Mefites' Choice best post contest, Week 1 roundup

December 8, 2015 10:33 AM

Vote with Fantastic flag, all thru December,
plus various prizes offered by members.
Now we've had one week of posts,
which did Mefites like the mosts?

We've wrapped up the first week of the month-long Mefites' Choice best post contest!

As a reminder, the contest works like this:

1) You vote for the Mefites' Choice award
Vote with the Fantastic Flag. You can vote for as many posts on the blue as you want, all month long. Top vote-getter each week wins a prize from the site.

2) You offer community prizes
Members can also offer prizes for any kind of post they like, under any conditions they like. Offer your prize/conditions in here and/or put it on the wiki page for the contest. Also check there for available prizes already being offered by fabulous community members -- maybe you can make an awesome post and win a prize.

Now on to this week's outstandingest posts.

The 2015 Week 1 Mefites' Choice Award goes to.....

One great rock show can change the world, a monster tribute to School of Rock, the movie and musical, by the inimitable Rhaomi. Rhaomi wins $25 toward a purchase from any shop in the Mefi Mall.
Congratulations, Rhaomi!

Runners up and honorables mention (also top vote-getters, if anyone's looking for community prize material):

An exhaustive collection of links about gun policy in the US
by triggerfinger

A snarky poem celebrating the labor done by working women, written in 1739 by the poet Mary Collier
by yarntheory

Walatta Petros: Ethiopian nun, radical leader and lover of women (and fighter of hippos and lions), who lived in the 1600s
by Athanassiel

Commonplace books, for collecting quotes and thoughts, with a bunch of cool examples from famous people
by MonkeyToes

Spooky Victorian Christmas ghost stories and M.R. James, an influential author of same
by GenjiandProust

Firsthand accounts of movie stuntwomen from the silent era to the present day
by ChuraChura

How the "rock" beat pre-set of a specific early 1980s Casiotone keyboard shaped the development of reggae and dancehall music
by acb

Baking Dune-sandworm-shaped bread - stay for the bad Dune jokes
by gregglind

Profile of the last living silent movie actress, "Baby Peggy", now 97
by Bourbonesque

All about antique molding pans, jello molds, ice cream molds, molds in the shape of pooping children
by knuckle tattoos

Three cheers for all our great posters this week, and for everyone who's voting and offering prizes!

posted by LobsterMitten (staff) to MetaFilter-Related at 10:33 AM (56 comments total)

Yay!

My Jessamyn's Choice winner was the OldMolds post by knuckletattoos although I also have a close to my heart runner up which is this library themed post by Fizz.

Both folks can contact me and email me your mailing address and I'll send you some mini prizes.
posted by jessamyn (retired) at 10:43 AM on December 8, 2015 [4 favorites]

Oh I love the runners-up / honorable mentions list - good to include more mentions rather than less. Congrats to Rhaomi - great post.
posted by joseph conrad is fully awesome at 10:43 AM on December 8, 2015 [2 favorites]

That gun policy post got a topical, potentially problematic thread off to surprisingly good start. I'm glad it see it recognized here.
posted by klarck at 10:45 AM on December 8, 2015 [3 favorites]

:D
posted by knuckle tattoos at 10:47 AM on December 8, 2015

How did you get the [more inside] to have the highlight? Formatting quirk? Mod powers?
posted by ODiV at 11:35 AM on December 8, 2015

I'm not sure what you mean - what highlight?
posted by LobsterMitten (staff) at 11:52 AM on December 8, 2015

I have wasted my time with dildos.
posted by maxsparber at 11:55 AM on December 8, 2015 [4 favorites]

Only seems to show up in Modern Dark, LobsterMitten. That's interesting.
posted by ODiV at 11:56 AM on December 8, 2015

I think what ODiV is talking about is that in dark-mode, the div holding the [more inside] is colored the background-color #3f3f3f instead of the usual #ccc. I suspect it's just a quirk of layout, probably the extra <br>.
posted by zamboni at 11:57 AM on December 8, 2015

I have wasted my time with dildos.

For I have linked them all already, linked them all:
Have linked the Tumblrs, meme pools, image hosts,
I have wasted all my life with dildo posts;
I linked to Twitter dying with a dying lol
With links to photos from a different host.
    So how should I compose?
posted by shakespeherian at 12:03 PM on December 8, 2015 [16 favorites]

Oh weird, I see it. I just tried removing the extra br tag, and that changed the position of the "more inside" (moved it to the same line as the last line of the poem) but didn't remove the dark highlight. I think we need to get our top men on this.
posted by LobsterMitten (staff) at 12:08 PM on December 8, 2015 [1 favorite]

How did you get the [more inside] to have the highlight? Formatting quirk? Mod powers?

Thank you. I kept looking at it, thinking it looked different, but wasn't perceptive enough to figure out what looked different about it, and I thought I was just making up weirdness where no weirdness existed. Glad to know the weirdness is real.

Congrats, Rhaomi!
posted by jaguar at 12:10 PM on December 8, 2015

I played with the inspector, and if there's a <br> as the last thing before the more inside <span>, CSS colors it #3f3f3f.
If I'm understanding things correctly, body.subsite-metatalk.dark-mode #posts .copy.post br+span.smallcopy
is the CSS responsible.
posted by zamboni at 12:15 PM on December 8, 2015

I didn't mean to make this a big thing, sorry. Congratulations to all the posters of awesome things!
posted by ODiV at 12:16 PM on December 8, 2015 [1 favorite]

Yeah, pb is looking at it. Although he also suggests maybe we can just see this as an exciting new feature, like an easter egg that lets alert readers know when there's a br tag in a post.
posted by LobsterMitten (staff) at 12:22 PM on December 8, 2015 [8 favorites]

Our highlighted more inside nightmare should be over. As you were.
posted by pb (staff) at 12:35 PM on December 8, 2015 [16 favorites]

I was confused and had the impression from the previous thread that this was about voting in December on the best posts of 2015. (I didn't flag anything tho, for I love them all equally). So has there ever been any vote-thingy for determining the best post of the year?
posted by Pyrogenesis at 12:40 PM on December 8, 2015

I have wasted my time with dildos.

For such a simple sentence, this is surprisingly difficult to parse.
posted by GenjiandProust at 12:46 PM on December 8, 2015 [7 favorites]

We've never done a best post contest that covered the whole year -- it's a lot of ground to cover, a lot of posts. Even best post of the month is a tall order, which is why we started doing weekly tallies.
posted by LobsterMitten (staff) at 12:48 PM on December 8, 2015

My Jessamyn's Choice winner was the OldMolds post by knuckletattoos although I also have a close to my heart runner up which is this library themed post by Fizz. Both folks can contact me and email me your mailing address and I'll send you some mini prizes.

Awww, that is sweet. I love my MeFite friends and strangers on the web. You're what keeps me coming back and posting.

Congrats to the winners.
posted by Fizz at 1:02 PM on December 8, 2015 [2 favorites]

I have wasted my time with dildos.

For such a simple sentence, this is surprisingly difficult to parse.

There's this meme that goes around periodically about how a simple English sentence with seven words can mean seven different things based on which word is stressed. I feel like the sentence in that meme should be replaced with this one.
posted by Errant at 1:21 PM on December 8, 2015 [5 favorites]

" I think we need to get our top men on this."

*leans in*
Who?
posted by joseph conrad is fully awesome at 1:22 PM on December 8, 2015 [1 favorite]

TOP.
MEN.

(Raiders of the Lost Ark - might be too obscure.)
posted by joseph conrad is fully awesome at 2:01 PM on December 8, 2015 [2 favorites]

Which posts in MetaFilter from 2015-01-01 through 2015-12-07 have the most favorites?

Three of the top ten were by Rhaomi.
posted by zarq at 2:13 PM on December 8, 2015 [1 favorite]

These were all great posts! My personal favorite was Chura Chura's post on stuntwomen. :)
posted by zarq at 2:14 PM on December 8, 2015

Congrats Rhaomi! I loved Athanassiel's post and spent a happy afternoon at work following links about Ethiopian Christianity which is not exactly what I was being paid for.
posted by billiebee at 2:48 PM on December 8, 2015

Thanks, Zarq! And all fantastic flaggers! And posters!
posted by ChuraChura at 2:48 PM on December 8, 2015 [2 favorites]

As I were what?
posted by boo_radley at 3:02 PM on December 8, 2015

I would like to thank all of you, for, while it is true that I have often been mentioned, it's only rarely an honorable mention.
posted by GenjiandProust at 3:10 PM on December 8, 2015 [4 favorites]

Great stuff, everybody! Looking forward to week two.

As I were what?

As you were laying in the gutter
Thinking thoughts you shall not utter
posted by cortex (staff) at 4:15 PM on December 8, 2015 [3 favorites]

In the room
The dildos come and go
Talking of Marco Rubio
posted by mandolin conspiracy at 5:27 PM on December 8, 2015 [11 favorites]

On a more serious note, this has alerted me to a couple of great posts I hadn't checked out.

And triggerfinger's post about guns should stand as a great example of how to frame FPPs that deal with hot-button issues so they have a chance of resulting in some reasonable discussion.
posted by mandolin conspiracy at 5:31 PM on December 8, 2015 [4 favorites]

And triggerfinger's post about guns should stand as a great example of how to frame FPPs that deal with hot-button issues so they have a chance of resulting in some reasonable discussion.

I agree. I am sure there were deletions, and there were definitely shitty comments that stayed, but overall it was surprisingly decorous and respectful.
posted by Dip Flash at 6:46 PM on December 8, 2015 [1 favorite]

Awesome sauce! School of Rock is one of my all-time favorite feel-good movies, so this one's been on my mind for awhile, ever since I learned about the new Broadway show. Thanks for the support -- it's great to see it bringing back good memories for lots of other folks, too.

Thanks also for the long list of top posts for this week! Can't believe I missed some of these. It's a perfect capsule of what makes this such an engaging place to read every day. And there's still more than three weeks left in the year!

[PS: I've got a lot of free time this month which hopefully translates into getting around to posts on some long overdue topics, including another great rock 'n' roll one in the near-ish future!]
posted by Rhaomi at 9:19 PM on December 8, 2015 [2 favorites]

I have wasted my time with dildos.

For such a simple sentence, this is surprisingly difficult to parse.

There's this meme that goes around periodically about how a simple English sentence with seven words can mean seven different things based on which word is stressed. I feel like the sentence in that meme should be replaced with this one.

Dildo dildo Dildo dildo dildo dildo Dildo dildo.
posted by teponaztli at 1:04 AM on December 9, 2015 [1 favorite]

Dildo dildo Dildo dildo dildo dildo Dildo dildo.

You've fallen into the hands of Republicans.
posted by GenjiandProust at 4:58 AM on December 9, 2015 [5 favorites]

Dildo dildo Dildo dildo dildo dildo

Maybe next year we should award a gold "statuette" for the best post about guns.
posted by Kabanos at 5:14 AM on December 9, 2015 [1 favorite]

Next year? Why wait? (Well, I'll wait to search for golden dildos until I get home.)
posted by filthy light thief at 7:02 AM on December 9, 2015

Next year? Why wait? (Well, I'll wait to search for golden dildos until I get home.)

I thought bronzing was traditional.
posted by mandolin conspiracy at 7:11 AM on December 9, 2015 [1 favorite]

That sounds like it would hurt. Hot metal and all that. (I think I don't understand how that sort of thing works.)
posted by filthy light thief at 7:58 AM on December 9, 2015 [1 favorite]

Awesome! I really wasn't expecting that, but am glad that other people seem to have found Walatta Petros as fascinating as I did when wintersweet shared the Guardian's review on Crone Island. I spent a good part of an afternoon happily delving through lots of links on Walatta Petros, Ethiopian Christianity, Ethiopian manuscripts and so forth. (Plus I have ordered the book.) Thanks for the link round up too, there's a bunch of good things there that I missed the first time round!
posted by Athanassiel at 4:53 PM on December 9, 2015

I Have Mailed My Prizes!
posted by jessamyn (retired) at 5:53 PM on December 9, 2015 [1 favorite]

I'm pleased to say there have been three supervocalic posts so far! I'm happy that I'll have multiple posts to choose from. However, all three so far are from knuckle tatoos — hopefully by the end of the month I'll also have more than one MeFite to choose from.
posted by DevilsAdvocate at 7:20 PM on December 9, 2015

Related: I'm offering Undertale or a similarly priced Steam game for the best December post tagged "anime," but so far I have the only anime post this month. I'm not going to award myself a prize, so I'm hoping to see some other anime posts soon. Or manga posts. Or manhwa posts.
posted by knuckle tattoos at 10:34 PM on December 9, 2015 [1 favorite]

With no slight on its OP, who did quite a lot of work, it's really frustrating to see the post on gun policy being held up as an example of how to do things in the future, when, despite containing a lot of great links, it was kind of an explicitly advocacy-based post in ways that would not have been great on other topics. (In particular, the "Organizations To Support" list.) I'm glad that the topic didn't get too ugly, though I do remember seeing some doozies, but I don't think it's necessarily a good idea to credit it as the ideal post that brings about gun civility.
posted by corb at 10:44 AM on December 10, 2015 [1 favorite]

corb: With no slight on its OP, who did quite a lot of work, it's really frustrating to see the post on gun policy being held up as an example of how to do things in the future

It was a community poll about the post and its thread, not a referendum on post construction.

"Which post did mefites like the most" ≠ "how posts should be done in the future."
posted by zarq at 10:48 AM on December 10, 2015

Oh no! I was specifically referencing comments above. I would have quoted, but I'm on my phone, which really sucks at that. Sorry for giving the wrong impression! I don't mind people getting plaudits for hard work.
posted by corb at 10:52 AM on December 10, 2015 [1 favorite]

Ah... okay, sorry. My mistake. :)
posted by zarq at 10:56 AM on December 10, 2015 [1 favorite]

I think it was support for the framing, the mods (who likely nipped some ugly tangents in the bud) and the community for being generally polite on this hot-button issue.

knuckle tattoos, even before the incentive, I had an anime post baking away and hope to post it this month. Not that I'm claiming any prizes, but noting there should be more this month.
posted by filthy light thief at 10:57 AM on December 10, 2015 [1 favorite]

I don't think it's necessarily a good idea to credit it as the ideal post that brings about gun civility.

The thread went decently which is the basic bar people are aiming for especially with the topic which is one that often sucks here. Many people felt that the framing of a difficult topic was well done. You disagree because of your particular viewpoints and your particular view of how MeFi should operate. That's fine, you feel what you feel, but it doesn't make them wrong either.
posted by jessamyn (retired) at 10:59 AM on December 10, 2015 [1 favorite]

IMO, the post had a ton of great stuff (really, some of those links are really terrific and will be resources I'll be returning to in the future), and then also had bits that were more on the "call to action" side of things than (IMO) we usually like to see. But this is why we have guidelines not rules -- this is one of those cases where there's some elasticity based on context and it worked out in this case. In the context of the recent many incidents of high-profile gun violence and with the way the site was on the day it was posted, it seemed the best course to run with the post as-is rather than insisting on a rewrite. I was pleased the thread ended up being mostly decent, which was a huge relief compared to how those threads often go.
posted by LobsterMitten (staff) at 11:33 AM on December 10, 2015 [1 favorite]

And also, PSA reminder - vote vote vote, vote for this week's great posts, as many as you want, using that fantastic flag. These posts won't flag themselves.
posted by LobsterMitten (staff) at 11:45 AM on December 10, 2015

I agree with corb about the political call to action being inappropriate, especially in a thread referencing a tragedy that was still ongoing at the time. That portion was more appropriate for a Daily Kos diary.

Otherwise, yes it was an excellent post.
posted by Drinky Die at 9:04 AM on December 12, 2015 [1 favorite]

These posts won't flag themselves.

Until Google rolls out its self-flagging FPPs next year. That will save everyone's time.
posted by GenjiandProust at 1:49 PM on December 12, 2015 [1 favorite]

Reminder again, today's the last for voting on Week 2 posts.
posted by LobsterMitten (staff) at 11:51 AM on December 14, 2015

Reminder to get your votes in for the final week - vote with the fantastic flag, voting closes at midnight eastern US time, New Years Eve.
posted by LobsterMitten (staff) at 10:48 PM on December 29, 2015 [1 favorite]