Making an FPP for Women's March? Let's chat.

March 6, 2017 7:46 PM

As the call for a Women's March MeTa has gone dead, I figured here might be a good space for brainstorming topics, asking for help crafting FPPs, and talking about what makes a good FPP. Women are particularly welcome to come and post and look for support here.

My brain is currently mush, but here's what's on my list for the moment to track down links for:

snowsnake communications
that thing with why farts mostly smell good to you and not other people
DAILY PARASITE
dimples, why and how do they form
army/navy goat thefts

What about you?

posted by sciatrix to MetaFilter-Related at 7:46 PM (37 comments total)

I've got half-finished posts about Robbie Conal and Busby Berkeley, and I'm searching everywhere for the nearly finished Overnight/Linda Ellerbee post I worked on ages ago. There's surprisingly little on Overnight and it was a pain to put together :(
posted by Room 641-A at 8:19 PM on March 6, 2017

Thanks for posting. I will think of topics. Is there a tag we should use?
posted by delight at 8:41 PM on March 6, 2017

So I have been collecting links but haven't had time to sit down a make a post about Vaseline Glass, which is RADIOACTIVE GLASS made from 1880 to about 1940 which had URANIUM !?! added to it to make it glow a pretty color. Why would I know about this? Because a Geiger counter started going nuts in my dining room a few weeks ago.
posted by Suffocating Kitty at 8:51 PM on March 6, 2017 [20 favorites]

So once I get some time to sit down and make a sample post - would someone mind taking a look at it and offering suggestions ?
posted by Suffocating Kitty at 8:52 PM on March 6, 2017

Yes; if you want to add your FPP to the perusing, tagging it with WomensMarch and maybe MonthByWomen would probably be a good idea. (MonthByWomen will also get it lumped in with the JulyByWomen earlier initiative as well as the last WomensMarch push.)
posted by sciatrix at 8:54 PM on March 6, 2017

I've got a mefi folder in Instapaper that I've been adding to recently, a post with just one link is ok too!

Great post sciatrix, I will go back and add MonthByWomen too.
posted by ellieBOA at 10:25 PM on March 6, 2017

For the longest time I was staring at this and wondering if there was going to be another women's march (against Trump) that I hadn't heard about. Even after reading below the fold I was all "that does not seem right for a serious political event."

In my defense, one of the kids had gastro last night so I'm working on very little sleep.
posted by Joe in Australia at 2:42 AM on March 7, 2017 [2 favorites]

I had a post all set up, but it involves multiple links to the NY Times. I know that can be a problem because of the paywall, even though a lot of people have workarounds. Is there a policy on that?
posted by Mchelly at 4:03 AM on March 7, 2017

There's no site policy limiting NYT links. And if anyone has trouble, people usually share how to get around the monthly limit.
posted by taz (staff) at 4:35 AM on March 7, 2017 [3 favorites]

I've wanted to do one on the value of the dollar and what actually IS currency, but I've been failing at framing it in a not super finance-y way. maybe I'll work on that again.
posted by larthegreat at 5:23 AM on March 7, 2017

This inspired me to go look at my Evernote "post" tag and I found something worth posting that I'd started in 2012! A bit outdated, in that the YouTube channel isn't updating anymore, but still way cool imo.
posted by bobobox at 6:22 AM on March 7, 2017 [1 favorite]

I've been meaning to do a post on the Smithsonian's use of Kickstarter as a means of expanding their budget, (the one for Dorothy's ruby slippers was REALLY COOL), but um, life happened. Maybe I'll finish it this month.
posted by PearlRose at 7:22 AM on March 7, 2017 [2 favorites]

There was a really interesting, informative post about Carson McCullers a few days ago. I'd be happy to see more stuff like that.
posted by still_wears_a_hat at 8:22 AM on March 7, 2017 [1 favorite]

Yaah! These topics all sound so interesting!

Suffocating Kitty: So once I get some time to sit down and make a sample post - would someone mind taking a look at it and offering suggestions ?

I'd be more than happy to review posts, and others have offered to do so, too, in the prior Women's March post thread.

(Also, why did you have a Geiger counter active in your dining room?)
posted by filthy light thief at 8:26 AM on March 7, 2017 [2 favorites]

My husband had read somewhere that granite emits low level radiation and ordered a Geiger counter off of amazon to see how much. (Amusingly, you can also order small amounts of uranium to calibrate/test your Geiger counter too. The more you know....). He thought it was broken at first because it kept going off around the decorative glass bowls my mother in law had.

I appreciate the offer! I had someone MeMail me to offer to help as well - once I get enough nap times, I'll hopefully put together a post worth looking at.
posted by Suffocating Kitty at 9:28 AM on March 7, 2017 [3 favorites]

There was a really interesting, informative post about Carson McCullers a few days ago.

I'm always looking to make more literary-minded posts, so I'll keep this in mind and see if I can find another author that is as worthy of discussion. :)
posted by Fizz at 2:27 PM on March 7, 2017 [1 favorite]

I'm thinking about making a post about the recent Marines United scandal, focused on the response from veterans organizations but keep feeling like I saw a post I can't now find and maybe it was deleted? And maybe it's too depressing?
posted by corb at 3:07 PM on March 7, 2017 [2 favorites]

I'm working on a post on Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie and her new book, which will hopefully be ready tomorrow.
posted by roolya_boolya at 3:08 PM on March 7, 2017 [2 favorites]

I'm taking tomorrow afternoon off to make hamantaschen, and I'm contemplating doing a post on non-traditional purim foods. Because there are some strange hamataschen on Pinterest.
posted by ArbitraryAndCapricious at 5:07 PM on March 7, 2017 [7 favorites]

To be clear, I am super unsure about the topic and could use yeas or nays.
posted by corb at 7:31 PM on March 7, 2017

Corb, I'm not a woman but I'd be very interested if you could give it a more substantial background than what has been in the news reports.
posted by Joe in Australia at 10:10 PM on March 7, 2017 [4 favorites]

I made a post! It's something I've wanted to link to for a while, so the WomensMarch effort definitely motivated me. A little bummed that the only comment so far is of the "FTFY" variety, but maybe it will get more traffic as the day goes on.
posted by terooot at 2:00 PM on March 8, 2017 [3 favorites]

Psst--if you flag the dumb snarky jerk stuff, usually mods will take care of it for you. I'm off to check it out, but I do want to let folks who haven't done a lot of fpps know that rushing into a brand new fpp to declare how terrible or boring the topic is actually genuinely not great behavior that can be removed if it looks like it's stifling discussion. The mods are pretty nice about it, too.
posted by sciatrix at 2:52 PM on March 8, 2017 [1 favorite]

What sciatrix said—flag that shit and we will just about always kersplat it as soon as we see it. (Just did exactly that; the system works!)

Low comment counts in general are more of a part-of-the-whole-crapshoot deal; some posts rack 'em up, some not so much, and you never really know. But a whole lot of people who don't comment do read, both logged-in members and lurkers/readers, so don't fret if there's not a ton of commentary. A cool post is still a cool post, and I'm glad you went for it, terooot.
posted by cortex (staff) at 3:00 PM on March 8, 2017 [3 favorites]

Would a combined post about the upcoming 4/22 March for Science and 4/29 People's Climate March be welcome? I don't know if it's too far "in advance," but in my circles people are very excited about these and I don't think I've seen a post yet concerning them.
posted by mostly vowels at 6:21 PM on March 8, 2017 [1 favorite]

I'd say go for it, but I also would add that the last march for science post (now closed) involved a fair few scientists feeling crabby, and in my own circles a lot of female scientists in particular seem to be a bit alienated by some particularly tone deaf messaging. Looking back at it now, it looks like they've made a pretty strong effort to learn from that, but it was a bit of a pattern in my experiences with them early on and--oh, hell, I don't know; evo/ecologists in particular have been getting pressured to commit large amounts of time and effort to unpaid outreach work as a condition of fighting for increasingly lean NSF grants for as long as I've been in science, and I'm so worn out and tired about it that I'm cynical about how much the general public actually cares about our careers.

And weird stuff like encouraging people to march in PPE and fighting about the coolest hat to wear and people cheering about, about I Fucking Love Science which routinely plagiarizes from more thorough science outreach blogs and photographers and glosses over the complicated stuff in favor of memeable punchlines--it feels like folks are gleefully reveling in, in, putting science on like a class signaler and thinking of it like a bite-size TED-talk style source of a five-minute sense-of-wonder rather than actually honoring the work and the reality that a lot of science builds on itself and failure is just part of the game. And that just makes me more tired and more afraid that my career won't--that if I fail, if I gamble and lose, that's it for my career; there's no safety net for us, no stability or support. At a time when support has been lacking in my life for a number of reasons, that's not really a message that's made me feel particularly much like the March or marchers have my back all that well.

I'm just frustrated a bit by them. I think I would appreciate a post, in case they've gotten a lot better in the interim since I drifted off in exhaustion, and in order to reconnect with the enthusiasm that folks like you are feeling 'cause christ knows I could use it right now. So, uh. It's not a bad idea, I guess? I hope I haven't killed your excitement; I just wanted to sort of warn you about what you might or might not see in the results. I'd be happy to help you frame it, if you wanted to forestall crabby folks like me wading in and immediately filling the thread with upset complaints; I bet you could really minimize depending on what gets centered.

Um. Is that helpful?
posted by sciatrix at 8:23 PM on March 8, 2017

"Low comment counts in general are more of a part-of-the-whole-crapshoot deal; some posts rack 'em up, some not so much, and you never really know. But a whole lot of people who don't comment do read, both logged-in members and lurkers/readers, so don't fret if there's not a ton of commentary."

To emphasize this, I made a post that got just a dozen comments the other day (one of which was my own), and that's with the added bonus of mod visibility, but it got reblogged and retweeted elsewhere, including on Miss Cellania, so even things that seem to be sinking like a stone on MeFi may be appearing elsewhere on the web, because plenty of people are reading and enjoying it even if not commenting or favoriting!
posted by Eyebrows McGee (staff) at 10:48 PM on March 8, 2017

I always feel kind of bad if I read and enjoy a post without commenting to say so, especially if there aren't a lot of comments -- I worry that people will think their posts have just been ignored, when that was not the case. But then I also feel kind of weird just being like "great post, thanks!" all the time. Is my intuition right in thinking that comment threads are better left for more substantive discussions?
posted by shapes that haunt the dusk at 12:12 AM on March 9, 2017 [1 favorite]

Especially in low-comment threads or on things that are fascinating but not controversial, I'll try to say "Wow, great find!" or "Whoa, neat!" or something similar. If there are 20 substantive comments discussing arcane points, I'm probably not needed, but the posts where it's fascinating and educational but perhaps not much to debate or extend in the comments, I try to voice my appreciation.
posted by Eyebrows McGee (staff) at 12:58 AM on March 9, 2017 [2 favorites]

I think "great post, thanks"- type comments are a-okay. Don't second guess, just say the nice thing.
posted by LobsterMitten (staff) at 7:24 AM on March 9, 2017 [2 favorites]

Lobstermitten, a couple of times you've done just that for one of my posts. I really appreciated it and I've started passing it on when I like a post and there aren't a bunch of comments (and I have time and I remember ...)
posted by Joe in Australia at 2:47 PM on March 9, 2017 [2 favorites]

Um. Is that helpful?

YES! I had missed the post you mentioned. I am more familiar with the People's Climate March and was going to focus the post more on that, but felt like I should mention the Science March since it's only a week before.

Thank you for the context, it's helpful. May be good to just also do a mega climate change post that rolls in recent stuff at EPA, since I am frustrated by the lack of discussion about Pruitt in the big potus45 megathreads.
posted by mostly vowels at 4:14 PM on March 9, 2017 [1 favorite]

Sigh. The original FPP I was dusting off has been sidelined because I found a truly haunting longform Buzzfeed article about the Jonesboro middle school schooting in 1998 -- the 19th anniversary of it is next week. The article itself about 4 years old, having been published for the 15th anniversary. But I searched, and it hasn't been posted anywhere on the Blue. Should I go for it anyway?
posted by PearlRose at 1:05 PM on March 13, 2017

Nothing wrong with an older article per se; if it's a good link and it hasn't been done, do it!
posted by cortex (staff) at 1:33 PM on March 13, 2017

I started digging into Professor Robert Kelly's blog (he's the Korea expert whose BBC interview went viral when his kids came into his home office) and found myself really fascinated by his insights, and am thinking about making an FPP about it. He has said he hopes that the attention around his family dies down soon so they can get back to normalcy, but my post would be concentrating on his international relations writing. I'm commenting here to ask: would this be gross, okay, other? Thoughts?
posted by brainwane at 8:48 AM on March 15, 2017 [2 favorites]

Would be fine for me, Mefi isn't the source of all of the attention.
posted by ellieBOA at 9:05 AM on March 15, 2017 [1 favorite]

I hope someone makes a post about Nisha Ayub, this amazing trans activist in Malaysia who deserves more attention. She and I are loosely acquainted so I'm not the person to make this post, but someone else could step in and I could help some if that's OK.
posted by divabat at 4:51 PM on March 19, 2017