MetaTalk

I want to talk about the ongoing toxic trend on Metafilter of people threadshitting within the first few comments of a post without reading the post's subject, leading into arguments about content that either has nothing to do with the post or have been addressed directly within the post. It's been a problem with the site for years, and I think the community would be much better for it if this trend just outright stopped. [more inside]
posted by flatluigi on Feb 3, 2014 - 279 comments

Ask MetaFilter should default to a white background for new users and those not logged in.
posted by anildash on Mar 5, 2007 - 514 comments

Having a public argument among a few people limits the ability of everyone else to continue a discussion. If you need to have an intense back and forth, please consider moving your discussion to another forum. Please also consider limiting the number of comments you make in a thread so that others may have the chance to voice their opinions.
posted by spaghetti on Jan 20, 2005 - 24 comments

Hey Matt, you should start a new subsite called MetaWord. Visitors would contribute single word posts, like Heart, or Hero, or Terrorist or Gallbladder and then everyone can argue about what the word means and did mean and should mean and would mean if we all spoke Esperanto and wore those hats with the fruit on them.

Alternatively -- and this might even be a better idea, if possible -- MetaWord would have regular posts, but comments would be limited to one word. You could even do away with the textfield and just give people a dropdown box with preselected words like 'Doublepost!,' 'Racist!,' 'Troll!' 'Nazi!' 'Liberal!' 'Kitties!' and '*yawn*'. And then we could argue about the meaning of the word "yawn."
posted by Shadowkeeper on Jul 24, 2002 - 48 comments