mefibookmarks.com

February 17, 2005 4:02 PM

mefibookmarks.com - my pet project gets its own domain name. Please give it a test drive - go easy on it!
posted by FieldingGoodney to MetaFilter-Related at 4:02 PM (20 comments total)

Interesting stuff - I've been wanting to track specific posts in a more organized fashion.

Naturally I wanted to bookmark this post (meta-meta and all that!), but I got "already bookmarked" even though I hadn't and it doesn't show up in my bookmarked list.

Looks good to me thought!
posted by lirio at 4:29 PM on February 17, 2005

Same problem lirio had... but great idea!
posted by idest at 4:40 PM on February 17, 2005

it's very cool, but when i look at "recent mefi posts" there's no way to add a bookmark without clicking on the link itself--couldn't there be a button or something next to each listed thread saying "bookmark this" or something? It shows me the whole thread i want to bookmark (the Paul Martin Gay Marriage speech), but the url isn't visible without clicking or doing other things.
posted by amberglow at 4:52 PM on February 17, 2005

lirio and idest - that bug is fixed now - should have spotted that one before!

amberglow, you can get the URL of a post by right-clicking on the "number of comments" link of it (i.e. you don't have to go into the thread - see here as example) - it's the joys of iFrames - I don't see a way to have "meta-tools" for a 3rd party site without using frames of some sort (meaning getting hold of URLs is a bit tricky).
posted by FieldingGoodney at 5:00 PM on February 17, 2005

I'm not entirely pleased that you bought a domain with "mefi" in it and you plastered "metafilter" all over an outside project. It starts to look too much like a product or section of this site, done by me and if anything bad every happens (data loss, db hacked), it will look like my problem. Could you add a "not affiliated with MetaFilter" in an obvious place please?

Also, does the whole thing work by screenscraping?
posted by mathowie (staff) at 5:06 PM on February 17, 2005

btw, I'm still planning to do a built in version here, maybe for all, maybe for pro members.
posted by mathowie (staff) at 5:07 PM on February 17, 2005

also, if the recent post lists are being scraped from mefi at the moment someone requests it, you're doing more harm than good to the server.

Maybe I'll whip up a local version of this tonight. I just don't want to see this grind the server more than an internal, built-in version would.
posted by mathowie (staff) at 5:09 PM on February 17, 2005

Oops amberglow, I didn't read you right the first time - hmmm I thought long about this thing of how to bookmark.....the problem is that iFrames doesn't know the what the URL is of the 3rd party site as soon as you click around it, so you have to manually get the URL using your browser tools.....it's a bit of a pain, but I just can't see a way around it.....

Could you add a "not affiliated with MetaFilter" in an obvious place please?

Sure Matt - no problem.

Also, does the whole thing work by screenscraping?

Yes it does - it only "scrapes" the posts you choose to bookmark, and also the top 5 latest posts of each section.
posted by FieldingGoodney at 5:09 PM on February 17, 2005

also, if the recent post lists are being scraped from mefi at the moment someone requests it, you're doing more harm than good to the server.

Actually, what I think I'll do is take down the "latest posts" section and just leave it simply for bookmarking....then everybody is browsing as normal.
posted by FieldingGoodney at 5:12 PM on February 17, 2005

Also, does the whole thing work by screenscraping?

I've now taken down the "latest posts" section so it now only grabs posts people bookmark.
posted by FieldingGoodney at 5:17 PM on February 17, 2005

If it is a thread I comment in it is 'bookmarked' as it will show in my comments history. If I really have nothing to add I might wait until the thread dies down and drop a '.' in it to add it to my comment history. Either way, it can be handled internally without an outside project banging on the server. A fine line that I think you know you are straddling.

How might this affect advertisements and the click-through? How soon before you place ads that then take away from potential MetaFilter ad revenue?

For the sake of trying it I just took a look in the Beatallica thread where the comment, 'Nice post title' by kenko is completely lost.

Nice idea but if it is really for the greater good and not personal gain I vote for turning it over to mathowie. You would surely get credit and it would be the right thing to do.
posted by geekyguy at 6:27 PM on February 17, 2005

Bookmarklet, please.
posted by scarabic at 6:27 PM on February 17, 2005

If I really have nothing to add I might wait until the thread dies down and drop a '.' in it to add it to my comment history.

Don't do that.
posted by Saucy Intruder at 6:44 PM on February 17, 2005

Your reference, Saucy Intruder, is to a six month old pony request that is a rehash of a previous pony request. I'm supposing that it is less taxing than a pet project site that does screenscrapes. But you are right. I was simply suggesting there are ways to do this internally and one certainly must be the lesser of two evils.

It seems the ponies are coming with greater frequency and FieldingGoodney may have pushed this one further up the queue.
posted by geekyguy at 6:59 PM on February 17, 2005

uh. apple-D, ctrl-D works fine for me.
posted by angry modem at 7:53 PM on February 17, 2005

Why not use, you know, actual bookmarks?
posted by delmoi at 8:49 PM on February 17, 2005

More bookmarking (whatever way you want to do it) will reduce server load on Metafilter since nobody has to load the entire front-page of Metafilter/Metatalk/Ask Mefi to get to the post they are looking for.
posted by FieldingGoodney at 1:59 AM on February 18, 2005

Why not use, you know, actual bookmarks?

Or del.icio.us?
posted by terrapin at 8:10 AM on February 18, 2005

Nice work, FieldingGoodney! I've been toying around with fixing MeFi's search engine using cURL to parse the Google Search results, but it's pretty daunting without access to the actual database. I'm impressed you were able to create this functionality completely by proxy.
posted by Civil_Disobedient at 12:09 PM on February 18, 2005

Terrapin hits it in one for me. Just tag with MetaFilter and drag that feed into your reader. Otherwise this is just one more thing to keep track of.
posted by billsaysthis at 12:18 PM on February 18, 2005