From the mists of time....

July 20, 2001 5:01 AM

Let's respect MeFi's past, while looking to chart its future. I've scanned through the archives and pulled up some of the more important threads in my time on MeFi, and I encourage you to do the same.
posted by hijinx to MetaFilter-Related at 5:01 AM (6 comments total)

The very first thread I thought of was the earthquake thread. I remember that was important for MeFi because it was really strutting the web's power - I recall that MeFi was the first with the news, even beating CNN. And we got stories and thoughts straight from the people there, which is far more powerful than reading a dry news report.

But then I got to thinking: this could have been duplicated elsewhere. It's all very coincidental and incidental that MeFi was the vehicle; it could have happened on another site, and probably did, somewhere. Thus, I threw that one out.

One of the threads exemplifying MeFi in my mind was the one discussing car free cities. We got some intelligent thought out there, and honest discussion on transportation. Given that it's a big issue that affects us all, and the link was just as important as the discussion, I selected it.

The other thread that stood out was cash for birth control, discussion of a controversial ad on Chicago's El. It started as something in the real world, that ended up having a web connection; it then went to discussion on the web. I like that.

Admittedly, I did some scouring for those two threads. I kept my personal criteria confined within the time I've been a member - since April 00 - and I tried to point to links with more than a modicum of discussion. I also ignored my own links.

Interesting things I noted: a majority of the articles I wanted to link to were posted by Matt. They all seemed to deal with larger issues, even when they were apparently little ones, and they all garnered a deep discussion (loads of comments, too). But I kept running by Matt's entries and thought, "Yeah - that was good stuff."

Things to take away from these threads: the ones that garner the best discussion deal with big issues, but not ones that simply divide people in two (ie, any damn politics thread.) Give people a link, give people something to think about, and then - hopefully - it won't get buried by the latest Oddly Enough crap.

Your thoughts?
posted by hijinx at 5:01 AM on July 20, 2001

(Note: this idea was berthed by rodii. Go rodii!)
posted by hijinx at 5:09 AM on July 20, 2001

<comment class=pedantic> The idea was more likely "birthed" by rodii. <comment>

(Unless, of course, you meant rodii was trying to keep a safe distance from it. Which you very well might. Sorry, I'm in a weird word mood this morning.)
posted by bradlands at 7:22 AM on July 20, 2001

No, he just gave it a place to sleep.
posted by Octaviuz at 8:00 AM on July 20, 2001

Ah memories
posted by rschram at 11:52 AM on July 20, 2001

There was this thread about the Summit of the America's protest, true it was started by me, but became a pretty damn good non-shouting debate about the issues involved.

posted by owillis at 1:08 AM on July 21, 2001