MetaFilter

(If I need to make that argument, I'll do that inside!)

87.32% of the userbase now reads Metafilter on iPads and thus can't use flash.
posted to MetaTalk by Tell Me No Lies at 6:29 PM on April 24, 2013

Okay, it's possible I might have exaggerated the percentages a little.

As my penance I present you with some real data:

The number of posts containing the word "flash" per month, January 2006 through March 2013.

Not exactly what you asked for, but indicative nonetheless I think.
posted to MetaTalk by Tell Me No Lies at 12:50 AM on April 25, 2013

Favorites begetting favorites

There are no breakpoints/critical masses for favoriting, it's a smooth curve.

(comments with 1-10 favorites go off the top of the graph but they are also a smooth line. In addition I truncated the graph at comments with 173 favorites or more because that's when data starts getting relatively sparse.)

Oh yeah, the source data is the 9 million favorites given since 01-01-10.

You've got to get in on the ground… [more]
posted to MetaTalk by Tell Me No Lies at 6:48 PM on April 22, 2013

Right, so there are a couple of notable things in the data:

1) Surprisingly, there is at least a 20 minute ramp up before sweet spot is hit.

2) The ramp up is noticeably shorter in AskMe. My guess that is because a) an AskMe post seldom takes long to read or process, and b) a lot of the time someone knows the exact information needed off the top of their head.

Number of favorites selected in a post by 5 minute intervals
posted to MetaTalk by Tell Me No Lies at 11:52 PM on April 22, 2013

I think people are primarily talking about the number of favorites for comments, not posts.
posted to MetaTalk by Tell Me No Lies at 1:48 AM on April 23, 2013

Hirsch has a Metafilter account?
posted to MetaTalk by Tell Me No Lies at 6:20 PM on April 24, 2013

Whups, thought we were talking Bacon numbers.

I think there's probably a pretty picture to be made out of favorite densities.
posted to MetaTalk by Tell Me No Lies at 6:22 PM on April 24, 2013

Oh goody. Another one of these threads.

How is anti-capitalism not political[?]

The same way as hating guns is not anti-military. You can hate the tool without hating the user.
posted to MetaTalk by Tell Me No Lies at 5:45 PM on April 24, 2013

bullshit

Wow, the fire is still fucking burning and you want to make political hay out of it.

Just, wow.
posted to MetaTalk by Tell Me No Lies at 10:14 PM on April 17, 2013

Among other things BlueJae, you were responding at noon the next day to things that had been posted that morning about an event that had happened the day before.

If that conversation had gone on while tornadoes were still smashing through cities and people were still trying to contact their loved ones in Joplin I suspect it would have gone otherwise.

12 hours and/or a night's sleep can change the tenor of a conversation tremendously.
posted to MetaTalk by Tell Me No Lies at 2:44 PM on April 19, 2013

MetaTalk Queue

You guys have done impressive things this week.
posted to MetaTalk by Tell Me No Lies at 10:17 AM on April 19, 2013

This is the Internet. Taxonomy is important

Are there good ways to distinguish comments which are merely negative from comments which are aggressively or combatively so?

Not really, no. Most of the time it depends on which side of the bed the readers got up on that day.

Try not to make it personal and play everything else by ear.
posted to MetaTalk by Tell Me No Lies at 1:28 AM on April 17, 2013

What would have been a permissible way to raise this topic?

MetaFilter is not for "raising topics"

QFT.


zanni's rule of thumb:

This is cool; other people will want to see it == Good post
This is important; I want other people to see it == Bad post
posted to MetaTalk by Tell Me No Lies at 1:22 PM on April 12, 2013

Second, I don't really give a crap if "how do I make a good post?" is a question asked in good faith. It's worth answering, and it can't do any harm, so I'm damned well going to answer it.

If you believe that the question was in bad faith then you are rewarding bad behavior.
posted to MetaTalk by Tell Me No Lies at 2:23 PM on April 12, 2013

This is cool; other people will want to see it == Good post
This is important; I want other people to see it == Bad post

By that argument, what percentage of posts tagged with abortion are "good posts"? Why is the subject ever on the front page?

Dunno. Why are any of the other bad posts on the front page?
posted to MetaTalk by Tell Me No Lies at 9:17 PM on April 12, 2013

BUT, it is really frustrating to watch when a person who is saying something that other users strongly disagree with or just don't want to hear is deemed to be behaving badly, just because they continue to think what they think instead of capitulating to what everyone else thinks they should think.

While this does happen from time to time, overall I think people are deemed to be behaving badly because they are behaving badly.… [more]
posted to MetaTalk by Tell Me No Lies at 10:18 PM on April 13, 2013

cribcage wrote...
The next time the subject comes up, you chime in with your opinion (relevant to the FPP, we'll assume)

The situation you're mentioning here is what was on my mind when I wrote:

On occasion, although not always, when threads touch on those topics I comment.

There definitely is some reputation management to be done. I have an opinion, but I don't want to… [more]
posted to MetaTalk by Tell Me No Lies at 11:54 PM on April 13, 2013

I don't want to be that guy who will always show up with a predictable response when a topic is mentioned.

(unless you post a metatalk bitching that your social-injustice-o-the-day post was taken down in which case I will be there with zanni's rule of thumb. Every time. I can't stop myself. It's a thing.)
posted to MetaTalk by Tell Me No Lies at 11:57 PM on April 13, 2013

If everyone who "doesn't like" the commonly held position on a given topic has to only talk about it on controlling people's terms or leave, then they will all leave

I'd just like to restate that this is not my experience as someone who doesn't like a number of commonly held positions.

In any case I think you may be conflating talking in people's terms with agreeing with them. They are very much not the same thing.… [more]
posted to MetaTalk by Tell Me No Lies at 8:49 AM on April 14, 2013

There are plenty of blogs that fulfill that niche, so I don't see why MeFi is specifically obligated to work within that niche subculture as well.

I don't know about obligated, but I definitely would rather belong to a community where everything (handled respectfully) is fair game.
posted to MetaTalk by Tell Me No Lies at 11:38 AM on April 14, 2013

[Marijuana] isn't illegal in my state, for example, but the exact legalities around buying and selling (as opposed to using) are still being hashed out

Wait. I get it! :-)
posted to MetaTalk by Tell Me No Lies at 10:40 AM on April 15, 2013

But if you want want to replicate the suburban BBQ of middle aged parents who stand around and complain about taxes and the number of people on welfare and how young people today are just lazy, and, by the way, did you catch that segment on Hannity last night?

I live in a *really* different suburb than you do...
posted to MetaTalk by Tell Me No Lies at 10:21 PM on April 16, 2013

Thanks everyone

I posted it simply to humanize the victims of the U.S. attack in Afganistan, nothing more.

Fair enough. At this point I figure you realize you missed that target. Having said an inappropriate thing myself from time to time, I hope people can let it go.
posted to MetaTalk by Tell Me No Lies at 5:54 PM on April 15, 2013

I don't want to start a whole new Metatalk thread so I'm just going to suggest this here:

Would it make sense to have a facility where a banner message could be added to the top of the comment window for a given thread? It seems like a permanent note saying "Please do not engage in speculation in this thread -- The Mods" would save a lot of trouble for both commenters and moderators.
posted to MetaTalk by Tell Me No Lies at 6:03 PM on April 15, 2013

It does seem important to me when in the thread people are asking "what kind of person would do this?" [that] we are the sort of people who do these things.

I think this is a good example of why speculating about who would do this is a bad idea in a thread like that. Speculation invites a response, and a counter response, and eventually the thread has derailed. Not a big deal in an everyday thread but not such a good thing in a thread… [more]
posted to MetaTalk by Tell Me No Lies at 6:08 PM on April 15, 2013

And hugs for twiggy32. Here's hoping that everyone you know was far far away from the finish line.
posted to MetaTalk by Tell Me No Lies at 6:10 PM on April 15, 2013

Such a sign would be odd, as people speculate about why things occurred, especially tragedies.

I agree it would be strange, but cortex asked people to shut down speculation (at least certain lines) twice.

I had thought that jessamyn had done so too, but reading back through her comments I see I was mistaken.
posted to MetaTalk by Tell Me No Lies at 6:17 PM on April 15, 2013

The Westboro Baptist Church is known for two things:

1) Unrelenting gay bashing.
2) Glomming on to any public tragedy to push their message.

In fact they very quickly glommed onto this one. It pains me to see people I otherwise respect following suit.
posted to MetaTalk by Tell Me No Lies at 11:15 AM on April 16, 2013

I think it will never be convenient enough or appropriate enough to stand up for the abused of the world, and their dignity, humanity, and need for protection and relief from all the same kinds of pain as the rest of us

Really? Because I live in a constant soup of people doing just that.

Could you tell me why you feel it is inconvenient for you do that on a daily basis?

certainly not for the people with any power at all to do so.

Were those the people in the thread?
posted to MetaTalk by Tell Me No Lies at 9:51 PM on April 16, 2013

THANKS A FUCKING LOT

What is with certain emotions being considered moral failings now?

Anger is an open wound. Consistently angry people are more akin to cutters than anything else and in fact the overlap between constant anger and physical self-harm is fairly high.

Self-harm is not moral or immoral, but I must admit it's a phenomenon that I'd wish to see a lot less of.
posted to MetaTalk by Tell Me No Lies at 10:19 AM on April 12, 2013

Think how much social justice is powered by anger at injustice

Okay. Now I'm thinking about how much social justice is powered by a sense of injustice.

Anger is not a necessary stopover between the two. People often fix things simply because they are broken.

IMHO this is a temperament thing. You see it on the playground at a very early age when sharing breaks down for some reason or another. Some… [more]
posted to MetaTalk by Tell Me No Lies at 10:37 AM on April 12, 2013

I feel like sometimes when people lecture others on how bad anger is, they really do mean it in the sense that they feel it's wrong to even have the emotion

What we water grows.

and that they have somehow developed beyond that point.

Ironically I think a lot more of the moralizing comes from people who are angry at themselves for *not* being able to transcend their own humanity. Also see: virulently anti-gay politicians in airport bathrooms.
posted to MetaTalk by Tell Me No Lies at 10:45 AM on April 12, 2013

I mean, why the hell else would people bother to mobilize social movements? Social movements are hard. They take time, they take energy, they sometimes take serious risk of life and limb, community and career. Nobody would fucking bother if they weren't furious about something

I think you are correct that anger gets the ball rolling in most social movements and probably keeps the core motivated, but I don't believe that the vast numbers who come on… [more]
posted to MetaTalk by Tell Me No Lies at 11:15 AM on April 12, 2013

How about "There is no situation that necessitates poking your own finger into your eyeball until it pops"?

IMHO that's a true thing to say. I'm sure I can work really hard and come up with an edge case but well, I'd be working really hard to come up with an edge case which is less "conversing" and more "trying to assign logic values to English sentences."
posted to MetaTalk by Tell Me No Lies at 7:17 PM on April 14, 2013

How about "There is no situation that necessitates poking your own finger into your eyeball until it pops"?

Help me understand. Do you think that most instances of feeling anger more or less amount to the self abuse you've described? The reason I'm curious is that I would have agreed to that once, but now I don't.

No. I was just responding to the idea that the construction "There is no situation that… [more]
posted to MetaTalk by Tell Me No Lies at 10:13 AM on April 15, 2013

I'm talking about getting the pump to work in the first place.

I had a problem with that side of it for years and in a lot of ways still do. After years of work I can get angry immediately when appropriate, but only when it's a relatively small thing. Hit my car while texting and I'll get pissed at you. Ram my car on purpose and it will be six months of expressing patient understanding before one day I go "Hey, fuck you!".… [more]
posted to MetaTalk by Tell Me No Lies at 12:44 PM on April 15, 2013

Not A Forum

After years of fighting this fight I have finally (with the aid of a helpful mod or two) recognized the fact that really not that many people care either way.

I still try to encourage people to stick with interesting things on the web versus outrage of the day type posts, but I consider it largely a lost cause.
posted to MetaTalk by Tell Me No Lies at 3:06 PM on April 12, 2013

You're my favorite.

In the meantime, allow me to BLOW your MIND!

Google:

site:metafilter.com "by jessamyn" AROUND(0) "fuckers"

Explanation: this will return metafilter.com pages where the word "fuckers" appears near "by jessamyn".

The only downside to this is that you become aware of how often certain mods use the word "fuckers."
posted to MetaTalk by Tell Me No Lies at 9:27 AM on April 11, 2013

tellmenolies, Google used to claim that there was some meaning to the argument used in AROUND( ), but I didn't find it to be reliable. Does "0" have some special meaning, or has Google given up the pretense?

No idea. I saw the same claim made but I was reading blogs.

I sure can't see a difference when I fiddle with it.
posted to MetaTalk by Tell Me No Lies at 1:16 PM on April 11, 2013

How should we remember Roger Ebert?

Ah, that went up while I was writing this.

You hit the post button 35 minutes after the other one went up. Thanks for . . . a very thoughtful post, I guess?
posted to MetaTalk by Tell Me No Lies at 9:24 PM on April 4, 2013

Number of flags per deleted post?

Deleted comments are tough as all the infodump tells us is that a comment was deleted, not what post it was associated with.

There are two ways to deal with this, both of which assume that a fast moving thread is the source of deletions:


Assume the previous comment was made in the same thread that the deleted comment was in and/or
Assume the comment was made in the thread that had the most comments over the previous N… [more]
posted to MetaTalk by Tell Me No Lies at 12:50 PM on April 4, 2013

Deleted posts are easy, actually. I seem to recall from the last time I ran numbers that a surprisingly large number of posts (close to 15%?) get deleted.

I just realized there there is another likely metric for determining which thread a comment was deleted from, which is the longest thread in that general time period. Not only would a long thread be statistically more likely to be the source of the comment, but very long threads often are very fractious threads.
posted to MetaTalk by Tell Me No Lies at 1:58 PM on April 4, 2013

Another Panacea

Welcome to this little rock we all call home!
posted to MetaTalk by Tell Me No Lies at 10:42 PM on April 2, 2013

Thanks for MetaFiltrest

Woo hoo! We finally got rid of the titles!!!


....aww, DAMN IT.
posted to MetaTalk by Tell Me No Lies at 10:12 PM on March 31, 2013

twoleftfeet stoked a sudden brilliant memory.

I must track down the code for hunt and mhunt immediately.
posted to MetaTalk by Tell Me No Lies at 12:59 AM on April 2, 2013

Can we please filter out HTML blinks?

I disagree with using blink as an intensifier. Visual spacing and bold text are well understood signifiers and are used everywhere including all over the place in offline consumer manuals.

Can you imagine what the user manual for your toaster would look like if the blink tag was available?
posted to MetaTalk by Tell Me No Lies at 10:12 AM on March 31, 2013

Eideteker won that earlier thread:

Just blink your eyes once a second and you won't notice it.
posted to MetaTalk by Tell Me No Lies at 11:55 AM on March 31, 2013

An emergent pattern on Metafilter FPPs

Down with this sort of thing!
posted to MetaTalk by Tell Me No Lies at 7:52 PM on March 30, 2013

There is a guitar effect called the Klon that, for reasons that don't matter here, is tremendously controversial. People are always arguing about the Klon.

Perhaps we should just swap. I'm prepared to offer some very controversial, nay incendiary opinions if anyone would care to choose sides.
posted to MetaTalk by Tell Me No Lies at 7:57 PM on March 30, 2013

Amazingly pathetic, you mean.
posted to MetaTalk by Tell Me No Lies at 8:20 PM on March 30, 2013