MF Wiki + adding political resources February 7, 2017 10:01 AM   Subscribe

Hey mods and fellow MeFites. Apologies if this has been discussed recently but I didn't find anything. I have two questions: Can we make it easier to find the Mefi Wiki? And is it okay to add a page of links to groups like Indivisibleguide.org so there's a central list of progressive activism resources?

1. Can we make it easier to find the MetaFilter Wiki? There is a tremendous amount of useful info there but unless you've already bookmarked it and especially if you are new it's hard to find. I think this is one of those "curse of knowledge" things. People who know about it know about it and so it may not seem urgent to make it more visible.

2. I've never contributed to a wiki before. Because of the election threads (thanks for adding them to the sidebar!), there are links to useful political resources spread across a bunch of different threads. I'd like to compile a page for the wiki that includes as many links to groups (Indivisibleguide.org, etc.) as possible. Is that an okay thing to add? Am I the only one who might find it useful?
posted by Bella Donna to Feature Requests at 10:01 AM (15 comments total) 1 user marked this as a favorite

Right now the wiki is linked in the footer of every page, and in Metatalk (the link is in the top navigation bar on Classic theme, and in the sidebar in Modern theme). Also here's a link just because. You can also quickly find it by just googling "mefi wiki" -- honestly that's often what I do if I'm looking for a particular wiki page.

It would be fine to make a wiki page for collecting political resources, and I bet lots of people would find it useful. There have been some roundups at the beginnings of threads, so that would be the first place I would start in assembling such a list. There's a page from the fall for election threads, that might give a model or have some useful stuff.
posted by LobsterMitten (staff) at 10:21 AM on February 7, 2017


(Looking again at that election thread page, it's not what I was thinking of.)
posted by LobsterMitten (staff) at 10:51 AM on February 7, 2017


Not all MeFites are progressive. Metafilter strives to be inclusive in other areas, so could we add political resources besides those that are regarded as progressive?
posted by Rob Rockets at 11:09 AM on February 7, 2017 [3 favorites]


Well, it's a wiki. If you want to make a page of conservative "here are the phone numbers for your representatives" lists or whatever, that seems fine. (I would hope it would go without saying, but given the times we're living in, I'll say it anway: links to stuff like Stormfront or that kind of thing are not going to be ok, and it's not ok to troll the wiki or deliberately add offensive stuff over there.)

I guess this is a community question, whether people are ok with the wiki being used to collect lists of resources that folks are mentioning in the politics threads. If people would rather the wiki not do that, that also seems ok to me as a norm to set. So: if you think the wiki shouldn't be a place for this kind of thing, please say so.
posted by LobsterMitten (staff) at 11:17 AM on February 7, 2017


Rob Rockets, that's a good point. Can you give me an example of one or more of the kind of resources you mean? Since I'm personally interested in resources for progressive activism, I'm willing to do that work. Folks who want to add additional resources will probably need to do that themselves. I should note that what I really mean is "resources for fighting the Trump administration and its attempts to dismantle things like support for science, our constitution, etc." And that plenty of people who don't consider themselves progressives support a reality-based approach to the world. So maybe progressive was the wrong term.
posted by Bella Donna at 11:18 AM on February 7, 2017


Thanks, LobsterMitten, that is the question. I think a central place for links now spread across many threads would be useful. If the community disagrees, that is fine.
posted by Bella Donna at 11:21 AM on February 7, 2017 [1 favorite]


Collecting a list in a central place is fine, I think many people would find it useful. It's just the separate question about where to put it -- do folks want that kind of thing to be on the Mefi wiki or is it too non-Mefi-related to go there and instead it should go somewhere else.
posted by LobsterMitten (staff) at 11:25 AM on February 7, 2017


I like the idea of centralizing links with a short description and maybe a link to the origin on MeFi? I sometimes miss the political threads because life is busy, but I'd like to see what's being accumulated in those enormous threads. It could also be an easy resource for people who aren't sure if something has been linked before, which I remember being an issue brought up on the gray about those enormous threads.
posted by Deoridhe at 11:41 AM on February 7, 2017


If you are going to link to political resources on the wiki, perhaps the best thing to do would be to simply make sure that it is oriented in MetaFilter terms, e.g. “Political Resources Mentioned On MetaFilter”. That is entirely value neutral and will allow conservative/liberal values to fall out as people would like. (Indeed, if the wiki were to simply accumulate resources that had not been mentioned on MetaFilter, I would think that that was a poor use of the wiki itself.)
posted by Going To Maine at 11:45 AM on February 7, 2017 [1 favorite]


I do not think including a list of political activist resources mentioned in the Metafilter US politics threads is an appropriate use of the wiki.

/my two cents
posted by crush-onastick at 11:52 AM on February 7, 2017 [2 favorites]


If you are going to link to political resources on the wiki, perhaps the best thing to do would be to simply make sure that it is oriented in MetaFilter terms, e.g. “Political Resources Mentioned On MetaFilter”

The wiki is unofficial so the good news is

1. you can do whatever you want, for the most part
2. other people can do whatever they want.

It might be useful, given this, that you start with a PoliticalAskMe page? Because you'd wind up with what amounts to progressive advice without having to curate and decide what was included and was wasn't included, just because of the nature of the audience? Something like ReadMe only for political advice threads. Because ultimately it should be about something on MetaFilter not just another place to toss good links. But I'm sure creative people can find ways to do that.
posted by jessamyn (retired) at 11:54 AM on February 7, 2017 [2 favorites]


I do not think including a list of political activist resources mentioned in the Metafilter US politics threads is an appropriate use of the wiki.

My gut reaction was the same, because I tend to think of the wiki as just a Help/How To resource for the site, as well as an archive of some of the lore. But as jessamyn points out, people can do (and have been doing) whatever they want. Just hit "Random Page" within the wiki and you'll discover all kinds of obscure stuff.

But more to the point, there seem to be a number of pages that are collections of information/links/resources, some more related to MetaFilter than others:

• There is a page about how exactly to "get a lawyer". Scroll down past the resources and you'll see it links to related AskMe threads.
• There is Travel guides, which links to relevant AskMes, organized by country.
• And Reputability of the media, which appears less explicitly MetaFilter-related but does have several links to relevant threads or comments scattered throughout.

So, there are lots of ways you could structure this. But I think ultimately there should be some tangible connection to MeFi in there.
posted by Kabanos at 2:33 PM on February 7, 2017


Thanks for the feedback, folks. Much appreciated!
posted by Bella Donna at 10:34 PM on February 7, 2017


I did not know the Wiki was at the bottom of the page. I see it in the same list as Chat and Labs, both of which are also in a drop down menu up top under More. Perhaps Wiki could be added to the drop down list under More? Stuff above the fold generally gets vastly more exposure than stuff down at the bottom of a page.
posted by Michele in California at 1:02 PM on February 9, 2017 [1 favorite]


What Michele in California said. The page scrolls on soo long that it's hard to notice it there at the bottom if you don't already know that it's there at the bottom.
posted by Bella Donna at 10:25 PM on February 13, 2017


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