MetaTalk

mo' trends, mo' problems

Klipspringer — Wed, 08 Apr 2026 16:53:34 GMT

1. If a user persistently posts noise and derails and "performance art" and does not respond to mod warnings, what can community members who are annoyed by this do?

2. Should MeFi introduce a blocking feature? This has been requested for many years and is a standard feature on many other forums and social media. Various third-party extensions and userscripts have been created, but these are not an option for many users, especially on mobile.

3. Is "don't call out users in MetaTalk" now an accepted site policy?

These questions arise from a recent Metatalk thread which was deleted. We were invited to create a followup thread focused on "trends or problems you see on the site", so here it is.

How do I ask a question about my word choice?

Pickman's Next Top Model — Wed, 08 Apr 2026 16:12:35 GMT

I recently had a post deleted for using the term "missing stair," with the reason that the term was ableist. I tried to ask in Ask what a better term than "missing stair" is for an individual who is a known source of harm that the community manages around rather than addressing directly, and my question was deleted for being a "performative ask." I do not want anyone in the disabled community to catch any strays when I refer to this kind of problem. What term should I use? How can I ask this question in a non-performative way?

Deleted because _____

NotLost — Wed, 08 Apr 2026 13:23:55 GMT

Why was the Two Weeks post on the blue deleted without explanation? Given that users have called for explanations for comment deletions, that should indicate that we want explanations at least as much for post deletions.

Link between hip pain and why dogs kick?

Zumbador — Wed, 08 Apr 2026 12:16:27 GMT

I am pretty sure there was an Ask in the last three years or so: someone asked for help with hip pain (I think? Some kind of body pain), and an answer suggested a massage point that triggered the same reflex as why dogs kick when you scratch them near their chest? And rubbing / massaging that place triggers a similar relflex in humans, meaning a deep muscle release happens? But I cannot find this ask...

Global BIPOC Board Meeting, 17/18 March 2026

creatrixtiara — Mon, 06 Apr 2026 09:34:43 GMT

Meeting minutes available under the details tag at the bottom of this post. This is the first Global BIPOC Board meeting chaired by creatrixtiara (and also creatrixtiara's first meeting in general), since travelingthyme has stepped down. This may also be the last Global BIPOC Board Meeting for a while, since cendawanita has buttoned and yueliang has stepped down. Topics discussed: the past and future of the Global BIPOC Board, feedback on the volunteer moderation system, the BIPOC Board's take on how Metafilter is like for global BIPOC members Since the Global BIPOC Board is independent of the Metafilter Board, these minutes are posted via creatrixtiara's own account as meeting chair.

Global BIPOC Board Meeting minutes, 17/18 March 2026

hide away

HearHere — Sun, 05 Apr 2026 11:11:54 GMT

previously)

where clicking ⯈ opens up more text

see below

click me

Board Update, Apr. 3, 2026

MeFiBoard — Sat, 04 Apr 2026 02:09:12 GMT

Meeting minutes available under the details tag at the bottom of this post. As always, please note: we have all approved these informally, but these are technically draft minutes until they are read into the record at our next Board meeting. (Additionally, the version we read into the record will not be identical to these, as it will contain our real names instead of usernames.) Some highlights, for those who don't want to peruse the full minutes: Moderation. As outlined in yesterday's MetaTalk, we've engaged adrienneleigh on a temporary contract to join the moderation team. You'll find some of the formal logistics of voting for that here, but please check out that thread for more details and to ask any questions you might have. Town Halls. The first set of town halls went great! We'll be posting high-level recaps soon and are hoping to have at least two more such events before the end of our terms (establishing something like a quarterly cadence). Newsletter. We're working on an email newsletter that will be a way to highlight top posts and build a distribution list. More to come soon!

Minutes of the April 3, 2026, meeting of the MetaFilter Community Foundation

[This post awaiting moderation]

roaring beast — Fri, 03 Apr 2026 19:37:16 GMT

In light of the ongoing discussion about moderator coverage shortage and possible volunteer moderation, I wonder if we could have comments or posts automatically hidden with a note like [awaiting moderation] if they receive some threshold of flags. Then we only need moderators a few times a day to review those posts and approve/respond to them. This would reduce the need for constant moderation and also give the community more of an important role in being involved in moderation.

Apologies if this has already been discussed or misrepresents the job of moderators.

Issues with read/unread

bootlegpop — Fri, 03 Apr 2026 17:33:47 GMT

For the last two days, the date from which "new" posts start in a thread is past the time that I was on the site last by quite a bit, or the thread listing states that there are no new posts when there are definitely new posts.

Is this happening to anyone else? Is it a known issue that is being worked on? Thanks.

A Quick Update on Our New Mod and New Policies

MeFiBoard — Fri, 03 Apr 2026 00:47:37 GMT

We want to share an update with the community about a recent decision: we have temporarily engaged one of our Board members, adrienneleigh, to join the moderation team as a contractor.

With the vacancy left by Brandon, Metafilter has a sudden and short-term need for additional moderation support. adrienneleigh has excellent relevant experience and is well placed to step in on a temporary basis. We know this decision will still raise questions. Specifically, we know that many people believe that Board members should never be paid by the organisations they govern. That concern is valid, and is also exactly why Conflict of Interest policies (including ours; see below) exist. CoI policies do not forbid conflicts from happening; they anticipate that they will, and lay out the procedures and safeguards an organization needs to follow when they do. The Board have consulted with our nonprofit legal team and the Moderation Oversight Committee in making this decision. Having adrienneleigh on the mod staff will allow the Board to trial fresh moderation approaches as future policy and strategies are considered. For example: as a direct response to the recent transphobic comments that occurred during a mod coverage gap and this excellent comment by ftrtts, adrienneleigh will be reserving some scheduled shift hours to use as float time for emergent moderation concerns. In practice, organisations (especially communities like ours) sometimes need to draw on skills and experience already within the community, and because we believe drawing on adrienneleigh's skills now is in the best interests of the organization, the Board has chosen to move ahead with a number of safeguards in place for good governance. These include:

Voting Recusal: adrienneleigh has voluntarily recused herself from voting not only on conflicted matters, but on all Board matters for the duration of the contract. This voluntary recusal far exceeds standard conflict-of-interest practice and is intended to reinforce confidence in the integrity of Board decision-making.
No Conflicted Involvement: adrienneleigh does not participate in discussions or decisions relating to their own work, compensation, or role.
Independent Oversight: adrienneleigh's contract work will be overseen by three non-conflicted Board members through the newly formed oversight committee, who will work in tandem with the MOC should issues arise.

We've also formalised these measures in a dedicated policy you can read here. This engagement is a temporary contract. By the end of that contract, we should have a better idea of what we need to overcome in order to transition to volunteer moderation, and we will certainly connect with the community to revisit this at that time. If you have questions or feedback, we welcome them!

Big Mean Trans Thread

brook horse — Sat, 28 Mar 2026 18:57:56 GMT

This is a thread for trans people to vent and be righteously uncharitable about transphobic bullshit on Metafilter and otherwise.

Cis people who comment must acknowledge that trans people are allowed to be huge meanies and bite your head off in this thread. ✅

MeFiCoFo Financial Update, Mar. 19, 2026

MeFiBoard — Tue, 24 Mar 2026 19:40:43 GMT

February income was down from January (-15%). Expenses were up 10%, resulting in a net loss for the month. We show a small uptick relative to the average over the past six months, but due to some seasonal and unforeseen expenses, the loss is larger than our average, or budget. The P&L can be found here. Last month's update is here.

Income

Google AdSense income has swung back down sharply. We haven't done any significant investigation into the issue. Amazon income was down from the average for the past couple months.
Donation income was down, because February is the shortest month, and because the deposit periods aligned with the calendar. Next month is a five deposit month, and should see a rebound in income (we will be watching closer how it looks on a three-month interval, which is a better trend test). Our MRR in Stripe has flattened out, confirmed by review of the churn numbers. We will be watching this closely and now that we are clear of most of the transition processes, we will be double-checking our communication follow up on failed transactions (we do have automated notices set up in Stripe for card expiry and the like, but want to confirm that in PayPal and review it all to make sure it's working as expected), but it appears we have very little accidental churn (subs that are cancelled because of multiple transaction failures).

Expenses

Contracting is basically equal to our past 12-month average. There have been no significant changes to this spend. Mod spend is ~80% of this amount, and the remainder is Dev spend. No other funds have been used to remunerate board, committee or volunteer support in this period. In December, we noted that mod shifts are scheduled to be reduced, but the impact of this is not reflected in spending yet.
AWS spiked (up 15%), but it doesn't appear to be a trend (the March bill is projected to be lower and in line with the past couple months).
Expenses were up: one-time charges for tax prep, a tax payment (Federal), and the D&O bill, which I erroneously reported as paid last update (was actually posted in Feb).

Cash Position:

Our net change in cash in January was a decrease of $7.7K, consistent with the loss reported for the month. Our cash reserves are $103K (Note the numbers are rounded).
Previously I was giving a 'runway' number but month to month variance really reduces the value of that—folks are free to make their own estimates with the data we have (the simplest math is that we have ~25 months of runway, but this would vary based on how conservative you project future revenue).

TAX UPDATE Our taxes are filed (and mostly paid—the state of Delaware has a fascinatingly opaque and hard to reach payment system, but it's in progress). We previously reported that a tax liability wasn't expected, but there was a transfer in February 2025 that we did not get clarification on until we had full access to our secondary bank account (which happened in Jan 2026). As we were showing a loss for the year before that transaction was posted correctly, I didn't think to do any tax management (push forward some payments, e.g.). Thus we have a small bill. COMMENTARY

Here is the QuickBooks P&L. Per last month's note, we are going to run this alongside the manual P&L for another 2-3 months, and then sunset the Google Sheet in favor of reporting directly from QuickBooks. The reconciliation from last year still has not moved forward, but hopefully I can find some time in April to work through the backlog.
A 2026 Budget was reviewed and approved by the Board (it also shows actual from 2025) -note this is the same Google Sheets doc as the P&L, just a different tab. It's based on the information we have on hand and our projected spending based on that information. For expenses, those are somewhat controllable (things like AWS being the main outlier). Income for the year is projected, which was consistent with the last two months (and optimism), but it's the area that will require the most attention going forward. Jan and Feb in this doc are basically actual figures, but starting next month (now that this is approved and public) I will set up some 'performance against budget' analysis. It may also be updated to match the QB reporting we do (so it might get more granular).

Financial Controls handover

Transition from the Interim Board is 95% complete. PayPal still needs some cleanup, but otherwise we can confirm that the new board has signatory authority and is the primary or only contact point (this is a reprint from last update).
We reported last month that there were still some PayPal direct pay accounts (GitHub is the only regular account I can find). Still not updated, on the list for next month.

HOW YOU CAN HELP If you are giving currently, or have considered restarting a previous donation, our recommendation is that you consider migrating from monthly to quarterly if you are giving at the $5 or $10 monthly level, and that you do it via Stripe (there is a more detailed discussion on this in the December update). donnagirl provided a draft of an updated donation page, which we are reviewing, and I will be reviewing our 'product catalog' (in Stripe for now) and making tweaks so the math is more logical. We did not make our March deadline (there were a number of unexpected administrative and dev issues, unfortunately pushing this into April). This post was authored by 99_, and reviewed and approved by the entire board (for a detailed conversation about the "Board Account" please see this Meta)

How Law Works 101

EmpressCallipygos — Thu, 19 Mar 2026 11:33:59 GMT

It seems to be a common quip these days that "laws don't work anymore" or, more specifically, "laws can't stop Trump". This is incorrect, and continuing to make this claim is at worst damaging to the general well-being - and at best, is annoying as shit.

In the past year, there have been hundreds of lawsuits filed against the Trump administration's policies and executive orders; nearly one third have already successfully blocked Trump's actions for that specific suit. Another third are still pending. Here are a few resources people can use to track these cases: AP News Trump Executive Order Lawsuit Tracker Lawfare.org Trump Litigation Tracker Just Security.org Litigation Tracker It also apparently needs to be said that the existence of a law does not prevent a person from committing a crime in and of itself; the fact that there are laws against theft does not on its own prevent someone from trying to break into your house. Rather, laws and their associated punishments will punish a criminal after the fact, and can stop them if they are still continuing to engage in that criminal act. It is true that Trump is ignoring many laws. But that does not mean the legal system is not working; it is just stopping him after the fact, and has already done so in over 300 instances just this past year. Laws are not magic shields, and lawyers and judges are not time-traveling superheroes.

[Title Removed]

chmmr — Tue, 17 Mar 2026 13:12:22 GMT

Hi Mods, I've always been supportive of you. Brandon has always been super supportive of MeFi - I don't know him personally but look at his record. Reconsider.

[Removed]

Account wipe options and mod comment flagging

MeFiBoard — Mon, 16 Mar 2026 20:42:36 GMT

New options for users who wish to wipe their MetaFilter account, as well as a new way to provide community feedback on moderation decisions.

The policy on account wipes is changing. While MeFi has always given users the option to request an "account wipe" which would in theory remove all their posts and comments, the original process was flawed and did not actually result in a removal of all information the user might want to remove. Additionally, the community has expressed concern that widespread wiping of accounts could result in large parts of the site's historical content disappearing, including the comments other users have made on posts by the user requesting the wipe. To address both these concerns, MetaFilter now offers three options for users who want to remove their contributions to the site:

Full account wipe: All posts by the member on the main site have their text replaced with "post has been deleted" and are reassigned to an anonymous user. Comments on the post by other users are conserved. All the user's comments on all sites, plus their posts and faves on other sites, are soft-deleted. This is the option that should be chosen by users who want absolutely all their contributions deleted from the site, and is also the option that complies with the EU's GDPR.
Comment deletion: All comments by the member on the main site and all subsites are soft-deleted. The user's posts remain as-is, but are reassigned to an anonymous user.
Account anonymization: All posts and comments by the member on all sites remain as-is, but are reassigned to an anonymous user.

Note that "soft-deleted" means the content is still present in the site's databases, but will not be visible on any public facing pages. The scheduling of purging soft-deleted content from the database entirely will be covered in the forthcoming data retention policy review. To request an account wipe, members should use the Contact Form. Staff will verify that you are really you (if you contact us while not logged in) and that you are requesting a wipe, and then one of the above options will be applied as stated. Requests for other types of wipes, such as the member's contributions to a single subsite, will also be considered on a case-by-case basis. If you have requested a wipe and have not been contacted by staff after a week or so, or if you feel that your request is being handled poorly, you may contact the Board via email or by MeMailing any of us directly. Please do give the staff some time to work before escalating, however. The implementation of these new wipe options was handled a while back by Rhaomi and frimble, but never fully announced, so thank you to them for their hard work on making wipes work better and giving users more granularity. Additionally, we're implementing a new option for users to give feedback on moderator actions. The flagging options for comments will soon include a new flag-with-note reason, "Poor Moderation", which we ask you only use on mod comments, and which will let us know when you disagree with a moderator action. These flags will be visible to the moderation team and to the board, to begin with, and we will use them to track community sentiment about moderation decisions. The intention is to allow feedback about moderation without necessarily derailing the thread with comments about moderation. As usual, flagging does not guarantee any action, and other channels for feedback about moderation, including, but not limited to, contacting the Moderation Oversight Committee, creating a post on MetaTalk, contacting the board, complaining on other sites or in your private chats, violent overthrow of the current regime, or screaming into the void, remain available for use at your discretion. Posted by adrienneleigh for the Board

Staffing Update, March 13

MeFiBoard — Fri, 13 Mar 2026 13:10:15 GMT

An update to staffing based on recent events.

The Board took action earlier this week and informed Brandon Blatcher that we have decided to terminate his contract with Metafilter. His mod and admin tools have been suspended and his access to internal communications has been deactivated. His MetaFilter account is otherwise active. This was not a decision we made lightly and it was not in response to a single deletion decision. We discussed this at length for several days as a Board; our decision-making process included a formal review and recommendation from the MOC. Ultimately we agreed that this was the most appropriate action given both our short- and long-term goals for community management. For the immediate term, Brandon's shift hours will be covered as needed by other moderators. We are making this post for community awareness, but as we cannot comment further on personnel decisions, this thread will be closed for comments.

Dealing with archive.today/is/ph/etc

trig — Fri, 13 Mar 2026 11:06:33 GMT

Should links to archive.today and its mirrors be un-linkified, or some other step taken to protect users?

Up until now those sites have been linked here frequently to help readers access paywalled content, but the owner of those sites recently inserted malware into their own captcha pages to hijack user's browsers to run a DDOS attack. (They also altered the contents of some archived pages, among other really shady behaviors.) A lot of people still haven't heard about this and archive links are still being posted here. Should we prevent that in some way, or disable current (and past?) links, or automatically insert a warning not to click on the links, so that we're not sending metafilter readers to a site known to use malware? This is different than the type of case where a site gets hacked by a third party; when that happens you can reasonably hope that after the hack gets cleaned up the site will be safe to visit again. Here it was the sites' own owner who brought in the malware (and also tampered with actual archived content), so it doesn't seem like there's going to be a reasonable expectation of safety or content fidelity at any point. For comparison, Wikipedia has been removing all its archive.[mirror] links. The sites in question use frequent captcha checks that force users to have javascript turned on if they want to view the archived articles, and the malicious JS was placed in those captcha pages. So disabling JS isn't a workaround for using those sites safely. Note: This is about archive.today, archive.is, archive.ph, and all the other mirrors (see the wikipedia link for a list). It is not about archive.org, which is the Internet Archive's Wayback Machine.

Comprehension of older English texts

jasper411 — Fri, 13 Mar 2026 00:44:36 GMT

I'm positive I saw a link to a site that presents text in earlier versions of English, but I can't find it using either Google or MetaFilter search. Can someone point me to the link (if I'm not hallucinating!)

Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy

cortex — Thu, 12 Mar 2026 04:45:24 GMT

It's been a while! What are you playing lately, game-wise, video or not?

Better than Goodreads?

NotLost — Wed, 11 Mar 2026 21:54:15 GMT

I could have sworn that, within the past week, I saw a post on the blue about something like Goodreads but better. Can you help me find it, please?