Le index est mort

September 8, 2013 4:34 AM

After many years of service, jaden is no longer be maintaining his wonderful Mefi Contribution index. Results will now be frozen at mid-August. Thanks for running it for as long as you did, jaden!
posted by zarq to MetaFilter-Related at 4:34 AM (71 comments total)

Thanks indeed! Always been an interesting peek at Mefi life!
posted by ThePinkSuperhero at 4:38 AM on September 8, 2013

Number one!

Now and forever.
posted by The Whelk at 7:08 AM on September 8, 2013 [6 favorites]

We'll never catch up with delmoi, now.
posted by anotherpanacea at 7:18 AM on September 8, 2013

Neat. I wonder what changed recently on our end.
posted by jessamyn (staff) at 7:25 AM on September 8, 2013

Made it back to top 10.

I finally saw the writing on the wall that I could no longer compete in today's global comment marketplace so I outsourced many of my comments to a facility in Chennai.

I've just inked a deal to be the exclusive North American distributer for a wide assortment to high quality comments. I am pleased to offer a complete comment solution containing everything from old favorites like "meh" and "squee" to new classics like "u wot m8?" with more coming every day.
posted by Ad hominem at 7:38 AM on September 8, 2013 [10 favorites]

All my comments are handmade, locally sourced, and constructed in the strictest organic environment.
posted by The Whelk at 7:39 AM on September 8, 2013 [16 favorites]

Organic comments are a total scam. There is no science to back up the assertion that they are any better than factory comments.

In addition, factory comments have gotten much better in recent years. They now have more oversight and stricter quality control. There hasn't been an outbreak caused by factory comments in over a year now.
posted by Ad hominem at 7:46 AM on September 8, 2013 [13 favorites]

In addition, factory comments have gotten much better in recent years.

Pffft, probably just confirmation bias. Everyone knows they started producing better comments in the factories when Obama won and it became clear that there would be no gutting of the FCC (Federal Commentariat Commission), NHSTA (National Highbrow Snark and Talk Authority), FDA (the "Feh!" and "D'oh!" Administration), and other main regulatory bodies.
posted by wenestvedt at 7:54 AM on September 8, 2013 [3 favorites]

You never get the same quality and attention to detail in a factory setting, not to mention the feeling of unbroken tradition between you and the Anicent USENET comments of yore.
posted by The Whelk at 7:55 AM on September 8, 2013 [5 favorites]

Look at his production volume and tell me that these are organic comments. Hah! Lovingly crafted by the fucking metric tonne.
posted by Meatbomb at 8:01 AM on September 8, 2013 [2 favorites]

Le index est mort
I guess somebody doesn't understand how liaisons work.

I am old and grumpy and detest fake French. Please discount my opinion accordingly.
posted by Wolof at 8:06 AM on September 8, 2013 [3 favorites]

I'm not denying the appeal of the bespoke comment. Nothing can match the smell and heft of an expertly handcrafted comment. There are still some great artisanal commenters working with traditional methods as well.

Today's consumers want value though. They also want the flexibility to consume comments how and when they want. They may want to savor each comment individually or they may want to binge, reading dozens or hundreds over a long weekend.

Modern supply chains and business intelligence allow us to provide comments how and when consumers want with reduced overhead. The result is more comments at a reduced cost. It is a win for both comment producers and consumers.
posted by Ad hominem at 8:07 AM on September 8, 2013 [17 favorites]

Lovingly crafted by the fucking metric tonne.

That's what the Ommpa Loompas are for.
posted by The Whelk at 8:08 AM on September 8, 2013 [5 favorites]

Should be "l'index est mort".
posted by dfriedman at 8:15 AM on September 8, 2013 [1 favorite]

I wonder why jaden did this by scraping the user pages, which is brittle about subtle changes, while the Infodump has everything needed, in a way meant for data analysis.
posted by Pronoiac at 8:16 AM on September 8, 2013

Should be "l'index est mort".

Indice, Jesus.
posted by Wolof at 8:20 AM on September 8, 2013 [5 favorites]

I ain't writing in French here. If you squint really hard, you can just about detect where the gears change from Fr to Eng.
posted by Wolof at 8:26 AM on September 8, 2013

Er, I mean still doing this with scraping. The index has been going from 2002, which pre-dates the Infodump by years. Maybe it's for daily updates? Still, there's a better way to do this now.
posted by Pronoiac at 8:28 AM on September 8, 2013

Aww. The index was the cause of my first grumpy departure from MeFi, way back in 2002. Obviously I will miss it.
posted by Curious Artificer at 8:55 AM on September 8, 2013 [1 favorite]

I never showed up on the index. This is good. I like my operations to remain somewhat underground.

You don't want to know how my comments are produced. It's a rough and dirty process. But cheap—so, so cheap.
posted by Rory Marinich at 8:58 AM on September 8, 2013 [1 favorite]

Astro Zombie has been in a self-induced coma for two years now and is still on 2 of these lists.

ASTRO ZOMBIE IS KICKING YOUR ASSES WHILE COMATOSE
posted by Slarty Bartfast at 8:58 AM on September 8, 2013 [1 favorite]

I'm writing up a prototype based on the infodump now.
posted by mkb at 9:01 AM on September 8, 2013 [5 favorites]

AstroZombie is dead (undead undead)
posted by The Whelk at 9:14 AM on September 8, 2013

"l'index est mort"

No, I still make the odd, infrequent comment now and then. Thank you for your concern.
posted by LionIndex at 9:33 AM on September 8, 2013 [8 favorites]

Jesus, Astro Zombie was a loudmouth.
posted by Bunny Ultramod at 9:33 AM on September 8, 2013 [10 favorites]

You're too late rtha, I have won!
posted by Brandon Blatcher at 9:38 AM on September 8, 2013 [1 favorite]

Le index est mort

Actually when I first saw that, I instantly heard in my head Mr. Rooney saying "Les jeux sont faits".
posted by Melismata at 9:38 AM on September 8, 2013 [3 favorites]

Jesus, Astro Zombie was a loudmouth.

I miss Astro Zombie 3.
posted by Curious Artificer at 9:42 AM on September 8, 2013 [2 favorites]

Wolof: "I am old and grumpy and detest fake French. "

Sorry. Mea culpa. I prefer to use scifi references in meta post titles, but I was up super early for a work event and was just too tired to get creative. Or be accurate.
posted by zarq at 10:14 AM on September 8, 2013

Jesus, Astro Zombie was a loudmouth.

Yeah, what a jerk. :)
posted by AElfwine Evenstar at 11:35 AM on September 8, 2013 [1 favorite]

/looks at list.
/blinks.
/pretends that never happened.
posted by Artw at 11:49 AM on September 8, 2013 [2 favorites]

Look, if the French know anything, it's liasons.
posted by maryr at 11:54 AM on September 8, 2013 [1 favorite]

I maintain that Artw should be refered to as
"The Colonel"
posted by clavdivs at 11:57 AM on September 8, 2013 [1 favorite]

Dangereuses!
posted by klangklangston at 11:58 AM on September 8, 2013 [1 favorite]

"Contribution" really isn't the right word for all of that.

No fuckin' shit, dude.
posted by y2karl at 12:21 PM on September 8, 2013

I had no idea this existed, and now it's dead.

...I'm sure there's meaning in that somewhere. I'm too sleepy to dig for it, though.
posted by tzikeh at 1:13 PM on September 8, 2013

Aw man. This reminds me I miss delmoi, ericb and the man of twists and turns.

I shall drink a toast in their honor. And one for the index itself. And one for each person on the index.
posted by homunculus at 1:26 PM on September 8, 2013 [1 favorite]

Whoa, I don't feel so good.
posted by homunculus at 1:26 PM on September 8, 2013 [7 favorites]

Very glad to see mkb working on Contribution Index II: MetaElectric Boogaloo. I was hoping somebody would pick up what was obviously a thrown gauntlet. (Although I hope mkb washes that gauntlet before using it)
posted by oneswellfoop at 1:34 PM on September 8, 2013 [1 favorite]

Whoa, I don't feel so good.

Actually, you feel pretty good.
posted by Brandon Blatcher at 1:47 PM on September 8, 2013

oneswellfoop: "I was hoping somebody would pick up what was obviously a thrown gauntlet.

I had hoped, but didn't want to ask. Felt presumptuous. Thanks, mkb!

(Although I hope mkb washes that gauntlet before using it)"

I'll have you know, sirrah, that my gauntlets are clean enough to eat with. I lick them clean after every meal.

Wolof: "I am old and grumpy and detest fake French."

What's funny to me about this is I actually fucked up the English. My native language. Big ol' error in the first sentence of this post. :)
posted by zarq at 1:56 PM on September 8, 2013

I always kinda wondered what the MetaFilter experience would be like if you read the site using a killfile to filter everybody who appeared on the top-whatever of that index.
posted by cribcage at 2:09 PM on September 8, 2013 [3 favorites]

I don't know, zarq, I often use the phrase "is no longer be" to declare my unwillingness to do something I've done before. It confuses them long enough for me to leave the room.

Meanwhile, Contribution Index Star The Whelk made such a Darth Grevious error on his latest FPP (mixing up Spike Jonze with Spike Jones) that I wonder if any future Index should provide the means to take points OFF.
posted by oneswellfoop at 2:15 PM on September 8, 2013 [1 favorite]

I always kinda wondered what the MetaFilter experience would be like if you read the site using a killfile to filter everybody who appeared on the top-whatever of that index.

Like the comments section of my local newspaper. Without the sanity.
posted by arcticseal at 2:16 PM on September 8, 2013 [1 favorite]

I miss delmoi

I missed this development....that sucks.
posted by AElfwine Evenstar at 2:53 PM on September 8, 2013

The ability to comment while at the gym or rowing a boat no doubt did wonders for my ranking.
posted by The Whelk at 4:14 PM on September 8, 2013

Thanks for running it for so long, jaden. Hopefully someone else can take it over, or make something similar.
posted by stavrosthewonderchicken at 4:40 PM on September 8, 2013 [1 favorite]

Man, I was just about to go on a commenting tear, too.
posted by elmer benson at 5:22 PM on September 8, 2013

I was about to go on a post-making tear to at least bump empath or someone off the bottom of the list. I know I can compete on quantity alone!
posted by Potomac Avenue at 6:51 PM on September 8, 2013

I had a dream last night that I bumped into The Whelk at an airport and we discussed the upcoming MetaFilter kickball league.

This has absolutely no bearing on the conversation whatsoever. I just wanted to share.

Also, delmoi: oof.
posted by slogger at 7:49 PM on September 8, 2013

Astro Zombie has been in a self-induced coma for two years now and is still on 2 of these lists.

MiguelCardoso has only posted four times in the last nine years and he’s still in the Top 15.

p.s. Why isn't flapjax at midnight (550+ posts, almost 13,000 comments) on the "Most Threads" and "Most Comments" lists? When I think of my favorite posters (thread masters?), he and madamjujujive are at the top.
posted by LeLiLo at 9:07 PM on September 8, 2013 [2 favorites]

I'm a little surprised LiB got pushed off the list. I think there actually may be something wrong with this list. I was well out of the top 10 a few months back and it isn't like I upped my comment game.
posted by Ad hominem at 12:38 AM on September 9, 2013

Hey, so this is a cool thing, but color me naive about a handoff. Is the difficulty in running this type of shindig solely from things like "paying to host it", "keeping data up to date", and "patching stuff regularly"?
posted by oceanjesse at 4:31 AM on September 9, 2013

I am not on either list and Dan decided to quit the project on my birthday. Mere coincidence? Probably.
posted by orange swan at 7:03 AM on September 9, 2013

I'm a little surprised LiB got pushed off the list. I think there actually may be something wrong with this list. I was well out of the top 10 a few months back and it isn't like I upped my comment game.

He changed his username, so maybe that helped?
posted by ersatz at 7:26 AM on September 9, 2013

I'm writing up a prototype based on the infodump now.

Yay, way to be.
posted by cortex (staff) at 8:51 AM on September 9, 2013

Today's consumers want value though. They also want the flexibility to consume comments how and when they want. They may want to savor each comment individually or they may want to binge, reading dozens or hundreds over a long weekend.

Ad hominem, you have that corp-lingo down pat. You're one of my damn clients, ain'tcha?
posted by madamjujujive at 9:27 AM on September 9, 2013 [1 favorite]

Glad to see amberglow's still up there!
posted by not_on_display at 11:52 AM on September 9, 2013 [2 favorites]

How some people make their comments
posted by double block and bleed at 12:08 PM on September 9, 2013

Ad hominem, you have that corp-lingo down pat. You're one of my damn clients, ain'tcha?

I delegated that one.
posted by Ad hominem at 1:49 PM on September 9, 2013 [3 favorites]

But I signed off on it, so you could say it is my comment.
posted by Ad hominem at 1:49 PM on September 9, 2013 [1 favorite]

Sorry, I just got a misdirected email from Sandy in the local Comments & Quips office, I'll forward it to you. Basically, she says that your delegated comment credit transfer was missing the DCCT-41b form, and that the lingo is still technically ownerless until you get that form to her, stamped or signed by Larry in the C&Q office at HQ. I know it's a pain in the ass, but we can't have ownerless lingo floating about in the infosphere -- it's a liability and we don't want the HBDFG's on our case.
posted by not_on_display at 3:16 PM on September 9, 2013 [2 favorites]

thaaaaaaanks. Cheers!
posted by not_on_display at 3:17 PM on September 9, 2013

Wow, I didn't realize the index had such a following. It warms my cold bitter heart. I also didn't know the infodump existed (of course it didn't exist when I created the index). In answer to questions about what it took to maintain it, the current implementation was fragile, and even a minor change on the user page (like an additional space or moving tags around) would break the regex. I would have to be alerted there was an error, then dive into the source code and come up with a new regex that worked until the next change. Such is the way of web scraping, and as the saying goes, "Some people, when confronted with a problem, think, 'I know, I'll use regular expressions.' Now they have two problems."

Now that I know about the infodump it should be trivial to convert the index to use it, making it far more reliable and much less hassle to maintain.

I know mkb was working on a prototype, but there's no rule to say we can't have two contribution indexes.

Thanks for the kind words everyone - 'tis much appreciated.
posted by jaden at 7:41 AM on September 10, 2013 [4 favorites]

jaden, that's AWESOME! Thank you!!

In case anyone else isn't aware of it, the Metafilter Infodumpster has site statistics queries.

Also,
Secret Metafilter highlights discussions that are still active on older Metafilter posts.

Click here to see a random selection of 100 websites run by Metafilter members.
and
The Oracle of Mefi is a curated tumblr "collection of intelligent, insightful, funny or otherwise interesting comments from all over Mefi" run by Foci for Analysis.
posted by zarq at 9:32 AM on September 10, 2013 [2 favorites]

Aw sweet. I have no place to put my prototype, but you can have my source code (in Go).
posted by mkb at 8:46 PM on September 10, 2013

Alright, the updated contribution index is now using the Infodump data and will grab the updated files every Sunday.

I added a new top list for most Meta posts, which number one dominates. I noticed a user dropped out of the CI index and, thinking there was a bug, I dug into the files and found their user id was obfuscated. I believe that's what happens when a user requests to be kept out of the infodump, so in lieu of displaying the stats for a user with an invalid user ID and unknown start date, I just left them out of the database.

However, there may be other issues. Please let me know if you see any oddities.

@mkb Cool, I've played around with Go and wanted an excuse to do something more with it. Feel free to email me the code.
posted by jaden at 10:00 PM on September 10, 2013 [3 favorites]

Yep, that's precisely the case with obfuscated IDs, thanks for handling that appropriately.
posted by cortex (staff) at 7:17 AM on September 11, 2013

Huh. I have dropped out of all top lists, except MeTa posts started. I think I'm good with that.

Also: thanks again, jaden!
posted by stavrosthewonderchicken at 5:56 PM on September 11, 2013 [1 favorite]

Thanks for resurrecting this! One minor nit: the post counts include deleted posts.

Please don't ask how I know this.
posted by double block and bleed at 4:13 PM on September 12, 2013

@double block and bleed That's an interesting point. I was about to remove deleted posts from the database, but after further consideration, I'm going to leave them. The contribution index counts how many times a user posts content, even if it's later deleted.
posted by jaden at 5:42 AM on September 17, 2013