MetaTalk

MetaFilter meetups on seven continents

Plutor — Fri, 03 Jul 2009 17:56:59 -0800

MeFi's own eotvos is organizing a tenth anniversary meetup in Antarctica. We have officially conquered this planet. Anyone know anyone currently on the ISS?

Elevating the level of discourse

Autarky — Fri, 03 Jul 2009 16:41:18 -0800

Why are comments like this and this not deemed totally unacceptable?

We have DVDs

Who_Am_I — Fri, 03 Jul 2009 14:53:27 -0800

As foretold here, The State has been released on DVD. I know it wasn't supposed to come out for a few weeks. I found out from Michael Ian Black's Twitter feed, and ordered it on Monday. But I wanted to actually have it in my hands before I got people's hopes up again. It arrived today. There are no T-shirts left though, sorry.

Mefibrarians in the Loop

ulotrichous — Fri, 03 Jul 2009 00:12:25 -0800

Any Mefibrarians headed to Chicago for ALA Annual? Want to meet up? Saturday or Sunday night would probably be good. I hope we can get something together, I must confess Mefi meetups are my favorite part of ALA.

Printer-unfriendly

Afroblanco — Thu, 02 Jul 2009 16:53:35 -0800

Could we please have a moratorium on comments to the effect of, "OH NOES I HAVE HAVE TO CLICK ON THE NEXT PAGE LINK! YOU DIRTY BASTARDS ARE TRYING TO GET AD REVENUE!!!" Every time there's a link to an article that has no Printer-Friendly option, there's always some incredibly insightful fellow who feels the need to spout off about it. It's kind of like "this post sucks," only worse because it doesn't even attempt to address the content of the link. Furthermore, this statement presupposes that there's something inherently rotten about wanting to collect ad revenue from site content. Finally, it's just an incredibly trite complaint. I mean, really? Clicking on the "next page" link is just that much of a hassle for you? You poor poor thing. Those starving children in the Sudan have nothing on you. Anyway, it's not an original complaint, you're not adding anything to the discussion, and you probably didn't even read the full article. To wit, complaining about pagination is on par with posting "FIRST!" On my off days, I suspect people only do it because it's a cheap way to pick up favorites.

Procession of user numbers

joeclark — Thu, 02 Jul 2009 10:44:50 -0800

For the upcoming meetups, or more exactly for press and blog coverage of upcoming meetups, could PB or Cortex or somebody gin up a kind of graph or visualization of brute quantities of user signups over time, along with user numbers? I’m assuming user numbers are often nonconsecutive (there may be a 23417 but not necessarily a 23418), but those numbers probably do not jump entire orders of magnitude (if there are 11000s there are probably also 12000s). Sometimes people leave or just forget about the site and their user numbers lie fallow. Everyone’s interested in the growth of MetaFilter contributors (the first half of my request), but I am also interested in the distribution of user numbers. This is almost exclusively because, by coincidence, mine is a nice round 250. (Sometimes I believe low numbers are important or significant in some way and sometimes I don’t. What amazes me about my own user number is just that it’s a multiple of 2, 5, and 10.) With those data visualizations, people covering MeFi 10th would have a way of understanding how many people have joined up over time. Then those of us who are unusually interested in numerical patterns would be able to study those too.

Repurposed comment thread...

mr_roboto — Wed, 01 Jul 2009 10:58:53 -0800

It seems that comments from a Metafilter thread have been copied into a blog linked in the post... It looks like the blog author has copied our comments into their thread. Weird, and kind of uncool. Have we seen anything like this before?

Meetup at Anthrocon

Alison — Tue, 30 Jun 2009 17:23:39 -0800

Anthrocon is happening in a few days in Pittsburgh. I've never been, but I've been told that there are good places to people watch for free at the convention center. Are there any Mefites interested in meeting up? It would be fun to meet up with any attendees, of course! I'd prefer to meet outside of the convention just in case there is anyone in town who would like to show up, but isn't interested in blowing $50 on the entrance fee.

A creep who knows how to register a domain is still a creep

kathrineg — Tue, 30 Jun 2009 14:39:47 -0800

I don't see why this post hasn't been deleted... Maybe there's something that I'm missing. From here it seems like part of ongoing harassment/stalking. Not what should be on Metafilter.

Unfavorited?

AzraelBrown — Tue, 30 Jun 2009 14:09:49 -0800

Just the curiosity of a self-obsessed "Favorited by others" watcher: I've noticed, on a couple occasions, my 'favorited by others' number will drop by a couple digits. Not a lot; I think the last time it was from 95 to 93 or something. I'm not favorited often, and I don't think I've had any posts deleted recently, so I find it odd. Can somebody "anti-favorite" you, or are things being deleted in older stuff than I've noticed?

Play me off

The Whelk — Tue, 30 Jun 2009 09:43:37 -0800

Did I hallucinate a Metafilter comment? I remember reading the line "Play him hither, Lute Cat" on Metafilter recently and though it was so hilarious I needed to illustrate it. I wanted to give credit to the original commenter, but I can't for the life of me find the comment. All my styles of google-fu have failed me. Did this comment actually exist?

Which meetup?

jontyjago — Mon, 29 Jun 2009 17:36:33 -0800

Would it be possible to include, in the profile information, the 10th Anniversary meetup (if any) that the user is attending (definitely or maybe)? I'm attending a meetup with a large number of attendees and I often click on user profiles if I see a comment I like / think is funny / think the user is an asshat etc. If the profile could tell me which meetup (if any) that user is attending it would be a reminder for me to search out (or avoid) that user at the meeting itself should he/she be attending. I know I can cross-reference with the information on the Mefi10 page, but this would be simpler.

Ruth Madoff's glasses

Flood — Mon, 29 Jun 2009 14:50:37 -0800

Why was I not allowed to make a comment about Ruth Madoff's glasses? A recent AskMeFi question, asked about the brand name of Ruth Madoff's designer glasses. I find the question absurd and offensive. I left two responses to that effect as an answer. Both were removed. Is there no sensitivity to her victims? Is that an appropriate discussion to having about a woman who caused so much pain and suffering? Should she be held up as a fashion symbol? Suppose I asked a fashion question about a serial killer, would that be acceptable? How should I have registered my disgust with question, if not leaving an answer?

No other information

parmanparman — Mon, 29 Jun 2009 12:22:30 -0800

If an FPP about a member (even if they happen to be famous) is posted, but it doesn't provide any fruitful information for others to right a situation where they feel they have been overcharged, then why is it allowed? (closed)

New Theory: Stupid people reproduce more because the alternative is sleeping with [Mefites].

ND¢ — Mon, 29 Jun 2009 11:40:38 -0800

There have been 205 comments on Metafilter as a whole mentioning the movie "Idiocracy", some subset thereof expressing or implying agreement with the premise of the movie (stupid people breed more so we as a population are getting stupider). There have been 800 comments linking to or about the online comic strip xkcd, some subset thereof expressing or implying an agreement with the opinions found in that comic strip. There is now an xkcd comic strip expressing the opinion that the premise of the movie "Idiocracy" is incorrect. In the law game, this is what is known as a split in the circuits, and requires a decision by the Supreme Court, hence this MeTa post.

Macbook pro eteched with Metafilter

bigmusic — Sun, 28 Jun 2009 21:23:55 -0800

Forget about the t-shirts, where do I order me a metafilter laptop?

Add a tag? Don't mind if I do!

Captain Cardanthian! — Sun, 28 Jun 2009 21:23:37 -0800

In the Michael Jackson obit post, and only in the Michael Jackson obit post, I have the ability to add tags. What gives? I noticed this a few days ago when the thread was first posted, but I didn't wonder too much about it until now. I took advantage of it to add "obit" to the tag list, which I hope was ok. Why do I have this option? Is it specific to me, or is it something about that particular thread? Does the tag I added show up to everyone else? Is this a message from the Cabal?

MeFiSwap Summer 2009

carsonb — Sun, 28 Jun 2009 08:09:43 -0800

MeFiSwap Summer '09
Believe it or not, it's been about that long. Let's mail each other good music. I think these work best if some guidelines are set out right at the beginning:

Email me at tediseasy asper@nd gmail stop. com if you would like to participate. Please include your mailing address and your username. If you would prefer not to use email, memail me. However, things are much simpler from an organizational standpoint if I can use the robust features afforded by email rather than barebones memail, so email is preferred.
Sign-up deadline is 2 weeks from today, July 12th.
If there's enough interest, I'd be happy to set up side swaps for tapes or whatever (how many of you cut vinyl?), but let's stick to swapping CDs for the most part and mixes of music for sure (not teddy bears or tshirts or wevs).
If you signed up to participate last time but didn't mail out your mix, you are not invited to swap again. If you sign up to participate this time, do so with the full intention of mailing out at least 5 mix CDs. You may be asked to mail overseas (and if you live outside the USA, you will most definitely be asked to mail packages to foreign countries). Communication is important; if you can't get your mixes out by the deadline (see below), let me or the other members of your swapset know.
Once sign-ups are closed, everyone will be broken up into swapsets. Swapsets are ideally 6 members big, so each swapper will mail out 5 copies of their mix. If you're in the mood to mail out more (and receive more in return!), lemme know in the email.
There's generally a deadline set for mailing swaps out, so let's set that to Saturday, August 15th.

As usual, I feel like I'm leaving a lot out of this, so if you have any questions I'll be skulking around here all day and/or email me.

Bottom bar on front pages?

Thorzdad — Sat, 27 Jun 2009 05:03:05 -0800

Odd stationary footer bar on all front pages in Firefox? I've been seeing this footer on all three of the main front pages...blue, green, gray. It's not on the front pages of Projects, Music, Jobs, etc. Nor is it on any interior pages. It's just on the front pages. The oddest bit is that it has appeared only in Firefox. It's not there in Safari. This is, of course, as nitpicky as anything can get, and not a complaint. More like a "Huh. That's weird." thing. And, very possibly, something that's years old that I just now noticed.

Anecdotes

archagon — Sat, 27 Jun 2009 00:54:03 -0800

I love reading personal anecdotes on MeFi and AskMeFi. Could you link me to your favorite anecdotal comments and threads? Thank you! This thread is good, but not quite what I'm looking for.