I like the cut your jib July 24, 2018 3:20 PM   Subscribe

Is it possible to see what other user's have added to their 'My Fanfare'?

I did a search for 'other my fanfare' and didn't see anything.

If there is a way currently, an opt-out would probably be in order.

I run into users who are passionate and thoughtful about their media, and willing to share here - and I'm super curious as to what other media/ shows/ books they're also passionate about, kind of as a recommendation system.

Other people's thoughts about having access to other members' Metafilter preferences/ info (arguably, what a member adds to their 'My Fanfare' is potentially fraught personal info)?
posted by porpoise to Feature Requests at 3:20 PM (12 comments total) 2 users marked this as a favorite

There's no current functionality like this and I don't think we'd look to add it; we similarly don't show what folks have added to their Recent Activity, or what tags folks have in their My Ask or My MeFi filters. Basically there's no specific compelling reason to make that kind of user specific preference stuff public, so we don't, and I don't expect that to change.

That said, the idea of some way to publicly and obviously share interests/preferences would be fine to brainstorm, if folks want to do so. And building tools that do more of an aggregate surfacing of that kind of interest/preference stuff could be interesting if done in a way that doesn't come down to identifying individual users inadvertently, etc; one of the things we're working on with the FanFare front page rework is building "here's what folks are chatting about" into the basic design sensibility so it'll be easy to see at least at a top level where folks' collective interests are at any given time.
posted by cortex (staff) at 3:24 PM on July 24, 2018 [1 favorite]


I'd really like to know what the most popular media is (are?). Can you tell that X people added [show] to their MyFanFare?
posted by AFABulous at 4:07 PM on July 24, 2018 [2 favorites]


I'd be in favor of having my 'My Fanfare' selections visible -- as an opt-in feature of the Profile page, the way geographic location is? Maybe separate from the Recent-Activity-functional My Fanfare, if that's a concern -- like, add an 'Add To My Profile' button to the show pages that pulls them all into a profile section formatted like the 'AskMefi tags', so people can opt not to show their guilty-pleasure/problematic favorites, or can easily remove something they've rage-quit.
posted by oh yeah! at 6:52 PM on July 24, 2018 [2 favorites]


One sort-of proto-idea I've been kicking around a bit (and not to the point where I've had conversations about feasibility at all with the team or anything! mostly just in my own brain pan) is having down the right side of the page, under the "add recaps" and whatnot, a section that says "Like Game of Thrones? Then you might like ..." and let individual users add shows (or movies, books, whatever) that they like in the same way they like GoT -- whether that's as a historical fantasy epic, or a political thriller, or things starring Peter Dinklage, or whatever. And then there'd be some kind of "yes, this!" button so you could add your vote if that's what you were going to add too, and then sort them by most-suggested.

My thinking was, if you go to amazon and it says "people who bought X also bought Y," you tend to get just, like, two super-popular things that a whole lot of people are buying. But if you say to someone, "If I love The Good Place, what else should I watch?" you get interesting and varying answers based on WHY people like The Good Place and picking out commonalities with very different things. If you said, "I loved Pride and Prejudice, what else should I read like that?" some people will suggest stories about the lives of women, some people will suggest things set in the Regency era, some people will suggest romances, and that's a LOT more interesting than "If you loved P&P you'll probably also love Sense & Sensibility." Probably true! But not a very interesting recommendation!

(Just throwing it out there so people can kick the tires, improve it, adapt it, or point out why it's doomed to terrible failure!)
posted by Eyebrows McGee (staff) at 9:22 PM on July 24, 2018 [1 favorite]


> Basically there's no specific compelling reason to make that kind of user specific preference stuff public, so we don't, and I don't expect that to change.

User profile pages already show their most frequently-used tags in their posts, so anybody who creates posts rather than only lurks or comments has a list of interests visible to other members.

I feel like this is one of those instances where personal privacy should be respected but on the other hand members are already putting their interests on display by engaging with Fanfare threads, so it's not that much of a reveal.

Tangentially, is there a way to make more visible the list of clubs we're a part of? currently that list is buried behind a nonobvious link in small text in the My Fanfare tab. It's not an obvious thing to find.
posted by ardgedee at 2:53 AM on July 25, 2018


User profile pages already show their most frequently-used tags in their posts, so anybody who creates posts rather than only lurks or comments has a list of interests visible to other members.

That's just aggregating already-public information from their posts, though. The proposal here would be taking not-already-public information and making it public, which is pretty different. We don't see other users' preference settings or anything either, which feels like a closer analogy.
posted by Dysk at 3:44 AM on July 25, 2018


Yeah, I should be clear: I don't see us flipping the switch on currently-not-public stuff, is my basic position, and I think that needs to be the basic position. "Hey, you thought that was private but now it's not!" isn't really viable.

But that's just an answer to whether that specifically would happen, which I'm belaboring out of an abundance of caution since we're talking, if maybe only implicitly, about the idea of the visibility of existing data here.

I don't have a problem with the idea of building new public-by-design tools for this stuff, or pursuing a really unambiguous opt-in approach to some of what already exists, so brainstorming about that stuff is totally fine. I do like the idea of drawing on the strength of the crowd to feed nice discovery approaches to FanFare, fwiw!
posted by cortex (staff) at 8:39 AM on July 25, 2018 [2 favorites]


down the right side of the page, under the "add recaps" and whatnot

To be honest I think making "also liked" data explicitly user-generated means you simply won't get much data. The "add recaps" list is an unfortunate example here because it really feels to me like basically nobody uses it: it's too small, too tucked-away on the sidebar, and so gets forever overlooked.

I like the idea of auto-generating "also liked" suggestions from the aggregate My Fanfare subscriptions a lot better because you already have that data; it's just a matter of surfacing it in a meaningful way. Although I do feel your fear that the results won't be terribly interesting as they'll be dominated by the most popular shows: people that watch Game of Thrones also watch Westworld.

(FWIW I also think "add recaps" fails as a tool because it's an isolated island away from the discussion in the comments. More often when I link to a recap it's because I feel it adds something to the discussion; and it makes much more sense to link to it from a comment in which I can add some context about why it's interesting and/or an illustrative pullquote.)
posted by We had a deal, Kyle at 11:48 AM on July 25, 2018


Yeah, I mostly gave up on adding recaps in the recap sidebar because the sidebar is invisible in mobile Classic mode (as is the show search box).
posted by oh yeah! at 4:15 PM on July 25, 2018


Hmm public like vs private like. Sorta like amazons pub/priv wishlists. Now if Mifi lists could drive netflix recommendations (financial possibility?) it could be a wonderful gestalt, getting non-stupid recommendations would really be helpful at 3am when too tired to think but need something to survive the insomnia.
posted by sammyo at 7:32 PM on July 25, 2018


First up, I'm about to suggest a terrible idea. Second, as someone who silently screams inside every time they read "friend" for "befriend online" the lingo really grates. Thirdly (here it comes, don't hate me) what if we also had the option to "fan" things, be it expressed as yet another [+/-] option on every thread/comment or a freeform text field on our profiles or yet another semi-redundant backend database entry or whatever.

E.g. I might fan The Quidnunc Kid's profile, the Doctor Who Fanfare page and the penisbeaker tag (I totes fan them, fam).

Relevance to topic being that I agree 100% with cortex's point that nothing profile-related should ever be made less private under any circumstances, but a new mechanism for sharing broad stroke interests might work. Although I guess we could just write that into our profiles as things stand anyway, "I shure do get a kick out of them Beavis and Butthead shows!"
posted by I'm always feeling, Blue at 9:53 PM on July 27, 2018


Stand back
...
This sounds like a solution from


BIG DATA!
posted by Nanukthedog at 2:01 PM on July 31, 2018


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