tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-290469892024-03-07T13:27:39.985-08:00refi : metafilter in reviewwebsite is 20/20cortexhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02439222638852171134noreply@blogger.comBlogger13125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-29046989.post-64873944432410825202007-06-25T16:12:00.000-07:002007-06-25T16:44:05.753-07:00More Every DayA lot of ReFi posts (where 'a lot' should be scaled to the relatively geological update frequency around here) have been inspired by some familiar old phrase catching my eye in a recent comment, and today's edition is a good example of such: in a thread about a SCOTUS decision, relatively newly registered user <b>quarter water and a bag of chips</b> <a href="http://www.metafilter.com/62369/New-Supreme-Court-Opinions#1741087">trots out a classic oldie</a> and gets my mind wandering googleward. The phrase?<br /><br />"America sucks more every day."<br /><br />It was familiar, and no shock that: a user named <b>wakko</b> went on a spree with it, a while back. Here's the offical wakko-ASMED tally, in order of posting<br /><br /><h2>America...</h2><br /><br /><a href="http://www.metafilter.com/42569/Supreme-Court-outlaws-medical-marijuana#950178">wakko vs. SCOTUS pot decisions</a><br /><a href="http://www.metafilter.com/42677/Ready-To-Learn#953443">wakko vs. CPB funding cuts</a> (with acknowledgement) (<a href="http://www.metafilter.com/42677/Ready-To-Learn#953452">amberglow follows up</a><br /><a href="http://www.metafilter.com/42763/Fearless-leader-forever#956941">wakko vs. the 22nd Amendment</a> (and <a href="http://www.metafilter.com/42763/Fearless-leader-forever#956949">mk1gti</a> with the followthrough)<br /><a href="http://www.metafilter.com/42904/Brilliant#961550">wakko vs. library snooping</a> (and <a href="http://www.metafilter.com/42904/Brilliant#961557">quonsar rebuts</a>)<br /><a href="http://www.metafilter.com/43073/Eminent-domain-on-the-move#967352">wakko vs. eminent domain</a> (with <b>plans to leave</b>, and a <a href="http://www.metafilter.com/43073/Eminent-domain-on-the-move#967355">response from Pollomacho</a>)<br /><a href="http://www.metafilter.com/45144/You-Cant-Get-Fooled-Again#1047461">wakko (verbose!) vs. nuking Iran</a> (with credulous <a href="http://www.metafilter.com/45144/You-Cant-Get-Fooled-Again#1047529">signed reply from DuffStone</a>)<br /><a href="http://www.metafilter.com/46932/Intellectual-Property-Protection-Act-of-2005#1116870">wakko vs. IP law</a><br /><a href="http://www.metafilter.com/48865/even-posting-Pepsi-Blue-would-make-us-liable#1198151">wakko vs. the Trademark Dilution Revision Act</a><br /><a href="http://www.metafilter.com/48924/Evidence-of-a-Slippery-Slope#1200442">wakko vs. slippery slopes</a><br /><a href="http://www.metafilter.com/51166/Thats-not-his-privilege#1289506">wakko vs. Katrina FEMA</a><br /><br />This sort of willful memedom can't hope to go unnoticed; in a Metatalk thread, <b>Steve at Linnwood</b> <a href="http://metatalk.metafilter.com/9983/#239169">calls wakko on it</a> and wakko <a href="http://metatalk.metafilter.com/9983/#239172">asks for numbers</a> in response.<br /><br />That does it for the pure specimen—what we might call <i>The Wakko</i>—but there are variations to be found.<br /><br /><h2>Other things that suck</h2><br /><br />- wakko thinks <a href="http://www.metafilter.com/51178/Stephen-Harper-doesnt-care-about-aboriginal-people#1289981">Canada sucks like America sucks</a><br />- wakko takes on <a href="http://www.metafilter.com/48197/What-if-Canadas-ruling-party-was-ousted-because-of-copyright-reform#1169650">Canadian copyright reform</a>, American bedamned—between these two and the next, you wonder if he made good on that plan to depart America, above...<br />- wakko changes his mind about Canada thanks to <a href="http://www.metafilter.com/43125/Go-North-Young-Man#969106">legalized gay marriage</a> (and <b>fungible</b> <a href="http://www.metafilter.com/43125/Go-North-Young-Man#969280">has been paying attention</a>—I wonder if I should try to bring him in as a co-author?)<br />- <b>sciurus</b> indicts <a href="http://metatalk.metafilter.com/11268/#287729">Metafilter itself</a><br />- in 2001 (!) <b>quonsar</b> gets prescient in talking about how the <a href="http://www.metafilter.com/7086/#70390">economy</a> sucks<br />- and then in 2006, quonsar gives it to <a href="http://metatalk.metafilter.com/11366/#290766">beedogs.com</a>—apparently a meta-wakko reference?<br />- fungible, not letting the torch die, knocks <a href="http://www.metafilter.com/43745/Hey-Turd-blossom-Get-in-here#994089">the comics page</a> (and America while he's at it)<br />- <b>weretable and the undead chairs</b> gives <a href="http://www.metafilter.com/53422/Do-as-Joe-says-not-as-he-does#1386147">Joe Liberman</a> the more <i>and more</i> treatment<br />- <b>gigawhat?</b> gets positive and <a href="http://metatalk.metafilter.com/11330/#289474">praises Metafilter</a><br />- Moving to the far tail of the meme, <b>Alvy Ampersand</b> was wondering why <a href="http://metatalk.metafilter.com/11330/#289498">Bush sucked less today</a><br />- <b>jonson</b> more-and-mores <a href="http://metatalk.metafilter.com/10477/#258372">nicwolff</a>, and wakko <a href="http://metatalk.metafilter.com/10477/#258380">corrects his form</a>!<br /><br /><h2>Other verbs than sucking</h2><br /><br />There are a few specimens to be found that closely match the overall template of "X Ys Z [and Z] every day" while diverging from <b>The Wakko</b>; most of the memetically proximate examples are cited above—clear or arguable examples of a species of what the folks at <a href="http://itre.cis.upenn.edu/~myl/languagelog/">Language Log</a> like to call "snowclones"—then there are these, which likely do <i>not</i> owe any direct deference to today's phrase but which nonetheless manage to do <i>something</i> more every day...<br /><br />- <b>Divine Wino</b> <a href="http://www.metafilter.com/49645/Praise-the-Lord-and-Pass-the-Petition-Onward-Christian-Organizers#1228968">appreciates</a><br />- <b>tehloki</b> <a href="http://www.metafilter.com/57990/Life-before-American-Idol#1564026">misses</a><br />- <b>nofundy</b> thinks the military will <a href="http://www.metafilter.com/29472/Dean-cant-carry-the-south#582090">swing away</a><br />- <b>ODiv</b> wants to <a href="http://metatalk.metafilter.com/14300/Strap-on-your-running-shoes#420523">run</a><br />damnitkage thinks <i>The Handmaid's Tale</i> <a href="http://www.metafilter.com/25671/The-easing-of-dissent#487192">comes to life</a><br />- <b>shminny</b> <a href="http://ask.metafilter.com/18631/Music-Matches#308457">loves AskMeFi</a><br /><br />And so on; there are, aside from things which <i>do something</i> more every day, also many examples of things of which one might do "x or more every day", which is just the completely wrong neighborhood, thanks very much.<br /><br />And here, finally, NDcent on the philosophy of <a href="http://ask.metafilter.com/37886/Help-me-be-a-better-law-clerk#586437">sucking less every day</a>. Homage or happy accident I do not know, but there it is.<br /><br /><h2>Further notes</h2><br /><br />Two more things:<br /><br />1. I found no sign of any version of "sucks more X day" for any non-'every' value, nor any attestations of "sucks more every X" for any X other than 'day'.<br /><br />2. <b>qwaaboc</b>, who inspired this whole thing, also recently decried <a href="http://www.metafilter.com/61892/Two-doors-down#1721718">wrong-door raids</a>, which is particularly interesting—repeated homage?<br /><br />No, as it turns out, and so we proceed to the coda.<br /><br /><h2>Sockpuppetry sucks more every day</h2><br /><br />Through the magic of the admin interface, I have slightly more mojo for ReFi research than I had for previous entries, and one of those tools is IP searching. Which makes it a lot easier to find sockpuppet accounts—multiple accounts registered and operated by the same user—and, well, what do you know:<br /><br />quarter water and a bag of chips <i>is</i> wakko. And he was StrausborgSeacaucus in the mean time, though the latter never mentioned America (or anything) sucking in the form underdiscussion. So apparently America sucking skips generations. Also, it looks like he's <a href="http://www.metafilter.com/60393/Abortions-for-none-miniature-American-flags-for-others#1658665">still planning the move out of the US</a>. And not content with just the old material, he's been testing the waters with a brand new catch phrase, "west of the beb", used thrice thus far.<br /><br />Weird stuff.cortexhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02439222638852171134noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-29046989.post-1168927757664282542007-01-15T20:40:00.000-08:002007-01-15T22:09:17.676-08:00Mindfucks and apologiesSo it's been forever. I feel bad. I hope to start posting a bit more frequently again. In the meantime, someone else is sort of, kind of, doing my forensic post-hoc analysis work for me, over at Grey-13493:<br /><br /><i><a href="http://metatalk.metafilter.com/mefi/13493">Mindfuck is a tag</a> that has been used only once on askmefi. I'm truly amazed. More people should be using this in the human relations section, I think. I'm sure it would suit many other categories as well. If people were more attuned to what a mindfuck is . . . then they wouldn't be posting a lot of those human relationship questions, I guess.</i><br /><br />It's true, or was at least at the time of this writing: there's only one AskMe tagged with "mindfuck". Amazing? That's subjective. Tags on the green aside, the term has been used on metafilter now and then:<br /><br /><a href="http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=site%3Ametafilter.com+mindfuck&btnG=Google+Search">~70 raw hits</a>, touching on:<br /><br />- <a href="http://www.metafilter.com/mefi/50731#1271908">middle school suicide</a><br />- <a href="http://www.metafilter.com/mefi/17884#291977">religious hypocracy</a><br />- <a href="http://www.metafilter.com/mefi/38999#834872">lesbian bunny maple syrup</a><br />- <a href="http://www.metafilter.com/mefi/37177#776417">new-agey films</a><br />- <a href="http://www.metafilter.com/mefi/36263#750623">marketing schemes</a><br />- <a href="http://www.metafilter.com/mefi/57411#1539071">dead soldiers</a><br />- <a href="http://www.metafilter.com/mefi/48600#1187440">something about the Old Testament?</a><br />- <a href="http://www.metafilter.com/mefi/51751#1315857">rotoscoping</a><br />- <a href="http://www.metafilter.com/mefi/5681#47398">cute violence</a> (with bonus <a href="http://www.metafilter.com/mefi/5681#47407">"this made me join metafilter"</a> sighting!)<br /><br />And so on.<br /><br />And the real gem, a specific self-conscious use of the mindfuck tag <a href="http://www.metafilter.com/mefi/44504#1019687">on the <i>blue</i></a>.<br /><br />Small note, I'm rather fond of the Herbert rework by loquacious in <a href="http://metatalk.metafilter.com/mefi/13493#377939">this litany</a>:<br /><br /><i>I must not care.<br />Care is the mind-fucker.<br />Care is the belittling breath that brings unwanted obligation.<br />I will face my cares.<br />I will tell them to fuck off and ignore them.<br />And when they have gone past I will turn the inner eye to see their path.<br />Where the cares have gone there will be nothing.<br />Only I will remain.</i>cortexhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02439222638852171134noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-29046989.post-1156110365018928962006-08-20T14:06:00.000-07:002006-08-20T14:48:42.510-07:00What Metafilter Is Not AboutWhen it comes right down to it, you could refract <b>Refi</b>'s purpose into the following question: "What is Metafilter about?"<br /><br />But the more common question—or implicit question, suggested by answering assertions—is this: "What is Metafilter not about?"<br /><br />It's the sort of thing that comes up regularly. Just today, in fact, <b>TwelveTwo</b> was struck by the question, <a href="http://metatalk.metafilter.com/mefi/12535#336755">as seen in this comment</a>. And so I turned to google, and asked a couple of pointed questions. Let's take a look!<br /><br /><h2>What Metafilter Is Not About</h2><br /><br />In no particular order, Metafilter is not about...<br /><br /><a href="http://www.metafilter.com/mefi/33689#685995">...derailing someone's thread</a><br /><a href="http://metatalk.metafilter.com/mefi/2668#51396">...news and new products and flash</a><br /><a href="http://metatalk.metafilter.com/mefi/756#7411">...asking a question to prompt conversation—anymore, at least</a><br /><a href="http://metatalk.metafilter.com/mefi/3371#75039">...indexing everyone by their experience and areas of knowledge</a><br /><a href="http://metatalk.metafilter.com/mefi/9358#212762">...banning <b>bevets</b></a><br /><a href="http://metatalk.metafilter.com/mefi/3676#89619">..."like-minded users" and "trusted groups"</a><br /><a href="http://metatalk.metafilter.com/mefi/1497#19243">...posting newsfeeds</a><br /><a href="http://metatalk.metafilter.com/mefi/8894#194731">..."being beneficial for society"</a><br /><a href="http://metatalk.metafilter.com/mefi/12265#327112">...overt requests for favors—specifically regarding AskMe</a><br /><a href="http://metatalk.metafilter.com/mefi/2348">...'what kind of music do you like' threads</a><br /><a href="http://metatalk.metafilter.com/mefi/8777#190222">...silly threads where people blow off steam and have some dumb fun with images</a><br /><a href="http://metatalk.metafilter.com/mefi/2233#37726">...the Daniel Pearl video</a><br /><a href="http://metatalk.metafilter.com/mefi/598">...linkless posts</a><br /><a href="http://metatalk.metafilter.com/mefi/8600#181229">...stupid</a><br /><a href="http://metatalk.metafilter.com/mefi/3447#78066">...word-oriented people having fun being clever with words</a><br /><a href="http://metatalk.metafilter.com/mefi/8373#172173">...your childish, petty thoughts about dead journalists who committed no crime against you</a> (or <a href="http://metatalk.metafilter.com/mefi/8373#172187">are they?!</a>)<br /><a href="http://metatalk.metafilter.com/mefi/2715#52981">...news junkies wallowing in serial killer stuff</a><br /><a href="http://metatalk.metafilter.com/mefi/2945#59678">...personal, partisan anti-war rallies</a><br /><br />And here's some bonus <a href="http://revme.livejournal.com/188198.html?thread=525094#t525094">off-site commentary, from Livejournal</a>.<br /><br /><h2>Post-mortem</h2><br /><br />That was a quick survey. I asked google two simple things—<a href="http://www.google.com/search?q=%22not+what+metafilter+is+about%22&hl=en&lr=&filter=0">uno</a>, <a href="http://www.google.com/search?q=site:metatalk.metafilter.com+%22not+what+*+is+about%22&hl=en&lr=&start=20&sa=N&filter=0">dos</a>—and sifted through the results. I expect that, with a more thorough and creative search, there are a great many more instances to be found wherein variations on this question are asked (or, more likely, answered), but as a first canvassing, this provided at least some insight.<br /><br />Perhaps not surprising: people mostly kept their negative definitions of Metafilter's thesis to Metatalk threads, and mostly spoke about Metafilter threads—a few AskMe references popped up, but they were very much in the minority, despite AskMe featuring nearly as many threads as MeFi at this point. Then again, the green has been around for less time than the blue; perhaps navelgazing correlates to age?cortexhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02439222638852171134noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-29046989.post-1152373711742452702006-07-08T07:43:00.000-07:002006-07-08T08:51:38.873-07:00Meme Theme: Magritte ReferencesI've got guests in town and things to do, so Refi has been quiet. By way of apology, I'm stealing a little bit of quiet Saturday morning to examine an old-school meme: Magritte references. <br /><br />Thanks to <b>Smedleyman</b> for the <a href="http://www.metafilter.com/mefi/52838#1362205">inspiration</a>!<br /><br /><h2>Ceci n'est pas une Refi Post</h2><br /><br /><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ren%C3%A9_Magritte">Rene Magritte</a>. Belgian surrealist. Good stuff. The image in question, here, is a simple little assertion, in words and picture, that the map is not the same as the territory: <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:MagrittePipe.jpg">ceci n'est pas une pipe</a>.<br /><br />And throughout Mefi history, we can see, mixed in with various All Your Base jokes and such, more lofty memetic jokes deploying some variation of this. This Magritte-ery has shown up on the blue, the green, and the grey. Let's take a look!<br /><br /><a href="http://www.metafilter.com/mefi/1180#2623">dhartung's coy self-link</a><br />This is the first cited use on Metafilter. dhartung is clearly a trendsetter. There is a citation from an earlier thread, as well, but it's a comment made to good old Thread 19, much later in actual <i>time</i>. <a href="http://www.metafilter.com/mefi/19#222862">And it's even true!</a><br /><br />And it continues...<br /><br /><a href="http://metatalk.metafilter.com/mefi/5502#116986">jfuller steps up</a><br /><br /><a href="http://metatalk.metafilter.com/mefi/5872#122996">Tin Man defends his Metatalk post</a><br />Of course, <a href="http://metatalk.metafilter.com/mefi/5872#122908">DaShiv beat him to it</a>, but he drove the point home.<br /><br /><a href="http://metatalk.metafilter.com/mefi/11394#291537">I think I'm so smart</a><br /><a href="http://metatalk.metafilter.com/mefi/3331#73312">languagehat argues</a><br /><a href="http://www.metafilter.com/comments.mefi/35541">madamjujuve riffs on goatse</a><br /><a href="http://www.metafilter.com/mefi/46243#1089163">ubernostrum on cornucopia</a><br /><br /><a href="http://www.metafilter.com/mefi/25668#487546">Magritte abuse complaint!</a><br />Here we have a quick rant from <b>Zurishaddai</b> (whom I should perhaps alert!) decrying the lazy and mistargeted use of the Magritte-ism. Evidence suggests, so far, that Mefites do better than the anecdotal grad-school tattooee, though. Perhaps that is a relief.<br /><br />But the beauty of memes is the beauty of the well-crafted pop song: even if you hate it, it gets stuck in your head. And so we see, not long after, that <a href="http://www.metafilter.com/mefi/26418#504395">Zurishaddai plays along!</a> And what does all this say about <a href="http://ask.metafilter.com/mefi/21644#349261">fandango_matt's tattoo suggestion?</a><br /><br />And many more!<br /><br /><a href="http://www.metafilter.com/mefi/20303#352872">polyglot vowe explains the joke</a><br /><a href="http://www.metafilter.com/mefi/26159#498245">soyjoy make a reference</a><br /><a href="http://www.metafilter.com/mefi/41520#915838">bumpersticker jokes</a><br /><a href="http://www.metafilter.com/mefi/21675#388961">a simple namecheck</a><br /><a href="http://www.metafilter.com/mefi/29297#577271">broccoli joke</a><br /><a href="http://www.metafilter.com/mefi/37437#784457">admitted non-francospracher</a><br /><a href="http://www.metafilter.com/mefi/37616#790361">on virtual women</a><br /><a href="http://www.metafilter.com/mefi/26433#504607">jfuller...again!</a><br /><a href="http://www.metafilter.com/mefi/22759#415008">riffing on The Matrix</a><br /><a href="http://www.metafilter.com/mefi/28074#548560">bonehead makes a point</a><br /><a href="http://www.metafilter.com/mefi/4267#29880">there is no cabal</a><br /><a href="http://www.metafilter.com/mefi/8843#104558">fighting for Art</a><br /><a href="http://www.metafilter.com/mefi/11888#166523">terrible/wonderful pipedream pun</a><br /><br /><h2>French Is Hard</h2><br /><br /><a href="http://www.metafilter.com/mefi/35603#734731">Google buys a picture of a webpage</a><br />And kaibutsu swings but apparently misses—<b>mrgrimm</b> steps up to fix up the rendering. This is a good time to point out that I have zero French and have to look it up myself. Be strong, kaibutsu—<i>you are not alone</i>.<br /><br /><a href="http://www.metafilter.com/mefi/43003#965426">Flag burning</a><br /><b>Fezboy!</b> recasts the flag-burning question to one further level of abstraction. And then he corrects his own French (see? It's hard!), and <b>TimothyMason</b> steps up with a (now sadly broken) NSFW "pipe" image of some sort. <br /><br /><a href="http://www.metafilter.com/mefi/47146#1124393">French riots denied</a><br /><b>Falconetti</b> takes a wry jab, and spells it wrong.<br /><br /><a href="http://www.metafilter.com/mefi/17848#291096">On yacht naming</a><br /><b>dorian</b> name checks the artist and the work. And then <a href="http://www.metafilter.com/mefi/17848#291136">m@ quotes Radar</a> and deploys some French.<br /><br /><a href="http://ask.metafilter.com/mefi/11274">This AskMe doesn't qualify</a><br />but it acts as a good warning about the dangers of Googling. <b>orange swan</b> introduces an insole question with a touch of French, but she doesn't seem to be aiming for Magritte in particular. Damn!<br /><br />That's it. I need another cup of tea. Have a surreal weekend.cortexhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02439222638852171134noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-29046989.post-1151011200149577212006-06-22T14:13:00.000-07:002006-06-22T14:20:00.166-07:00501-600: Drama in BloggerlandGet ready. Get set. Get:<br /><br /><h2>501-600</h2><br /><br /><a href="http://www.metafilter.com/mefi/501">Microsoft suckers Matt</a><br /><a href="http://www.metafilter.com/mefi/505#162">Matt plays Slashdot mod</a><br /><br /><a href="http://www.metafilter.com/mefi/508">The Matt Dabrowski Saga</a><br />Not going to dig into it right now, but I think it'd make a good refi post of its own—early active mefite teenager (and inveterate self-linker) geek gets into trouble, etc.<br /><br />This post features <a href="http://www.metafilter.com/mefi/508#166">an appearance</a> by the father of one of the principle players, even. Exciting!<br /><br /><a href="http://www.metafilter.com/mefi/521">An early candidate for [more inside]</a><br /><br /><a href="http://www.metafilter.com/mefi/522#206987">"kottkefilter" speculation</a><br />It's a whole thread of kottke talking about Matt talking about kottke, and basically <a href="http://www.metafilter.com/mefi/522">bloggers calling themselves dorks</a>, and in one comment Matt claims this is the first thread to have broken 10 comments. Was he right, at that moment at least?<br /><br /><a href="http://www.metafilter.com/mefi/531">Matt vs. script kiddies</a><br />More administrative stuff on the front page, pre-Metatalk.<br /><br /><a href="http://www.metafilter.com/mefi/535">no seriously napster is awesome</a><br /><a href="http://www.metafilter.com/mefi/536">kitten-chucking at unamerican.com</a><br /><a href="http://www.metafilter.com/mefi/539">pinko commie web design</a><br /><a href="http://www.metafilter.com/mefi/541">chatfilter (and another great big post)</a><br /><br /><a href="http://www.metafilter.com/mefi/545">Matt suggests voice synth gutenberg radio</a><br />And no one responds. God, I have days like that.<br /><br /><a href="http://www.metafilter.com/mefi/546">A terrible post!</a><br />At least, in retrospect. No explanation, just a link to a url (www.word.com) with the text "I smell a lawsuit." Did it make sense at the time? Probably. Maybe. I wasn't there. The contents of www.word.com are, at this point, far from contentious.<br /><br />So that's interesting. Would this post fly on mefi today? Should the durability of a post in the long run be a consideration when posting? Over how long of a run?<br /><br />Does anybody know what was interesting about word.com in early 2000?<br /><br /><a href="http://www.metafilter.com/mefi/548#231">There might've been a comment editor!</a><br /><a href="http://www.metafilter.com/mefi/553">Matt willfully doubleposts</a><br /><a href="http://www.metafilter.com/mefi/559">Mad props from CoolSTOP</a><br /><a href="http://www.metafilter.com/mefi/562#268">Matt can ollie a foot high</a><br /><a href="http://www.metafilter.com/mefi/564">More Bloggy Drama!</a><br /><a href="http://www.metafilter.com/mefi/568#267">Bygone: font colors</a><br /><a href="http://www.metafilter.com/mefi/572">Bush and Gore</a><br /><br /><a href="http://www.metafilter.com/mefi/576">Death to DoubleClick</a><br />And what was <a href="http://www.metafilter.com/mefi/576#285">this</a> about a marketing scare, Matt?<br /><br /><a href="http://www.metafilter.com/mefi/578">domain dispute drama</a><br /><br /><a href="http://www.metafilter.com/mefi/580">Matt talks about MeFi's growth</a><br />Item: proposed moderation for link posting!<br />Item: default was 7 days of posts on the front page. 7 days! On contemporary Mefi, that'd be something like 300-400 posts to scroll through. Wow.<br />Item: proposed karma and comment moderation!<br />Item: again with proposed comment editing!<br /><br />Mefi was getting 1,000 page views a day as of January 26, 2000. It was also, bear in mind, <a href="http://www.metafilter.com/mefi/580#291">crazy silly fresh</a>.<br /><br /><b>dangerman</b> makes a <a href="http://www.metafilter.com/mefi/580#295">prescient declaration</a> about what makes Metafilter work. (And dings kottke.)<br /><br />And <b>kottke</b> <a href="http://www.metafilter.com/mefi/580#313">speaks up</a>: 50 posts a day (just a fever-dream at the time; now a MeFi reality) is Too Many. Site style will shift over time as the userbase grows. And he signs his post. And in <a href="http://www.metafilter.com/mefi/580#315">a followup comment</a>, he predicts increasing snark ("bitterness or crankiness", specifically) and the appearance of an agenda as the site grows.<br /><br />According to <b>vitaminb</b>, "<a href="http://www.metafilter.com/mefi/580#387">you can have</a> popular weblog or an uncensored weblog, but not both." Which is a good line, but may not really hold up. How do you define "uncensored?" Contemporary MeFi sees occasional comment and post deletions, but does not have the transparent feel of Moderation seen on, say, Slashdot. Where is the line, and just how wide and gray and fuzzy is it?<br /><br /><a href="http://www.metafilter.com/mefi/581">More MeFi press</a><br /><a href="http://www.metafilter.com/mefi/585">Another self-link!</a><br /><br /><a href="http://www.metafilter.com/mefi/586">log spam a new thing?</a><br />I hear "log spam" and think of the junk that shows up daily in my referrer logs—it looks like <b>prolific</b> meant it as "web log spam": the receipt of email from a blogger requesting that you check out his site. The instance quoted is actually, to my modern sensibilities, quaint beyond belief, but apparently it was jarring in 2000.<br /><br />Plus: more appearances by old A-listers. Blog drama!<br /><br /><a href="http://www.metafilter.com/mefi/590">no one uses HTML anymore lol</a><br /><br /><a href="http://www.metafilter.com/mefi/592">administrative stuff: preferences improved!</a><br />No Metatalk yet, so Matt posts site news on the front page. What's this "floating menu" stuff he's talking about? Also, apparently <a href="http://www.metafilter.com/mefi/592#327">karma was impending</a>. Never did materialize [aside: thank god], though as of June '06 Matt has been mentioning a thumbs up/down idea...<br /><br /><a href="http://www.metafilter.com/mefi/596">MozillaFilter</a><br /><br /><a href="http://www.metafilter.com/mefi/597">Genesis of "no self-links"!</a><br />What would by today's standards be an incredibly shitty post. Back then...well, it was apparently an incredibly shitty post.<br /><br />Read <a href="http://www.metafilter.com/mefi/597#333">the historic comment</a>. The phrase "self-links" was still apparently uncoined—Matt refers to "self-promotional links", a wordier option that collapses rather nicely to the current lingo—and there was a 24-hour waiting period. (These days it's, what, a week, plus a few mandatory comments?) Also: <b>No Marketing Crap</b>. Pepsi Blue was still a glint in a soda exec's eye, but Matt was laying down the law.<br /><br />Note also his deployment of the phrase "self-policing". Is that a first?<br /><br />Also, CrazyUncleJoe calls kottke "Mr. Cranky Pants".<br /><br />And it's technically out of bounds, being at thread 602, but there's a shameless (though slightly more artful) selflink <a href="http://www.metafilter.com/mefi/602">that same morning</a>.cortexhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02439222638852171134noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-29046989.post-1149632385529110182006-06-06T15:00:00.000-07:002006-06-06T15:19:45.710-07:00Shark-jumping: 701-800I hear what you are saying. Where are 301-700? This post is out of order! <b>THIS WHOLE WEBSITE IS OUT OF ORDER!</b><br /><br />Well, hush. Those other posts will be along in good time—contributors are working on them, and will post them when the time is right.<br /><br />In the mean time, I'm hopping ahead a bit, to see how things have changed between October 1999 and February 2000. And so...<br /><br /><h2>Threads 701-800</h2><br /><br />Let's take a stroll through 701-800, shall we? First of all: it's still quiet, but not <b>too</b> quiet. Most threads have comments, and the average there has jumped from 1 to 5-6 (ballpark). A few threads break into double digits—I've noted a couple of interesting ones below.<br /><br />Also, with the exception of the Dave Winer thread detailed below, things remain remarkably civil. Most threads are either goofy or earnestly agreeable; there is essentially no name-calling and very little genuine conflict.<br /><br />On with it:<br /><br /><a href="http://www.metafilter.com/mefi/701">Live action The Tick!</a><br /><a href="http://www.metafilter.com/mefi/702#653">CrazyUncleJoe asks permission to curse</a><br /><a href="http://www.metafilter.com/mefi/706">Stan Lee draws Backstreet Boys</a><br /><a href="http://www.metafilter.com/mefi/709">contentious, 6-comment discussion of homosexuality!</a><br /><br /><a href="http://www.metafilter.com/mefi/711#706">Ernest goes to the void</a><br />I got excited when I saw this—was this a precursor to the moment-of-silence <b>"."</b> marker that has become such a fixture in contemporary Mefi obit threads (and such a fixture of Metatalk queries)?<br /><br />No. It was an accident, as dan_of_brainlog's next comment attests. Damn.<br /><br /><a href="http://www.metafilter.com/mefi/717#741">Apologetic (!) re-rail of thread</a><br /><a href="http://www.metafilter.com/mefi/723">Matt is an ignorant white American</a><br /><a href="http://www.metafilter.com/mefi/726#733">Mefi threads might've been threaded</a><br /><a href="http://www.metafilter.com/mefi/732">Jesse Helms = racist jerk!</a><br /><a href="http://www.metafilter.com/mefi/737">Weak eponysteria: obit by tomcos<b>grave</b></a><br /><br /><a href="http://www.metafilter.com/mefi/747#774">"I blogged this"</a><br />Further evidence of Metafilter's continued limbo status—not quite Matt's blog, but not quite a community site that Matt just happens to run yet. Of course, this might just be evidence that back in 2000, Matt really liked using "blog" as a transitive verb. Or that "I posted this" just wasn't natural parlance yet. Or something.<br /><br /><a href="http://www.metafilter.com/mefi/751">First annual Oscars discussion</a><br />With a (record-breaking?) 16 comments, no less. Viva la chatfilter!<br /><br /><a href="http://www.metafilter.com/mefi/757">Applefilter</a><br /><br /><a href="http://www.metafilter.com/mefi/765#879">jessamyn signs her post</a><br />Another forebearer of Todd Lokken syndrome. This was not her first post; that happened <a href="http://www.metafilter.com/mefi/562#367">a few weeks earlier</a>. But this is the first time she tags her comment with her initials, and she doesn't do it again in her next few comments, at least. Odd. <br /><br />She has since become the only true co-administrator of Metafilter and is now inescapably part of the site—but at that point, she felt the need, at least this one time, to actually sort of declare who she was. How things change!<br /><br />(It's worth noting that, other than <b>Sapphireblue</b>, she is the user with the highest usernumber (and is hence the newbiest newb) in the thread; her newness may well have been chafing her a bit. Number <b>292</b>? Did you ride your widdle bicycle to the website? Did you? Did you?)<br /><br /><a href="http://www.metafilter.com/mefi/767#876">Cavatica deploys UBB code</a><br /><br /><a href="http://www.metafilter.com/mefi/772#887">Matt has had it with Dave Winer</a><br />Also in the thread: Kottke disses Dave's design, Derek speaks up about his side of the argument (and signs his post!), <a href="http://www.metafilter.com/user/46">Dave</a> shows up to explain that everyone is <a href="http://www.metafilter.com/mefi/772#924">full of shit</a>, tomcosgrave notes <a href="http://www.metafilter.com/mefi/772#931">the high comment count</a> (which closed out at a stunning <b>40 comments</b>), Matt jokes about <a href="http://www.metafilter.com/mefi/772#932">closing the thread</a> (a feature that has since actually seen implementation in Metatalk)...and in a months-later coda, Dave closes it all out with a <a href="http://www.metafilter.com/mefi/772#182497">recto-centric suggestion</a> for Matt.<br /><br />Ladies and jerks, this may be the first genuine instance of full-blown Metafilter <b>drama</b>.<br /><br />Interesting to note: the major players in the thread are mostly folks actively involved in the (then inchoate) Blogosphere. Metafilter seems to have been as much about/by bloggers as it was a nexus for community blogging—there were apparently a lot of Big Names (dare I say <b>A-listers</b>?) on board.<br /><br />I admit I wasn't paying much attention to blogging in general at this point—I was reading <a href="http://www.memepool.com">memepool</a> and playing counter-strike and programming for recreation and hadn't likely even <b>heard</b> of Metafilter quite yet, etc—so it all has an odd sort of History Channel cattiness to me. I don't quite know what's going on, but I can't help but read the thread anyway.<br /><br /><a href="http://www.metafilter.com/mefi/776">Sock Puppet: pets.com</a><br /><a href="http://www.metafilter.com/mefi/780">Did you know George Bush Sr. worships Osiris?</a><br /><a href="http://www.metafilter.com/mefi/782">More of Derek and the Bloggers</a><br /><a href="http://www.metafilter.com/mefi/784">They called it the PSX2?</a><br /><br /><a href="http://www.metafilter.com/user/462">Steven C. Den Beste</a> is <a href="http://www.metafilter.com/mefi/787#957">appalled!</a><br />About who Wants To Marry A Millionaire, specifically. And it's his first comment ever!<br /><br /><a href="http://www.metafilter.com/mefi/792#1008">this Jabber thing might catch on</a><br /><br /><a href="http://www.metafilter.com/mefi/796">MetaFilter used to kick so much ass</a><br />This may be the first time Metafilter was declared to have jumped the shark. Not much of a thread—a self-link before "self-link" was common lingo on the site, followed <b>seven months later</b> by one lengthy self-described diatribe by cCranium, who uses the phrases "empty vanity post" and "self blog" to describe the link.<br /><br />I haven't read the September 2000 archives yet—I don't know if the "idiotic personal attacks" referenced were a problem by then or not. And that this comment was posted months later suggests that this wouldn't likely be the "first time" mefi was thus dissed, but rather just the earliest thread in which it happened. I'll be keeping my eye out, regardless.<br /><br /><a href="http://www.metafilter.com/mefi/797">Metafilter starts displaying new-comment count</a><br />And appearing therein, a truly earlier <a href="http://www.metafilter.com/mefi/797#996">shark-jumping allegation</a> by none other than jkottke. Fortuitous! Plus, <a href="http://www.metafilter.com/mefi/797#1002">sikk encourages fighting</a>. So now you know who to blame.<br /><br />I wonder where the Metatalk launch was, relative to this. Seems like just the sort of discussion-about-Metafilter that Matt was aiming to take off the front page. I could look up the date, but that would be spoiling the surprise!<br /><br />(Oh, okay. I couldn't resist. Metatalk was launched March 3, 2000, about two weeks later. But that's a whole other post.)cortexhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02439222638852171134noreply@blogger.com6tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-29046989.post-1149539843352488022006-06-05T12:59:00.000-07:002006-06-05T13:37:23.466-07:00Refi: Naming and Namespace Collisions<h2>Adventures in Namespace</h2><br /><br />It just occurred to me—has Google indexed the site yet? (The answer is <a href="http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=site%3Arefiblog.blogspot.com">yes, they have</a>.)<br /><br />But before I requested from Google such specificity, my first query was for, simply, "refi". This, I thought to myself, is a nonce construction, an odd jamming together of letters that has no meaning. Right?<br /><br />Well. Hoom. This is where it becomes clear that I do not have a mortgage: I have, as consequence, never considered <b>refinancing</b>. As such, I've certainly not gotten so used to <b>talking about my refinance plans</b> that I would feel compelled to adopt a useful (if twee) bit of short-hand like <a href="http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&lr=&safe=active&q=refi">refi</a>.<br /><br />Shit.<br /><br />There's also a Polish (I'm guessing) blog at <a href="http://refi.blog.pl/">refi.blog.pl</a>. Anyone who can read the language is welcome to let us know what, precisely, is going on there with the pictures of adorable children and the dearth of paragraph breaks.<br /><br />Note: <a href="http://refi.blogspot.com">refi.blogspot.com</a>, the address I had <b>hoped</b> to snag when I created this blog, is throwing a "Not Found". Which suggests that someone used it and <b>wasted it</b>. Blast you, failed blogger!<br /><br /><h2>Why name this site "refi"?</h2><br /><br /><b>Short answer:</b> it's short and snappy.<br /><br /><b>Long answer:</b><br />Regular readers of Metafilter know more than one name for the site. We call it <b>the blue</b>, after the color of the front page (so lazily cribbed for the design of this very blog). We also call it <b>mefi</b>, because that's a 60% savings on keystrokes.<br /><br />And the other sections of the site—<a href="http://ask.metafilter.com">ask.metafilter</a> is <b>the green</b> or simply <b>askme</b>, and <a href="http://metatalk.metafilter.com">Metatalk</a> is <b>the grey</b> (or as some people have asserted in the past—we'll keep an eye out for this—<b>the brown</b>) or simply <b>meta</b>. Any of these can be seen rendered in lowercase or with punctuating capitals—MeFi, AskMe, MeTa—though I think this is most common with MeTa, being as how the lower-case rendering "meta" is a bit confusing without explicit context.<br /><br />(There's also <a href="http://projects.metafilter.com">Projects</a>, which is a newer part of the site. The newness of the section, the weird-cousin difference in functionality from the rest of the site, and the lack of any particularly euphonious coining: I suppose these factors taken together explain why there's no generally accepted nickname for Projects yet. I've heard "MePro" once or twice, but that's not exactly a winner. Projects was also called <b>the red</b> for a while, but after a number of complaints Matt opted for a less retina-searing dark teal. And <b>the dark teal</b> just doesn't stick.)<br /><br />It is in the context of that grand history of names and nicknames that <b>refi</b> was chosen. It's an implied collapsing of "Review of Metafilter", I suppose, though "Metafilter in Review" is a much more appealing subheader.<br /><br />But it is not about refinancing your home. Really.cortexhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02439222638852171134noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-29046989.post-1149294727999214592006-06-02T17:24:00.000-07:002006-06-02T17:39:16.686-07:00The Early Days - the second hundredThanks is due to my dear friend, Doctor Millard, for allowing me to participate in this delightful project of his.<br /><br />The first 100 threads have been covered and quite capably summed up. It would seem, to paraphrase Eliot, that MetaFilter began not with a bang, but a whimper. The next hundred are not entirely different, although a few precious moments stick out - and much like those sappy ceramic dolls of the same name, they're awfully saccharine and<br />characteristically MetaFilter.<br /><br />The mathowie posting frenzy continues - he no doubt scoured the Internet for post-worthy material as MeFi still held that coveted "new shiny toy" space in his heart. We see an out-and-out Saab boycott from user #1 in <a href="http://www.metafilter.com/mefi/105">thread 105</a>. Given the relative obscurity of the thread, I wouldn't be surprised if he's gone against his words and rushed out to buy the latest 9-3 sedan from the Swedish auto maker. The cause? Saab seems to have sent spam advertising their latest models, mathowie has taken umbrage. He links to the text of the offending e-mail, which has since been deleted, lost to the waves of time.<br /><br />And lo! In <a href="http://www.metafilter.com/mefi/109">thread 109</a>, mathowie comments several times on his own FPP within the course of a few days, surely the Internet equivalent stepping up to the microphone and shouting, "IS THIS THING ON? <span style="font-style: italic;">HELLO?</span>"<br /><br />So many posts in the second hundred come and go without comments, these hastily written FPP's that smack of the "GYOBFW" genre. Cheese sandwiches, billboards about butter, <i class="moz-txt-slash"><span class="moz-txt-tag"></span>The Real Life<span class="moz-txt-tag"></span></i>, and -- wait, what's this? The first self-link? Why, yes! Yes, it is! And mathowie seems to approve! Why anyone hasn't posted a MeTa callout about the two dozen threads that link to mattdabrowski.com is beyond me. Better late than never, however, and I strongly urge the reader to right this wrong,<br /><span style="font-style: italic;">post haste</span>.<br /><br />A TERSE OVERVIEW:<br /><br /><a href="http://www.metafilter.com/mefi/140">Thread 140</a>: mathowie links to Fark, and thus a new epoch is born.<br /><br /><a href="http://www.metafilter.com/mefi/145">Thread 145</a>: mathowie takes joy in anagrams.<br /><br /><a href="http://www.metafilter.com/mefi/161">Thread 161</a>: A website for instant expert answers to whatever question one needs to pose. The precursor to AskMeFi?<br /><br /><a href="http://www.metafilter.com/mefi/172">Thread 172</a>: Diaryland.com is launched, both of MeFi's active users (seemingly, only mathowie and tdecius are around) take notice.<br /><br /><a href="http://www.metafilter.com/mefi/184">Thread 184</a>: Hot damn, it's an absinthe post, complete with an absinthe FAQ!<br /><br />And so the next hundred trudges along, much like a lonely pedestrian travailing the quiet, dimly-lit streets of the Internet. That pedestrian is MetaFilter -- do you recognize that trademark blue sweater? MeFi is wandering the streets, searching for its sense of purpose and identity, quietly singing Jimi Hendrix tunes to itself and waiting for the dawn.antifreezhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12087521057833877505noreply@blogger.com6tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-29046989.post-1149287207526231292006-06-02T15:19:00.000-07:002006-06-02T15:30:39.176-07:00Digest: Threads 201-300If you're keeping track, you'll note that threads 101-200 haven't been covered. Worry not—they're coming, via guest correspondent (and long-time mefite and #mefi/#tapes denizen) <b>antifreez</b>.<br /><br />In the mean time, let's look at...<br /><br /><h2>Threads 201-300</h2><br /><br />Still prehistoric times, much like the first hundred. Many broken links. Not worth linking too, though—<b>they're broken</b>. Among those are a plurality of deceased Geocities pages.<br /><br /><a href="http://www.metafilter.com/user/33">tdecius</a> did a LOT of posting; he and Matt account for a good 90 of these 100 threads. And most of the very, very few comments. Most threads still have none; a few have comments from whichever of the two posters didn't make the post. Matt also replies to himself now and then.<br /><br /><h2>Highlight Reel</h2><br /><br /><a href="http://www.metafilter.com/mefi/203#47">Matt likes guiness</a><br /><br /><a href="http://www.metafilter.com/mefi/206">Shotgun Rules</a> <br />This one's interesting—not only has the link <b>not</b> died, the website in question, <a href="http://www.shotgunrules.com">shotgunrules.com</a>, has gotten an incremental makeover from <a href="http://web.archive.org/web/20000816065654/http://www.shotgunrules.com/">back when Matt linked it</a>. Much of the text and layout remains the same, but it's been prettied up, adorned with Google Ads on the sidebar, and revised here and there. Note particularly the change, in the Exceptions section near the bottom, from "The Opposite Sex" on the older version to "Significant Others" on the current revision. The addition of a <b>Rock, Scissors, Paper</b> rule for arbitration of contested shotgun calls is a good thing as well.<br /><br /><a href="http://www.metafilter.com/mefi/213">Matt predicts death of Slate</a><br /><a href="http://www.metafilter.com/mefi/214">Unabashed links to several unrelated things</a><br /><a href="http://www.metafilter.com/mefi/231">Wow! Domain registration for just $20!</a><br /><a href="http://www.metafilter.com/mefi/232">Front page editorializing!</a><br /><br /><a href="http://www.metafilter.com/mefi/240">First: Linkee comments in thread.</a><br />And, adorably enough, he commits a <b>Todd Lokken</b>. Remember, kids, don't sign your posts.<br /><br /><a href="http://www.metafilter.com/mefi/250">Matt <3 Moxy Fruvous</a><br /><a href="http://www.metafilter.com/mefi/257">The dark days before Skype</a><br /><a href="http://www.metafilter.com/mefi/262#55">Godwin's Law manifests</a><br /><a href="http://www.metafilter.com/mefi/270">A post by someone other than Matt or tdecius!</a><br /><a href="http://www.metafilter.com/mefi/271">San Fran is dead to Matt</a><br /><br /><a href="http://www.metafilter.com/mefi/273">A landmark post!</a><br />Item: not posted by Matt or tdecius!<br />Item: 4 comments! 4! Of course, they're all from Matt and tdecius...<br />Item: I worked for a dot-com in 2000 that was trying (and failing) to compete in this space. If only I'd been reading Metafilter back then...<br /><br /><a href="http://www.metafilter.com/mefi/275">Metafilter server boots slow</a><br /><a href="http://www.metafilter.com/mefi/278">Wow! Napster!</a><br /><a href="http://www.metafilter.com/mefi/280">tdecius is a self-linking bastard</a><br /><a href="http://www.metafilter.com/mefi/290#61">Matt scratches surface of non-secure communications</a><br /><a href="http://www.metafilter.com/mefi/296">Did I mention Rock, Scissors, Paper?</a><br /><br />And that's a wrap. Look for antifreez's post in the next few days, as well as a contribution from another <b>super secret guest correspondent</b> (named "dios") whenever he gets a chance to put one together.<br /><br />(What? <b>You</b> are interested in contributing? Really? Well, drop me an email, then!)cortexhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02439222638852171134noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-29046989.post-1149183134759770572006-06-01T10:25:00.000-07:002006-06-01T10:33:43.950-07:00The Extremely Early Days - On To 100Looking through the early history, Metafilter can be seen to have started off quietly. Despite the belated party in <a href="http://refiblog.blogspot.com/2006/05/extremely-early-days-cat-scancom.html">the first thread</a>, posts to <b>the blue</b> have only a few (if any) comments by modern standards. It's almost quaint—it's clear, glancing through these early posts, that, Metafilter then could not have seemed at all to carry a sense of the inevitablity of it's Internet Presence that I take for granted these days. Those first few months especially: it feels like <b>some dude's website</b>.<br /><br /><h2>Thread 25</h2><br /><br />After Thread 19, we jump to <b>25</b>, <a href="http://www.metafilter.com/mefi/25">a post about JenniCam</a>. (That takes you back, innit? In 1999, we were bemoaning the tiredness of JenniCam; in 2006, we're thinking, "oh, hey, JenniCam! I remember that! Wow, yeah!" JenniCam is betamax now. Wide ties. Pet Rock.)<br /><br />And what have we got in Thread 25? One comment by <b>jjg</b> on the day of the post. Another, a month and a half later, from <b>CrazyUncleJoe</b>. And then...a big jump to some latter-day OMG I CAN STILL POST comments in the style of Thread 19. Not a thread so much as a link—Metafilter as an over-implemented <a href="http://www.memepool.com/">memepool.com</a>.<br /><br /><b>Odd trivia:</b> the "Older/Newer" links down at the bottom of the thread (which are by my recollection yet another <b>added feature</b> not present when Mefi launched—which may help explain the following) point, from threads 19 and 25 both, to <a href="http://www.metafilter.com/mefi/24">non-event Thread 24</a>, which the link text suggests had something to do with "Download[ing] Abiword". Click the link, though, and you see only this:<br /><br />"No post found"<br /><br />Bit of a mess in the old database, I guess.<br /><br /><h2>A quick skim of early threads</h2><br /><br />Moving on. We have <a href="http://www.metafilter.com/mefi/26">a post about an Apple product</a>—something I consider a Mefi staple</a>. The link is dead; the comments are split: 2 related comments (mathowie and poster jjg discussing the PDA? in question), and 2 others from <b>MUD</b> that suggest he might be <a href="http://www.metafilter.com/mefi/26#222814">discovering that threads are still open</a> long after the fact.<br /><br />Thread 27: <b>jjg</b> (again!) posting about <a href="http://www.metafilter.com/mefi/27">a tiny webserver</a>. One comment.<br /><br />Thread 33: <b>mathowie</b> posts about <a href="http://www.metafilter.com/mefi/33">extreeeem sports TV</a> and gets no reply whatsover.<br /><br />Thread 34: <b>honkzilla</b> link to <a href="http://www.metafilter.com/mefi/34">The Death Clock</a>. Sole comment: Matt making a UNIX joke.<br /><br />And so on. <a href="http://www.metafilter.com/mefi/35">Matt on fonts</a>; <a href="http://www.metafilter.com/mefi/36">peterme on Hello Tarot</a>; <a href="http://www.metafilter.com/mefi/37">Matt on Yahoo</a>; <a href="http://www.metafilter.com/mefi/38">Matt disses Soccer Barbie</a>. No comments on any of those.<br /><br />The trend continues as such—paging through the threads that follow, I see two things:<br /><br /><ol><li>0-2 comments per thread</li><br /><li>usernames I don't even recognize (and a few I do)</li></ol><br /><br />A few other hilights from the first 100 threads:<br /><br /><a href="http://www.metafilter.com/mefi/48">Remember when Aerons were the new black?</a><br /><a href="http://www.metafilter.com/mefi/49">Yet Another Apple Post</a><br /><a href="http://www.metafilter.com/mefi/50#247688">riffola celebrates 50</a><br /><a href="http://www.metafilter.com/mefi/60">Politics come to Metafilter</a><br /><a href="http://www.metafilter.com/mefi/63">Wow! 10 Megabytes!</a><br /><a href="http://www.metafilter.com/mefi/69">Bashing Hipsters in 1999</a><br /><a href="http://www.metafilter.com/mefi/78">Matt Thanks Kottke</a><br /><a href="http://www.metafilter.com/mefi/81">Mozilla not ready for prime-time</a><br /><a href="http://www.metafilter.com/mefi/90">Gitcher vintage browsers!</a><br /><a href="http://www.metafilter.com/mefi/100#247689">riffola celebrates 100</a><br /><br />So that's <b>the first hundred</b>. Or, well, the first hundred, minus the couple dozen that got deleted. Between the lack of comments and the dominating presence of mathowie-as-poster, the whole venture up to this point feels pretty small-scale, pretty <b>GYOBFW</b>. Consider also: these threads (19 through 100) span more than a month, 7/14/99–8/26/99. These days, we see that many posts to Metafilter inside of a couple of days. <b>Slow days</b>.<br /><br />I think it's fair to say that at this point <b>Metafilter hadn't really started</b> yet. The site was there, a few people were there, but it was less community weblog and more Matthew Haughey's Experiment.<br /><br />I'm interested to see when that changed.cortexhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02439222638852171134noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-29046989.post-1149094781971589042006-05-31T08:55:00.000-07:002006-05-31T10:11:14.183-07:00The Extremely Early Days - cat-scan.comIt's not entirely easy to pick a starting point for Metafilter—I'd like to get started with an Early Thread, but I can't simply start with thread number one, because <b>it doesn't exist</b>. Metafilter was (and continues to be) a test-as-you-go experience, administratively, and so the first 18 thread numbers were tied to threads that are no longer <b>of this world</b>.<br /><br /><h2>Scanning Cats</h2><br /><br />The first active thread, then: <a href="http://www.metafilter.com/mefi/19">Thread 19</a>. The infamous "cat scan" thread. Infamous, and from a purist starting-from-the-beginning perspective consequently problematic—folks wandered into the thread long after it was posted, on more than one occasion, to chatter. The lack of a <b>year field</b> in the comment timestamps makes it difficult to tell when exactly the incursions happened, but the key point is clear: this thread, as a single entity, is not really an "early" thread so much as a thread that was originally posted early on. The comments span a great deal of mefi history.<br /><br />Looking at thread 19 is anachronistic in more than one way. Aside from the great big jumps in the 3-year-long comment chronology, there are site features present to the modern viewer that weren't there when the thread was posted. Tags, for example: those weren't around for <b>years</b>—only after the fact has the post been tagged. A sort of revisionist librarianism, that.<br /><br />Also, <b>flags</b>—just now, I've flagged <a href="http://www.metafilter.com/mefi/19#31667">this mathowie comment</a> as 'other', but flags are a relatively recent innovation. (God knows what <a href="http://www.metafilter.com/user/1">Matt</a> and <a href="http://www.metafilter.com/user/292">Jessamyn</a> will make of that.)<br /><br />And the thread is closed! As it clearly wasn't originally—automatic thread closure after 30 days was a change made no less than <a href="http://www.metafilter.com/mefi/19#304887">three years</a> after the original thread 19 was posted.<br /><br /><h2>The cat-scan Meme</h2><br /><br />By virtue of both it's <b>historical significance</b> and the sheer potency of the idea itself, cat-scan.com has held fast as a long-running (if low-frequency) meme on Metafilter. It's not hard, with a little Googling, to find references to the site and even the original text of mathowie's post. Consider:<br /><br /><ul><br /><li><a href="http://www.metafilter.com/mefi/43347#977660">Pretty_Generic riffing</a></li><br /><li><a href="http://metatalk.metafilter.com/mefi/2582#48192">yhbc, likewise</a></li><br /><li><a href="http://metatalk.metafilter.com/mefi/1797#25714">evanizer makes a disapproving comparison</a></li><br /><li><a href="http://www.metafilter.com/mefi/5549#45483">gluechunk has an epiphany</a></li><br /><li><a href="http://ask.metafilter.com/mefi/28580#449557">blue_beetle mis-spells the url</a></li><br /><li><a href="http://metatalk.metafilter.com/mefi/2495#45808">riffola discusses doubleposts</a></li><br /><li><a href="http://metatalk.metafilter.com/mefi/11402#292334">George_Spiggott uses it as a placeholder variable</a></li><br /><li><a href="http://metatalk.metafilter.com/mefi/7988#158486">DrJohnEvans on doublepostery</a></li><br /></ul><br /><br />The double-post joke has become a birthday tradition for Metafilter, as well:<br /><br /><ul><br /><li><a href="http://www.metafilter.com/mefi/2448">2000</a></li><br /><li><a href="http://www.metafilter.com/mefi/9013">2001</a></li><br /><li><a href="http://www.metafilter.com/mefi/18444">2002</a></li><br /><li><a href="http://www.metafilter.com/mefi/26980">2003</a></li><br /><li><a href="http://www.metafilter.com/mefi/34316">2004</a></li><br /><li><a href="http://www.metafilter.com/mefi/43466">2005</a></li><br /><li><a href="http://metatalk.metafilter.com/mefi/8041">Metatalk</a></li><br /></ul><br /><br />It'll be another month and a half before the inevitable <b>2006 edition</b>.<br /><br /><h2>Not What I Had In Mind</h2><br /><br />My hope, with <b>Refi</b>, is to take a good systematic look at joe-average Metafilter threads over time—essentially, examine threads that have no particular motivation toward self-examination and see what's going on in there. <b>Thread 19</b> is a terrible fit for that sort of thing—as threads go, it is highly self-aware and its offspring are all likewise. <br /><br />On the other hand, looking through this stuff is a hell of a lot of fun, so it's safe to say you can expect to see more thematic/memetic explorations that veer somewhat <b>off-point</b>—considering that no such <b>on-point</b> posts yet exist, especially...cortexhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02439222638852171134noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-29046989.post-1149089760547458642006-05-31T08:16:00.000-07:002006-05-31T08:36:00.563-07:00Why Refi?Why Refi? Why review Metafilter? To what purpose? <i>&c</i>.<br /><br />It's been something like seven years since <a href="http://www.metafilter.com/">Metafilter</a> came into being, and the site has grown from tiny experimental community weblog to a bustling fixture of <i>blogdom</i>. In that time, the userbase has grown and changed, the threads have gotten longer, the traffic has gotten heavier. Folks talk about the good old days; other folks talk about how there <i>weren't</i> any good old days. Assertions get tossed around—this has changed, that has stayed the same—<br /><br />But why not test some of that? Why not take a look back through the history of Metafilter, and see what there is to actually see?<br /><br />Why not indeed!<br /><br />So here's the plan: sample mefi history, talk about what's there, who's there, and what the hell everybody is talking about and how. Maybe some armchair discourse analysis thrown in. Maybe even directed graphs of conversational branching.cortexhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02439222638852171134noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-29046989.post-1149082502170975222006-05-31T06:33:00.000-07:002006-05-31T07:04:15.176-07:00Refi is born!And this is its pancreas. Not really what I want to present to you in your first glance; let's let this sit here for a moment while I get everything else under control, and I'll show you something adorable when I'm good and ready.<br /><br />Thanks a bunch.cortexhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02439222638852171134noreply@blogger.com0