MetaTalk

Guinness record for the Blue?

reenum — Wed, 11 Nov 2009 13:27:06 -0800

Is there a record for most consecutive days making a meaningful FPP post? Just wondering. I've been making FPP posts of interesting articles and topics I've read over the last week, and they seem to be well received. I have a ton more stuff and will make posts until I run out of cool stuff or the mods tell me to cut it out.

Further China-like Censorship

peter_meta_kbd — Wed, 11 Nov 2009 09:27:36 -0800

Don't Believe In Sex Before Marriage? Don't Bother Saying it in a Comment, It'll Be Deleted The admins (and possibly the comment-flagging readers?) here apparently continue their insistence on censoring viewpoints based on content. About a week ago, there was one not-so-young lady who was asking for tips on how to have her first kiss etc. In my answer, I encouraged her to remember that anything she gives away to a passing stranger is a gift she can never give to a life partner, although I don't remember the exact wording. The admins deleted it (or maybe it was lost in the database?). So I sent a question about this to the admins through the contact form. It was not answered after 2 days. So I sent a personal email to the owner. He asked what was the problem and said that contact form entries are usually answered within a few minutes. I explained to him, and there was no further response from him in 2 days. I'm not saying that this website "should" respect freedom of speech in a different way, of course it's the owner's site and he can do whatever he wants as long as its legal, and I'm not saying his way of running the ship is illegal. I'm just pointing out what goes on here. Typical of the illiberal state of affairs in reactionary left wing contemporary circles. (closed)

MetaFilter Book Club this weekend

russilwvong — Wed, 11 Nov 2009 07:52:26 -0800

Just a reminder that the MetaFilter Book Club (previously) is discussing Margaret Atwood's Oryx and Crake starting Friday November 15, on this LibraryThing thread (possible spoilers). If you're interested in joining future discussions, check out the LibraryThing MetaFilter group. Nominations for our next discussion can be added to this thread.

Best Flame Out Ever! (Or maybe not).

cjorgensen — Tue, 10 Nov 2009 06:29:14 -0800

I go in for surgery in a couple of hours to have a tumor removed from my neck. I'm getting a parotidectomy (link not safe for breakfast). I was going to spend some time thanking some people for pretty much being the people they are, for amusing me, or challenging me, pointing out interesting stuff, or giving me the information I needed, but honestly I don't have that kind of time and I don't want to leave someone out. So to the community as a whole I'll say thanks. I fully expect to make it, but in the event I don't it's been worth the $5. I feel much better about the surgery after reading this askme answer. This place has been great for me the last couple of weeks especially. Thanks.

Why doesnt Deleted Posts show up?

wheelieman — Tue, 10 Nov 2009 05:53:16 -0800

No Deleted Posts Script? It doesnt seem to be working for me (Firefox 3.5, Windows Vista)

Robot goes adventuring.

iamabot — Mon, 09 Nov 2009 17:34:39 -0800

Sydney Meetup ?! Your friendly robot (that's me) will be in Sydney for work for the next 2 weeks, I'd like to meet some of the local folks if anyone will be in the general area.. Schedule is likely to be a bit wonky but I'm hoping I'll have a couple of evenings free.

DC Mefites play mini golf!

youcancallmeal — Mon, 09 Nov 2009 15:38:46 -0800

After the EPIC MEETUP FAIL that was this weekend's DC meetup, there seems to be interest in trying again next month. Saturday December 5, 6pm at H Street Country Club. Can I get a hell yeah? (Baltimore mefites: I have a Jeep and can fit 4 people other than myself if anyone needs to carpool. Just shoot me a MeMail.)

100k auction?

mathowie — Mon, 09 Nov 2009 13:52:45 -0800

Behind the scenes, we've been thinking about what the 100,000th user on MeFi would mean, and how we could commemorate it, so I'm floating our idea here... When we hit 99,999, user signups will freeze for one week, and we'll launch a 7-day eBay auction for the 100,000th user account. All proceeds will be donated to Kiva.org at the end and we'll resume user signups. We've been talking about this privately for the past few weeks and given this morning's post on the issue I figure I'd make a new post instead of bury it in a comment. So, does this sound good to everyone? Is Kiva a good choice? For what it's worth, DonorsChoose.org (fund mostly US school kid projects) and Creative Commons were also front-runners but Kiva is still pretty cool and I could transfer the money to my team-linked account and disburse it to current listed projects, and recycle the money back into it as it gets repaid.

Another day, another digit.

mkultra — Mon, 09 Nov 2009 11:36:45 -0800

User registrations are quickly coming up on 100k (Highest user number is around 99300 as of this posting). Are there any plans to either commemorate the occasion, or reserve the number? I know that in the realm of Metafilter Lore, user numbers aren't supposed to mean anything, but this does seem like a milestone the site isn't likely to match anytime soon. Considering how lackluster the lucky users who got the other "10k multiples" are (either non-existent or non-contributing), how about an auction or some such thing?

AskMe to Recent Ac

Netzapper — Mon, 09 Nov 2009 11:00:44 -0800

Could one's AskMe questions perhaps show up in Recent Activity? As it stands, to keep track of your own AskMe thread, you have to manually check it through your general activity. Since questions seem to remain open for a very long time, it's possible that people can provide an answer long after the question has faded into the vaulted halls of memory. Would it not be better if asking an AskMe question acted as if you'd posted in your own thread, thereby adding it to your recent activity and bumping it to the top whenever somebody replies? Yea, would this not be a very shiny and well-behaved pony?

The GifWell Thread

taz — Mon, 09 Nov 2009 01:20:57 -0800

Can we have have the ability to upload gifs as our profile pix? I wanted to use this, but it was converted to a jpg. I can understand that file size could be a potential problem, and that you don't want outside-hosted images, but perhaps a size cap? Like no larger than 40KB? Obviously, not the most important beast in the pony stable, but I just thought I'd ask.

RSS feed or reader broken by long thread?

FishBike — Sun, 08 Nov 2009 10:58:22 -0800

The November Experiment thread has broken something RSS-related. I'm trying to follow that monster thread via RSS and I can't get the feed to load in my reader (RSSOwl 2.0.0 build 2009-10-24). Checking the log file, I'm seeing this:

MESSAGE Error loading 'Comments on: November is National Let's Try Obscuring Favorite Counts Month' Problem: Error on line 26308: The character reference must end with the ';' delimiter. Link: feed://metatalk.metafilter.com/18396/November-is-National-Lets-Try-Obscuring-Favorite-Counts-Month/rss

Is it the RSS feed that's broken, or can my reader just not handle it? Is it working for anyone else?

Watcha reading? Well, this thread for one thing

jokeefe — Sat, 07 Nov 2009 17:46:00 -0800

This recent thread, from October 8, is just about to close. It's been an extraordinary one, and is still active as of this afternoon. If you haven't read it, or if you stopped reading after the first few posts, you might want to visit or revisit the thread; you will find one of the finest and most thoughtful Metafilter discussions touching on sexism, sexual assault, and gender relations to have taken place here. Threads like this make Metafilter itself the best of the web. A special thank you to all who posted, especially to the women who told their personal stories.

iPhone posting

pwally — Fri, 06 Nov 2009 23:04:00 -0800

New iPhone interface! High fives! Although I had to switch back to the regular site to post this. But don't get me wrong.. looking good San Diego. Also, how do I switch back? (closed)

Venezia

yegga — Fri, 06 Nov 2009 18:43:28 -0800

Venezia, anyone? Any Mefites in Veneto?

Favorite counts went away again

xmutex — Fri, 06 Nov 2009 08:05:40 -0800

WTF? I turned back on favorite counts and now it's back to showing me "has favorites" WHAT GIVES METAFILTER?

sack, some rope, a couple rocks and a pond

Mayor Curley — Fri, 06 Nov 2009 06:07:49 -0800

The display of the second-to-last related question here is absolutely fantastic.

46: Help, I'm trapped in my room

mathowie — Thu, 05 Nov 2009 15:48:10 -0800

Episode 46 of the podcast was recorded last week on October 27, 2009 (sorry about the delay getting it edited and out). We cover our favorites from Projects, Jobs, MeFi, Ask MeFi, MetaTalk and even throw in a few Music favorites. Show notes follow. (don't fear the) reaper by kimyo (with Cello) Halloween 97/98 by es_de_blah Meeting MetaFilter intro sequence Goodbye Horses (cover) by frenetic (end credits) MeFi Projects Post Apocalypse Dead Letter Office which takes a long time to explain (.gov site with exquisite corpse) How to Use the Print Server to Print with Zombies Why Balloon Boy Never Could Have Been This is just to say... blog (related: diamond joe song, sonogram) World War Vi MeFi Jobs Freelance Writer in London Paint my Portrait Book Designer MeFi Posts Canadian Drug Laws laxed? CAPS LOCK DAY THREAD (cortex abuses the admin powers) Vocoder out of a piano - David Lee Roth as midi 40 year anniversary of the Internet (me playing with the first node of the internet 1, 2) The Gervais Office Principle Diary of a Blacksmith (who wants to see my johnson meetup) Shoutout to All My Eichler Homies Name Dropper thread A brief musical history of Garage and A brief musical history of Electro Magic the Gathering nerding around Ask MeFi Questions Help I'm trapped in my room! MetaTalk posts Un-winnable Choose your own adventure story Stork Enemas What side of the bed should a gentleman sleep on? Was black and white scenery painted in color for black and white movies? MetaTalk Posts MeFi survey for an academic study

iPhone Stylesheet for MetaFilter

pb — Thu, 05 Nov 2009 15:18:02 -0800

MetaFilter has a new look on iPhones. Today we started serving up a new stylesheet for iPhones. It's based on the print stylesheet, and tweaked for the iPhone. The pages themselves have a few extra linebreaks here and there, and there's a new menu for navigation at the bottom of the page. Here's what MeFi looks like in the default theme (front, thread, menu) and the plain text theme (front, thread, menu). We've been testing it behind the scenes for a couple months, and we've found it's quite a bit more readable than the standard site. But if you're on the iPhone and want to go back to the standard site, click the "Switch to Standard Site" link at the bottom of any page. Not everything is available via the iPhone site, so there might be times you need to switch to standard for some features. There's no link to add a new post, for example. For background here's a brief history of MetaFilter on the iPhone. In January, 2008 we launched mobile.metafilter.com as an experiment. It looked sort of like a native iPhone App, but it was for reading only. At some point we decided to discontinue development of a separate space for the iPhone, and tweak the main site to make it more iPhone-friendly instead. (Most recently discussed here.) This new site style is a continuation of that idea. Instead of duplicating features at a separate subdomain, we're trying to make reading and commenting at the main sites more iPhone-friendly. Right now we're focusing on the iPhone, but once the bugs are worked out we'll start playing with turning the stylesheet on for other devices. Oh, I should also note that if you have opted-out of the November Experiment in your web browser, you'll also need to set that cookie in your iPhone by saving your preferences on the iPhone. To do that, scroll to the bottom menu, click Preferences, make sure the box is checked next to "Show comment favorite counts?", and click Save. That will set the opt-out cookie for Mobile Safari. If you spot problems with the new iPhone stylesheet, please let us know here.

What did I do wrong?

philip-random — Thu, 05 Nov 2009 13:40:51 -0800

Why is Glenn NOT being killed in a horrible accident NOT best of the web? Last night, I dared to mount a FPP which consisted of a single link to an Onion News Network story: Victim in Fatal Car Accident Tragically not Glenn Beck. Upon waking this morning, I noticed it had been deleted. After patiently (and vainly) waiting all morning for it to pop up in Deleted Threads, so I could read the reason for the deletion, I now feel compelled to nudge the issue a bit. Was it deemed: 1. just not funny? 2. offensive? 3. too thin? 4. in contravention of some unknown (to me at least) rule about single-linking to The Onion? 5. other? Please educate me. I just watched the clip again and, no it wasn't just the beer I drank last night, it's a darned funny piece of satire that works on more levels than one.