MetaTalk is for talk about and criticism of Metafilter.

March 2, 2005 7:11 PM

MetaTalk is for talk about and criticism of Metafilter. Metafilter is not. That means this, and especially this, and on and on and on, are totally out of line because of they are outside of the grey.

Quit it -- you're hurting America.
posted by NortonDC to Etiquette/Policy at 7:11 PM (36 comments total)

The same goes for Ask MetaFilter.
posted by NortonDC at 7:11 PM on March 2, 2005

I can see what you're talking about--both of those comments are unnecessarily insultingly worded--but adding links to flimsy posts in a thread is perfectly good.

Would you like it better if the posters had started new threads to metatalk complaining that link x and link y and link z would have made post a a better post?
posted by interrobang at 7:23 PM on March 2, 2005

I understand your point, NortonDC, but think the line's a bit blurrier than your "totally out of line" implies. Seems to me MeFi benefits from a low level of relatively gentle corrections in threads themselves, rather than creating a new MeTa thread for every case where a user (new or not)might could use some guidance.

I've struggled with this in the past, so nowadays try to stick to offering a positive and/or informative contribution to the thread before adding a gently phrased suggestion about the quality of the post itself. Tone is everything in those cases, I think, which makes casu marzu's comment read a bit worse than yhbc's.

Suggesting there's no middle ground between 1) creating a new MeTa thread and 2) offering brief guidance to users posting for the first time seems excessively rigid.
posted by mediareport at 7:27 PM on March 2, 2005

Unless a post is really inappropriate for some reason, rather than just not being good, I would rather see the comment right in the thread, rather than start a whole new thread just to bitch over here. This is especially true, for instance, when the post is a double. So now we litter the site with not one but two redundant posts? A couple of niggles: keep them in the thread; a pile-on of negative comments or a complaint that the post grossly violates decorum: bring it over here.
posted by caddis at 7:29 PM on March 2, 2005

It's all about the tone. :)
posted by Witty at 7:30 PM on March 2, 2005

My tone was completely wrong, for which I apologize. I didn't set out to insult Postroad but I dashed off my comments too quickly. I thought about posting to Metatalk, but decided not to waste the space on something so seemingly trivial. But I did want to offer some constructive criticism on how the post could have been better (as opposed to "OMG t1s post is teh suxx0rz!").

So, I'm sorry Postroad.
posted by casu marzu at 7:38 PM on March 2, 2005

Suggesting there's no middle ground between 1) creating a new MeTa thread and 2) offering brief guidance to users posting for the first time seems excessively rigid.

Fasle dichotomy -- I didn't suggest any such thing. Communication happens outside of *.metafilter.com, including personal emails. I chose not to go that route this time because I see so much of this abuse of the blue and green, and disregard of the grey, that I wanted to make my concern public. In the place that's designed for just such concerns.

Another motivator was the fact that the abuse was coming from both old and new members, which I took as sign of the seriousness of the issue.
posted by NortonDC at 7:39 PM on March 2, 2005

To my mind yhbc's comment would have been fine if he had just left off the overly MeTa "I'm sorry to lead off with what may come off sounding like a kvetch, but IMHO more would have been better in this case. Something like:"

And simply posted the rest of his comment: "Here's more information about les freres Lumiere, and a dissenting opinion as to the invention of color photography (which was discussed here previously). Wonderful pictures!"

Remember when madamjujujive used to do this? It was a wonderful contribution and people still learned from it, plus it didn't derail the thread.
posted by onlyconnect at 7:42 PM on March 2, 2005

casu marzu, your tone is not what made it inappropriate for the blue. The affectless content of your comment was enough (though certainly not all). Postroad has an email address in his profile, and your comments may have been appropriate in an email or here in the grey, but (again) their content apart from their tone made them inappropriate in the thread.
posted by NortonDC at 7:46 PM on March 2, 2005

Hmm, rereading my own comment, I did present a dichotomy when I said "outside of the grey." Inside or outside. You were right, mediareport.

I should have phrased it positively, "inside the blue." I didn't because I initially wrote the post to cover AskMe in it's initial area. I rewrote it, but incompletely, leading to my sloppy interpretation of my own words.
posted by NortonDC at 7:50 PM on March 2, 2005

I don't get this at all. Why is it necessary to say "Crap post. Here's some links to make your post conform to my ideals."? What is wrong with just offering the links? Just, "Here are some more links."

There that was easy. No need to go to MetaTalk. No need to email. No need to be nasty in the blue.
posted by Secret Life of Gravy at 7:52 PM on March 2, 2005

Secret Life of Gravy speaks truth.
posted by NortonDC at 7:57 PM on March 2, 2005

But only because he's agreeing with onlyconnect.
posted by NortonDC at 7:58 PM on March 2, 2005

Communication happens outside of *.metafilter.com, including personal emails.

That's a fair point, NortonDC. A low level of relatively gentle corrections sent via email would pass along advice *and* keep threads more focused on the topic at hand.

Two possible downsides, however:
1) Helpful comments wouldn't have as wide an effect on lurkers/future posters.
2) Bad advice sent via email might be accepted by the poster without question. If, on the other hand, a piece of bad advice is posted to the thread, someone who disagrees can *then* take things to MeTa.

Maybe those downsides are a decent price to pay for the benefits of reducing snarky MeTa-esque callouts in MeFi threads. But I'll still suggest that insistence on an absolutely rigid distinction between the blue and the grey is probably unworkable, and should be modified to include at least some room for helpful non-snarky advice.

I'm with you on the green, though. Keep the fucking green clear - make that *ruthlessly* clear - of anything that's not a direct, serious answer to the question being asked. God help the green if that isn't done.
posted by mediareport at 7:59 PM on March 2, 2005

I followed Postroad's link because he put a great teaser in. However, he just linked to a book review which contained very little information. That was tremendously disappointing. The purpose of my post was basically to fill in some useful background material. The content of my comments was very much germane to the topic of the post.

Where I messed up was (1) conflating this with my NYTBookReviewFilter comment, which is a problem, but which is better addressed in MeTa, and (2) not calming down from my general dissatisfaction with these things before posting.

In the future, I'll follow Secret Life's advice.
posted by casu marzu at 7:59 PM on March 2, 2005

... unless I feel like hurting America that day.
posted by casu marzu at 8:01 PM on March 2, 2005

I followed Postroad's link because he put a great teaser in. However, he just linked to a book review which contained very little information. That was tremendously disappointing.

Yeah, well, that's pretty much what you get with a Postroad link. You may notice that Postroad either pretends not to know about or doesn't know about metatalk (I kinda believe the latter).

His threads are often interesting, but he's one of those posters who you can kind of expect something from. I don't hate his posts, but I don't like them, either
posted by interrobang at 8:13 PM on March 2, 2005

.
posted by interrobang at 8:15 PM on March 2, 2005

Mediareport, even correct posting advice delivered in the blue is still unhelpful, because the correct advice is being delivered in a what is itself a faulty comment. It's a classic "do as I say not as I do." The overall lesson of misposting to speak advice, even correct advice, is that misposting is acceptable.
posted by NortonDC at 8:17 PM on March 2, 2005

We get your point, Norton; take a breath. I dislike like seeing a lot of meta-chatter in the blue, but then I also dislike too many petty call-outs in the gray. Sending some users mail is not an option because they don't disclose their contact info. And I share the opinion of others here who suggest that well-worded and brief nudges on posting etiquette serves to educate future posters. In short, there really isn't a hard, fast rule about when meta-comments should move to the gray.
posted by squirrel at 8:29 PM on March 2, 2005

I respectfully disagree, as is my right, since I am one of the posters being called out. MetaTalk is, certainly, the appropriate place for "topics specific to MetaFilter itself", including but not limited to "questions of content", but I don't think that my initial comment in the WWI pictures thread rose to the the level of a question of content. Instead, I saw what I thought was an interesting, but flimsy, post, based as it was on only a single link to an interior page of Big D and Bubba's website, without any explanatory text or other context. I really was afraid the link wouldn't get the attention it appeared to deserve, and I didn't want to kill it by dragging it into MetaTalk, but to help it. I did some quick Googling and found some supporting links to other Lumiere sites, and the inevitable comparison to the other early color pictures that have been linked and discussed here repeatedly. I put those links forward in as helpful and friendly a manner as I could, including what I thought was a preemptive apology for any perceived presumption. Maybe including that was the mistake, since it wasn't in my first draft, and it might have come off as overly "meta".

At any rate, others in the thread agreed (it appears) with me, and there was little or no harm done to the discussion, which is what I thought was the point to the whole comments section.

Until know, when it was dragged into MetaTalk.
posted by yhbc at 8:38 PM on March 2, 2005

I don't mind seeing a gentle nudge in the right direction inthread. I dislike it it when it's one of the first comments because it often tends to influence how the thread develops. Sometimes it totally throws it off, or cuts it off — especially with the more rude complaints.

One note though; I often contribute further links to a post when I comment, but 99% of the time it's just because I really liked the post, and it inspired me to do some more research on the topic, or because I know of some really nice related site that would complement the link(s). I would be mortified if I thought that the poster thought that I was doing so because I found his or her offering insufficient!
posted by taz at 8:40 PM on March 2, 2005

I would prefer to see an in-thread comment to yet another MetaTalk post. Email would often be better still, but emailing somebody you don't know can seem weird. The first comment linked here seemed wholly appropriate to me; the second could have used a kinder tone, but neither derailed the thread. Also, I reckon this sort of thing has been discussed here before. You could have emailed the parties you believed to have been offending and pointed them to one of the many MeTa posts making that point.
posted by anapestic at 8:50 PM on March 2, 2005

Or I could have made an etiquette post to MeTa. The point of posting complaints/advice/suggestions in MeTa is to keep the blue focused on content. Making "yet another MetaTalk post" doesn't waste the time of those readers that are in the blue for content and discussion of the content. In-thread meta-commentary is always at least a temporary derail and does force those only interested in the content into meta considerations.

MetaTalk=optional
meta-comment in the blue=forced

And of course unadorned links to MeTa from the blue are the elegant bridge between the two worlds -- apparent to all but devoid of commentary, and beckoning while never insistent.

squirrel, don't worry; I'll be in bed soon, and then it's all yours.
posted by NortonDC at 9:07 PM on March 2, 2005

*rubs paws together fiendishly*
posted by squirrel at 9:13 PM on March 2, 2005

You know, everything NortonDC says sounds completely reasonable, but I keep having this gut feeling like I don't agree. I'm not totally sure why, but I think some of it has to do with the fact that the gray seems kind of snarky and overly call-out centered right now, anyway. Maybe it's just because my first day of reading the gray was the day of the first y2karl gangbang. Maybe it's just because since then it's been a non-stop parade of call-outs, including this thread. I'm not sure. I just feel like offering advice to a user in the relevant thread seems a good deal more community-oriented and constructive than a call-out in the grey, which feels like public shaming. Kind of medieval, you know? Personal emails, I guess, are fine but I side with mediareport on that issue.

Anyway, none of that excuses getting snarky and nasty about things, but insofar as we're talking about decent helpful criticism I'm not sure I'm feeling this idea.
posted by shmegegge at 11:24 PM on March 2, 2005

So, I'm sorry Postroad.

Normally I would agree with nortondc, but postroad never shows up in metatalk, so criticism and apologies here are wasted. Of course, he doesn't care about criticism in his threads either, so it's all a waste of time.
posted by justgary at 11:25 PM on March 2, 2005

I like hurting America, though.
posted by stavrosthewonderchicken at 1:23 AM on March 3, 2005

Ow.
posted by yerfatma at 4:52 AM on March 3, 2005

That's a fair point, NortonDC. A low level of relatively gentle corrections sent via email would pass along advice *and* keep threads more focused on the topic at hand.

Two possible downsides, however:
1) Helpful comments wouldn't have as wide an effect on lurkers/future posters.
2) Bad advice sent via email might be accepted by the poster without question. If, on the other hand, a piece of bad advice is posted to the thread, someone who disagrees can *then* take things to MeTa.

3) There's no way to know if someone else has already e-mailed the thread creator offering advice. People run the risk of making a small mistake and getting 20 e-mails saying the same thing, and people trying to offer advice won't know if their comments will be helpful or redundant. If it's posted in the thread, it only takes (in theory) one comment. At least, people continuing to criticize a post after its shortcomings have been pointed out in-thread can be rightly blamed.
posted by ludwig_van at 9:56 AM on March 3, 2005

Postscript: one of the reasons I decided against posting in MetaTalk is that no one reads it. It's like we never had this conversation at all.

This doesn't mean it was a good reason. But I think it's a good observation.
posted by casu marzu at 2:23 PM on March 3, 2005

3) There's no way to know if someone else has already e-mailed the thread creator offering advice.

That's an argument for using MetaTalk, not for littering meta-commentary inside blue threads.

If it's posted in the thread, it only takes (in theory) one comment.

That's an incomplete accounting. If it's posted in-thread, it's a thousand people reading one comment, instead of, worst case, 1 person reading 20 comments.

MetaTalk or email still wins over dropping meta-commentary in blue threads.
posted by NortonDC at 9:39 PM on March 3, 2005

Although a straight complaint / diagnosis of an FPP seems out of order, I don't see what the big issue is if someone happens to criticize the the original post, but includes a bunch of links that would improve it.

Taking it to metatalk might be the 'right' thing to do, but wake up and smell the coffee, most people don't seem to even know what it is, never mind visit to find out what they've done wrong.

I'd much rather see a link-laden mild criticism than yet another metatalk thread about Popstroad's latest crap FPP.
posted by daveg at 3:39 AM on March 4, 2005

as someone who only recently started reading metatalk regularly, I'd like to say that before I joined MeFi, metatalk was kind of like walking into a room full of comic book geeks without ever having read a comic book. It's hard to understand what everyone's getting so worked up about (say, during discussions of crap fpps or asking for new features) when you don't have access to link or comment posting yourself. It's just outside the realm of a reader's experience. Most of the new people (myself included) are probably just not used to the idea that MetaTalk is something they SHOULD read now. Can't speak for the old-timers, though.
posted by shmegegge at 4:25 AM on March 4, 2005

This

most people don't seem to even know what it is, never mind visit to find out what they've done wrong.

and this

It's just outside the realm of a reader's experience.

are both best addressed by this:

unadorned links to MeTa from the blue are the elegant bridge between the two worlds -- apparent to all but devoid of commentary, and beckoning while never insistent.

And if a specific situation seems uniquely immune to MetaTalk (Postroad!), then email the author. Between these two communication channels and the onlyconnect/Secret Life of Gravy concept of "make it better without the bitching," there's no good reason to leave metacommentary in the blue.
posted by NortonDC at 7:22 AM on March 4, 2005

Yeah, but that's just, like, your opinion, man.
posted by squirrel at 9:03 AM on March 4, 2005