-recommendation I'll make is Word; it seems like it likes to (at least historically, maybe this has improved lately) do too much smart-character replacement so that you end up with non-ASCII characters for quotes and other surprising things that sometimes don't translate correctly when you make the post itself. Most common place that has shown up in the past is hrefs getting broken when the url ends up swaddled in some weird slurry of smart- and actual-quote characters.
posted by cortex (staff) at 5:25 PM on February 28, 2015

I also use GDocs; I like that the links are live without a ctrl-click so you can see exactly how your links will look on the blue.

I keep a list of potential topics and links in my WorkFlowy, and even though I haven't posted much in a long time they're there if and when I want to.
posted by Miko at 5:29 PM on February 28, 2015

I sometimes draft posts in my gmail, since I know it's constantly autosaving, and it's nearly always open in a tab.
posted by ocherdraco at 5:34 PM on February 28, 2015 [1 favorite]

Another nice thing about gmail is you can access it from most devices without needing to sync or have the right app. I use Notes on my iPad and Text Wrangler on my laptop for longer, linkier posts but I'm trying to get in the habit of using Gmail for everything.
posted by Room 641-A at 6:05 PM on February 28, 2015

Metafilter: swaddled in some weird slurry of smart- and actual-
posted by Joseph Gurl at 7:42 PM on February 28, 2015

MetaTalk: What do you write your draft posts in?

I'm having odd issues with Gmail lately - hidden characters, and the cut-and-paste always means you have to manually change the font back to your standard, which, cumulatively is a pain in the ass. If I cannot address with the options I'll probably switch to drafting in something else. YMMV - I thought I'd mention in case others experienced these probs.
posted by joseph conrad is fully awesome at 10:02 PM on February 28, 2015 [1 favorite]

Not sure what's up with the hidden characters, but if you do ctrl+shift+v (or command-shift-v on Mac) in gmail, it should paste as unformatted text.
posted by amery at 12:36 AM on March 1, 2015 [3 favorites]

Just checking in to clarify, the actualy tag is WomensMarch right, without the # symbol?
posted by infini at 7:25 AM on March 1, 2015

Just checking in to clarify, the actualy tag is WomensMarch right, without the # symbol?

Yep! There's a comment somewhere in this behemoth of a thread that # symbols aren't allowed in tags anyway.
posted by Blue Jello Elf at 7:30 AM on March 1, 2015 [2 favorites]

Don't use Microsoft Word for creating MeFi posts, for the reasons cortex sites.

Otherwise, what you application one uses , isn't as important as the format you save it in. So for me, posts for MeFi get saved as a .txt file and saved in a folder on Dropbox. Then I can work on it using a Mac, PC or iDevice.

Why .txt format? Because it seems to closely match Metafilter's writing "engine," for lack of a better term. No fancy characters are used in the .txt format, so nothing weird happens when I copy the text from whatever device into Mefi's fields.

On a Mac, I use TextEdit or TextWrangler, both of which are free. On a PC, Notepad++ is the free tool to use.

Just don't use Word!
posted by Brandon Blatcher at 7:49 AM on March 1, 2015

5 down, 95 to go...
posted by Ruki at 9:09 AM on March 1, 2015

We are go for sidebar and Best Of post!
posted by cortex (staff) at 9:10 AM on March 1, 2015 [8 favorites]

And.... Go!
posted by bq at 9:16 AM on March 1, 2015

yay! it's already been a great morning on the blue! i squealed when i saw the empire post.
posted by nadawi at 9:44 AM on March 1, 2015 [2 favorites]

Eleven down! And I have plans for a few days in. :D
posted by sciatrix at 1:27 PM on March 1, 2015 [2 favorites]

That Best Of post made me feel all warm and fuzzy inside.
posted by Ruki at 4:46 PM on March 1, 2015 [1 favorite]

I just wanted to say congrats on the sidebar, I don't regularly check MetaTalk so had missed this thread up until now. I also usually pay more attention to the green and the purple than the blue, now I have extra motivation to check out the blue! I may or may not post anything, since I tend to find FPP-worthy things randomly and I may not this month, but if I do I shall tag to join in the fun.
posted by Athanassiel at 5:40 PM on March 1, 2015 [6 favorites]

So partially because of the way Deoridhe phrased the "more inside" part of this post and partially because of how my brain works, nearly every time I see the phrase "WomensMarch", I chant to myself:

"What do we want? / More posts by women! / When do we want them? / Now!"

It's pretty delightful and I hope I can pass that feeling on to more people.
posted by MCMikeNamara at 6:21 AM on March 2, 2015 [4 favorites]

Damn. I didn't know that posts which include current fundraising links weren't allowed. My post this morning is going to have to wait until after WomensMarch (and the indiegogo campaign) is over. But it also means I need to come up with a new idea for a post to meet my quota. So there's that.
posted by Sophie1 at 11:27 AM on March 2, 2015

Shouldn't the sidebar link to the tag as opposed to just this thread?
posted by I-baLL at 11:46 AM on March 2, 2015 [1 favorite]

Yeah, it's one of the more subtle posting things, so no worries, Sophie1. Sorry it makes for bad timing in this case.

Shouldn't the sidebar link to the tag as opposed to just this thread?

That's a good idea. I guess I was thinking more "this has just now started" than "this is under way" when I wrote that little blurb up, but it's not like it won't still be right there in the sidebar as time passes.
posted by cortex (staff) at 12:08 PM on March 2, 2015

For those of you looking for post ideas, consider checking out this Metatalk post made by 'the man of twists and turns' back in 2013, which asked people where they come up with source material for their FPP's. There are tons of great resources linked there.

I love this initiative, and am so glad it's up and running. I'm looking forward to reading all your posts. :)
posted by zarq at 1:00 PM on March 2, 2015 [1 favorite]

The man of twists and turns has also always been very generous with using their profile page as a public incubator. I believe the only request is that you give them a heads-up.
posted by Room 641-A at 2:30 PM on March 2, 2015 [1 favorite]

So I've been pondering what I should make a post on. It's been bugging me more then it really should. On my drive home I heard something on the radio and was all "I could post about this!" Now I need to see if I can find links because I think it's hecka cool.

I'm writing this here as a public declaration on my intent so I don't wimp out....
posted by Jalliah at 4:36 PM on March 2, 2015 [5 favorites]

The man of twists and turns has also always been very generous with using their profile page as a public incubator. I believe the only request is that you give them a heads-up.

Are people using those? I mean either for this project or in general. I don't have as much material as that sitting in my MeFi bookmarks folder, but I've fished out a few possibilities that I would have liked to see FPPs on. In some cases, I don't foresee having the time to pick out the best stuff, and in one or two cases, I don't think I'd know how to pick the best stuff, even though the topic interests me. I would be thrilled if someone took them for any reason.
posted by Monsieur Caution at 6:59 PM on March 2, 2015

Are people using those? I mean either for this project or in general.

The only person to ever contact me for one was filthy light thief.
posted by the man of twists and turns at 7:20 PM on March 2, 2015 [2 favorites]

The only person to ever contact me for one was filthy light thief.

The answers to some questions make way too much sense. :D
posted by Monsieur Caution at 7:26 PM on March 2, 2015 [5 favorites]

The only person to ever contact me for one was filthy light thief.

filthy light polite borrower
posted by kagredon at 11:50 PM on March 2, 2015 [10 favorites]

Man, there have been a lot of awesome posts coming out this past couple of days! What kinds of ideas are people playing with right now? I'm still trying to figure out how I want to frame the OSHA post I talked about earlier, and have been contemplating a Jane Addams post in maybe a few days or so.
posted by sciatrix at 9:06 PM on March 3, 2015 [2 favorites]

I've swapped podcasts on the metro for working through my instapaper queue looking for interesting things to share :)
posted by ellieBOA at 12:42 AM on March 4, 2015

I'm working on a post about capoeira; I've got the "fall down a YouTube rabbit hole of amazing games" part down pat, I'm just trying to figure out how to frame it.
posted by tchemgrrl at 5:37 AM on March 4, 2015 [1 favorite]

It's been especially awesome to see some first and second timers really kick butt their first times out. My first FPP was so ennnnh, even for the early formless days of MeFi, that I've disavowed it, so I'm doubly impressed.

I've been working on a Nazimova and/or Garden of Alla(h) FPP on and off for about 3 months. I thought #WomensMarch would be an awesome time to kick it into shape and post it, but whenever I kick it, the FPP just lies languidly on a couch and says it's not perfect yet.

So in the meanwhile, I've been putting together a sort of song genealogy post that has been fun to research.
posted by julen at 5:58 AM on March 4, 2015 [1 favorite]

And for some reason I love the fact that the first thing I found searching julybywomen was jenfullmoon's post on Juggalos vs. the FBI. I attribute that to needing more Juggalos in my day today.

OMG, THAT'S the first thing that comes up?!? *am scairt*

I just wanted to say that i totally appreciate the freaky animal links that went up recently. Whoever did 'em, keep 'em coming. *snerk*
posted by jenfullmoon at 6:32 AM on March 4, 2015 [3 favorites]

I'm thinking about making one full of the wacky world of hipster gun video channels, but am still working on how to frame it to make sure no one takes it as a time for the gun control debate.
posted by corb at 9:37 AM on March 4, 2015 [2 favorites]

Oh gods, I once went down the rabbit-hole of guns-shooting-through-improbable-things and it was awesome.
posted by Deoridhe at 5:34 PM on March 4, 2015 [2 favorites]

Hah! I've posted twice and neither were deleted!
posted by jenfullmoon at 8:58 PM on March 6, 2015 [5 favorites]

We're up to 104 posts with the #womensmarch tag!
posted by Blue Jello Elf at 8:34 AM on March 8, 2015 [8 favorites]

Whoa, eight days in and we met the goal? Women of MetaFilter, you rock!!
posted by Deoridhe at 10:41 AM on March 8, 2015 [8 favorites]

127 posts tagged WomensMarch (including this one)
posted by small_ruminant at 8:44 AM on March 10, 2015 [1 favorite]

I should amend my recommendation for TextEdit on the Mac: Make Sure You Use It in Text Mode.

My Portential [sic] Front Page Posts doc accidentally got changed to a .rtf last week, and every time I've cut and pasted from it into the New Post form, I've had annoying issues - end quotes aren't normal end quotes (regardless of font), some links don't copy the link AND the link text (which I didn't realize until it was way too late for my Gallows Tree post... *shakes fist*), and there's some weird rtf formatting cues that has to be fixed for a web presentation. It wasn't until I reverted the file to .txt that ease was restored and my fist was returned to my pocket to await another calamity worthy of it.
posted by julen at 9:10 AM on March 10, 2015

I would like to thank nadawi for the Notepad++ rec--I'm finding it really useful for categorizing my proto-posts while I add some context or body for them. I was previously using Word, which was quite a bit clunkier and more of a mess. Thanks!
posted by sciatrix at 9:42 AM on March 10, 2015 [1 favorite]

Okay, done! Though it looked smaller in preview than on the front page...ah well.
posted by corb at 11:34 AM on March 12, 2015 [1 favorite]

...also not about what I thought! Maybe I will do another. March is long!
posted by corb at 11:34 AM on March 12, 2015 [2 favorites]

Awesome post, corb!
posted by daisyk at 2:08 PM on March 12, 2015 [2 favorites]

I am really loving this month. There's more than I can keep up with, which is a nice problem to have. Well done everyone - and keep it up!
posted by Athanassiel at 6:12 PM on March 12, 2015 [1 favorite]

Okay, I've posted... seven things this month so far. And I've been worrying about it today, because I kind of feel like I'm taking over the front page/taking up a whole lot of post space/taking attention away from other women in #WomensMarch. I can't figure out whether this is a reasonable worry or just my jerkbrain being over self-critical. Perspectives would be awesome.

(By the way, there have been so many awesome things that went up just in the last few days as a result of this initative--I really loved rtha's roller derby post and Blue Jello Elf's post on the first Chinese-American movie star and Lexica's post on orchid mantises and flex's farting post, in particular. You guys all have such awesome things to talk about!)
posted by sciatrix at 10:34 AM on March 13, 2015 [1 favorite]

If you're taking up too much front-page space, sciatrix, then joseph conrad is fully awesome and Blue Jello Elf and I need to retire covered in shame and embarrassment.

I vote the more the merrier, personally…
posted by Lexica at 10:48 AM on March 13, 2015 [11 favorites]

You're fine.
posted by the man of twists and turns at 8:36 PM on March 13, 2015 [4 favorites]

Shall I backtag WomensMarch and share the taking over? :P
posted by infini at 3:16 AM on March 14, 2015

There really has been a slew of good stuff on the front page everyday since March began. I don't know why we don't just do this all year round.
posted by infini at 3:17 AM on March 14, 2015

There really has been a slew of good stuff on the front page everyday since March began. I don't know why we don't just do this all year round.

I found myself posting a lot more readily after JulyByWomen, so I wouldn't be surprised if this month also increases posts by women in the long tail. So we kind of will be doing this all year round!
posted by kagredon at 4:54 PM on March 14, 2015 [6 favorites]

My first post was an obit post, in the middle of the night (Eastern). And then nothing, until JulyByWomen, which gave me the confidence to fail. I mean, a post doesn't need hundreds of comments to be successful. And even if it doesn't go well, that's okay. But the atmosphere of encouragement was helpful beyond belief, and that has definitely carried over. I feel much less awkward about posting now. As in, posting FPPs is something I do now.
posted by Ruki at 9:01 PM on March 14, 2015 [4 favorites]

I'll chime in that I'm really enjoying the posts this month, and appreciate all the effort everyone's been putting in. I'm glad some new folks have given it a whirl, and I hope more will too.

I kind of feel like I'm taking over the front page

Do not worry about this. You aren't. And in any case, we have several male posters who are extremely prolific and there's no concern about them taking over, so you shouldn't worry either. Post great stuff, that's what counts.
posted by LobsterMitten (staff) at 9:39 PM on March 14, 2015 [13 favorites]

"we have several male posters who are extremely prolific and there's no concern about them taking over..."

OMG yes - MartinWisse, filthy light thief, and the man of twists and turns post pretty much every day like clockwork. Their stuff is great and they're really good contributors in this community!

No one complains that they are taking up too much of the front page. YES YOU CAN POST EVERY DAY!
posted by joseph conrad is fully awesome at 7:02 AM on March 15, 2015 [10 favorites]

I'm waaaay less anxious this year to prove anything than I was last event (JulyByWomen 2014), hence some of the single-link posts I've been doing. I'm also on a medication that makes you super non-anxious (that would be 'calm', right?) and so I sort of do not have that same anxiety driving me to research, research, research. And that feeling of "Wait! It could be even _better_..."

Having said that it's still really fun and I'm enjoying the unexpected stuff on the blue this month.
posted by joseph conrad is fully awesome at 7:11 AM on March 15, 2015 [4 favorites]

And in any case, we have several male posters who are extremely prolific

I am deliberately posting less this month, fwiw. I did the same last July.

Please post as much as you like. You're all doing a brilliant job.
posted by zarq at 7:34 AM on March 15, 2015

I just posted my first ever FPP!

I spent years lurking before I even made up my mind to sign up for an account, and I spent the first year as a member without getting around to making an FPP, but the WomensMarch thing really gave me that push to finally put something out there. Thanks to Deoridhe, viggorlijah, and everyone else who was involved in starting this MonthbyWomen movement.
posted by litera scripta manet at 8:28 AM on March 15, 2015 [19 favorites]

Rock on, lsm.
posted by cortex (staff) at 8:47 AM on March 15, 2015 [3 favorites]

I posted a FPP for the first time since last July just now, and I probably wouldn't have thought to do it if it hadn't been for this effort. So thanks for that!
posted by immlass at 10:47 AM on March 15, 2015 [7 favorites]

In addition to the MonthbyWomen and WomensMarch tag, I also used "myfirstfpp" on my post this morning. I know we talked a little bit about this in the Yaypril thread, but I wanted to bring up this idea here in case anyone who is doing their first FPP during WomensMarch (or even not as a part of WomensMarch) wants to use it going forward or via backtagging. It might be fun at the end of the month to see which FPPs came from first time posters!
posted by litera scripta manet at 3:36 PM on March 15, 2015 [6 favorites]

Oh, and I also want to say a public thanks to taz for answering my questions this morning as I was putting together my post and to cortex who fixed the typo I made in the title of the FPP so quickly that I barely had any time to freak out about it.

Hugs and high fives for everyone!
posted by litera scripta manet at 3:46 PM on March 15, 2015 [3 favorites]

200 posts, all! Go women of Metafilter, well done everyone so far!
posted by sciatrix at 4:46 PM on March 17, 2015 [5 favorites]

I have finally posted my one March FPP, but the MarchByWomen drive has gotten me to at least start brainstorming and drafting a few more. Even if they don't make it in March, I feel like I might actually post them eventually instead of leaving them in the "eh whatever, nobody cares" pile.
posted by specialagentwebb at 11:12 AM on March 19, 2015 [6 favorites]

Do it, do it, do it! :D I bet you they'll turn out awesome.
posted by sciatrix at 11:15 AM on March 19, 2015

Yes I really liked your pie fight fpp.
posted by joseph conrad is fully awesome at 1:46 PM on March 19, 2015 [1 favorite]

Okay, so I posted the Ashley Judd thing. I almost did it yesterday and then thought, "Oh god, what if I get in trouble for it?" and backed out. Then I saw her essay today and thought, "No, this has to get posted."

still hope I don't get in trouble for it somehow

I can't post anything else for 24 hours, but might I recommend if someone wants a suggestion to FFP this Monica Lewinsky NYT profile? I mean, really, it's kind of horrifying that nearly 20 years later she still apparently can't really have a home or a job.
posted by jenfullmoon at 4:31 PM on March 20, 2015 [6 favorites]

Thanks for the heads-up lalex!
posted by zarq at 8:21 AM on March 21, 2015

I decided to take the bait and draft up a post for Women's March.

Only, I am so nervous about the whole thing and want to toss it in the gutter. Can someone proofread my post so I stop thinking about quitting and just get to posting it already?
posted by PearlRose at 11:13 AM on March 23, 2015

Sure! If you want to MeMail me, PearlRose, I'll be around for a while. I'd be happy to look over it and give you feedback if you want.
posted by sciatrix at 11:22 AM on March 23, 2015

You're also totally welcome to bounce that sort of thing off the mods if you want; just fire us a draft at the contact form and we can give you some feedback.
posted by cortex (staff) at 11:36 AM on March 23, 2015

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