MetaTalk

A lot of people have complained about FanFare's professional white background. Well, DRUNK WITH POWER after somehow kludging together a successful CSS theme for /r/MetaFilter with zero experience, I decided to try my hand at giving our new subsite a makeover, too -- the layout is fine, but that glaring white is painful to read in a darkened teevee room. Inspired by the original soothing dark blue color scheme from film/TV review aggregator Metacritic (which discarded it for an unpopular redesign years ago), I put together a complete FanFare theme (screenshot*) that adjusts not just the background and text, but stuff like visited links, link hovering, the pop-up video button and lightbox, posting page notes, live preview area, and the sidebar and Deck ad box. You can install it in Firefox (with Greasemonkey or Stylish), Chrome (with Stylish or Blank Canvas Script Handler), and jailbroken iOS (with Userscript Loader, using this URL) -- it's tested and working properly on all three. [more inside]
posted by Rhaomi on Aug 8, 2014 - 63 comments

Recently I have seen several old movies just appear on Fanfare without any notice. I would like to participate in these discussions, but have a hard time watching them with no prior notification. I know the threads stay open for a long time, but the great majority of the comments come in the first couple days of a thread being posted. Wouldn't it be nice if we had some kind of guideline asking people to post a Fanfare talk notice a few days before posting older movies/tv shows? I am not pointing fingers at anyone, and I know this is all new functionality, but it would be nice if we had some idea that these older things would be posted prior to them landing on the main Fanfare page. Plus, I imagine it would push up the amount of discussion, which would be nice. Yes/No/Maybe? Just to be clear, with new shows/movies this isn't an issue because we can assume that people will already be watching, but with something like Who Framed Roger Rabbit, a few days to notice so I can plan a rewatch would make a big difference to me (and others?).
posted by Literaryhero on Jul 31, 2014 - 77 comments

During the initial discussions surrounding FanFare back in March, some talk was had regarding adding books and other reading to the subsite at some future time. It was noted in passing that there is a two-year dormant MetaFilter Goodreads Group. I'm curious about moving forward on one of these options and would like to solicit opinions from the group. [more inside]
posted by Celsius1414 on Jul 23, 2014 - 49 comments

Today we're releasing a spot for discussing plans for TV and Movie watching (stuff like the Horror Film Club, the Summer camp series, etc) by adding a discussion area to FanFare called FanFare Talk. We're also adding the ability for new posts in the Movies section to be added by members instead of just me for the last couple months of testing. Both discussion posts and movie posts will need to be approved before going up, as TV shows still are moderated. The front page of FanFare has been updated to show the titles of recent Talk posts along with a new tab in the upper right to get to all the discussion posts. [more inside]
posted by mathowie on Jul 18, 2014 - 47 comments

Does FanFare need its own talk page, like Music? It seems like there have been enough Fanfare planning posts here lately to make a new space for them, and to keep MetaTalk more MetaFilter related. [more inside]
posted by that's how you get ants on Jul 12, 2014 - 24 comments

The FPP I made on Slings & Arrows (probably some spoilers there if you haven't seen the show yet) was pretty well received, so who's interested in working our way through the series? [more inside]
posted by feckless fecal fear mongering on Jul 11, 2014 - 36 comments

We're going non-English again this week, but also taking a dip in the more extreme end of horror. Martyrs, a 2008 French film by Pascal Laugier is emphatically not for beginners. It's so violent, in fact, that it is sometimes lumped in with films like Saw and Hostel as "torture porn." The twist is, this film has--so I am given to understand (haven't seen it yet myself)--an ending that casts the subgenre in an entirely different light, and considerably more thought and sense of purpose than the genre typically bothers with. It is--I want to emphasize again--seriously and ceaselessly violent and upsetting. [more inside]
posted by DirtyOldTown on Jul 10, 2014 - 72 comments

I just watched the finale of Breaking Bad last week, after snorting the entire series over the course of about six months. Withdrawal is giving me a fever, and the only prescription is more Heisenberg. Who wants to jump in the RV with me? [more inside]
posted by scody on Jul 9, 2014 - 42 comments

The next one is The Big Lebowski, which I will post Monday June 14. It's widely available to watch online, or you can simply replay the whole film in your mind, as can everybody in our generation. And then, alternating between old and new: [more inside]
posted by maxsparber on Jul 9, 2014 - 26 comments

Summer Camp/Movie Series Club Calendar - let's arrange it here. [more inside]
posted by troika on Jun 30, 2014 - 26 comments

When looking at this deleted post that hit my RSS feed, it made me wonder why the new FanFare feature (love it, btw) wouldn't be perfectly appropriate for discussion of World Cup matches, even while in progress? [more inside]
posted by mcstayinskool on Jun 25, 2014 - 65 comments

MeFi FanFare Summer Camp! Consider this thread our arts & crafts cabin, let's macrame up a list: [more inside]
posted by troika on Jun 23, 2014 - 39 comments

Who's in? What do you want to watch?
posted by maxsparber on Jun 22, 2014 - 114 comments

I've drafted (very roughly) a Fanfare post to kick off a spoiler-friendly Arrested Development rewatch. I'm seeking people who have input on what such a rewatch would include. I also have some questions about what will happen to meta-Fanfare posts like this one in the future. [more inside]
posted by kagredon on Jun 20, 2014 - 21 comments

The way that shows on FanFare are automagically coralled under the the show/ url is great! Would it be feasible (or helpful) to automatically add the show name as a tag for any posts made for a show? [more inside]
posted by subbes on Jun 20, 2014 - 13 comments

I rewatch Twin Peaks once a year. I think it would be fun to do a rewatch thread for the show in Fanfare. I'm thinking Tuesdays and Thursdays at 8PM EST? Who else would be interested in doing this? [more inside]
posted by codacorolla on Jun 20, 2014 - 56 comments

Can we add books included/show only/first watch/rewatch to the URIs for FanFare? [more inside]
posted by bfranklin on Jun 16, 2014 - 10 comments

Apropos of the horror movie club post below, I would like to suggest a system of having movie clubs/curated movie series, which would appear in a sidebar for upcoming watches. Details below. [more inside]
posted by Eyebrows McGee on Jun 8, 2014 - 28 comments

As a spinoff of this discussion about new labels in FanFare, I floated the idea of pseudo-formal FanFare movie clubs, in which threads could be posted for older movies and folks would convene to discuss them, book club-style. Several folks seemed interested, with the idea of a horror movie club on the table. Who's on board for a MeFi Horror Movie Club? I figure we can get together and choose a movie here and reconvene next Monday in a FanFare thread to discuss the film. Ideas?
posted by DirtyOldTown on Jun 7, 2014 - 128 comments

Today we're adding four new labels for TV show threads at FanFare, to denote special spoiler conditions. Two are for recent experiments in "Rewatch" and "First Watch" threads, the other two are specifically for Game of Thrones threads, which we'll be splitting the last two episodes of this season into "Show Only" and "Books included". [more inside]
posted by mathowie on Jun 6, 2014 - 242 comments

As a general guideline for FanFare: what are the best ways for people who are both show watchers and book readers to enjoy a thread, make comments, and have engaging conversation while: 1) not ruining things for the show-only folks, or 2) having people assume that every comment made is a spoiler? [more inside]
posted by tempestuoso on Jun 2, 2014 - 224 comments

Could we have a "My Shows" view on the FanFare front page? I probably only want to keep up with at most 4 or 5 of the whole list there....as we add more shows, that list is just going to grow and grow. Thoughts?
posted by pjern on May 25, 2014 - 27 comments

Some of us are discussing a re-watching of Mad Men from the beginning once this current half-season ends. We have some questions around spoilers and quasi-spoilers and exactly how to set this up in FanFare. [more inside]
posted by mikepop on May 23, 2014 - 134 comments

The FanFare site is evolving and we mentioned in the first post about it that we'll someday be moving into other areas of pop culture on the site. The TV experiments have gone pretty well so we're going to start playing with movies as a major post type matter on the site. [more inside]
posted by mathowie on May 16, 2014 - 80 comments

Episode 92 of the podcast was recorded yesterday and runs about an hour and twenty minutes long covering all our favorite posts from the past month of MetaFilter [more inside]
posted by mathowie on May 13, 2014 - 50 comments

Thanks to the tireless efforts of pb, we're now able to start opening FanFare up to more shows. You'll see a few more shows listed on the New Post page, as well as a link to add additional shows. New shows will go through an approval process like episodes do currently (here's what a search on a show title looks like). I'd like to ask everyone upfront not to just go in and add every show you can think of, but to add shows you are ready to make posts right now about that you expect people will join you on. [more inside]
posted by mathowie on May 6, 2014 - 376 comments

On the heels of the previous MeFiTV thread as well as internal discussions about how we could someday do a site around entertainment in general, we're ready to open up a small beta test of what discussions around episodic TV might look like at FanFare. [more inside]
posted by mathowie on Apr 16, 2014 - 1288 comments