MetaTalk

In addition to the ~biweekly megathreads, the 2016 DNC saw four daily threads with 12,536 total comments, plus a 1,598-comment VP thread for literal potato Tim Kaine. This cycle there are no megathreads, and a grand total of *checks notes* zero posts or comments on either the DNC or VP nominee Kamala Harris, a charismatic woman of color with a complex record who may potentially lead the nation for a dozen years if everything breaks her way. I know the megathreads were a burden, but this seems sub-optimal, especially given the desire on the site and in society generally to spotlight women leaders, black voters, and the push for criminal justice reform. [more inside]
posted by Rhaomi on Aug 18, 2020 - 295 comments

I remember that somebody in the megathreads was keeping a website that compiled and organized all the little bits of information that came out in the news about Trump's collusion with Russia (and maybe also other Trump stuff), but I can't remember the name and haven't been able to search for it successfully. Does somebody have a link?
posted by coolname on Sep 12, 2019 - 1 comment

The megathreads have been decommissioned, and many members of the subcommunity that has grown up around them have expressed that the return to normal Metafilter-style threads for political discussions will not fill the same role that the megathreads did. Let's discuss our options for finding a new space for this subcommunity to continue. [more inside]
posted by biogeo on Jul 25, 2019 - 179 comments

During the 2016 US election cycle, we experimented with moving US politics discussion to a catch-all megathread model: focusing almost all discussion of the topic to large omnibus threads posted every week or two. The resulting megathreads have been a valued thing for many people, and a lot of work and care has gone into them from posters and commenters to try and help them be a functional part of the MeFi posting mix. But the threads have always posed significant challenges, and the time has come when we need to make a fundamental change. [more inside]
posted by cortex on Jul 23, 2019 - 611 comments

"Life is like politics: 10% getting things done. 90% exploiting loopholes." That's the summary of a classic Peanuts strip, now colorized. This is the latest hyucking hyuck thread.
posted by filthy light thief on Apr 23, 2019 - 74 comments

While catching up with the latest politics megathread, I was surprised to see this mod note from LobsterMitten: [Note about post drafts - putting here so people will see it, but happy to talk it over more in email, will email some of the recent posters. Please keep the posts on the shorter side, maybe 1000 words or that neighborhood. Thanks.] As a longtime crafter of megaposts, I don't think I've ever seen official mod guidance to cut them (relatively) short in this way. Posts have been edited for leaving too much above the fold, but I can think of only a handful of incidents where the post body itself got official pushback for being Too Long -- and those largely involved novella-sized posts with length-induced display errors (really) or blanket copy-pasting a website's contents. Is LobsterMitten's advice targeted at the political megathreads only -- perhaps for performance reasons -- or should it be construed more broadly? I happen to think a well-organized megapost is the best of MeFi and a feature few vid- and listicle-driven sites can match, and in the case of the politics threads specifically they're a fine example of community collaboration that provide a valuable curated record of this chaotic era. But what do you think?
posted by Rhaomi on Apr 17, 2019 - 48 comments

So our first experimental Hyucking Hyuck thread worked out pretty well, and then a month went by and it closed. So: here we are with round two! This is a dedicated space for riffing and jokes, designed in particular to take some strain of the overcrowded US politics catch-all threads. [more inside]
posted by cortex on Feb 17, 2019 - 196 comments

This is a userscript I've been working on that adds the appearance of pages to threads. It's a visual change only, so you still have to wait for the full thread to load, but it might help a little with responsiveness and navigation. [more inside]
posted by lucidium on Aug 14, 2018 - 2 comments

From M-x shell on the most current megathread: "Request to admins to just have weekly or even daily resets of the megathread. Not wait for a user to make them, just make them automatically and close previous ones. I don't need another recap of links every time. Each thread should just have a link to previous one at the top and link to next one at the bottom." [more inside]
posted by jenfullmoon on Jul 28, 2018 - 176 comments

Please help me track down the various links people have posted in the MeFi politics megathread that argue that general, across-the-board voter turnout is the key to defeating Republicans in elections. [more inside]
posted by Rykey on Jan 3, 2018 - 5 comments

Hey folks, big discussion time. We're going to be making some changes on how U.S. political discussion plays out on MetaFilter, to try and make sure it remains available as a useful resource in a way that isn't as unsustainable as the current approach has been. I’ll lay out some concrete steps we’re taking, and some general thoughts, below. This is detailed but important and I appreciate you taking the time to read through it. [more inside]
posted by cortex on Nov 28, 2017 - 464 comments

As per Rock Steady's comment in the mega-thread ...thread, I thought i'd set up a separate post about this related content widget pony. [more inside]
posted by softlord on Mar 28, 2017 - 13 comments

The biggest change in the way that mefites participate on the blue in years has been the rise of US politics megathreads. We have had several discussions of the qualitative impact of them, but it occurred to me that it might be useful to dig into the infodump and see what quantitative picture might emerge. I think my findings are worth sharing - while a quantitative analysis on its own can't tell us whether the megathreads are a good thing or not, there are several negative trends regarding community engagement and participation that are happening in close concurrency with the rise of the megathreads. [more inside]
posted by strangely stunted trees on Mar 27, 2017 - 435 comments

Since the megathreads are so long and cause problems with mobile browsers occasionally reloading the page, I've found it easiest to "checkpoint" my place by occasionally clicking on the timestamps so that my browser will update the URL to have the anchor of that comment. That way if the page is accidentally reloaded it will go back somewhere near the right location. If I'm unlucky enough to click on a comment that is deleted due to moderation, the anchor goes away and I must endlessly scroll hoping to find where I left off. Is it possible for the anchor tags for deleted posts be preserved into either the next comment or maybe the [moderators comment] that removed it?
posted by autopilot on Feb 28, 2017 - 54 comments

We seem to be having more of them, lately, and I stress that this is not a complaint, they're fine, but I was just wondering what that reflected regarding the userbase, and don't have the infodump skills required to figure it out. [more inside]
posted by Shepherd on Jul 22, 2016 - 32 comments

I've been following the most recent last primary US election post and the Brexit post in my recent activity. However, trying to load these threads (even on my laptop - I don't even bother on my phone) in full is very difficult. Are there Chrome plugins out there that will allow me to truncate or modify these threads in some way to make the page load faster?
posted by codacorolla on Jun 26, 2016 - 55 comments

I'm trying to follow the 4000+ comment election thread, and it's getting really difficult. Links are not where they look like they are, lines of text are duplicated and overwritten. Now, in addition to the jumping-links behavior, I'm having trouble scrolling. The page will just sit there as I wheel, then jump a couple of screens, so I have to go back, which also doesn't go smoothly. It's becoming unusable. [more inside]
posted by Kirth Gerson on Apr 3, 2016 - 154 comments

So, even outside of election years browser crushing 3000+ post megathreads are now a not uncommon thing - should we be looking at pagination at the 2000 comment mark? And if not pagination what else could be done to make them less of a browser crushing experience, especially on mobile?
posted by Artw on Apr 18, 2013 - 93 comments