December 2002 Archives (all archives)

December 30

Is anonymity on the Web passe?

Is anonymity on the Web passé? What is there to be afraid of, exactly? Nowadays, more and more MetaFilter members seem to use their own names - or, at least, make identifiable comments here. Our own Evanizer is compiling a photographic collage of Mefi's #irc regulars. So is it OK to be ourselves again? Or is protecting our identities still paramount? I suspect that the causes and reasons of paranoia have now officially passed...
posted by MiguelCardoso to Etiquette/Policy at 12:05 AM PST - 93 comments

December 29

text entry keyboard shortcuts don't work in Phoenix 0.5

MetaFilter's super-handy text entry keyboard shortcuts don't work in Phoenix 0.5 (a Mozilla-based browser) on Windows 2000.
posted by NortonDC to Bugs at 8:46 PM PST - 9 comments

December 27

I logged out and now I can't log back in

I logged out, since I'm not using my home computer, and now I cannot even see the site, much less log back in. I managed to sneak into meta and log on, but I can't get to the mefi front page. Help! [more inside]
posted by elwoodwiles to Bugs at 12:44 PM PST - 10 comments

When good posts go bad....

When good posts go bad . . . what's the correct course of action when you realize that the cute site you linked to about monkeys is really an argument for intelligent design and you are forced to admit that you didn't read the entire article? Since it wasn't the main link, I didn't get annihilated, but is there a workable way to prune the one bad apple from a multi-link post?
posted by vraxoin to Etiquette/Policy at 11:49 AM PST - 6 comments

December 26

So why has Metafilter been down all day?

So why has Metafilter been down all day?
posted by stevefromsparks to Bugs at 5:42 PM PST - 55 comments

December 24

I/P snark as usual

I found some of the following comments irresponsible and irritating. This attack nearly hijacked a thread. These comments are off-topic and are not fair to both the poster of the thread and the victim poster.
a->p->a
posted by abez to Etiquette/Policy at 12:35 AM PST - 35 comments

December 23

Step 1: read Step 2: post

Of course, don't bother to actually follow through to the content of the link, instead you'd rather be the first to wish me a Happy New Year, Mefi-style.
posted by yonderboy to Etiquette/Policy at 11:02 AM PST - 22 comments

Time Limit Error

Since the start of December, whenever I've written a post for the front page, previewed it, then hit the final 'Post' I get this error, which says the 'request has exceeded the allowable time limit'.. and this occurs on the line where weblogs.com is pinged. My posts do make it to the front page but I just get this error.

Someone reported the same error six months ago, but it appears to have started again..
posted by wackybrit to Bugs at 9:44 AM PST - 8 comments

December 21

NYC Meetup

MeFiNYC Winter 2003. Let's meet up and have fried Mars bars. If you have a better suggestion, feel free to post it.
posted by riffola to MetaFilter Gatherings at 1:59 PM PST - 146 comments

December 20

"Harshing on Metafilter"

The Gawker-Metafilter Saga continues. After this it now continues here - "Harshing on Metafilter". Where will it end ?
posted by Voyageman to MetaFilter-Related at 3:02 PM PST - 62 comments

Users in RSS

Could we have the name of the poster in the RSS feed?
Oh and happy Christmas
posted by none to Feature Requests at 9:58 AM PST - 8 comments

December 19

Merry Christmas, mathowie.

Merry Christmas, mathowie.

I am sure I am not the only one who would like to sincerely wish our host the best of the festive season and for the year to come. I have enjoyed greatly my short time here and look forward to much more. Thanks, kudos and congrats for the work you have done.
posted by dg to MetaFilter-Related at 5:32 PM PST - 53 comments

Can we have [more inside]?

Is it possible to make [more inside] a feature?

[more inside]
posted by betaray to Feature Requests at 3:56 PM PST - 19 comments

thread about abortion aborted

the making of an abortion. nuff said.
posted by quonsar to Etiquette/Policy at 1:52 PM PST - 36 comments

MeFi Timezone Support

MetaFilter's front page now supports the display of posts by proper time zone. Set your offset on the customize page, then go to the front page (with the default date sort only at this time) to see the site customized for your part of the world. I'll be adding support for the comments and archives later today. MetaTalk, I'll eventually get to.
posted by mathowie to Feature Requests at 12:56 PM PST - 31 comments

December 18

So what did YOU think about the new Spiderman?

The thread in question. I understand that some sort of precedent was set with the Spiderman thread last spring (or was it something before that?), but can't we, I don't know, reverse the precedent? [more]
posted by The God Complex to Etiquette/Policy at 2:44 PM PST - 33 comments

Can't log out

Am I the only one having trouble logging out? I click "logout", and it just spins me around to the homepage, and I'm still logged in. Tried closing the browser, rebooting, etc. No dice. This has happened on multiple computers (public ones, unfortunately) that have previous had no problems with logging out.
posted by oissubke to Bugs at 12:04 PM PST - 21 comments

Anti- and pro- sites do not make a double

This thread seems to be a triple post. Augusta was discussed here and here.

My apologies for not bringing it up here first.
posted by Kellydamnit to MetaFilter-Related at 11:05 AM PST - 3 comments

I for one welcome our new _______ overlords

I was wondering if anyone out there could point out the source of the "I for one welcome our new _______ overlords" meme. I've seen it frequently on Metafilter in many different iterations... I Googled it to no avail. Movie, song, novel, event? Thnx!
posted by ao4047 to Etiquette/Policy at 11:02 AM PST - 57 comments

Preemptive moratorium on Elcomsoft DCMA acquittal postings

I may be overreacting, but can I put in a preemptive plea that no one posts about the Elcomsoft DMCA acquittal until there's an interesting link to go with it (like a commentary from a Lessig like legal scholar for instance)?
posted by PinkStainlessTail to Etiquette/Policy at 7:02 AM PST - 23 comments

December 17

This post has too many links!

I think it has been mentioned before, and maybe I'm just grumpy tonight, but there are TEN FREAKIN' LINKS in this post.
posted by centrs to Etiquette/Policy at 10:19 PM PST - 23 comments

Temporary IRC Relocation

The irc server turlyming seems to be down, so come on over to irc.undernet.org channel #mefi.
posted by beth to Uptime at 8:19 AM PST - 17 comments

December 16

Metafilter is not about us

MetaFilter is not about us; it's about what we find out there on the web. If so, we should be in the background of our posts if not outright invisible, and we should avoid phrasing our posts as personal blog entries. First example: "I found no post ... I only post it now ... as I see in my weblog's referer log ... that's how a few people found my site." Second example: " I hope ... I've searched ... It has special relevance to me since I am ... Being 25 and wanting to pay off my loans, I may have ... " And posts like this, which are all about personal experience and nothing else, are right out.
posted by mcwetboy to Etiquette/Policy at 4:49 PM PST - 48 comments

sub quality journalistic demagogues

So, Newsmax before Newsweek? I tend to find Newsmax, CommonDreams, YellowTimes, BushWatch all sub quality journalistic demagogues. A question of policy.
posted by four panels to Etiquette/Policy at 7:40 AM PST - 31 comments

December 15

What happened to this post with an image?

Am I imagining things, or was there not a comment post by 4panels on this thread that had a picture of someone....I have forgotten who. Was it deleted? I know that both FPP (especially FPP) and comments-based jpegs are bad form, but are they delete worthy?
posted by lazaruslong to Etiquette/Policy at 6:42 PM PST - 10 comments

Duplicate search issues with x.com vs. www.x.com

This is a double-post. Presumably the author wasn't told because he used "http://idea-a-day.com" while the first post used "http://www.idea-a-day.com". Perhaps a little bit of code could be implemented to solve this problem?
posted by Pretty_Generic to Feature Requests at 9:24 AM PST - 30 comments

December 14

IRC is Down

Ack! The metafilter irc channel is down. How am I ever going to get my fix of mindless chat?
posted by beth to Uptime at 2:59 PM PST - 22 comments

December 13

Is there a lofi for MeTa and what is lofi for anyway?

Is there a lofi for MeTa? If not, what happens to posts that get deleted (like the one that was just here, for example?) Is there any archive, anywhere? For that matter, what exactly is the point of Lofi? Sorry if this has all been explained before - I did search, but couldn't find anything.
posted by jonson to Etiquette/Policy at 10:48 PM PST - 15 comments

There have been 9 FPPs taken from BoingBoing in the past month

There have been 9 FPPs taken from BoingBoing in the past month, not to mention the occasional Slashdot link. Sources like these are widely read and have their own discussion fora. Is making FPPs from them something that should be discouraged?
posted by turbodog to Etiquette/Policy at 1:26 PM PST - 24 comments

How did these users sign up?

How did 17320 and 17319 get in? And what's up with this profile?
posted by riffola to Bugs at 1:40 AM PST - 42 comments

December 12

metafiler.com

Picture, if you will, a web page. On that page, a single link. The text of that link: "Click here to find Metafilter." You click the link. The breath is ripped from your lungs as you are rushed headlong to the Ask Jeeves (UK) search results for the word "metafilter"!

...OK, there's really no way to make this dramatic. But have any other typo-prone users run across metafiler.com?
posted by staggernation to Bugs at 1:29 PM PST - 16 comments

Was this post deleted?

Did I imagine the George W. posting concerning statutory rape yesterday? Or was it just yanked?
posted by puddsharp to Bugs at 9:29 AM PST - 38 comments

December 11

New comment counter nice idea, not accurate

So whenever I access MeFi, and it is supposed to have that nice little new comments next to the thread to let me know how many new comments have been posted, it does one of the following:

1. Picks a random number.
2. Never refreshes.
3. Relates wild tales of sexual debauchery with my mother.

OK, so the last one only rarely. But seriously, what's up with that?

posted by lazaruslong to Bugs at 7:08 PM PST - 47 comments

Weird Mefi bug

Most weird thing I've seen on Metafilter in a while. I got this

-1073741819 (0xc0000005)

When I hit the home page. More suspicous - I had just read the Dick Cheney thread.
posted by dhacker to Bugs at 6:07 AM PST - 8 comments

December 10

Rhyming, community-building posts here....

Anybody know what's going on here? I don't want to interrupt him, he seems to be on a roll.
posted by Stan Chin to Etiquette/Policy at 10:54 AM PST - 50 comments

December 9

I admit it, I monopolized the thread

Er, Guilty... It's easy to monopolize a thread when the subject is dear to one's heart. But it's difficult to gauge when one should resign and say "I'll shut up now". Cheerleading is annoying and thread-destroying. Although it's impossible to regulate posters' percentages and stuff, I'd like to hear other members' opinions on what constitutes the acceptable limit for commenting on one's own thread - considering that the moment you post it, it no more belongs to you than it does to anybody else.
posted by MiguelCardoso to Etiquette/Policy at 6:51 AM PST - 75 comments

December 7

This is a bad post.

Is this another horribly one sided news post, that does more trolling than informing. If the poster had made any attempt at exploring the other side of this issue, he could have included several examples, that show there's enough hypocrisy to go around, when it comes to this issue, but instead we got a lazy, one sided front page post, that was basically an opportunity for a bunch of gun control supporters to jerk each other off.

He could have posted any number of links about the famous arrest of liberal columnist Carl Rowan, who seemed to have an obsession with gun control. At least that is, until he was arrested for illegally keeping a handgun in his Washington DC residence, but that wouldn't have been as much fun I guess.

If your doing a front page post about a hot button issue, shouldn't there be at least a feeble attempt to post links that represent both sides of the debate?
posted by Beholder to Etiquette/Policy at 5:12 PM PST - 58 comments

Good FPP derail belongs in Metatalk?

After seeing this thread denigrate into a debate over the question of whether it was a good FPP or not, I started wondering: is a metatalk thread an appropriate vehicle for trying to divert etiquette debate out a blue thread even when the metatalk thread itself is likely to turn into a rehash of a zillion other metatalk threads?
posted by boltman to Etiquette/Policy at 1:25 PM PST - 19 comments

Is the login down?

Is the login down? I guess that's what I get for logging out.
posted by oh posey to Bugs at 11:27 AM PST - 17 comments

How much traffic does MetaFilter get?

All I want to know is -- roughly how much traffic does MetaFilter get? There must be a fair amount of people unable to become members.
posted by Pretty_Generic to MetaFilter-Related at 6:41 AM PST - 28 comments

December 6

Anyone still interested in the PHP-Metafilter project?

Is anyone still interested in the PHP-Metafilter project? From looking at the sourceforge pages, it doesn't appear that any work was ever done on it. I've been working on a project for my company, part of which involves our own internal version of metafilter. It's not an exact clone of MeFi, but it's definately inspired by it. I'd be glad to donate it to the project, if everyone finds it appropriate & acceptable.
posted by skwm to MetaFilter-Related at 9:43 PM PST - 14 comments

Linking to Copyrighted Material

Isn't this link to copyrighted material illegal? Or at the very least, unethical? Not trying to stir up controversey over the whole "file sharing" debate, just don't want MetaFilter sued for distribution of material that's both copyrighted & commercially available.
posted by jonson to Etiquette/Policy at 12:58 PM PST - 46 comments

December 5

Amphetadesk error message

Playing with Amphetadesk, and got this error message:

AmphetaDesk could not determine the format of http://xml.metafilter.com/rss.xml.
posted by mecran01 to Bugs at 10:27 AM PST - 5 comments

December 4

How could I have made my post better?

I realize that the 'ethnic cleansing' was inappropriate as it was. I'm wondering though if anyone who saw it for the five minutes or so it was up could give any suggestions as to how to post it differently, other than a disclaimer on the front page rather than inside. Or was it inappropriate altogether, warning or not? (Yes, I've read posting guidelines.)
posted by dgt to Etiquette/Policy at 10:24 PM PST - 23 comments

Troll?

This reminds me of a large mythical creature that lurks under bridges, and also smacks of lots of news.
posted by The Michael The to Etiquette/Policy at 6:24 AM PST - 51 comments

December 3

Fair is fair.

If you're gonna delete this, you better delete this. Fair is fair.
posted by RylandDotNet to Etiquette/Policy at 10:15 AM PST - 47 comments

Link&Think Archive pointing to the wrong year

The Link & Think Archive on MeFi Homepage today points to the 2001 archive - http://www.metafilter.com/linkandthink.mefi. I know we can see 1/12/2002 at http://www.metafilter.com/lofi.mefi. Is this deliberate? Just curious.
posted by dash_slot- to MetaFilter-Related at 9:24 AM PST - 5 comments

Am I missing something?

Am I missing something? John Gilmore and Cory Doctorow are asking us to harass total strangers by phoning them at home. [more inside]
posted by y6y6y6 to Etiquette/Policy at 9:20 AM PST - 31 comments

A clean, responsible, and non-snarky way to deal with a funged link

Thanks sebas. A clean, responsible, and non-snarky way to deal with a funged link for the benefit of the community.
posted by PrinceValium to Etiquette/Policy at 3:53 AM PST - 8 comments

December 2

irc is back

irc://irc.metafilter.com:6667 is back up and running
posted by mathowie to MetaFilter-Related at 1:29 PM PST - 23 comments

Thanks everyone

Is it all right to use MetaTalk to thank everyone for wonderful links yesterday? Matt, that was a great thing. I can't recall being so moved by a website before. Thank you, everyone, for that. (and sorry if this is not appropriate for MetaTalk)
posted by Joey Michaels to MetaFilter-Related at 10:04 AM PST - 10 comments

December 1

White on white mefi

in today's theme, on mozilla 1.0 (sorry, but that's the latest version in debian stable/testing) textareas appear as white on white. i have a general (ie desktop) white on black colour scheme, but mozilla is configured to have a default of black on white. ps my mefi config uses the "other" colour-scheme.
posted by andrew cooke to Bugs at 12:37 PM PST - 5 comments

This is not supposed to be a theology debate.

This is not supposed to be a theology debate. Although I don't mind walking the line because I am interested in people's reactions and interpretations of a natural phenomenon. But I don't want my first FPP yanked because people couldn't at least flame on topic and the topic is HIV, how it works and what it looks like.
posted by wobh to Etiquette/Policy at 9:35 AM PST - 19 comments