MetaTalk

We're introducing a new visual styling for moderator comments today! Instead of the older [small text and brackets style], mod comments will now feature a contrasting border, full-sized text, and for text browsers and screenreaders an explicit "Mod note:" text prefix to compensate for the lack of graphical cues. [more inside]
posted by cortex on Apr 14, 2021 - 48 comments

We’re adding a heads-up note to the posting process on the front page when previewing a long-above-the-fold post, to help provide folks with preemptive feedback about post length. It’s not enforced—your post won’t be truncated by the posting process or anything like that—but we’re hoping it’ll help folks think about how they’re framing stuff in terms of how much vertical space it might occupy. [more inside]
posted by cortex on Jul 15, 2015 - 60 comments

I was recently called out by another user for the style I use when quoting others. The criticism was that, by wrapping the other person's comments in <small> tags, I was engaging in a deliberate effort to diminish the importance of what they said. Is this a legitimate criticism? [more inside]
posted by tonycpsu on May 4, 2014 - 169 comments

What are the most creatively written posts on Metafilter? [more inside]
posted by mokin on Dec 9, 2011 - 32 comments

Is it just me, or are more people using emoticons in comments than a year or so ago? [more inside]
posted by codacorolla on Sep 27, 2011 - 174 comments

What is the correct style/convention for hyperlinks and punctuation? [more inside]
posted by Aizkolari on Mar 10, 2011 - 60 comments

Low-priority pony: mobile stylesheet for profile pages? [more inside]
posted by ctmf on Mar 7, 2011 - 6 comments

How did using italics for quoting become house style? If it didn't just evolve, who pushed it and why?
posted by Joe Beese on Oct 17, 2010 - 82 comments

Bank Machines owes Metafilter a nod: Just look at this ATM screen design.
posted by boo_radley on Aug 25, 2009 - 103 comments

I really hate this. But since I don't want to do the same thing, I need to explain what "this" is. "This" is writing a whole post on the front page without ever saying what the post is actually about. Teaser posts are teh suck.
posted by Doohickie on Oct 25, 2007 - 84 comments

So I found two cool sites, dealing with entirely separate things that could make meaty FPPs. I just don't have the time to do the research to flesh them out right now. Should I make a pair of posts, or one post connected in a jokey or left-field way? Should I just make follow-up posts in my own thread as I find more stuff, or would you prefer the style of my previous posts, in general, even if it means I forget about stuff that may potentially be cool? I see a massive variety of styles, but I figure I may as well sound the hivemind out. Please feel free to ignore me if I'm being too n00bish.
posted by StrikeTheViol on May 23, 2007 - 41 comments

It seems people have a lot of virtiol for my comments. Since I missed those posts, I would like to take this opportunity to respond.
posted by kfx on Dec 6, 2006 - 135 comments

I made a FPP (Stern Review of global warming) linking to Wikipedia using the ^ - for stylistic reasons, I wanted to emphasis the second link in the FPP and not the Wikipedia link, which is the first link, and so wanted to keep it small and unobtrusive. Someone< ?> then changed it and made it a full link. Is there a style-policy? Is it documented anywhere?
posted by stbalbach on Oct 30, 2006 - 50 comments

If you can't be bothered to punctuate or capitalize, maybe you shouldn't post to the front page.
posted by dame on Sep 29, 2006 - 84 comments

I suppose this must come up from time to time, but I couldnt' find it searching... I was just viewing AskMe through Safari and when I went to add a comment, the little toolbar for bolding/italcizing/linkifying text wasn't there. I see this is the same on the other pages as well. What up with that?
posted by hwestiii on Sep 23, 2006 - 3 comments

This is about linking style.

Many folk on MeFi and other, somewhat geek-identified sites like kuro5hin have a linking style as follows:

1. Placing multiple links such that several consecutive words in a sentence each link to a different page
2. (somewhat following from #1) Links that bear no relation to the text they mark.

Here is a (made-up) example: "Best Buy stocks several brands of electronics."

What is wrong here? The first link is well placed, but all the others are terrible. Firstly, logically, there is no reason why the word "several" should link to anything other than a page about the word "several". But what is worse than this is that the casual reader has no way to parse this sentence for information without clicking on each link. In this case the URLs are obvious, when hovering over the link in question, but many times the URLs are not so obvious.

Why not just use the much plainer, better style: "Best Buy stocks several brands of electronics such as Sony, Samsung, Mouser, and LG."

Or if it's not intended to give the linked websites so much importance, you could simply say: "Best Buy stocks several brands of electronics (examples 1, 2, 3, 4)."

Either of these would be a vast improvement. Discuss.
posted by splitpeasoup on Mar 13, 2006 - 91 comments

Firefox 1.5 is throwing up a list of errors from the Metafilter style sheets, mainly (but not solely) about 'font-color'.

Just thought you'd like to know.
posted by twine42 on Jan 28, 2006 - 12 comments

One. Word. FPPs. (ok, so the last is more than one word) I don't know about you, but sometimes I'm stuck on a slow connection. Dial-up slow. I have to carefully select which links I click, and I don't want to waste my time on links that don't interest me. I screen my choices based on the info provided by the FPP itself, and link location is only mildly helpful (except for newsfilter). Can't we please get a consensus for making the FPPs informative enough to judge interest? (other uninformative posts today alone...)
posted by mystyk on Sep 28, 2005 - 73 comments

In this thread on ask.mefi, purpleporpoise asked me to defend my call-out. (More inside)
posted by oddman on Sep 7, 2005 - 16 comments

No need to "sign" your posts or comments. Just below each post and comment, we can see your name. By clicking your name, readers can find any info you want to share (and as a community we encourage email addresses being listed so we can help you out with stuff via email rather than call you out in the thread or on MeTa). Just thought I'd give a heads up for some of the newer folks, as this young fellow mentioned it in his comment.
posted by macadamiaranch on Jul 29, 2005 - 46 comments

Uhm, everyone using [more inside] in Ask MetaFilter sort of defeats the purpose if it and looks, err, bad, does it not? Is there anything to do about it?
posted by xmutex on Feb 18, 2005 - 31 comments

Does anyone agree with me that posting an entire paragraph as a single link makes it very hard to understand? I find it very difficult to read these types of links and posts. Particularly because a mouseover event causes the entire paragraph (in bold typeface) to flash between white and yellow on a blue background.
posted by PigAlien on Jul 14, 2004 - 18 comments

55 characters = 55 links? http://www.metafilter.com/mefi/25409

While I appreciate all the hard work that y2kcarl put into the post, I have to ask, "Are the 55 links useful to anyone?"

I thought the idea was post a link or perhaps several, to point out somethign new and allow for a bit of discussion.

Who has the time/energy to look at 55 sites? Is the post more about style than substance?

Or am I out in left field here as a link minimalist?
posted by Argyle on Apr 28, 2003 - 94 comments

A pet peeve, to me, is something intensely subjective and harmlessly annoying that it's unreasonable to attack and stupid to waste time decrying. And yet...and yet we all have them and it's fun to list them. Mine(sorry SpecialK for singling you out)are:
1) Yawn...[six more pet peeves inside]
posted by MiguelCardoso on Jul 9, 2002 - 131 comments

This post had a white background when I previewed it (like this one still does), but it disappeared when I posted it. Shouldn't "Preview" mean "show me what I'll get if hit Post now"?

The HTML filter appears to have elided the "style=" and quote marks from the tag.
posted by nicwolff on Dec 20, 2001 - 18 comments

Shouldn't front page posts describe the content of the linked material? Lately a few posts have offered a brief opinion of the linked material without describing it (e.g. this one, this one, and this one), which I find a bit of a nuisance because I have to dig just to find out what's going on. By no means am I trying to criticize the posters; I simply wanted to draw attention to a general trend that might need correcting. What do you think?
posted by mcwetboy on Nov 16, 2001 - 11 comments

Today it's raining outside, but I think it's just a shower. It was sunny yesterday, and I hope it'll be sunny tomorrow. Is summer your favourite season? What sort of weather do you recommend? I like rainbows. They are nice.
posted by holgate on Sep 9, 2001 - 31 comments