[MeFi Site Update] June 7th

June 7, 2021 1:11 PM

Hello Metafilter! My 5th update on the state of the site.

Reminder: I will be the only mod monitoring this thread so please be patient as I reply to your feedback and questions.

If you have any questions or feedback not related to this particular update, please Contact Us instead. If you want to discuss a particular subject not covered here with the community, you’re welcome to open a separate MetaTalk thread for it.

Technical Changes
- Fixed inline youtube player icon so it displays correctly now for certain edge cases
- Updates to Funding info and PayPal payments including:
➝ Miscellaneous development cleanup on the backend
➝ New explicit link to Stripe payment management page on the user Preferences page (instead of having to go directly to the Funding page)
➝ New signup, one-time and recurring payments to PayPal will go to a new MetaFilter PayPal account with more up to date credentials; payments to the old account associated with the @haughey.com address will continue to work as always.

General Projects we are working on
- Privacy policy: Scheduling follow up calls with our lawyers for last revisions.


Reporting back on feedback from previous Metas

I’ve started going over previous feedback and questions and when it comes to the future of MeFi, a lot of it ties back to the overall priorities our team has been working on that was addressed here a few weeks ago.

Let me summarize them in the usual 3 buckets for now:

- Infrastructure: The main priority right now is the completion of our privacy policy and subsequently the terms of use. Once those are completed we can start thinking about possible growth strategies.

- Sustainability: We keep doing ongoing work on how the team distributes their hours, projects and responsibilities to make sure that we keep the site running and improving as smoothly as possible. Overall, the mod on duty currently reviews all reports coming during their shift and, if anything particularly complex is reported it may be reviewed collectively (either with other mods available at the time or together as a team during our weekly meetings, depending on how time sensitive it is).

- Improvements: I have been tracking the most common requests and added them to a wishlist internally, like the ability for users to remove their own content. For now, please keep Contacting Us if you need any of your content anonymized or removed.

We were also asked if there was any recent data on what percentage of total posts and comments are deleted and this has steadily been around 1%. Let me know if you have any questions.

Feel free to start adding questions to this thread and I will do my best to address them as promptly as possible.

posted by loup (staff) to MetaFilter-Related at 1:11 PM (7 comments total)

Would it be helpful if recurring Paypal payments go to the new account even though the old one is still functioning?
posted by kathrynm at 5:44 PM on June 7, 2021

Yes, we are still working through this, so the current set up is not the final one. Also, I want to thank the people who have reached out privately to send your feature requests to be added and tracked, I'll bring them up to the team!
posted by loup (staff) at 11:19 AM on June 8, 2021

Improvements: I have been tracking the most common requests and added them to a wishlist internally, like the ability for users to remove their own content.

Thanks, loup. Is this what you meant by going over the previous issue-based metatalk threads and compiling user feedback so that the mod team could be aware of it and respond to it?

If so, I think it's important for that list not only to be internal but to also be public-facing, at least for registered members. There was a lot of work members did in those threads, a big, depressing sense of speaking into the void, and some assurances that no, eventually the issues brought up would be read and addressed. Having a public list means that members can look at it and see what the mods are taking in from among the many points that were made; what issues we can expect to see addressed; and what doesn't seem to have made it onto the radar.
posted by trig at 12:57 AM on June 10, 2021 [6 favorites]

By all means, sharing more details about where we are at with previous threads and feedback publicly is something we need to do.

I will do that, slowly but steadily. The main goal of this site update was to let you know what are our main priorities for now but that doesn't mean my work here is done.

Also, if there is anything that any of you think is priority, please bring it up in these threads and I will make sure to 1. Bring it up to the entire team and track it. 2. Address it the best way I can.
posted by loup (staff) at 10:10 AM on June 10, 2021

Back in October 20th I asked this question:

"What became of the idea for greater transparency in Metafilter's fundraising? I don't just mean the idea of donating separately for a BIPOC board, I mean the idea of giving supporters options for what projects at the site they wanted to fund, as in:

"We need $XXXX to fund the BIPOC board for a year, and so far we have raised XX%"
"We would need $XXXX to fast track development of tools that allow users to anonymize or fully delete their own posts"
"We are hiring attorneys to nuke the assholes on Twitter who targeted users and mods, estimated fees are $XXXX"

The response from restless_nomad was that "Developing the tech for multiple-bucket fundraising is still ongoing; it's proving to be much more annoying to set up on the Stripe end than just setting up the page would be. Right now the only bucket we'd have would be the BIPOC board project - everything else needs to go to salaries, at our current funding levels"

The conversation continued for the next few comments before that thread was closed. Miko pointed out that the Donation page said at he time (and still says) ""You can make these and other new projects possible by contributing below and contacting us to let us know how you want us to use your contribution."

Except there currently are no other new projects. There's the existence of the BIPOC board, but we're asked to donate to either the board specifically, or just the site in general, and if we choose the latter it's just a black box where we have no real understanding of how much is needed, nor can we give any input on what other projects might be important to us.
posted by The Pluto Gangsta at 12:34 PM on June 10, 2021 [2 favorites]

This is another MeTa post about feature redesign/improvement that is almost exactly a year old:

The flag button's design is bad enough to be a social justice issue
posted by The Pluto Gangsta at 2:04 PM on June 10, 2021

Thank you for the feedback! I've brought both points above to this week's meeting with the team. We'll start looking into the fundraising part right away and and look into what needs to be done to redesign the flag button and how much work it involves. Thank you again.
posted by loup (staff) at 10:04 AM on June 14, 2021