MetaTalk

DARPA challenge update?

longsleeves — Wed, 02 Dec 2009 16:38:18 -0800

Did Metafilter register a team for the DARPA balloon challenge? The balloons will be released on their tethers this Saturday. The deadline to register a team was December 1st. There was talk here of MetaFilter taking part. Details would of course be confidential by nature of the competition, but is there a MeFi team in the game, and if so, will there be any way to follow its progress?

All's well that ends well?

bigmusic — Wed, 02 Dec 2009 11:56:43 -0800

Many ask.metafilter questions don't have an "end" to the story. Which questions are you most curious about how they ended?

SF is better than NYC. There. I said it.

Afroblanco — Tue, 01 Dec 2009 22:32:14 -0800

Hello, San Francisco! I've been living here for six weeks now and already I know that this is the perfect place and time for me to exist. I love everything and everyone here, and I want to marry you all and best friend you and have a thousand million babies with you. Which is to say, YES! I live here now! KEEEEE YAH! Which is to say, YES! LET'S! MEET! UP! I'm thinking ~~Dec 18th~~ [note: Dec 19th instead, see below], because that is the day that maximizes the greatest amount of awesome for our awesome. I'll leave it up to you where we shall meet, and pray to Tlaloc and Marduk that this doesn't have to involve a spreadsheet. (and if you think I'm joking, look back at some of the NYC meetup threads) (although, to be fair, the spreadsheet did work pretty well.)

Comment instead of thread number in Fuzzy Favorites.

Monday, stony Monday — Tue, 01 Dec 2009 21:29:42 -0800

On this activity page, the "more" on the first item links to http://www.metafilter.com/2839866/We-know-what-happened-because-he-said-yes#2839866; unfortunately, we haven't reached 2.8M posts on MetaFilter. Also, the same comment appears as item 3 of the list, but this time the "more" link works (gets to the right comment in the existing thread). Windows 7; FF 3.5.5; logged in.

The one where we talk about November Experiment stats

FishBike — Tue, 01 Dec 2009 16:03:00 -0800

A thread for discussing November Experiment data, stats, graphs, and other datawankery. The official post-November Experiment thread is probably going to be pretty long. I've said in a couple of comments that I don't think the discussion of the experiment should focus on numbers. Nevertheless, I think it'll be interesting to see if the experiment did have any numerically or statistically visible effects. I suspect I'm not the only one wanting to run some queries on a post-Experiment copy of the Infodump. So, in the interests of not derailing the more important general discussion, and not making that thread any longer than it'll already be, I'd like to have the stats discussion here in a separate thread. If there are stats you want to see, post your ideas here. If there are stats you want to produce, and it's going to take you a while, maybe comment here before you start to avoid too much duplication of effort. And if anything relevant to the main discussion comes out of this, we can link to it from over there, or copy it, or whatever.

November Favorites Experience concludes. New preferences! Survey! Discuss!

cortex — Tue, 01 Dec 2009 12:36:15 -0800

November is over, and favorites are back to normal. In addition, we've got a couple related things to mention: a survey about the November exercise and favorites in general, and a couple of new display options for folks who want to alter the default favorites view. Survey You can get to the survey here; we tried to keep it relatively short while covering some of the main points of discussion that came up during November and previously. There's a free-form field at the end of the survey, so if you feel like anything was omitted or have additional commentary, that's totally welcome. Results are tied to userid behind the scenes, so you can only take it once and the admins will know whose results are whose, but the identity of respondents will be kept secret in any results we share. If you run into any bugs with the survey, let us know here as well. Display options The new options can be reached from the Preferences page, under the "Comments favorite style" option. The three options are: - Show Favorite Counts (the classic style, and the default for everybody) - Show "has favorites" (the November exercise's default) - Hide Favorites (no indicator of favorites at all in comment bylines) Note that in "has favorites" mode you can mouse over the text for a favorite count if you want to peek without a clickthrough to the favorites list. General discussion It's been an interesting month; there's been a lot of discussion in the Oct. 31 announcement thread and a more recent thread from a few days ago, if you missed those. And now that November's over and things are back to normal, this seems like a good time for folks to discuss the whole experience and talk about what they got (or didn't get) out of it. Have at it.

Favorites in December

aniola — Tue, 01 Dec 2009 09:57:26 -0800

Woot! Favorites are back. I think I missed them. (closed)

NRW meetup!

backseatpilot — Tue, 01 Dec 2009 05:59:20 -0800

Meetup - Northwest Europe. Let's try this again! So, I'm back in NRW (-ish). Anyone up for a meetup? I'm staying in Heerlen this time, but don't mind heading out to Dusseldorf, Cologne, or perhaps farther. This weekend or next would be best for me. anyone else around?

Scoop!

jaruwaan — Mon, 30 Nov 2009 17:54:34 -0800

MeFi Scoop! Two years ago, oneirodynia made this FPP about the Smothers Brothers. Tonight on Fresh Air, Terry Gross interviewed David Bianculli whose new book about the Brothers' career, Dangerously Funny, comes out tomorrow. Bianculli is NPR's TV critic. The NPR link also features an excerpt (the Introduction) from his book. The second link of oneirodynia’s post points to a video that has been removed. Ditto the link to “Waist Deep in the Big Muddy,” but another video can be found here, and there is a link to a working video for Keith Moon’s exploding drum kit down in the comments. The other links are all still good. I enjoyed this FPP tonight as much as I did two years ago. Called out for being fabulous and fun.

St andrews day

sgt.serenity — Mon, 30 Nov 2009 12:44:32 -0800

This is the Happy St Andrews day thread.... As the vast majority of mefites are Scottish, i need hardly explain - but St Andrew is the patron saint of Scotland and today is our national day. Generally we go round to our neighbours and beat each other in joyous drunken celebration of what it means to be Scottish. I know this is a rather scots-centric post, but i am sure the small minority of mefites from the new world will bear with us. Now let all the Scots join this thread and hurl gratuitous insults at each other and bring up petty grievances from the past.

ugh. silverlight.

idiopath — Mon, 30 Nov 2009 11:32:45 -0800

Best of the web... whose web? Spurred by the persistent derail in this thread. Are MeFi links to things that only some of use can view OK? What if they require either making a purchase or theft? I have seen (IIRC) rejections of FPPs about iphone apps that cost a dollar (because they presume you have an iphone and expect you to pay a dollar, I guess), but what about a post that requires me to have an operating system that would cost me a hundred dollars or more? I can accept that I as a Linux user won't have access to some things on the web, but as far as I am concerned I would selfishly prefer if mefi stuck to things that were at least somewhat accessible to all users. At the very least if we hash things out here, either way, we may not have a predictable argument about silverlight taking over the discussion in FPPs.

Mix CDs in Mefi Music?

empath — Sun, 29 Nov 2009 15:02:00 -0800

Is it ok to post dj mixes to mefi music? I guess there are like copyright issues, but what about if it's a link to a third party site?

Transgender LA Times sportswriter Mike Penner dead in suspected suicide

planetkyoto — Sun, 29 Nov 2009 06:49:58 -0800

Veteran LA Times sportswriter Mike Penner dead in suspected suicide, a sad folo-up to this 2007 post about his bombshell column announcing his transsexuality and his decision to take a leave of absence and return to the newsroom as Christine Daniels. It got more complicated later on. He took another leave and returned a year ago as Mike Penner again.

Me asking AskMes

cmoj — Sat, 28 Nov 2009 15:03:41 -0800

What makes an AskMe question get a lot of answers? Several times I've posted (or seen) human relations, tech or nerdy questions of the kind that I thought would have gotten lots of answers but didn't. So, basically, what makes a good (as in prompts response) AskMe question?

Is it about a bike?

fixedgear — Sat, 28 Nov 2009 13:57:03 -0800

Matt Haughey's spectacular new custom 'cross bike. Built with local parts, as much as possible. Great stuff. Hope you get well soon and ride it in good health.

Meet up: mid-December, in Brooklyn.

defenestration — Sat, 28 Nov 2009 13:51:19 -0800

Meet up: mid-December, in Brooklyn. Anyone interested? We can hash out exactly when and where in-thread.

Has favorites for cuteness

lukemeister — Sat, 28 Nov 2009 13:19:23 -0800

Find the mod.

This is a thread for discussion of November's favorites experiment.

lalex — Fri, 27 Nov 2009 20:15:33 -0800

This is a thread for discussion of November's favorites experiment. The favorites experiment is ending in three days, and the old thread is kind of long. I thought it would be nice to have a new thread for people to post their impressions of how the experiment affected the tenor of discussion, the usage of favorites, and their general usage of the site.

Is polling wrong even if helpful?

You Should See the Other Guy — Thu, 26 Nov 2009 23:43:15 -0800

When is a survey/polling type question okay on AskMe? I run a retail shop and we have an annual boxing week sale. I'd like to use AskMe to find out people's opinions on two different types of sales so that we can pick the one that satisfies the most people. Am I wrong in thinking this is a break of AskMe's guidelines as it's kind of a polling question, or am I misunderstanding the rule against such questions? Thank you.

Not everyone celebrates Thanksgiving

joeclark — Thu, 26 Nov 2009 09:45:13 -0800

Reminder to Americans: Not all MeFites live in your country, hence any references to “Thanksgiving” will be meaningless (or, for Canadians, will have arrived a month late). Thanksgiving isn’t like New Year’s Day: It isn’t universally recognized and it doesn’t have a fixed date worldwide. American MeFites who post about “Thanksgiving” are actually posting about American Thanksgiving. An acknowledgement that the readers of your post might not live in a country that celebrates Thanksgiving, or might live in Canada where it’s celebrated in October, would show greater understanding of the global reach of this site.