Proposing a Brand New Day

December 3, 2024 1:56 PM

I’d like to suggest that the MeFi largely undergo a Brand New Day when the new executive director starts. (I expect we are several months away from that.) This BND would apply to both users (including former users) and mods.

This fresh start could be an opportunity for both users and moderators to reset dynamics, rebuild trust, and work toward a more cohesive and welcoming community. While I recognize there’s been significant controversy and lost trust, and we might be at a cliff, I believe any new executive director would be more effective with as much goodwill and openness as we can collectively offer. They won’t know the history of previous decisions, so it’s best to start with a welcoming spirit all around.

What would a successful BND look like to you? Are there specific areas (such as communication, moderation practices, community guidelines) that could benefit from a fresh approach?

Let’s think together about how we can make this transition a turning point for MetaFilter.

posted by NotLost to Etiquette/Policy at 1:56 PM (1032 comments total)

Anyone who has been banned or rage quit etc? Happy to look the other way to have them come back and try again. Plenty of folks have left or been kicked out of MeFi that I don't personally care for. But plenty more have left who I like. If MeFi gets another chance at life so should they.

A moderation log.

Mods who can read a comment for context before deleting it. Is it a slur or is someone linking to a charity website for people in their own ethnicity? Is it a slur or is someone referencing an all purpose washing powder? Is it nice words that sound smart and polite or is it transphobia? Words mean things and somewhere that purports to be the best of the web with paid moderators deserves to benefit from a better guiding hand.
posted by phunniemee at 2:33 PM on December 3 [37 favorites]

Get the new site up and running. Let volunteers assist with site operations. Get rid of paid moderation. Automate moderation as much as possible and be open to tweaks. Make it clear that any paid job will be for beer money only.

That would be a nice start.
posted by Diskeater at 2:41 PM on December 3 [13 favorites]

The most important thing for me to see would be an assumption of goodwill and good intent by the new entity, whoever is involved with the new entity. Those assumptions of good intent have long since been lost, particularly in these threads, and I do not want a Brand New Day to be the users of MeFi circling like sharks, thinking OH BOY I CAN'T WAIT TO SEE HOW THESE PEOPLE SCREW IT UP, and pouncing the instant something goes wrong.

(PLEASE NOTE: I am not saying those assumptions were lost for no reason, and I'm not interested in relitigating, for the eleventy-billionth time, how we got here. We're here, and it's painful. I'm just saying, forward not back.)

I want all us users of MeFi to give the new structure the time and grace it will need to get off to a good start, because on Day One, all things will not be perfect, all wrongs will not be right, and life will not be magically glorious, fresh and new. The road will still have bumps for a while.

So, when a bump is hit, please don't think "OH SHIT HERE WE GO AGAIN SAME AS IT EVER WAS I KNEW THIS WAS GONNA BE BAD WHY ARE WE EVEN". Please, when the switch flips, as it were, and the day is new: be your best selves, and think "how can I help this thing get off to its best new start?".
posted by pdb at 2:45 PM on December 3 [22 favorites]

That assumption of goodwill would require reasonable evidence that things actually will change. From my perspective, pdb, that would require new mods — probably volunteers, but certainly not the status quo we have now.
posted by knucklebones at 2:51 PM on December 3 [8 favorites]

delete everything and start over?
posted by sammyo at 2:56 PM on December 3 [2 favorites]

the users of MeFi circling like sharks

Hi there, recently spawned shark here, a brand new day for mefi would require new staff. [Not harassment-ist.]
posted by phunniemee at 3:09 PM on December 3 [24 favorites]

yeah I'm co-signing that any workable version of this would mean new moderation staff. I like the idea of moving away from paid moderation entirely and creating a larger focus on volunteer efforts in keeping with the "community-run" ideal that's so central to why the non-profit should exist.
posted by Kybard at 3:12 PM on December 3 [17 favorites]

The staff has to go. Every one of them. Anything less will doom new Metafilter.
posted by bowbeacon at 3:26 PM on December 3 [18 favorites]

For how much longer can I howl into this wind?
For how much longer can I cry like this?

A thousand wasted hours a day
Just to feel my heart for a second
A thousand hours just thrown away
Just to feel my heart for a second
For how much longer can I howl into this wind?

Personally, I don't see how there can be a new day without a whole new approach and a whole new staff. A brand new day for staff could have happened a million times over the past few years if they wanted to change.
posted by snofoam at 3:35 PM on December 3 [9 favorites]

On a practical level, isn't the ED salary replacing the current admin and moderation costs? Even if there was enough funding for both, any ED candidate that sees what's going on here and says "I can work with that" is not a good ED candidate.
posted by snofoam at 3:46 PM on December 3 [3 favorites]

On second thought, maybe I should be more open minded. I think under the new structure, it is only fair that we try a BND with staff as an experiment and see if it can work. Why don't we try it out for, say, part of a metatalk thread before we decide it's just not going to work?
posted by snofoam at 3:59 PM on December 3 [8 favorites]

The staff has to go. Every one of them. Anything less will doom new Metafilter.

Why, so you can attack and run out the new staff after 3 years? That’s been the pattern here since forever.
posted by Melismata at 4:07 PM on December 3 [66 favorites]

Well, I do not agree wholeheartedly with the firing of all staff. And certainly not in the weeks surrounding the holidays. Whether the majority thinks they have done a good job or a horrible job, I am confident in my belief that they are mainly decent, kind people who have good and bad days just like everyone else. I do hear the very vocal people who think they are bad at their job.

I can agree there have been many instances where a mod has made a bad decision or series of bad decisions, even harmful decisions, or said something they should not have, or revealed something they should not have. To me, it means they are imperfect humans who may need a little additional training in certain areas. To some, it means they do not have the temperament or skill for this job, and a few even think some of the mods are genuinely terrible people.

The thing is, we are a weird, diverse bunch who are not often going to be in total agreement. Also, I'm pretty sure some of you will not be satisfied no matter who becomes a mod. If this makes me one of the pollyannaish ones or whatever, fine fine. (I did use the word "delightful" twice in a recent post. It was about secret beans, though.)

If replacing the mods is the majority opinion, we should do that. I would not vote for it. Anyway. I hope they stick around here, either way.

If it turns out not to be the majority opinion, I hope the people who voted for it stay around here also.
posted by Glinn at 4:08 PM on December 3 [35 favorites]

I have never run off a staff. Fuck, I am a cortex fan. I follow him on instagram!
posted by bowbeacon at 4:09 PM on December 3 [5 favorites]

I don't think this is quite what the thread is about (I'm not sure what this thread is about...some sort of peace treaty between mods and users?), but for a real psychological reset, my two ideas would be: I think we should invite conservatives back and make this a more welcoming place for people with different political outlooks (not in the sense of "hey come have an argument with me" but in the sense of "you're a human being with a wide range of interests and shouldn't be driven out just because on some topics we disagree").

I also think the guidelines should be tossed out and replaced with a paragraph of no more than 3-5 short sentences.
posted by mittens at 4:14 PM on December 3 [15 favorites]

I also think the guidelines should be tossed out and replaced with a paragraph of no more than 3-5 short sentences.
posted by Sebmojo at 4:21 PM on December 3 [15 favorites]

I will not stay in a Metafilter that is run by Metatalk for purposes of vengeance.

Metatalk is not the community and is not a good way to get community feedback, much less community decisionmaking. And the idea that volunteer mods will prevent drama ignores pretty much every online community ever.

FWIW I think NotLost's idea is worth pursuing.
posted by zompist at 4:29 PM on December 3 [68 favorites]

I think we should invite conservatives back

Respectfully, there are like a million different things that could be done to improve Metafilter, and "recruit conservatives" is... not on that list, for me.
posted by dusty potato at 4:49 PM on December 3 [112 favorites]

No.

This is a bad idea.
posted by mule98J at 4:57 PM on December 3 [4 favorites]

This is a bad idea.

Just to clarify, which idea do you mean?
posted by NotLost at 5:05 PM on December 3 [1 favorite]

About the new Executive Director: They won’t know the history of previous decisions

They won’t? Are we choosing someone to run a website they’ve never looked through? Wild.

Anyway one of the things that has always impressed me about Metatalk is the ferocious Recitals of Past Grievances, in which links are generously provided. I can’t imagine what force could stop those.

For the record I’m also fine not inviting conservatives back.
posted by Vatnesine at 5:54 PM on December 3 [8 favorites]

Wow, this is a terrifying discussion. I've got plenty of 'past grievances' here (e.g., my sweetie and wife is one of those who buttoned out not long ago), but for the most part (only for the most part), this is a safe space. I sure don't want to lose that in the hopes of creating a whole new MeFi that 'works' in some yet-to-be-defined way.
And I definitely don't want that kind of uncertainty in one of my key communities at a terrifying time like this. Please don't yank it away.
posted by Flight Hardware, do not touch at 6:00 PM on December 3 [16 favorites]

A moderation log

The two most frustrating things about having a comment deleted with no further feedback (and no response to the preferred means of recourse/dialog via the form) are the sense that you must have stepped on a norm of some kind and will be given no opportunity to self-correct, and the sense that nobody in charge seems to think that matters.

I found my way into a site with a very strong ethos of trans allyship a few years ago. I have known a few trans folks over the years, and to the extent that a few of them had gotten to know me at work and asked to transfer into teams I managed suggested to me that my relatively naive and simplistic "I don't understand what the world must be like for you, but I'm doing my best to get there" energy had worked for them on some level. But when I found that site, wow was it bewildering. It opened up to me an entire culture, language, and world view. I could piece a lot of things together just hanging out and gathering context clues, but the single most valuable piece of education I got was the moderation log.

The mod staff there was no-nonsense, efficient, and terse, and that log was like a map. Just a list of collapsible headings with dates, times, and two or three word moderation reasons (sometimes just "Rule #3", or "well-meaning but TERFy"), with the actual comments hidden behind a widget I could click to read the offending material, and then make connections. Sometimes I saw past ideas or things I'd thought to myself in there, and I'd have a brief emotional and mental scramble wondering if I'd ever said something hurtful out loud, then I'd metabolize it and get on with things.

And look, for all I know those people are all idiots and I'm a bigger ideological mess after the experience than I was going in, but wow -- the idea that this site both heavily implies a social mission with its policies and high-touch moderation that has very plain ideological direction and yet feels no obligation to explain itself after it takes your $5 then deletes your contributions for, apparently, reasons.

I don't comment much these days because my confidence in whatever idea has most recently come to mind appears to be in an inverse relationship to my age (which is progressing in a more steady fashion than my virtues) and there's no shortage of people with the need to go ahead and say something similar anyhow.

All of which is a longish way of saying "brand new days" imply some forgiveness will go with the forgetting. I don't particularly want the mod team replaced, but conduct and standards have been inconsistent, the reasoning behind those things has sometimes been opaque, and in the low-stakes world of web forums those things require forgiveness. But forgiveness requires contrition, and contrition is most convincing when it is accompanied by a commitment to improve. A moderation log that both serves to educate and guide as well as offer an opportunity for feedback to moderator decision-making would present an attainable, meaningful commitment.
posted by mph at 6:36 PM on December 3 [57 favorites]

not in the sense of "hey come have an argument with me"

Has there ever been a politically diverse forum that doesn’t amount to that? I’m not even saying that’s a bad thing, I still get my fill of political arguments other places, but I’m not sure that’s what people want from here these days. And the forced hands off version is actually less appealing.
posted by atoxyl at 6:58 PM on December 3 [3 favorites]

If chosen as Executive Director I pledge to deal with everyone in a spirit of good faith and openness until they inevitably piss me off with their usual bullshit
posted by Alvy Ampersand at 7:20 PM on December 3 [22 favorites]

If chosen as Executive Director I pledge to make spooky noises, leave cabinets open in askMetafilter and also win staring contests against cats
posted by B_Ghost_User at 7:33 PM on December 3 [38 favorites]

you do that anyway
posted by glonous keming at 7:38 PM on December 3 [15 favorites]

I honestly think the community will give new leadership a chance. Yes, sometimes that relationship has degraded over time but that also is kind of normal if there isn't effort put into growing or improving the relationship. So while I think the question is good and also catnip for someone like me, who also is well aware that anything I write about a plan would fall apart at the first battle, so to speak, I think that if we can get a real leadership structure - volunteer or other - into place a lot will go better.

Anyways onto the catnip:

What would a successful BND look like to you? Are there specific areas (such as communication, moderation practices, community guidelines) that could benefit from a fresh approach?

I think there are lots and lots of good ways to approach this once someone's in charge for realsies. I would approach it from two main perspectives: comms/customer service and user experience design.

On the comms/cs side...bluntly, back when MetaFilter was all over Google and new people were joining and the web hadn't professionalized to the same degree, mods were more like referees and really tough shit for you if you didn't like it. At that era, I think MF mods were more thoughtful and more engaged by the standard of the time.

Now though, there's like, social media where good luck to you getting an answer from Meta about your account...but weirdly, having customer service also on social media along with Google and Yelp and Amazon reviews has made everyone else have to raise their standards. It's like how free tools like Canva have made bad posters look ten times worse than they did before templates were freely available.

So I would start with some basic training and customer service visioning for mods (which I have offered to the team, but I recognize that coming from me it's not necessarily going to feel ok and that's ok). I have thoughts about what that would look like but it would also be up to them. Basically though:

- set a vision
- talk about what 'the voice of moderation' of the site should be - there are actual matrices on this - you can say it's not authentic but it's really basic comms for anywhere that's not cult of personality driven. Not that mods can't break out of it but there should be a basic standard.
- develop templates for routine things and routine emails and code them in where possible and use them as much as possible
- commit to some proactive stuff I won't go into

At the same time if I were leadership I would set up an off-site, more private area like a form and invite people to share their thoughts and history. I would take those remarks and code them and then issue a report back to the community with insights that were gleaned, and then I would pick 2-3 items to work on first.

Then I would work on them and report back regularly.

You will notice I have not in this outline asked members to be more considerate. This is a very considerate group overall and wildly more thoughtful in aggregate than most customer bases, especially for a 'faceless' community. And by the same token, I pretty much assume from the results that either the mods do not have basic comms training or are stuck in a system that discourages the development of team comms tools. I might be wrong and I only see what I see which is usually the lousy stuff. It's just that I've seen a lot lately.

Some people will never be happy is a truism. But the flip side of that truism is that if you have a plan for improvement, which I do think the data easily tells us MF needs - if it were thriving there would be a question - you then apply 80%% of your effort to what's going to work for most people, not the complainers. You still listen to your critics, and treat them right, but you don't focus your efforts only through the criticism.

I think where the community should focus though is on what checks and balances will exist for staff as well as supports and clarity and kudos in the future and how will they know if they are succeeding or failing? That's tricky and takes thought and effort and is out of scope for this already very long comment I think. But it's really good board work for whoever is leading, and leadership work for that person.
posted by warriorqueen at 7:43 PM on December 3 [66 favorites]

That's really well thought out, warriorqueen.
posted by NotLost at 7:56 PM on December 3 [4 favorites]

RE: staff, the main thing is I would like to see MeFi prioritize hiring some folks who are good at running a business, executing a vision, public communications… that’s where current staff arrangements have been genuinely, seriously lacking. I’ve never personally felt that day-to-day moderation is particularly awful, though it suffers for a limited toolbox (I’m glad we’ve been talking about using outright deletion less) and I don’t know how much it lives up to the promise of “high-touch. It feels like we’ve moved away from moderators feeling integrated with the community, and in some of the places one would really hope to see more active engagement it just doesn’t seem to happen? But the elephant in the room is just that the site invests a lot in moderating a pretty modest volume of activity - still fine in isolation if people want to donate to support that - and meanwhile drops the ball on basic shit in every other area.
posted by atoxyl at 8:13 PM on December 3 [13 favorites]

A BND site would recognize that everything that impedes conversation in a site built on conversation is a problem, and that's really the only thing that requires moderation.

The last time I really recall the site being fully functional was in 2016 before the mods own politics and that of a percentage of the user base slowly drove large numbers from site. Of course, there should be Republicans on the site, as well as Independents, and Marxists, and numerous other flavors of political thought. That's what historically made the site interesting — a diversity of expertise and thought — not purity pile-ons demanding conformity.

Truly great moderation should help foster debate, rather than passively allow pile-ons, name-calling, thread-shitting and so on.

Truly great management should look to the homegrown example of the Steering Committee. They were polite, helpful, and treated everyone equally. They also collected user ideas, but also had ideas of their own, which they both acted and delivered on.
posted by Violet Blue at 9:29 PM on December 3 [18 favorites]

I haven't seen examples of online communities that work vastly better than MeFi does, but I'm not on many, and mostly read rather than write. This leads to some pretty basic speculation like:

What would make someone want to be the executive director of Metafilter? Do they have to know and like the community already? Is it just about the money, or a career opportunity, with no specific attachment to this site? Would we ever be able to pay enough money to get someone sufficiently adept that there wouldn't be any significant grumbles?

Is it more likely that we find someone part time because this site can't afford a full-time person? I have no idea what such people expect as fair compensation for their work, but it wouldn't have to be outrageous to still be unaffordable.

What happens if it takes years to find a candidate, or perhaps, to churn through enough people until we eventually find one who can and wants to make it work for a longer stretch?

Or what happens if we get someone that prioritizes fundraising and membership growth and sacrifices engaging with the community, or farms it out to volunteer moderators and only steps in occasionally to arbitrate fights involving moderators?

I guess whenever I beanplate about this too much, I come to the conclusion that I'll have a better time if I start with pretty low expectations and get good at accepting imperfection, rather than assuming there will be significant, sustained positive change. A bit like this guy pointing out that firing low performers might not help if you can't expect to replace them with anyone better (and perhaps this means they weren't so bad, actually?).

All this isn't supposed to be depressing - thinking like this about helping me stay focussed on satisficing vs optimising, and to try to see the things I'm currently taking for granted so I am in less of a hurry to start over, which is otherwise my default.

Anyway - if it's not too much of a derail, I'd love to hear from folks about possible role models for an ideal Executive Director, or an example of a community that gets this right/more right! What would they do with their BND?
posted by pulposus at 9:57 PM on December 3 [6 favorites]

I think a brand new day should happen, and should involve anyone who has buttoned being allowed to reinstate their account for free, insofar as that's technically possible.

About the other stuff, we're just spinning in the same pointless circles since the site has neither any active leadership nor any mechanisms for consensus decision making. People can propose ideas, other people can comment positively or negatively on them, but nothing ever happens because there is no person or process to implement them.
posted by TheophileEscargot at 12:48 AM on December 4 [17 favorites]

I don’t care what your beef is, gleefully fantasizing about firing the people who kept this place afloat is gross and toxic. JEEZE.
posted by anotherpanacea at 1:13 AM on December 4 [54 favorites]

No one is suggesting that we fire the former members of Steering Committee or the donors.
posted by snofoam at 3:33 AM on December 4 [22 favorites]

I love the idea of a moderation log. Not only would it increase transparency and help new members understand the culture, but it would also make the work the mods do visible. If someone posted 500 racial slurs at 4 pm, but I didn't come on metafilter until 6, I probably wouldn't see those posts or know it happened. But if I looked at the moderation log I'd see the mods cared about the situation and did something about it immediately, and it'd make me feel more positively toward them each time.

To me it seems like a really fast way to generate goodwill with no downsides.
posted by birthday cake at 6:26 AM on December 4 [15 favorites]

Is it no longer possible to just get a fucking blog? Jesus Christ.

I have spoken with your governor and he has provided special dispensation for you to be able to leave this site if you hate it.

You are free now. Go out and touch grass.
posted by DirtyOldTown at 7:31 AM on December 4 [24 favorites]

I love the idea of a moderation log.

it could be its own subsite and we could comment on the deletions
posted by mittens at 7:38 AM on December 4 [6 favorites]

I think the ED will have a lot to deal with, and that it's a good idea for us (and for them) to have a limited set of expectations for what can be accomplished by one person or catalyzed by their arrival. Some of the BND proposals above are suggestions that we agree collectively to change site culture on Day X, and I don't think that's a reasonable thing to tie to this change. That said:

A moderation log of some sort.

Monthly ED update, pushed to all subsites in order to encourage engagement from MeFites who don't visit MeTa.
posted by cupcakeninja at 7:52 AM on December 4 [6 favorites]

I'd be down for a moderation log; (on Reddit, which, yes, is Reddit) this purpose used to be served by Removeddit, so you could see what was gone and the mod note. There are definitely things I wouldn't have said here if I'd had the ability to see 'what kind of thing is not tolerated and why', and at minimum, changed my mind about whether that was something to say out loud (and avoided inflicting it on other users), and at maximum, changed my mind about whether that was something I believed at all (and become a slightly better person).
posted by ngaiotonga at 7:52 AM on December 4 [1 favorite]

Obligatory
posted by whir at 7:57 AM on December 4 [10 favorites]

So, here's the thing, having been a public facing employee at a badly managed business before, I have an enormous amount of sympathy for the current mod staff. Which is why I tend to really respect warriorqueen's approach to solving the current situation. If the problem is organizational, then punishing folks for working as best they could in a broke system isn't going to fix the system, just hurt the folks. And when you bring new folks in to replace them, guess what, the system's still busted. Which isn't to say that people shouldn't be held accountable for their behavior, there may be people that just have to go in order to fix the system. Usually these are the decision makers that let the system get broken in the first place. But for the non-managers, or newer managers that came into a broken system, the way to find that out who needs to stay and who needs to go is to set clear goals and expectations and then judge folks based on how they work in the new (improving) system.

Like we're not super unique here, plenty of organizations have had turn over in leadership. And all of the sudden you find out that the member who was "just the worst" was actually fine and just constrained by rules they had no control over. (Looking at you assistant manager at giant liquor store I worked at who was always stuck trying to explain nonsensical policies to customers).
posted by Gygesringtone at 8:50 AM on December 4 [40 favorites]

Which is all to say that a successful BND for the site is one that looks exactly like what warriorqueen described, with reasonable, measurable goals and a clear and explicate vision guiding decision making.
posted by Gygesringtone at 8:59 AM on December 4 [5 favorites]

I'm not the terribly forgiving type and I've been collateral damage in some to-my-mind-dumbass mod decisions, but "the current situation sucks and we should punish everyone involved, any changes are gonna suck, the new people should be viewed with intense suspicion" people--what, exactly, are you hoping for in your Mefi experience, except something to feel disgruntled about?
posted by praemunire at 9:11 AM on December 4 [39 favorites]

About the other stuff, we're just spinning in the same pointless circles since the site has neither any active leadership nor any mechanisms for consensus decision making. People can propose ideas, other people can comment positively or negatively on them, but nothing ever happens because there is no person or process to implement them.
posted by TheophileEscargot at 12:48 AM on December 4

This. Until a process or mechanism is found by which all Users, not only those reading and/or posting to metatalk, can - if they wish so - participate in decision making a shift to a Community led MetaFilter seems impossible, in my opinion.
If i remember correctly it is currently not even legally possible to contact all people who paid 5 Dollars via E-Mail. Not sure about mefi Mail, but not all ppl read that/use it.
My point is, what is the plan for reaching users beyond the Grey? Surely Community led cannot mean metatalk led?
posted by 15L06 at 9:12 AM on December 4 [3 favorites]

METAFILTER: something to feel disgruntled about
posted by philip-random at 9:16 AM on December 4 [7 favorites]

I’m going to say that a lot of my sympathy for the current mod team having to read the above was just undone by the UHC assassination thread being deleted. There was a really good vein of people expressing righteous anger at UHC and embarrassed not-disapproval over billionaire deaths vs appeals to compassion and empathy and I was in the middle of editing a longer reply - which I repeatedly changed as I wrote it because various people kept making great points that they actually changed my perspective (!!) - only to hit preview and see the thread deleted because “there’s not enough information yet.”

Like, JFC get over yourselves. I’m not here for CNN, I’m here for the community and the discourse and letting people I respect slowly pull me in the direction of being a better person the way they have for the past twenty-two years.

A mod team that can’t see the value in community exchange, or in some site members pulling others towards greater empathy, is one that has completely lost the plot and needs to find a less harmful use for their time.

A mod team that is institutionally adverse to regularly admitting fault and actually reversing bad deletions on a daily or near-daily basis is collectively consumed with insecurity to the point where it cannot responsibly hold a position of power over others.

I’m not going to start a new MeTa over it because I have better things to do than get dogpiled by apologists today, but I want to note that: this is why I now think that the people calling for a change of staff are in the right. I’m sure that’s hurtful for the current mod team to read, and I’m sorry about that, but I stand by it being necessary.
posted by Ryvar at 9:18 AM on December 4 [49 favorites]

You are free now. Go out and touch grass.

what, exactly, are you hoping for in your Mefi experience, except something to feel disgruntled about?

I once said that I think there is a great and too-often unspoken distance between this site's claimed appreciation for good-faith conversation and how it actually functions, and these sorts of responses are pretty good examples of that. I dunno. it's a bummer even if it's predictable.

anyway to be clear no one here has said "burn the site down it's not worth it". this thread exists in a context. people have expressed that their continuing struggle to trust or believe in the moderation staff has crossed lines that they personally can't see uncrossed, and a BND where the existing staff remain as-is but get to do the "starting... now" bit from Barry only tracks for those whose trust wasn't damaged to begin with.
posted by Kybard at 9:26 AM on December 4 [12 favorites]

Yeah, I had jokes in that FPP, and one was actually sort of funny. The Korea FPP was breaking news, and the Trans Rights SCOTUS case is literally happening right now. "Deleted as breaking news" is a batch of nonsense.
posted by Alvy Ampersand at 9:29 AM on December 4 [23 favorites]

^ what they said.

mods: please reinstate the UHC assassination thread
posted by slater at 9:35 AM on December 4 [13 favorites]

I am fully aware of the ongoing beefs people have with the mods. They are heaped in giant piles onto every single MeTa, endlessly fucking repetitive. The complaints that a subset of users have about this site have successfully swallowed virtually all of its regular internal discussions.

This whole subsite is just a monument to their exasperation and contempt.
posted by DirtyOldTown at 9:36 AM on December 4 [29 favorites]

I’m going to say that a lot of my sympathy for the current mod team having to read the above was just undone by the UHC assassination thread being deleted.

counterpoint: I think it was an understandable call -- certainly not unprecedented. I do think there is thoughtful and informed discussion to be had about the situation. But until we know a lot more about what even happened, I can see good arguments against giving space and time to it.

And yes, my Metafilter has never really been a breaking news site. I know we do it sometimes. I also know we don't do it most of the time. It's almost as if one of the great features (as opposed to bugs) of this place is that it remains undefined in terms of what it does/doesn't do. We have rules and guidelines but every so often it all just gets down to ...

Well, it depends.
posted by philip-random at 9:37 AM on December 4 [3 favorites]

It is unbelievable that the UHC thread was deleted. I've been keeping out of MeTa because I still like the posts, cannot understand or stand the way it's being run. But that UHC thread was great.

And the pro-eugenics thread was not deleted.
posted by ambrosen at 9:39 AM on December 4 [7 favorites]

I do not believe the deletion reason on the UHC thread. I believe the real rationale is "we feel uncomfortable with making murder jokes." Because if you take the deletion reason at face value then you would have needed to delete every political post, the I/P discussions, the current SCOTUS thread as someone already mentioned, go back and retroactively delete the 09/11 thread...I mean, we are a discussion board and the only reason anyone comes here is to talk about stuff, it makes no sense for someone to say "no, you can't talk about this right now, maybe later when someone writes a history book about it."

But that gets to the question of distrust, because if you can't say the real reason for deleting a thread that people care about...then you're lying to users. It should go without saying how bad that is.
posted by mittens at 9:55 AM on December 4 [26 favorites]

True to form, we're complaining about the UHC deletion--looking for yet another excuse to attack and run out the mods. We've had a million deletions consisting of "this thread is too thin, let's wait a bit for a more substantial one."

Get over yourselves, people.
posted by Melismata at 10:01 AM on December 4 [8 favorites]

Continuing a slight derail from BND but...

I wonder if it's just overall worth revisiting the "we are not a breaking news site" maxim. I see the value of that at a time when the Internet fundamentally looked and worked differently and MF had a lot more "best of the web"-type FPPs on the average day. But if we want to keep the site's heart rate up, breaking news style FPPs do contribute to that. I'm on the fence but just curious.
posted by kensington314 at 10:02 AM on December 4 [14 favorites]

it's a bummer even if it's predictable.

I think this sort of thing:

The staff has to go. Every one of them. Anything less will doom new Metafilter.

any ED candidate that sees what's going on here and says "I can work with that" is not a good ED candidate.

is even more of a bummer. I'm not around a ton these days, the moderation annoys me a lot sometimes, but, man. When I feel that strongly about it, I step away.
posted by praemunire at 10:03 AM on December 4 [25 favorites]

BND = Breaking News Discussions
posted by paper chromatographologist at 10:04 AM on December 4 [4 favorites]

I wonder if it's just overall worth revisiting the "we are not a breaking news site" maxim.

Yes, absolutely, I agree. Like, it's a weird thing for us to talk about how to increase user engagement but then say something like, "you know that micro-coup in South Korea yesterday, yeah, why don't you go to literally any other site to talk about it, since it's a current event and we don't do that here."
posted by mittens at 10:11 AM on December 4 [22 favorites]

True to form, we're complaining about the UHC deletion--looking for yet another excuse to attack and run out the mods. We've had a million deletions consisting of "this thread is too thin, let's wait a bit for a more substantial one."

No, at the point of deletion we'd only had 206570 threads in total. And that thread was up for about 1 hour 45 minutes and got 59 replies, so maybe one of the most active threads this week.
posted by ambrosen at 10:12 AM on December 4 [13 favorites]

They are heaped in giant piles onto every single MeTa, endlessly fucking repetitive…This whole subsite is just a monument to their exasperation and contempt.

You are free now. Go out and touch grass.
posted by snofoam at 10:17 AM on December 4 [19 favorites]

Will do. If y'all can keep your endless quest to strangle this site from taking FanFare down with it, that would be cool.
posted by DirtyOldTown at 10:20 AM on December 4 [6 favorites]

Metafilter doesn’t need extra reasons to have fewer posts or discussions at this point. There’s no need to saddle someone with the unnecessary responsibility of deciding whether a post should be deleted because it is breaking news. Even someone with great judgement would have trouble making that kind of choice without offending half the users.
posted by snofoam at 10:20 AM on December 4 [11 favorites]

You are free now. Go out and touch grass.
posted by DirtyOldTown

Just wanted to share that this made me big lol because of all the many people here who can and do probably touch grass regularly, I don't think it's DOT.

(maybe an opportunity??)
posted by phunniemee at 10:20 AM on December 4 [5 favorites]

looking for yet another excuse to attack and run out the mods

come on. this is metatalk, where this sort of conversation is forced to be. you're clearly way out on the extreme end of "thou shalt not criticize the mods", beyond even where the mods seem to be situating themselves.

i also happen to think this characterization shows a fundamental misunderstanding of what people want when they criticize the mods, which is broadly "good moderating"
posted by sagc at 10:21 AM on December 4 [12 favorites]

(I promise I started composing that comment before this recent exchange!)
posted by phunniemee at 10:21 AM on December 4 [1 favorite]

What regular internal discussions are being strangled? The ones about trying out comment hiding instead of deleting?
posted by bowbeacon at 10:23 AM on December 4 [6 favorites]

Consider me chased out.
posted by DirtyOldTown at 10:26 AM on December 4

Come into thread, tell people they suck and should touch grass, get reminded that you're a prolific poster yourself, flounce.

Nice!
posted by sagc at 10:27 AM on December 4 [17 favorites]

Maybe the CEO thread should have been deleted. Maybe it shouldn't have been deleted. I tend to think it shouldn't have been, but...opinions will differ.

Best-in-class moderation would have the moderator come into the thread where people are fighting about that deletion and discuss it with the members who took issue with it. Those members would feel heard, and might not get their way, but would feel interacted with and respected.
posted by bowbeacon at 10:32 AM on December 4 [9 favorites]

MetaTalk is for disgruntled Greasers and FanFare is for Socs.
posted by snofoam at 10:33 AM on December 4 [1 favorite]

This is the route to improved site culture?
posted by praemunire at 10:39 AM on December 4 [6 favorites]

Nah, phunniemee's joke was pretty funny. (And anyway, I don't think an AskMe power user is really that serious busting my shops about being prolific on a subsite.)

I just don't feel like fighting and the refusal in MeTas to even pretend there's good faith on both sides isn't how my brain works. It makes me tired and miserable. Honestly, I probably agree with more of the ongoing gripes than you would guess. I just sort of depend on my MeFi as my third space and I wish every single MeTa didn't have to take the express route to [whatever it is you want to call this awful vibe]. I'm not leaving in a huff, I'm leaving because I realize I'm not helping.

I hope everyone has a good day. I'm really not and that's really why I should dip on out.

And yeah, I'll probably watch another movie.
posted by DirtyOldTown at 10:43 AM on December 4 [37 favorites]

we're complaining about the UHC deletion--looking for yet another excuse to attack and run out the mods

That's just as unfair a characterization as what you get from the folks who go overboard with the mod critiques, don't lump me in with them.

We've had a million deletions consisting of "this thread is too thin, let's wait a bit for a more substantial one."

I've complained about Newsfilter a lot during my time here, but a lot of my griping was when the Blue featured a huge amount of quality FPPs that'd get pushed off the front page by single-link news posts. I wouldn't say the standards of FPPs have lowered, but the volume certainly has, and if the discussion isn't turning ugly there's little harm in leaving SLNF posts up. As said above, if the future of the site and community depends upon building engagement, it's not constructive to apply stringent criteria to posts and it's destructive to do it inconsistently, as was the case here.
posted by Alvy Ampersand at 10:44 AM on December 4 [8 favorites]

I'm at work on my lunch so I can't expand too hard, but:

1) I agree full-heartedly that the new site should have a moderation log, either as an ad-hoc version per thread or something similar to what Lobste.rs has rolled out. (Can you tell I've been monitoring this topic and beating this drum for a while?)

2) Deleting the thread about the murder of the United Healthcare guy because the schadenfreude was getting too strong is one thing -- and a defensible position I might even agree with. Framing it as "this is a breaking news story" (and for some reason that means there can't be a post about it?) is a shitty, cowardly lie, and loup should apologize for that.

3) We are four-and-a-half years since "The flag button's design is bad enough to be a social justice issue". We've very nearly reached the one-year anniversary of when I asked, and loup responded:

Can someone please clarify if turning the comments flag from [!] into [⚑] is considered to be the end resolution for the problems outlined in this MeTa from 2020?

No, frimble is not yet done changing the code across all subsites, the main goal of this release is to finally make visible changes, this will allow us to see if there are any bugs and to iterate from there.

Can frimble or kirkarcha (sp?) elaborate on what else has been done re: flagging?

4) On a new note, we sadly have to figure out what this site is going to do during the Trump administration. Is the front page going to have a new post about a fractal iteration of his shittiness every day for the next four years? Are we reviving the Fucking Fuck megathread? Does politics get siloed into a subsite? Some other option?
posted by The Pluto Gangsta at 10:53 AM on December 4 [22 favorites]

I mean, I can't say that I was surprised by the same 4-5 people pouncing in unison at a misstep by the mods, but this particular time has some serious "I can't yell at the CEO so I'm going to make my coworker miserable instead" vibes.

I agree, the current moderation regime isn't working for anyone, but neither is the current pattern of reaction to it. Like, it just seems that at some point this river of STRONG FEELINGS eroded itself into a set course and now folks are stuck in a channel of how they're able to express their strong feelings.
posted by Gygesringtone at 10:58 AM on December 4 [21 favorites]

we sadly have to figure out what this site is going to do during the Trump administration

Under my directorship there'll be one giant Your Country's Fucked And Probably Everyone Else's Countries, Too FPP every two weeks capped at 1000 comments, and each MeFite will be limited to three comments per. However, members will be able to purchase YCFAPEECT comment tokens that will allow them to make additional comments in the YCFAPEECT FPPs at $1 USD a throw, with a portion of each dollar donated to mental health support orgs and another portion going to buying me little dudes for Warhammer.
posted by Alvy Ampersand at 11:03 AM on December 4 [15 favorites]

4-5 people pouncing in unison

To be fair, it can be hard to distinguish this from several people commenting about something after it happened.

Should we implement some kind of anti-pouncing policy? Delete comments related to breaking moderation events until all the facts are in?
posted by snofoam at 11:04 AM on December 4 [6 favorites]

the pro-eugenics thread

the what?
posted by atoxyl at 11:05 AM on December 4 [2 favorites]

the pro-eugenics thread

I would call my description of the replies to this post — Want to raise a kid in Canada? That'll be $293K...and climbing — broadly accurate.
posted by ambrosen at 11:14 AM on December 4 [8 favorites]

4-5 people pouncing in unison

To be fair, it can be hard to distinguish this from several people commenting about something after it happened.

Should we implement some kind of anti-pouncing policy? Delete comments related to breaking moderation events until all the facts are in?

If you want a concrete example of what I was talking about with the "making a coworker miserable" bit, here you go. You cut off the bit where I specified that I was talking about specific people who have a recognizable pattern of behavior to make it look like it was a general complaint about a perfectly normal behavior. Then you went on to read my statement as saying that I was suggesting broad policies based on my supposed dislike of that perfectly normal behavior.

So, yeah, I get that you're upset, but I'm just as powerless as you.
posted by Gygesringtone at 11:16 AM on December 4 [3 favorites]

I would call my description of the replies to this post

Ohhh I don’t know if I would have characterized it that way precisely (and I thought you were talking about post content not reply content I guess) but yeah I don’t much like it.
posted by atoxyl at 11:19 AM on December 4 [1 favorite]

You cut off the bit where I specified that I was talking about specific people who have a recognizable pattern of behavior to make it look like it was a general complaint about a perfectly normal behavior.

Ok, but I actually think it was a totally different group of people who started complaining about that deletion, and most of the people who were already in his thread complaining about the mods didn’t comment on the deletion. I could be wrong and I didn’t check the comment history of each user, but that’s what it looks like to me.
posted by snofoam at 11:25 AM on December 4 [4 favorites]

see,
brand new day
🤔
posted by clavdivs at 11:49 AM on December 4 [3 favorites]

Mod note: A note that the previous post on this topic was deleted because it was still a breaking news story, with not much information accessible to have a productive thread. This new thread is staying up because there has been more information released since the first post several hours ago.

Sure.
posted by paper chromatographologist at 12:02 PM on December 4 [10 favorites]

comment tokens that will allow them to make additional comments in the YCFAPEECT FPPs at $1 USD a throw

Hilariously, this is actually priced about right for the current costs of moderation.
posted by automatronic at 12:11 PM on December 4 [6 favorites]

Huh? Why would mods not just reinstate the deleted thread, which already had dozens of comments from community members in it? Is there something sacrosanct about having slightly "more information" within the FPP itself as opposed to posted in the thread?
posted by dusty potato at 12:15 PM on December 4 [9 favorites]

It is site policy to never, ever admit that cortex Eyebrows McGee a moderator can make an incorrect action.
posted by The Pluto Gangsta at 12:19 PM on December 4 [17 favorites]

It used to happen a lot that breaking news threads were deleted until a point where the news was more clearly broken. I can vaguely recall times when 3 or 4 different breaking news threads were deleted because the news was still pretty thin before one was finally allowed. That might not be the sort of ideal scenario we would like to see continue in the new world order, but it isn't like this is some new behaviour for mods that has never happened before.
posted by jacquilynne at 12:31 PM on December 4 [20 favorites]

The story has not developed in any meaningful way since the original post was deleted.
posted by paper chromatographologist at 12:32 PM on December 4 [9 favorites]

there are numerous examples of news filter threads being deleted one example I'll give is on 9/11 there were two threads one was deleted. exception may be an obituary page.
interesting because reading story on line then coming here it just seemed a varied cut&, comments can be reiterated.

comment tokens that will allow them to make additional comments in the YCFAPEECT FPPs at $1 USD a throw

The consortium will go to 67.5¢ per token by selling non-token comments. for example, one could sell 2 of 3 comments in the 1000 comment limit post.

that's a a buck three eighty nine.
posted by clavdivs at 12:37 PM on December 4 [2 favorites]

I think a lot of the subtext of years of community frustration around various aspects of deletion is that mods just don't seem to really respect user contributions much, or at least don't give the issue much thought. Like yes, nobody authored their magnum opus in the original thread, but it's death by a thousand papercuts, and I think it would be annoying as hell to put down your thoughts on something and then see the entire conversation replaced by a basically identical one for no apparent reason.
posted by dusty potato at 12:39 PM on December 4 [16 favorites]

I think 'respect user contributions' would be a good guiding principle for the kind of work that warriorqueen mentioned above.
posted by jacquilynne at 1:25 PM on December 4 [11 favorites]

I would say that 90% of the time, mods make a deletion because "they don't want to get yelled at by someone who disagrees with it."
posted by Melismata at 1:28 PM on December 4 [2 favorites]

I would say that 90% of the time, mods make a deletion because "they don't want to get yelled at by someone who disagrees with it."

I think I agree with that assessment, at least if "being yelled at" and "criticism" are conflated. But, it's both an unprofessional and an un-community-minded impulse to prioritize.
posted by dusty potato at 1:31 PM on December 4 [7 favorites]

it's a lil early to call for a BND. there is no timeline for the Non-profit to be in control. Vote to close this as 'too soon, try again in 15 months'
posted by 922257033c4a0f3cecdbd819a46d626999d1af4a at 1:51 PM on December 4 [9 favorites]

I think part of a BND absolutely has to be a radical revision of MeTa. This subsite has become a place for self-devouring anger where people seem to come just to get bad enough to button. I’m not sure what should replace it, since the site needs some sort of “site discussion subsite,” but MeTa has clearly failed at that purpose. I used to spend a lot of time on the Grey, but I don’t any more; it’s very rarely worth the time or stress.
posted by GenjiandProust at 1:51 PM on December 4 [23 favorites]

BND absolutely has to be a radical revision of MeTa. This subsite has become a place for self-devouring anger where people seem to come just to get bad enough to button. I’m not sure what should replace it, since the site needs some sort of “site discussion subsite,” but MeTa has clearly failed at that purpose.

I think there’s truth to that it doesn’t really work, but I also think MetaTalk hasn’t had leadership in its use for a long time, if ever. I think it needs thought and really it will come down to values and investment. I thought MetaTalk worked surprisingly well for the Steering Committee and even for the Transition Team.
posted by warriorqueen at 2:00 PM on December 4 [20 favorites]

I was on the Steering Committee, and my experience of MeTa was a place where information had to be constantly repeated because people who had no direct experience had very firm ideas about What Was Going On. While I left the Steering Committee because of work pressures, MeTa as it existed (and still exists) was a resolutely negative experience and a major factor in why I stay off the subsite.
posted by GenjiandProust at 2:32 PM on December 4 [38 favorites]

One of my hopes for the initial transition a few years back was for MeTa to be managed by the steering committee -- instead of all of us pellet-gunning the mods/admins with these long threads and never getting much response, a few hearty souls from the steering committee (fellow mefites) would collect and clarify feedback, give it focus, negotiate an implementation schedule, and manage followups. This would be posted and public.

From a recent update, it sounds like we're compensating a user to do so -- my genuine thanks to them! -- but this should be part of a permanent, ongoing process. I'd even volunteer for that if I could be helpful AND if the process included actual accountability, which is essential for any of this to work.
posted by mochapickle at 2:32 PM on December 4 [14 favorites]

I might be an outlier but I'd gladly see Meta deleted. I'm rarely in here, and when I am, I quickly step back in horror at the river of vitriol and rage.

My experience of Metafilter is mostly on Ask. It's interesting, and pleasant, and useful, and I enjoy my time there. Occasionally I pop into the blue, and find a few interesting posts and conversations. That's all good and perfectly sufficient for me, and I'm pleased to be part of it. That is my Metafilter.

Then, occasionally, I drop in here and it's like I've entered an alternative universe.

I can't help suspecting there are a fair number of users like me who won't be chiming in here, who never come to Meta, noodle around the other sites perfectly happily, and have no idea that this grey underbelly exists, of people raging endlessly about the site, and how it's run, and demanding the firing of its entire staff.

I'm grateful the site is still here against the odds; I don't lift a finger to maintain it and I'm glad there are people who do (though I do pay monthly towards its upkeep); I'd probably like to know it was in the hands of someone with enough commercial savvy to make it sustainable. That's it.
posted by penguin pie at 3:00 PM on December 4 [56 favorites]

Mod note: One comment removed at poster's request.
posted by Brandon Blatcher (staff) at 3:16 PM on December 4

And yes, I accidently deleted penguin pie's comment by accident for a few seconds. My bad, fat fingers!
posted by Brandon Blatcher (staff) at 3:17 PM on December 4 [8 favorites]

If i remember correctly it is currently not even legally possible to contact all people who paid 5 Dollars via E-Mail.

It might take a bit of data wrangling, but I gather it's okay to send a mass email out to anyone who's accessed the site while logged in over the past 24 or so months (or if that data isn't retained, I guess anyone who's commented or favorited anything). A business/organization is allowed to contact its active users under -- I think! -- all privacy regimes^*.

In my ideal world, we'd have occasional referenda for some of the largest site-direction questions (one vote per user; getting caught voting with a sockpuppet would revoke voting rights) -- even if the results might not be 100% binding on the board -- and sending out an announcement email to all 'active' users would be a worthwhile part of that.

I think there's a chance that having some semi-regular things to vote on as a community -- and not just board elections -- might relieve some of the pressure build-up in these MeTa discussions (itself a subsite whose maybe main purpose all along was to relieve pressure build-up on the blue).

^*(Obviously this should be passed by a lawyer. The GDPR apparently doesn't specify a duration/expiration for what counts as a currently active customer/user/member, but 24 months is one of the numbers I've seen floating around as a guideline some orgs are using.)
posted by nobody at 3:58 PM on December 4 [6 favorites]

I was on the Steering Committee, and my experience of MeTa was a place where information had to be constantly repeated because people who had no direct experience had very firm ideas about What Was Going On

That’s good to know!

I think given my background I expected ppl to need things repeated a lot and I expect some conspiracy theories. They do make me sigh. But if they result in great engagement and donations it’s a win in my book (or successful elections.)
posted by warriorqueen at 4:00 PM on December 4 [8 favorites]

Brand New Day? Get rid of the toxic dumpster fire that is metatalk. Find a new, better way to collect and discuss feedback with the community.
posted by cgg at 4:11 PM on December 4 [15 favorites]

I might be an outlier but I'd gladly see Meta deleted. I'm rarely in here, and when I am, I quickly step back in horror at the river of vitriol and rage.

Brand New Day? Get rid of the toxic dumpster fire that is metatalk. Find a new, better way to collect and discuss feedback with the community.

Folks think FPPs get off-topic now. Just get rid of MetaTalk and see how much worse it can get.
posted by 922257033c4a0f3cecdbd819a46d626999d1af4a at 4:28 PM on December 4 [9 favorites]

I think there’s truth to that it doesn’t really work, but I also think MetaTalk hasn’t had leadership in its use for a long time, if ever

Yes. I agree that it often doesn’t work well, but that has a lot to do with implicit or explicit choices! It’s a place where thoughtful feedback gets minimal acknowledgment from staff (and even more rarely translates to any plan of action) while inter-user conflict goes off the rails.
posted by atoxyl at 4:33 PM on December 4 [5 favorites]

Mod note: I think some sort of formal post/banner/post about a brand new day would be a good idea. Like even some sort of official countdown to the switch, if possible. Like if decide that we'll be ready on X day, then like two weeks before. There's a post announcing the change along with details and a few goals about what we hope to achieve.

Just thinking off the top of my head as I write this, perhaps a Free thread, but with images? Something a bit different to really celebrate that we're moving forward. Hell, even make the Free Threads on the new site the place where images are explicitly allowed (with the option of those who do want them to turn them off).

As to BND for members, I have no super firm ideas at the moment. Obviously fuck no on spammers. As to the other, non spammer banned accounts getting a BND, I'm still personally on the fence. But if done, I think a message saying everyone that if everyone is willing to put the past behind them and people actually do that, then it could work.
posted by Brandon Blatcher (staff) at 4:40 PM on December 4 [1 favorite]

I gather it's okay to send a mass email out to anyone who's accessed the site while logged in over the past 24 or so months (or if that data isn't retained, I guess anyone who's commented or favorited anything)

Speaking only for myself, and not to derail the BND discussion, I cannot express strongly enough how much I do not want this. I love MeFi, I am looking forward to the new...whatever it is, but I do not want unsolicited emails from any website or entity I interact with regularly. If MeFi wants to take my temperature about something, put a call to action (survey link or something) on the site and let me access it from there. The last thing I need or want is more email.
posted by pdb at 4:46 PM on December 4 [7 favorites]

It seems like there many who think that a fresh start really requires all new management and a new staffing approach, but maybe a super special Free Thread would work too.
posted by snofoam at 5:00 PM on December 4 [12 favorites]

Something a bit different to really celebrate that we're moving forward.

In what ways are we moving forward?

even make the Free Threads on the new site

Does the beta for the new site have a date yet?
posted by Diskeater at 5:14 PM on December 4 [8 favorites]

Not to be a negative shit, but mass emails or banner gimmicks are poor ideas.

Email: I just realized that exactly 10 years ago I worked in a call centre where we did telemarketing for newspaper subscriptions. It blew my mind when I realized we got the phone numbers from the papers and we were calling previous subscribers who had cancelled. Those poor people fucking hated us more than anything. For whatever reason, people leave the site. Some just drift away, some button, some decide it's healthier to have a more passive relationship with the site. Even if their contact info is fair game to use, leave them the hell alone, I guarantee it will generate more bad feeling than it is worth.

Banner: I have no animosity against the site, the community, or the mods, but even from a charitable perspective, recent stunts really do have a feeling of rearranging deck chairs and reminds me of DC Comics' reboot crossovers which grew more frequent and sweaty as the market shrank, and did very little. BND On Inifinite Earths, BRD Hour, Infinite BND, Final BND, there's more, but I can't be arsed to look them up.

Brand New Day... I dunno. It means absolutely nothing to potential new users, and not much to current MeFites who aren't invested in the community culture, and if I was ambivalent or negative about the community, finding out MeFi was offering "amnesties" would at best elicit a snort of derision. I don't think free threads or photos are any sort of a draw. Stop announcing things. Staunch the bleeding. Stabilize the patient. Until that's done, they're not going to get better, and tying some fun balloons on their stretcher isn't going to help.
posted by Alvy Ampersand at 7:00 PM on December 4 [26 favorites]

So - is there an example of a healthy internet community that folks would point to as a model? Are there, preferably, several models toward which people would like to steer metafilter?

The healthiest internet communities I know are small and virtually private specialist blogs with a small number of commenters and a lower volume of posts - no more than a couple a day if that. When I read metatalk, I sometimes worry that people are expecting that a relatively large and relatively high-volume site can function like those small, specialist, basically self-managing sites, and that failure to do so is not just unfortunate but the sign of active malfeasance. (I mean, if folks are talking about inviting right-wingers onto the site for ideological diversity, well, one of the reasons the healthy internet communities I'm thinking about work so well is that they are very homogeneous.I do not think that an invite-the-right policy, or a "you can talk about how trans people don't real, that's okay" policy would actually produce the climate and commitment that folks may be imagining.)

I'm not saying that if people are consistently unhappy about specific issues they should all just suck it up. But I would like to have more confidence that when people are basically saying "metafilter is horrible" they are comparing it to a a real-world, achievable type of internet community, not just to "like things are now except with nothing bad".
posted by Frowner at 7:22 PM on December 4 [23 favorites]

when people are basically saying "metafilter is horrible" they are comparing it to a a real-world, achievable type of internet community

My current experience of Metafilter leadership is the worst it has been in my personal experience of Metafilter.
posted by phunniemee at 7:42 PM on December 4 [16 favorites]

Even if their contact info is fair game to use, leave them the hell alone, I guarantee it will generate more bad feeling than it is worth.

I think a single, brief "remember metafilter, here's what's new and different, check it out, we'd like to welcome you back!" type email wouldn't be too much of an imposition. There's the possibility that some folks wouldn't receive that well, but those people weren't going to come back anyway. What would the negative consequences be (for the site and current site users) of making someone who already dislikes the site dislike it fractionally more because it had the effrontery to send a polite email?
posted by Larry David Syndrome at 7:51 PM on December 4 [10 favorites]

"So - is there an example of a healthy internet community that folks would point to as a model?"

I'm a bass player, and the main forum for bass players is talkbass.com. They've been around longer than metafilter and have far more posts and comments per day and probably more users.

• Anyone can read and post, but posting classified ads and a few other things requires a membership. There are various level of membership. I have no idea what the percentage of supporting members is, but it looks like maybe 1/3 of the posters are (it says under each user's username if they a supporting member).

• Since the focus of the site is bass equipment, bass players, and bass technique, posts about religion or politics are not allowed. That probably wouldn't go over well on metafilter (although it would be fine with me), it does mean that there's virtually no drama on talkbass.com (aside from the occasional "heated" discussion about the ubiquity of tortoiseshell pick guards on certain basses).

• Their list of rules is pretty simple. There are just 11 of them, and three of them are specifically to address issues surrounding commercial users (i.e. people who work for bass equipment companies). There are no endless lists of words that can and can't be used, or multiple paragraphs explaining the same thing over and over in different ways.

• They run on xenforo software, which provides many of the modern features that users here regularly ask for (like the ability to hide users). It also appears to be inexpensive (unless I'm reading it wrong, it's $250 per month for unlimited members and staff, 4 million page views per month, 240gb of storage, and that includes hosting).

• Talkbass has moved platforms at least a couple times over the years and was able to move over all the content. I know nothing about ColdFusion, but it seem likely that the database could be exported, reformatted, and moved into new off-the-shelf software. If it can't, then just lock down the old site and treat it as an archive, and start fresh on the new site.

• Aside from encouraging people to become paying members, they don't do fundraising. No gofundmes, no posters of users' basses (although that probably would actually sell well), no cookbooks, etc.

• I have no idea if the guy who owns it treats it as his job, but since the site is run on commercial software, there's might not be a ton of work that needs to be done.

• I'd be willing to be a fair amount of money that the site doesn't cost almost a quarter of a million dollars per year to run.
posted by jonathanhughes at 8:28 PM on December 4 [31 favorites]

Why stop at Republicans? Let's get Flat Earthers in here! And those crystal people! And maybe we can have a MetaNon subsite where we could discuss Jewish Space Lasers and "globalists" wink wink.

Get some of those "Your body, my choice!" guys in here too. Christ knows they're underrepresented and could use a platform. Antivax and quiverfull moms. Porn bots. Incels. Volcels!

MGTOWs.

It could be sweet, kiddos.
posted by She Vaped An Entire Sock! at 9:02 PM on December 4 [9 favorites]

My current experience of Metafilter leadership is the worst it has been in my personal experience of Metafilter.

I think the cortex/eyebrows era was worse in terms of moderation (having mods actually throw massive controversial bombs into threads was really, really bad) but way better in terms of general accountability and leadership. Not amazing but I felt generally ok with the way money was being spent

My issue is less with moderation activity and more with people’s money being misspent, which makes me feel bad for them and risks the long term survival of the site

When people say they don’t want the site to change or go away, I get that. But having it be run in the way it’s currently being run sounds like it’s more likely to wreck the site than a reasonable change would
posted by knobknosher at 12:25 AM on December 5 [12 favorites]

Why would a brand new day free thread celebrate with images? We have been asking for hidden comments etc., not images.
I don’t understand the BND concept at all, really. It seems like a magic wand to be waved over this whole grumpy affair in an effort to make everyone Happy Again Like The Old Days. Why would anyone believe in this?
I hear there’s a list being made of what people want, that might be a route we could take to make people happy. Or at least a little less grumpy.
posted by Vatnesine at 5:07 AM on December 5 [13 favorites]

if folks are talking about inviting right-wingers onto the site for ideological diversity

Not one of my most well-received ideas! But also not quite what I meant, in that I'm not interested in ideological diversity in terms of stoking divisive culture wars--that is, I don't want to spend my days on Metafilter debating the foreign policy virtues of Trumpism or why girl's soccer is under siege by Woke or whatever. But Metafilter has in my fourteen years here become much more homogenous, and I think protectively so. The average user is a rapidly aging white gen x'er with mainline Democrat politics and a fairly well-paying email job, and we have a very narrow outlook and a very narrow set of practices for how to accept people. (Like, remember how we had all these big threads about transphobia and Metafilter promised to be better, and now we have like three trans users left and they're furious at the site all the time. I exaggerate, but not much.) My point is that we don't know how to welcome people, we don't know how to accommodate diversity. We literally have to pay a board of users to tell us how not to be so racist.

And I understand that my point reads very weirdly--"you want us to be less racist and yet invite the people voting for Jim Crow II?" "you want us to embrace gender diversity by inviting the people behind the bathroom bills?"

I think we have to stop monstering people who don't match our narrow demographic. You see this mechanism in any political thread: Republicans are inhuman cannibals that want to send us all to the camps. Democrats are genocide enablers that like a good drone bombing. Marxists are secret fascists and lazy to boot. We hate everybody not exactly like us. And I don't think that's a political argument, I think it's a cultural distaste. We don't want a bunch of rednecks getting their muddy shoes on the carpet.

I think it's possible to invite cultural diversity while using moderation to insist that every user deserves respect and that dehumanizing discussion will not be tolerated. Keep the culture war somewhere else.

Now I have already said too much for a point no one will agree with (and to the extent anyone remembers anyone else's comments from thread to thread, I suppose now my little leftist politics will be looked on with suspicion of harboring a secret love for Strom Thurmond and Friedrich Hayek), but I keep coming back to the strangest fact of existence, that many conservatives I know are nice. They're funny, they're interesting. They turn out to be human beings.

I guess I just think this site needs more practice in finding people to be human beings.
posted by mittens at 5:29 AM on December 5 [39 favorites]

Vatnesine's point isn't a bad one. To be Happy Again Like The Old Days would require a time machine and/or a site culture change that I don't see happening on Day 1.

I love this place and also intermittently consider buttoning because of intolerable users and bad threads/discussions/moderation. I appreciate creative thinking, but my BND does not involve the ability to see jpgs on MetaFilter. If anything, that would make things even worse when it comes to the people I think are pretty difficult in this space, however good or bad they may be IRL. I need mute and/or block, not jpgs.
posted by cupcakeninja at 5:49 AM on December 5 [12 favorites]

But Metafilter has in my fourteen years here become much more homogenous, and I think protectively so.

Actually, I think that's true! I'm not really sure how to undo it on a website, unfortunately, bar some unforeseen disaster that reassorts things.

I think a problem is that we want to act like we have a common ideological project and yet we don't, so that makes the easiest solution to our social problems a negative one, "we all agree that we won't talk about X or talk in such a way about X". In retrospect, although I understand why the decision happened, all the "we don't do Israel/Palestine well on this site, so we don't have those posts" stuff was a real augury - incontrovertible bad things were happening, discussing them led to extreme conflict, we collectively accepted that we just wouldn't say that here - and obviously it's not like having threads about Palestine would have prevented the genocide, but it does shine a light on how avoiding a conflict wasn't really the morally necessary kind of thing we accepted it to be.

At the same time, it's really hard to have difficult conversations on the internet with people who are more or less strangers, maintain some kind of moral compass and not have it turn into malice, willful misunderstanding, cruelty, etc. It's easier in real life because of all the other cues you get. (Although obviously the way things have gone with chuds and so on is people trying to bring new, vicious internet norms into the real world because they think it's good.)

I was reading some tweets by a union organizer recently and she was saying something similar to what you are (Cassie Pritchard, if that rings any bells) about how as a trans woman union organizer and barrista she has to have this mode of engaging with people while also arguing with them at the same time, because she needs to organize people who are ignorant about or soft-hostile to trans people, at least in the abstract, and she uses her real-world presence to deal with that, because people are usually less dumb and awful about an actual comrade who is a stand-up organizer than about some abstraction on the internet. And I think that's all really true - we can't flinch from difficult real-world dynamics and I think most of us in fact don't, at least a lot of the time.

At the same time, can we actually do that as a website, or does it demand a level of commitment that is in a way even greater than we already try and fail to achieve?

I think it's really really hard to intervene in that sequence of threat/anger that you get when there are values conflicts on the internet, whether we're talking fearing/being angered by someone bringing harmful talking points or fearing/being angered by being asked to drop harmful talking points . You can learn to do that, but it's tough, and I worry that it's not something we can do successfully on a large and loosely linked site like this one.

I would be open to suggestions on this.
posted by Frowner at 6:04 AM on December 5 [29 favorites]

I think asking for a certain amount of goodwill be given to the new ED makes sense, but framing it as a Brand New Day is perhaps leading the discussion off track. BND never really meant BND for users -- the mods had a pretty good idea who was who and it coloured future interactions with the new accounts -- and it can't really mean BND for site management, either because no one is really going to just forget how things are if nothing has changed yet.

I would suggest that a better framing for discussion would be something akin to the 'first hundred days' concept in US politics. What would people like to see the new ED accomplish in the first 100 days?

I would put warriorqueen's ideas about developing a new vision for what moderation is pretty high on that list. Maybe you don't get all the way to new guidelines in the first 100 days, but you could be well on the way.

I would also put a communications plan for the ED on that list. Figuring out how they will communicate with the community and then actually doing it.

I would also add an audience development plan, whether that includes attempting to win back the bored or annoyed MeFites of the past or building new audience. Probably both.
posted by jacquilynne at 6:48 AM on December 5 [18 favorites]

This BND would apply to both users (including former users) and mods. [...] What would a successful BND look like to you?

I saw this post earlier but only realized just now, on reread after somewhat boggling* at Brandon's comment, that you weren't actually proposing a BND that meant replacing the current mod staff.

FWIW, I think Brand New Day applies, as a concept, when we're talking only about behavior. Like "hey, you get a clean slate and nobody will hold your old actions against you." In the case of the mods - at least loup and some others - I think the problem goes beyond behavior and is a question of their deeply ingrained attitudes on the one hand, and, honestly, their actual skills/judgment/competence on the other. BND doesn't really make any sense in that context. I'm in perpetual hope that the mods suddenly upgrade their skills/judgment/competence and also fundamentally shift their mindsets, but if they don't do that any slate that's been wiped clean will be full again very quickly.

And to be honest I feel like I try to give them the benefit of the doubt and opportunities to build trust again and again, and have been for years, and I just feel like Charlie Brown, knowing full well what's going to happen with that football and still a little shocked every time.

This is about qualities and patterns that are either inherent in the people in question or deeply ingrained. I think a BND is only possible if it's earned the hard way - which is how today's mods have been earning the distrust I think this thread is trying to respond to.

If we're talking about actual new people running the site, that's a different story. Although I would need active signs from them - and from the people doing the hiring - that they are consciously not going to be following the adversarial "let's kettle, stonewall, and police the community to make it more easily manageable for us" approach, because to me that's even more fundamental a problem than operational clusterfucks (which is saying something). The site needs to be run by people who see their role as serving Metafilter and Metafilter's users - who are the ones who actually give it life - rather than people who are, consciously or unconsciously, interested in making their own jobs quiet, "fun",* or effort-free.



* will you continue not only implementing badly but also digging your heels hard against anything the community asks for that requires any more effort on your parts than making "fun" posts and comments now and then...
posted by trig at 7:17 AM on December 5 [16 favorites]

Responding to several things at once that seemed sort of related to my earlier comment. A lot has happened since then, so I've tried to include the context:

So, here's the thing, having been a public facing employee at a badly managed business before, I have an enormous amount of sympathy for the current mod staff. Which is why I tend to really respect warriorqueen's approach to solving the current situation. If the problem is organizational, then punishing folks for working as best they could in a broke system isn't going to fix the system, just hurt the folks.

[snip]

And all of the sudden you find out that the member who was "just the worst" was actually fine and just constrained by rules they had no control over.
[Comment]

This has been my experience, too, which is why I'm generally pretty reluctant to try to pin things on individuals. I'd much rather blame the system, or at least the technology!

Why would mods not just reinstate the deleted thread, which already had dozens of comments from community members in it?
[Comment]

My guess is that it's because the software doesn't make it easy/possible to do that, and fixing that hasn't happened because it's less pressing than other technical issues. Maybe the next question is why fixing this hasn't been the priority?

I think a lot of the subtext of years of community frustration around various aspects of deletion is that mods just don't seem to really respect user contributions much, or at least don't give the issue much thought.
[Comment]

Metafilter doesn’t need extra reasons to have fewer posts or discussions at this point. There’s no need to saddle someone with the unnecessary responsibility of deciding whether a post should be deleted because it is breaking news. Even someone with great judgement would have trouble making that kind of choice without offending half the users.
[Comment]

One way I expect this happens is when people lack good tools and/or time, it's pretty easy for them to decide that throwing away other people's work feels like reasonable self-preservation. I don't expect that you'd get a massive change in this dynamic by changing the individuals involved unless it's really clear that the tooling, process and staffing level is fine, which is always tricky to assess from outside.

Is it possible and trivial to restore a deleted thread? Is it possible to merge threads, so when someone reposts about the deleted thread, there's a way to join them and explain they were joined and why? I suspect the answer is that this is not available to moderators today.

It does make me think that the calls for increased visibility in the form of a moderation log, and hiding deleted comments partially instead of outright deleting them, are good steps that push the culture towards "user contributions are valuable and not to be thrown away as a first resort".

I would need active signs from them - and from the people doing the hiring - that they are consciously not going to be following the adversarial "let's kettle, stonewall, and police the community to make it more easily manageable for us" approach, because to me that's even more fundamental a problem than operational clusterfucks (which is saying something). The site needs to be run by people who see their role as serving Metafilter and Metafilter's users - who are the ones who actually give it life - rather than people who are, consciously or unconsciously, interested in making their own jobs quiet, "fun",* or effort-free.

[Comment]

I think it's really really hard to intervene in that sequence of threat/anger that you get when there are values conflicts on the internet, whether we're talking fearing/being angered by someone bringing harmful talking points or fearing/being angered by being asked to drop harmful talking points . You can learn to do that, but it's tough, and I worry that it's not something we can do successfully on a large and loosely linked site like this one.

[Comment]

It also seems like it's a pretty particular kind of person that can do that day in, day out, and not burn out or find themselves adopting strategies that make their jobs quieter, more fun or lower effort. I'm not sure how anyone effectively hires for that and retains good people, especially if they can't guarantee good pay/benefits/consistent hours/supportive management.

The healthiest internet communities I know are small and virtually private specialist blogs with a small number of commenters and a lower volume of posts - no more than a couple a day if that.
[Comment]

I'm a bass player, and the main forum for bass players is talkbass.com. They've been around longer than metafilter and have far more posts and comments per day and probably more users.

Their list of rules is pretty simple.
[Comment]

These are great examples though - I think they might underscore the idea that a site that tries to allow a wide range of users to engage with difficult topics is likely to have a fair number of participants upset at any given time.

Reading the list of rules also gave me a couple of laughs when thinking about recent MetaTalk:

Rule #3: Off-limit Topics & Forum-Specific Rules

Controversial topics will be VERY closely moderated. Politics and religious debate/discussion are not allowed in any forum unless specifically allowed by the forum's posted rules ("sticky" threads).

Rule #5: Questioning a Moderation Decision Publicly

If you have a disagreement with a moderator (If your thread gets deleted, if you get a warning, etc.), DO NOT post your complaint publicly on the forums. If you would like to raise a complaint regarding a moderator's actions, start a private conversation or email the moderator. If the moderator's response is unsatisfactory, please contact the forum admin staff by clicking the "contact us" link in any page's footer.

Sounds a bit like:

It is site policy to never, ever admit that cortex Eyebrows McGee a moderator can make an incorrect action.
[Comment]

I think the idea of not having to have your beefs about moderation or other user behavior in threads on the blue that have some other topic is what led to MetaTalk in the first place, a bit like having a talk page for your Wikipedia edit war instead of making everyone wade through that. But then it makes sense that it's a pretty angry place.

But maybe in addition to a moderation log, we need a place for apologies? I can imagine sometimes it maybe doesn't make sense to keep derailing a thread to try to cool down an argument, so maybe a casualty of that is the apology post is the one that doesn't get made, but we could have MetAtone for where you go to try to make amends (or it's the other use for MetaTalk).

Really though I am most curious about the day-to-day experience of the mods trying to actually work with whatever tools the site provides for moderating things as I'm usually horrified by what people's jobs actually entail. Maybe if Brandon is still feeling charitable, we can do a live-streamed mod session where several of us get to have a fight in a thread and we can see the side-by-side process of trying to fix things up via the opaque processes of moderating?
posted by pulposus at 3:25 PM on December 5 [8 favorites]

offering "amnesties"

I read that as "offering amnestics" and wondered when MetaFilter was bought by the SCP Foundation.
posted by The Ardship of Cambry at 3:46 PM on December 5 [7 favorites]

”I love the idea of a moderation log.”

it could be its own subsite and we could comment on the deletions

The RPG.net forums do this. (Only visible to registered users.)

That said, the RPG.net forums are notorious for their iron-fisted moderation.
posted by Lemkin at 4:05 PM on December 5

Is it possible and trivial to restore a deleted thread? [...] I suspect the answer is that this is not available to moderators today.

My recollection from past events is that it seemed to be both possible and (operationally) trivial.
posted by dusty potato at 4:43 PM on December 5 [8 favorites]

Get rid of paid moderation.

I will fuckin’ opt out of paying anything to support mefi immediately unless that choice gets some serious justification. Blowing up the site’s main highly anachronistic selling point is a wild move.
posted by Going To Maine at 5:11 PM on December 5 [8 favorites]

I feel like the concept that Metafilter exists for the purpose of paying moderators s something that sort of crept up on us and wasn’t really ever meant to be the point of all this.
posted by snofoam at 5:19 PM on December 5 [30 favorites]

"I will fuckin’ opt out of paying anything to support mefi immediately unless that choice gets some serious justification."

I think the justification for a lot of people is that it costs about a quarter of a million dollars per year to delete about 12 comments per day.
posted by jonathanhughes at 5:53 PM on December 5 [30 favorites]

As a personal expert in things mysteriously disappearing, I will ask to add: that we know of.
posted by B_Ghost_User at 6:47 PM on December 5 [8 favorites]

I just want to say that I like metafilter and the moderation and staff here. I find the imperfections pretty modest and the positives pretty great. Thank you to all who do the back end work to keep it going.
posted by latkes at 11:35 PM on December 5 [47 favorites]

I think there are far too many deletions on Metafilter.

But it would disgust me beyond measure if Metafilter were to fire mods who have devoted years and decades of their lives to making it as good as they know how according to their best judgement. They deserve better than that, and I don’t think I could go on if something like that happens.
posted by jamjam at 12:26 AM on December 6 [17 favorites]

Maybe we can solve all funding issues by selling AMAB stickers and Thin Blue Moderator flags to MetaTalk users, dang.
posted by Going To Maine at 1:07 AM on December 6

selling AMAB stickers

I know it's just an unfortunate acronym collision, but selling "assigned male at birth" stickers does scan as initially plausible for this place, weirdly enough. It took me a moment to realise you meant "all moderators are bastards"
posted by june_dodecahedron at 4:37 AM on December 6 [10 favorites]

Blowing up the site’s main highly anachronistic selling point is a wild move.
Is the fact that we spend a quarter of a million dollars annually on moderating a decimated, shell-of-its-former-self community our highly anachronistic selling point? Because I thought it was the text-only unthreaded discussions. I guess we come for the lack of images and linear discussion and we stay for the absolutely wild bonfire of donated funds.
posted by twelve cent archie at 7:21 AM on December 6 [18 favorites]

If folks hate it here so much why are they here? I get that not everyone feels the same as me so if some folks have beef that I don't that's fine, but the scale of the response is..odd.

The site works basically the same as the day I first joined in 2006, and at the end of the day, this is just a website - a pretty small part of my overall life. No serious harm can be done to me here and if I really dislike the culture or current leadership I can simply not visit this website? The options of either spending less time here, or getting more involved in doing the work to keep it running are both available?
posted by latkes at 7:37 AM on December 6 [27 favorites]

unless that choice gets some serious justification

The site costs $250k a year to run. The bulk of that cost is staff. What do the mods do on a day-to-day basis to justify that cost?

Maybe that's mean and shitty to say but that's the state of the site. Sugarcoat it all you want.

Get the new site up and running. Have mod tools that can automate some stuff (email modlist if something gets +X flags in a short timespan, auto delete comments with obvious slurs or rule violations, etc etc). Allow users to hide / block. Swap to nonprofit so volunteers can watch and respond to the flag queue. Throw more money at a coder or an admin.

It's beyond frustrating to see staff make up work as an excuse to not do 'real' work and then also not do the fake work. If people want to donate money for that, go nuts.
posted by Diskeater at 7:38 AM on December 6 [20 favorites]

The options of either spending less time here, or getting more involved in doing the work to keep it running are both available?
Some of us have done both of these things and yet the horrors persist. I don't know why I keep coming here! It's a good question. I spent a lot of time volunteering on the steering committee until I had to walk away from "getting more involved in doing the work." I left the steering committee frankly because the goings-on here smelled at best woefully unprofessional and at worst actively scammy. There is no one awake at the helm and the people who have the helm are unwilling to change and are actively getting in the way of change being made at anything more than a glacial pace. I suppose you're right: I can leave. Lots of people already have.
posted by twelve cent archie at 7:51 AM on December 6 [35 favorites]

My number one issue is the quarter million dollar budget. I will repeat again how absolutely insane it is that this post, that I am making right now, has a budget of an entire American dollar to be hosted here and moderated. That is...it's not high. It's astronomically, comically, insanely high. The number should be a fraction of a cent. I'm involved in another message board that also gets about 1000-1500 comments per day, and that site has a budget of $2400, Canadian, for the next TWO YEARS total, and the person (singular) who runs it has refused to accept any more money than that, because he thinks he could probably get it lower but it isn't worth his effort to go lower.

$250k is a completely, mindbogglingly unsustainable number that is just wildly out of proportion with what this should actually cost.
posted by bowbeacon at 8:11 AM on December 6 [41 favorites]

And if there is a quarter million dollars of work being done, I shouldn't be able to post in a thread for four days straight and get absolutely no response from the staff at all for those 4 days. Not an insufficient response, not a bad response, but no response whatsoever. If there IS $250,000 of work being done, it should include minimal things like "actually reading the messageboard" and "posting to the messageboard that they have seen the question".
posted by bowbeacon at 8:13 AM on December 6 [39 favorites]

But it's the holidays. We can't expect any work to be done during the holidays.
posted by bowmaniac at 8:16 AM on December 6 [2 favorites]

But it would disgust me beyond measure if Metafilter were to fire mods who have devoted years and decades of their lives to making it as good as they know how according to their best judgement. They deserve better than that, and I don’t think I could go on if something like that happens.

I know. I get that.

But that's part of why it has frustrated me so much that the site has been so negligent in how it has approached fundraising. After all, that's where the funding to pay them comes from. And for years, the one and only effective fundraiser was the one that was run by the Steering Committee - a group of unpaid volunteers. They were the only group that actually put effort into it.

The staff also, for years, have done nothing to attract new users (and therefore new income with which to pay them). Despite again, years of members talking about how important this was.

And snofoam's observation in another thread that the way the team is acting is truly the opposite of what you would expect from people who want to keep their job is really on point.

It feels like the equivalent of an employee getting years and years and years of feedback from their boss that their work isn't satisfactory and is causing the company to fail slowly, and the employee just blithely shrugging it off. And ultimately the company gets to the point where it just literally can't afford to both keep this employee and hire someone who will actually do the work the boss has been begging them to do all along. Would it really be a cold-hearted firing if the boss chose to go with trying to actually save the company? After years of talking with the employee, handholding the employee, begging the employee, supporting the employee with unpaid volunteer labor?

Metafilter is losing money (and longstanding members) each month. Jessamyn talks about how there's a 6-month buffer in the bank; that's nice, but the buffer is shrinking and that amount doesn't cover hiring anyone new. Both Matt and cortex had to cut hours and mod positions when there wasn't enough income for payroll.

It feels like Metafilter is living beyond its means, paying for staff that has shown over a long period of time that they're either not skilled enough or not willing enough to pull the site around. And regardless of skill level, the "not willing" part has been made fairly clear.

The site can't actually afford this.

If I had a lot more good will towards the staff - if the staff had (in my opinion) shown a lot more genuine good will and effort towards both the membership and the idea of keeping the site actually alive - I might feel differently. But as it stands, I'd be more disgusted if instead of letting loup and others go Metafilter kept them and ended up dying instead. We users also devoted years and decades to making this place as good as we know how, and we deserve better than the neglect and deafness we've been shown.

None of that answers the question of whether we'd actually be able to afford someone better and manage to turn this around, or the question of how the site would actually do with a much smaller staff to begin with. But if we're talking about ethics and justice, I am firmly on the side of treating employees well but I think that giving failing employees years' worth of opportunities and millionth chances and advice and patience and unpaid support is more than generous, especially when we're talking about a business that, through their own lack of fundraising, can't actually afford them.

And you know, they still have the chance to actually make an effort to turn things around. They can still show that they want to be here and that they're the right people to keep Metafilter alive. I want them to show that.

But I'm Charlie Brown with the football, and would it really be disgusting beyond measure for me to finally just take my ball back.
posted by trig at 8:16 AM on December 6 [21 favorites]

It might be worth noting that some of the volunteers didn't even come back. After volunteering here adrianhon didn't officially button but is "done with Metafilter for now". For those who don't know he's the founder and CEO of the software firm that makes the popular "Zombies Run" game. If he can't get anywhere with Metafilter, who can?

It seems like the staff rely on two distraction techniques. Whenever they're questioned, they say "Why don't you come up with some suggestions?" and "Why don't you volunteer?"

But for many years now, the suggestions are always ignored, and volunteers just bang their heads against a brick wall of obstinacy and apathy until they get fed up and quit.
posted by TheophileEscargot at 8:22 AM on December 6 [36 favorites]

I'm involved in another message board that also gets about 1000-1500 comments per day, and that site has a budget of $2400, Canadian, for the next TWO YEARS total, and the person (singular) who runs it has refused to accept any more money than that, because he thinks he could probably get it lower but it isn't worth his effort to go lower.

That is clearly an apples to oranges comparison, as the total cost to run that site is orders of magnitude less than it would cost for a single FT employees salary. I don't doubt that a niche site that's lightly moderated, has a volunteer mod, isn't too fussed about legal compliance, uses off the shelf bulletin board software and doesn't deal with contentious topics could be done on the cheap. That's just not what Metafilter is and this feels almost like a bad faith argument.
I've said it at least two times before, but I donate what I feel MeFi is worth to me each month. I think of it like a subscription. In the same way that I don't know or particularly care about the finances of The Atlantic or whatever [n.b. I do not actually subscribe to The Atlantic] Maybe the CEO of The Atlantic has a massive coke habit and also has five of his cousins on the payroll for no show jobs. Who knows? I enjoy the content here, I enjoy the virtual company of most of the other users here, the moderation is good enough, I care that a site exists that's outside of the corporate walled garden of X, Facebook, etc. Sure, I'd like the site to be financially stable and spend my donation wisely but I just can't seem to summon the outrage that so many people in MetaTalk seem to feel.
posted by Larry David Syndrome at 9:07 AM on December 6 [19 favorites]

People with the skills to volunteer are justifiably wary. This is an absolute mess with no clear leadership, and a legion of volunteers (despite being hand-picked and gate-kept for acceptability to the powers that be) have failed to make progress, their good efforts bouncing right off the core structure. Why waste time?
posted by Miko at 9:08 AM on December 6 [18 favorites]

If he can't get anywhere with Metafilter, who can?

I have issues with how the site's been managed community-wise and financially - that's why I've never donated - but using people who aren't active on the site as a ventriloquist's dummy for your criticisms is some tacky-ass shit.
posted by Alvy Ampersand at 9:16 AM on December 6 [9 favorites]

(i never like to participate in the money part of this conversation, but i did have a question: how much does an ED cost?)
posted by mittens at 9:19 AM on December 6 [1 favorite]

probably not $20, same as in town
posted by sagc at 9:21 AM on December 6 [6 favorites]

It’s one message board, Michael. What could it cost, $250k/year?

If people want to donate and aren’t concerned about how the money is spent, that’s certainly their right. But if the site collapses on the changeover to nonprofit because revenues crater because there’s no one to competently manage the switchover, then probably everyone is unhappy about that. If the site shuts down years before it has to because no one was willing or able to change the cost structure to something sustainable, then I think that’s a bummer for all the users.

There really is no keeping things as they are. The only reason there has been a status quo to maintain for the last few years was the Herculean volunteer efforts by the Steering Committee. The status quo is a pretty rapid decline and closure of the site if there aren’t serious changes. Costs are high, revenue is declining and the current team’s track record of fundraising or really doing anything is basically complete failure.
posted by snofoam at 9:35 AM on December 6 [18 favorites]

I'm not going to say fire the staff, because I think that's a bit nuclear. But the new ED, if they are properly and ethically hired, would be the one to evaluate and make decisions on staff. That is a part of an ED's role in a functional non-profit.

But I have to emphasize "properly and ethically hired" because when I was on the Steering Committee (SC) two years ago, not only did we work our asses off to raise money to save the site, we budgeted some of that money for an admin hire. A SC member also created a job description for that role. It was later admitted to that the hiring process had stopped because staff had decided to offer the job directly to a retired mod instead of openly recruiting. (Bullet point 1, section j, subsection v, points 1-18.) Reading that broke my fucking heart and then made me angrier than I've ever been here. If we really want a fresh start, that shit cannot happen with an ED hire.

So for me a brand new day would include:

Accountability and transparency, which (with the exception of the current batch of volunteers who, based on my own past experience, are likely desperately trying to move things forward with frustratingly scant staff support, and Brandon, who seems to be the one who has to apologize for everyone else's actions with nobody to back him up if he errs) is sorely lacking these days.

I also agree with the calls for a moderation log.
posted by kimberussell at 10:00 AM on December 6 [67 favorites]

18 months ago:

In response to Loup's statements regarding the admin hire (scope, choice of hire, etc), brainwane says it sounds like there is a pretty specific problem where work is promised to happen in a timely fashion but it didn't and doesn't, even if the staff/executives have the information to do the work they need to do. Brainwane feels that everytime the board tries to ask Loup why something is happening or why something is not happening, the goal posts keep moving. Brainwane notes a lack of acknowledgement when things aren't working, and says the board only seems to find out about things/decisions made after they happen, as a surprise later.

Such an illuminating read! Depressing, but illuminating.
posted by sagc at 10:13 AM on December 6 [26 favorites]

I think there are far too many deletions on Metafilter

Having just gotten one myself, I’m inclined to agree.
posted by Lemkin at 12:51 PM on December 6

I don't doubt that a niche site that's lightly moderated, has a volunteer mod, isn't too fussed about legal compliance, uses off the shelf bulletin board software and doesn't deal with contentious topics could be done on the cheap.

I said myself that ultimately people can pay for whatever they feel is important, but the point that some people are trying to make is that MetaFilter is a niche site, does not have more activity to deal with than the examples raised for comparison, and doesn’t actually handle contentious topics all that much better than average. The custom software is a reality, though a choice (and one I happen to like although I’m wary of the implications of the choice to do it a second time with minimal public discussion). The approach to moderation is also a choice, on which I am intentionally remaining (mostly) neutral. And not just to avoid conflict, I think what people want from moderation is personal, and if you want to make the case that the particular nature of something like Ask requires more resources than conventional forum moderation, go for it, I think there’s a fair argument to be made. But I do think it’s kind of absurd to talk like the site is so special that it couldn’t make different choices or prioritize differently.
posted by atoxyl at 1:42 PM on December 6 [14 favorites]

Imagine what you could do with Metafilter if you had two years, half a million dollars, no boss limiting what you can do, and a team of experts who were happy to share advice! That’s where the Steering Committee’s work left the current team two years ago. I think the results speak for themselves.
posted by snofoam at 2:08 PM on December 6 [32 favorites]

i never like to participate in the money part of this conversation, but i did have a question: how much does an ED cost?

So it's going to be tricky because really it depends a lot on paperwork and also on tech (which is one reason I don't think the custom tech solution is not sustainable long-term.) A community manager, which this role could be if it didn't involve a ton of supervising of staff and not a ton of paperwork, would in Canada run you around $65-70k average, ED of a niche org around $85k average. (This partly reflects how non-profit salaries are still lower on average.) But in the US I have no idea.

Bear in mind that payroll taxes here anyway often are ballparked around 20% in addition to that and that's before benefits etc. Also I'm not sure the site will ever hit average.

I think there are lots of possibilities but I know the interim board was looking for a ED, so just sharing numbers on that basis, not saying who/what/when/etc.
posted by warriorqueen at 3:26 PM on December 6 [3 favorites]

Can we get an update on the new site from kikaracha?
posted by Vatnesine at 4:07 PM on December 6 [10 favorites]

Mod note: Hi, I'm sorry to say that the information remains the same as it was in November site update: "Work towards the new site is still ongoing. We’ll provide updates as they are available."

I know no one wants to hear that, hell I don't want to write that, but is the information we have to share at the moment. When we do have more to share we will and no, there is no ETA on when we'll be able to share more information.
posted by Brandon Blatcher (staff) at 5:37 PM on December 6 [3 favorites]

I’m very much in agreement with penguin pie above, except I don’t know that we should get rid of MeTa. I just think the opinions expressed here should be taken for what they are—the feedback from a subset of users who feel motivated to give it for various reasons. The reason is in many cases that people have a grievance or apparently many grievances for a large number of years, and people don’t fight fair, so every grievance for all time sometimes gets dragged into threads with minor proposals or requests for feedback. People should probably better define what the scope of feedback is for a given thread, but that kind of lack of clarity comes with the territory of letting anyone in the community post feedback threads here. Not everyone will be that succinct or clear on what they want to hear or have happen, and that’s OK, just people being human.

But yeah, don’t think the mods should be fired, but do think it would be good to see a plan for how the site will handle another 4 years of whatever is happening in U.S. politics. Also don’t think inviting a bunch of random or previous member right-wingers back to the site for supposed balance is a useful or feasible suggestion. Right-wingers weren’t ever, to my knowledge, kicked off the site, so that feels a bit like a proposal built on a straw-man argument. People have self-identified their interest or lack thereof in continuing on the site and that’s up to them to continue to participate or not. Plenty of people have independently decided MeFi is too woke for them or whatever—or not woke enough for them or whatever—and that’s their choice.

There are so many people on the internet. A lot of them might like to find a home here if they knew it existed. There are probably ways to achieve growth that don’t involve drastic measures.

Also I like having real paid mods. I pay for that every month and I’m not aghast at the cost or at human mistakes that may be made. Everyone needs a hug.
posted by limeonaire at 5:41 PM on December 6 [10 favorites]

mittens: (i never like to participate in the money part of this conversation, but i did have a question: how much does an ED cost?)

sagc: probably not $20, same as in town

It depends if you're looking for long-term treatment or a stopgap measure, but you you suffer from erectile dysfunction, you can get generic viagra for as little as $13 for 30 pills, so considerably less than the $20 it would cost in town.
posted by Bugbread at 6:05 PM on December 6 [2 favorites]

There goes the Friday plans.

going by the 2022 budget breakdown if staff is covering 19 hours a day that comes out to about $27 an hour and I'm sure that's more work than just deleting comments.
posted by clavdivs at 6:12 PM on December 6 [1 favorite]

So, the site really should have been done before it was promised as a fundraiser prize.

Failing that, it should have been done a reasonable amount of time after it was announced that there were "a few DNS issues", or whatever the first delay was.

Failing *that*, it would have been good to provide a status update on those particular issues, either as they resolved or as a new timeline became clear.

Failing *that*, it would be good to hear at least an abstract of what *sorts* of issues are indefinitely blocking the project, rather than just referring people back to a month old update.

Failing *that*, I'd love to hear from the developer themself, since I simply don't trust mods to clearly communicate the status of projects - this is basically the "hiding comments" debacle writ large.
posted by sagc at 6:38 PM on December 6 [25 favorites]

latkes: "The options of either spending less time here, or getting more involved in doing the work to keep it running are both available?"

twelve cent archie: "Some of us have done both of these things and yet the horrors persist. I don't know why I keep coming here! It's a good question. I spent a lot of time volunteering on the steering committee until I had to walk away from "getting more involved in doing the work." I left the steering committee frankly because the goings-on here smelled at best woefully unprofessional and at worst actively scammy. There is no one awake at the helm and the people who have the helm are unwilling to change and are actively getting in the way of change being made at anything more than a glacial pace. I suppose you're right: I can leave. Lots of people already have."

Just wanted to note that Twelve Cent Archie closed their account after this.
posted by Bugbread at 7:44 PM on December 6 [20 favorites]

Ugh. twelve cent archie was terrific.

This sucks, guys.
posted by mochapickle at 7:47 PM on December 6 [20 favorites]

clearly it's the users and volunteers who are wrong
posted by glonous keming at 7:52 PM on December 6 [20 favorites]

If anyone has the impulse to tell someone else they should just leave the site if they think [x] about the site, maybe catch yourself first and at least downgrade that to a suggestion they just step away from MetaTalk for a bit.

(I mean, I also think it's pretty silly when someone chooses to button after an argument to really make their point, but it might be easier to agree to stop doing the first thing first.)

(I hope twelve cent archie comes back after some time away. It looks like AskMe was still providing something they liked.)
posted by nobody at 8:19 PM on December 6 [4 favorites]

Regarding the new site, several months ago we were told specifically that the preview version was only being delayed due to "issues with the new host service" and "DNS issues".

Now the specific reasons have disappeared and we're getting vague waffle instead.

With regards to the preview version of the new site, what issue is currently blocking it from going live, and what is being done to resolve that blocker?

Is it by any chance one of the two usual issues with projects at Metafilter?

1. One of the staff said they would do something and didn't?

2. Someone needs to make a decision on what features/bugs need to be in/out but no-one will make a decision?

Here are the previous updates:

September 18th 2024 update

Early access to the new site has been delayed in order to include more complete features and actions that users can test and kirkaracha and I are expecting to make it available by Sunday, September 29.

October 16th 2024 update

Early access to the new site is delayed due to some issues with the new host service. kirkaracha is working as we speak to fix it and we hope to have it ready later this week.

October 30th 2024 comment:

For full context, those DNS issues were resolved and then others popped, kirkaracha has been tackling them and monitoring them. As soon as we are certain we are good to go we’ll share access to the new site for testing.

November 23 2024 comment:

As to the new site, holidays have slowed things down a bit on a personal level, while various idiosyncratic issues have cause more problems than anticipated. Posting, commenting, and flagging are working for the most part on the site, but other aspects are proving trickier than originally thoughtwill and no, there is no ETA on when we'll be able to share more information.

posted by TheophileEscargot at 9:30 PM on December 6 [12 favorites]

I think paid moderation is important. It is the reason I finally joined the site, after years of lurking.
posted by LittleLadybug at 11:30 PM on December 6 [7 favorites]

nobody: "I mean, I also think it's pretty silly when someone chooses to button after an argument to really make their point, but it might be easier to agree to stop doing the first thing first."

I don't know Twelve Cent Archie from adam, so maybe I'm off-base, but I didn't read this as a "button-to-make-a-point" thing. They never announced they were leaving or made any big show of it. It was a quiet deletion. I just happened to find out because I was double-checking the level of activity of each former Steering Committee members and saw that twelve cent archie's was closed (tavegyl has buttoned as well, but I don't know when. Their last post/comment was in early September of this year).
posted by Bugbread at 1:39 AM on December 7 [7 favorites]

I know no one wants to hear that, hell I don't want to write that, but is the information we have to share at the moment.

FTR, I will put out there that kiraracha should not feel guilt about having a life; the decision to go ahead with a one-person underpaid rewrite inherently accepted risks and this is the absolutely predictable outcome.

That said I think ppl are quietly asking to know whether the hold-up is at the staff end, like decision-making or feature creep, or if it’s just more coding time.
posted by warriorqueen at 1:58 AM on December 7 [31 favorites]

I think paid moderation is important. It is the reason I finally joined the site, after years of lurking.

I think this perspective is important to voice so it doesn't get lost. I also still like the paid moderation (and community leadership stuff, too, like the banners and sidebar, and the free threads that had been hosted by taz and other staff), and it has value to me, though I realize why others may not feel it has value to them.

My main beef is leadership's (no names, right?) lack of vision/accountability, and at times what seems like their actual reckless and willful obstruction of the site's mission, budget, and potential to retain and grow membership. If an ED will fix that, I'd reinstate financial support.
posted by mochapickle at 2:25 AM on December 7 [6 favorites]

Now the specific reasons have disappeared and we're getting vague waffle instead.

Not quite pancakes but we're getting closer.
posted by yes I said yes I will Yes at 3:24 AM on December 7 [1 favorite]

Seconding that I am here because of paid moderators making this site bearable. I clearly remember the early 2000s here, and then on Metatalk the howls after Jessamyn became a mod and starting aggressively deleting ridiculous hate speech. And I occasionally accidentally see the dumpster fire that passes for conversation elsewhere on the internet today.
posted by hydropsyche at 4:52 AM on December 7 [18 favorites]

For those that like paid moderation: What is it about the paid model that makes you think it's better than having a structured volunteer mod corps?

I do understand that conversation on the site benefits from active moderation. What is the argument that it can only be supplied as a paying job?
posted by Miko at 6:45 AM on December 7 [11 favorites]

Is it nice words that sound smart and polite or is it transphobia?

THIS. A block button up in here is what I want for Festivus. Please, I beg. Maybe the one thing that Reddit and TiKTok get exactly right.
posted by edithkeeler at 6:52 AM on December 7 [10 favorites]

I think it's a ton of work, and I prefer to pay people to do work. I also know that labor conditions here have always been hostile against the moderators, for the whole history of the site (except maybe when Matt was the only one moderating), and people definitely deserve to be paid for working hard in a hostile environment.
posted by hydropsyche at 6:57 AM on December 7 [18 favorites]

If you think this community rates high on hostility towards moderation you haven’t moderated a lot of communities/comment sections. That doesn’t mean paying people isn’t right, but since the end of boy zone at least and as long as I’ve been here, this is overall a remarkably tolerant community with a few flashpoints.

Metatalk is visible and fiesty, I’ll give it that, and no one doubts the mods get shitty emails. But for the industry, this is not that hostile. At all. This difficult time with the non-profit transfer is harder, but the staff could have led it to be so much better.

If people are comparing this work to their normal office jobs and not to non-external online jobs like social media management then they are probably drawing the wrong conclusions. I won’t share stuff from this year’s encampment/protests that would curl your toes, but it’s been brutal, doxing, graphic and in rare cases personal.

Part of the problem here over the long term is that the narrative has been that it’s unusually hard. It is unusually badly supported and understood! The lack of management is difficult! But it’s not the moderation and honesty…a lot of companies get it worse, because there’s some director making bad calls all the time.
posted by warriorqueen at 7:15 AM on December 7 [9 favorites]

One thing is really clear: we’re never going to tackle any of Metafilter’s big problems if the same users keep coming in and amplifying their petty grievances about tiny details like site management, communication, financial management, fundraising, moderation policy, technology, and supporting the nonprofit transition.
posted by snofoam at 7:19 AM on December 7 [18 favorites]

"I think it's a ton of work"

Based on the fact that this is a low traffic bulletin board with only a couple hundred very active users, and only about a a dozen comments are deleted each day on average, you're probably going to get a lot of pushback on the idea that it's a ton of work.
posted by jonathanhughes at 7:26 AM on December 7 [18 favorites]

I know no one wants to hear that, hell I don't want to write that, but is the information we have to share at the moment. When we do have more to share we will and no, there is no ETA on when we'll be able to share more information.

I appreciate this update. I think there are many ways MetaFilter might be improved, but I think a continued effort to make clear statements like this is preferable to being left to wonder.

Another idea for BND: a standing fiscal oh-shit-ometer. That could be a bar graph with list of consequences if X or Y financial goal is not met, a fake cutesy analog dial to note if we're in the Aubergine Zone, etc. Right now we have various general and specific statements spread across many threads, but users are left to themselves to figure out a clear picture. I am not asking for this to be created at this time, but--something for the future.
posted by cupcakeninja at 7:33 AM on December 7 [3 favorites]

I think it's a ton of work

So, let's take as given that as presently structured, "it's a ton of work" (as noted above, that's a strong and apparently not well founded assertion, but let's make it the assumption for the moment). Imagine a future in which there is a paid ED/business manager who deals with the logistical side of things, and a cadre of volunteer moderators with clear guidelines and good communication who work one 4-hour shift a week, every two weeks or month. Perhaps those who do so receive a stipend (rather than an hourly wage) or some other form of recognition or incentive. Is it still a ton of work? Could that be a reasonable future vision?
posted by Miko at 7:35 AM on December 7 [6 favorites]

> a standing fiscal oh-shit-ometer.

oh i love this! get the guy who made the election needle thing for the NYT! endless grift, limitless sinecures for the obstructionist do-nothing moderators
posted by glonous keming at 7:43 AM on December 7 [3 favorites]

For those that like paid moderation: What is it about the paid model that makes you think it's better than having a structured volunteer mod corps?

For me the argument for having paid moderation would be that it provides the sort of high-quality judgment, competence, timeliness, commitment, and sense of responsibility that I think most people associate with the idea of professionalism.

We aren't getting that, though.
posted by trig at 7:55 AM on December 7 [15 favorites]

releasing the meme that's been pinging my brain on repeat for the last month
posted by phunniemee at 8:02 AM on December 7 [19 favorites]

I just can't seem to summon the outrage that so many people in MetaTalk seem to feel.

For me it's not outrage. I'd say it's frustration, but not the kind of frustration you feel at things that nobody can control. It's the frustration of watching multiple people in charge of something you find valuable treat it badly - when that's not actually an unchangeable situation - and being unable to see that thing placed in better hands.

And it's a real desire to see this place survive and, as the steering committee once phrased it, thrive.
posted by trig at 8:05 AM on December 7 [25 favorites]

endless grift, limitless sinecures for the obstructionist do-nothing moderators

This is a possibility, of course, but clearly part of the hope for MetaFilter's future is a move away from the current lack of clarity and toward a better, transparently moderated, accountable future. Do you think that's possible, glonous keming? Is there a timeline where your trust is restored here, such that you'd value a public, regularly updated visualization of MetaFilter's financials?
posted by cupcakeninja at 8:10 AM on December 7 [2 favorites]

Brandon: I know no one wants to hear that, hell I don't want to write that, but is the information we have to share at the moment. When we do have more to share we will and no, there is no ETA on when we'll be able to share more information.

What frustrates me about this is that there's no "able" here. kirkaracha is able to share information, and loup and jessamyn are able to require kirkaracha to share information unless Kirk's done a runner (which I doubt) or is otherwise incapacitated (which I really hope is not the case, but should be communicated if it is).

You're making an active choice here, so please stop phrasing it in passive "it's out of our hands" language.
posted by trig at 8:13 AM on December 7 [18 favorites]

(To be clear, I value the labor of moderators, whether volunteer or paid. I think MetaFilter has, as regularly discussed here, a lot to work through about moderation, more than Day 1 of the new ED will fix.)
posted by cupcakeninja at 8:13 AM on December 7 [2 favorites]

You're making an active choice here, so please stop phrasing it in passive "it's out of our hands" language.

I appreciate this perspective. Also, some personal anecdata: I encounter more situations these days in my work and personal life where people are going through hard times. Many for reasons frequently appearing on the blue, everything from Covid to job loss to housing loss to caregiving. It's the weight of demographics, the economy, the health care system, etc. I'm not trying to extend endless forgiveness or patience here, just saying I have truly noted an uptick in my life of situations that (for reasons of care or policy) just aren't open to public discussion. It's frustrating at times, but in those cases where I hear what actually happened, sometimes months later, I understand why Jane Doe wasn't available.
posted by cupcakeninja at 8:19 AM on December 7 [6 favorites]

What frustrates me about this is that there's no "able" here. kirkaracha is able to share information, and loup and jessamyn are able to require kirkaracha to share information unless Kirk's done a runner (which I doubt) or is otherwise incapacitated (which I really hope is not the case, but should be communicated if it is).

Serious question that is seeking advice on this:

If someone is able to publically share information and has not and no one has required them to publically share information and we've communicated that there are personal and technical issues going on, how would folks suggest that information be communicated more clearly on this matter?
posted by Brandon Blatcher (staff) at 8:30 AM on December 7 [1 favorite]

yes, i do think it's possible there is a such a timeline where i can trust the people running this site and be invested both emotionally and financially in the site's continued existence. it happened in the past, it could happen again.

we need modlog.

we need someone who is not constantly 6 months behind publishing documents and who know how to post reports where the links don't expire in 24 hours.

we need someone on staff who's willing and able to read all the comment threads on the site meta-discussion area, whether that continues to be MeTa or some other alternative. it doesn't have to be instant hotline-level response, but they need to be able to respond to user complaints, questions, and comments without having to pass it through a globe-spanning admin committee.

we need a clear, simple set of guidelines, 4 to 6 statements with limited digression and expansion, that both the users and the moderators adhere to, not a byzantine trap of nested gotchas that only get weaponized against users that make the mods feel bad when they get called out on mistakes.

users need block functions and hide comment/post functions.

if we had that, i think a financial MetaMeter would be a useful thing to have.
posted by glonous keming at 8:31 AM on December 7 [15 favorites]

You're making an active choice here, so please stop phrasing it in passive "it's out of our hands" language.

Yes they are. Just like they're making an active choice to not share information on why the cookbook, which as a reminder was supposed to be done in October as part of the fundraiser, has not been finished.
posted by bowmaniac at 8:34 AM on December 7 [5 favorites]

how would folks suggest that information be communicated more clearly on this matter?

New site status:
- All development is currently paused for personal time during the holidays. Build work is expected to resume January X.

- The next milestones involve technical issues x, y, and z.
posted by phunniemee at 8:38 AM on December 7 [26 favorites]

Mod note: Just like they're making an active choice to not share information on why the cookbook, which as a reminder was supposed to be done in October as part of the fundraiser, has not been finished]

I don't believe anyone has asked publically and those who asked privately were given information similar to this:

The individual working on the cookbook is currently unresponsive to communications and all working files currently reside with them. We will continue to reach out to them and when we have an update on the status, we'll communicate what it is.
posted by Brandon Blatcher (staff) at 8:44 AM on December 7 [2 favorites]

Mod note: Thanks phunniemee, that's a good template!
posted by Brandon Blatcher (staff) at 8:45 AM on December 7 [3 favorites]

"the holidays" happen every year and probably should have been factored in; there should have been clarity between mods and the developer as to what features would need to work for a preview to be released; you shouldn't have said it was ready for users during the fundraiser. How does it not embarrass the mods to have missed their self-imposed deadlines for months now?

Also, who is the "someone" below? It's nigh unparseable - all people want is a sign that work is progressing.

If someone is able to publically share information and has not and no one has required them to publically share information and we've communicated that there are personal and technical issues going on

posted by sagc at 8:46 AM on December 7 [6 favorites]

Why on earth wasn't the "we lost all the files in the cookbook project to an unresponsive volunteer" in the site update?

Like, am I reading that right? You can't even just do it yourselves, because reasons, and the mods are just throwing up their hands and saying "well, guess it's never getting done"?
posted by sagc at 8:47 AM on December 7 [10 favorites]

OK, sounds like you're saying a lot needs to be fixed before working on a financial MetaMeter. Thank you for saying so, glonous keming.

Brandon_Blatcher said: If someone is able to publically share information and has not and no one has required them to publically share information and we've communicated that there are personal and technical issues going on, how would folks suggest that information be communicated more clearly on this matter?

I gotta bounce for the day, but this paragraph has some possible nuances. phunniemee's wording is great, if that's the situation. That said, there's a fightier reading of the 'graf that implies that someone's not responding to being told to do their job, and that said refusal falls into the "personal and technical issues" category. If that's what you mean, then that's a management issue. MetaTalk rules and customs about naming responsible parties undercuts clear understanding on these sorts of issues, and, of course, whether public flaying of staff or users is helpful is another question.

Also: I don't believe anyone has asked publically and those who asked privately were given information similar to this:

Sometimes I feel like communication in MetaTalk is like an unpleasant game of Zork. You have to use the right word and action to get a response. I don't think that's intentional, but --to the post theme-- I hope a BND will involve formal, clear answers on ongoing projects that don't have to be parsed or sought across multiple threads.
posted by cupcakeninja at 8:48 AM on December 7 [13 favorites]

And lol at the idea of "asking publicly" as the way to get answers. Someone could really make a point by going back through the past, say, four months of threads, pulling out any unanswered public questions, and posting them here.
posted by sagc at 8:49 AM on December 7 [13 favorites]

Thanks phunniemee, that's a good template!

Happy to help. I only got to this point by my experience of working in an office on projects with tens of stakeholders.
posted by phunniemee at 8:50 AM on December 7 [17 favorites]

a cadre of volunteer moderators with clear guidelines and good communication who work one 4-hour shift a week, every two weeks or month.

OK, so there are 336 hours in a two-week period, divided by four, means you'd need at least 84 people willing to take a four-hour shift every two weeks to meet this demand. Are there actually that many of us here, who care enough and would be willing to do it and can meet a reasonable expectation of having good moderation skills, to keep a schedule like that going? Because that sounds like a lot, especially to keep it going week after week, year after year. If I had to guesstimate how many MeFites would be willing to take a four-hour volunteer mod shift every couple of weeks I'd put it at around 10 to 20, maybe? Even that may be high. If the pitch were "or else MetaFilter goes away forever", well, I guess I'd sign up, but I have a lot less on my plate than most people.
posted by Daily Alice at 8:50 AM on December 7 [9 favorites]

Brandon, loup, jessamyn: it's this level of handholding being necessary that makes people concerned about the capabilities of management.

I fully expect all new-site updates to now take the form of exactly two bullet points, one describing a pause, and one listing the work done on exactly three items
posted by sagc at 8:53 AM on December 7 [15 favorites]

Hey Brandon, please send me what you packed up for the cookbook person and I’ll just start fresh. I do editing and desktop publishing for a living and I have bandwidth this month.

I can post daily updates here as I’m putting it together.

Really, please reach out. It would be so nice to get this done by the end of 2024. Thanks!
posted by mochapickle at 8:55 AM on December 7 [31 favorites]

Why on earth wasn't the "we lost all the files in the cookbook project to an unresponsive volunteer" in the site update?

To give compete information, because we can't assume that we will otherwise get it, I was told the unresponsive person is not a volunteer and was being paid to do the cookbook.
posted by bowmaniac at 9:01 AM on December 7 [12 favorites]

and for the record you were publicly asked about that on Nov 23 with no response.
posted by bowmaniac at 9:07 AM on December 7 [13 favorites]

Also, who is the "someone" below? It's nigh unparseable - all people want is a sign that work is progressing

The developer of the new site and if seems odd that I'm avoiding their name, it's because anyone interested knows who it is and I am not comfortable making this about them (potentially have people pile on them) and prefer to focus on the issues.

Like, am I reading that right? You can't even just do it yourselves, because reasons, and the mods are just throwing up their hands and saying "well, guess it's never getting done"?

Literally no one said that.

Why on earth wasn't the "we lost all the files in the cookbook project to an unresponsive volunteer" in the site update?

Because it's not factual and it's not helpful to be publically imply that someone is incompetent.

Hey Brandon, please send me what you packed up for the cookbook person and I’ll just start fresh. I do editing and desktop publishing for a living and I have bandwidth this month.

I can post daily updates here as I’m putting it together.

Really, please reach out. It would be so nice to get this done by the end of 2024. Thanks!


To be clear *I* don't have anything packed up, but will get that information. No one who has that information is on shift this weekend, so I wouldn't expect an answer till monday or tuesday.

Also, do you use the Indesign suite? I have a background in using it and producing print matter so I could help out in some form or faction or just making sure you have what you need. Feel free to DM me if you want so basic info about what's what for now, which isn't a lot.

To be clear, this isn't necessarily done deal in terms of you in particular doing it, 'cause it's important to communicate to the original person that we'd like to move is they're unable to finish it. Also note that this was being done using some of the funds from the "Member Contribution Budget" so that would need to be hammered out

Obviously going forward MetaFilter should have some basic clear terms of what a particular project is, what the person doing it providing, several due times/status checks aka timeline, and a backup plan, along with regular public updates.

I wouldn't recommend doing daily updates, every few days or weekly is fine, but totally your call obviously, if you work on this.

and for the record you were publicly asked about that on Nov 23 with no response.

Very true! I did respond privately to them because I was unsure of how to respond publicly in terms of an in process business contract on a project I wasn't involved in. I'm learning as I go, so apologies. That person was also informed of pretty much everything else said here and since no one else asked publically, I pretty much just let it go.
posted by Brandon Blatcher (staff) at 9:14 AM on December 7 [3 favorites]

Sorry, I guess I *was* wrong; you seem to have lost a bunch of files to an unresponsive contractor.
posted by sagc at 9:16 AM on December 7 [5 favorites]

OK, so there are 336 hours in a two-week period, divided by four, means you'd need at least 84 people willing to take a four-hour shift every two weeks to meet this demand.

We don’t have that much mod coverage now, so we wouldn’t need it in this scenario, either. A more reasonable 8 hours a day of coverage would be fine, and that’s 28 4-hour shifts per fortnight. More realistically, if there were 10-20 volunteer mods there would almost certainly be someone who could pop in if an alert went off for a highly flagged post or comment. It might not be necessary at all to have people on shift.
posted by snofoam at 9:17 AM on December 7 [5 favorites]

Also, you absolutely already implied all sort of shit when you said the person was unresponsive. Like, what did I say to make it sound like they were incompetent? Sounds like projection.
posted by sagc at 9:17 AM on December 7 [6 favorites]

Why on earth wasn't the "we lost all the files in the cookbook project to an unresponsive volunteer" in the site update?

Because it's not factual and it's not helpful to be publically imply that someone is incompetent.

"The person working on it has not been heard from for a while, so there is no ETA on when it'll be available. Said person has all the original files, so things are in limbo at the moment."
posted by bowmaniac at 9:19 AM on December 7 [7 favorites]

Thanks for the quick response re: the cookbook, Brandon. Let’s be in touch in the next few days if all are amenable and the cookbook person has not yet made contact. All good.
posted by mochapickle at 9:19 AM on December 7 [8 favorites]

If [the developer of the new site] is able to publically share information and has not and no one has required them to publically share information and we've communicated that there are personal and technical issues going on, how would folks suggest that information be communicated more clearly on this matter?

Am I missing a word? If the developer is able to share information, but is not, wouldn't the obvious answer to this question be "they should share it"? That's why I asked.
posted by sagc at 9:20 AM on December 7 [4 favorites]

@bowmaniac, is that the original comment before edits? Brandon's comment says "working files" now, which makes more sense.

Still, doesn't really explain why they didn't just get someone else to do it.
posted by sagc at 9:22 AM on December 7 [1 favorite]

to cover the thin nighttime hours, theoretically a functioning new site could auto-hide comments that receive a certain number of flag, with a moderator email/alert/whatever to review the auto-mod (something that they probably should be doing anyway) when the next mod shift occurs. that way if someone spews a bunch of odious nonsense in the middle of the night, at least it's a chance it's not just laying there steaming for 14 hours.
posted by glonous keming at 9:22 AM on December 7 [4 favorites]

If the developer is able to share information, but is not

And if kirk is not able to share information, are they okay? We might be extra pissy about site management right now but we're all still a community first and kirk is one of us. Holler if they need support.
posted by phunniemee at 9:24 AM on December 7 [11 favorites]

I was also trying to avoid names, for many of the same reasons Brandon lists; I don't even really see this as a development problem (I think it's great that we have the features that exist so quickly!) but as a management-to-community communication problem.
posted by sagc at 9:27 AM on December 7 [2 favorites]

@bowmaniac, is that the original comment before edits? Brandon's comment says "working files" now, which makes more sense.

I quoted people directly without changing anything

Still, doesn't really explain why they didn't just get someone else to do it.

"Things are quiet, but it's also the holidays, so people tend to be slower about responding. I wouldn't worry about it until after the holidays."
posted by bowmaniac at 9:29 AM on December 7 [1 favorite]

Mods: Stop saying things publicly in Meta; email us privately.
Mods: Nobody's asked publicly for this information so we haven't made any public updates.
Mods: Someone asked publicly for this information but we answered privately.
posted by trig at 9:29 AM on December 7 [33 favorites]

Mod note: Let’s be in touch in the next few days if all are amenable and the cookbook person has not yet made contact.

So the cookbook status: currently in limbo as the original person working on it unresponsive. We'll reach out once or twice more, then see whether mochapickle is still available to do it and go from there.

Mods: Someone asked publicly for this information but we answered privately.

Yep, that was me, not mods.

To repeat what I explained above "I did respond privately to them because I was unsure of how to respond publicly in terms of an in process business contract on a project I wasn't involved in. I'm learning as I go, so apologies. That person was also informed of pretty much everything else said here and since no one else asked publically, I pretty much just let it go."
posted by Brandon Blatcher (staff) at 9:33 AM on December 7 [1 favorite]

Yep, that was me, not mods.

wat
posted by sagc at 9:35 AM on December 7 [14 favorites]

Brandon's comment says "working files" now, which makes more sense.

Does it? How much funding is this cookbook expected to raise? How much community spirit is it supposed to create? How much is worth spending on it?

I would think the original working files would be the recipes and details about the comments and commenters referenced. This unresponsive contractor might have some design files that they created, but anyone halfway competent should be able to put together basic cookbook formatting in a smallish amount of time. If the contractor isn't doing the work, the contract should be terminated and assigned to someone else (and any contract should have had a deadline...) And whether anyone should be paid to do more than "basic" depends on the answers to the questions above.


I don't really care about the cookbook (I don't think it's going to raise much at all), but I do care about this general "oh well, people aren't doing work or even communicating about it, what can ya do" approach to management that's been endemic with everyone from jessamyn all the way down.


On preview:
Yep, that was me, not mods.

Brandon, do you see yourself as a paid professional representing an organization, or not.
posted by trig at 9:37 AM on December 7 [14 favorites]

Mod note: Brandon, do you see yourself as a paid professional representing an organization, or not

Oh sure, just clarifying that it was me, my decision, to answer privately and then move on, not a discussion with other mods, so blame me, not the group, if that presents a problem.
posted by Brandon Blatcher (staff) at 9:39 AM on December 7 [2 favorites]

I am confused about this new "not using people's names" thing. Especially when it is already known who the people are? What is the point? Is it like spelling out certain words when speaking in front of small children? Is this just a personal choice by trying but often confused mod? Is it a policy supported by absentee owner or cannot deliver anything on time unless it is a multimillion dollar project admin? I'm just confused and I'm not even sure if I am doing this right.
posted by snofoam at 9:41 AM on December 7 [11 favorites]

Just so people can say "stop throwing Brandon under the bus"? Nah, man. It's Metafilter that's taking these actions, not our old, non-mod commenting buddy BB.

First step to getting your shit together as a moderation team, is, apparently, to realize that you don't have your shit together as a moderation team.
posted by sagc at 9:41 AM on December 7 [8 favorites]

and the thing is this isn't necessarily even about the cookbook as much as it is about a pattern of behavior regarding sharing information and transparency.

It's like pulling teeth to get an answer from anyone "in charge" and when we do get an answer it's at best incomplete and at worst misleading.
posted by bowmaniac at 9:43 AM on December 7 [12 favorites]

It's frustrating that mods have been answering public questions privately, and then assuming that if no one continues to ask publicly that no one else cares, but then when people do continue to ask, we're getting painted as harassing the mods.

Please answer public questions publicly. If someone is asking here, it's often because they want to make sure the entire community knows about something. (This happened to me when I asked about the process of applying for the member-contribution stipend thing; I asked publicly not because I wanted to propose a project but because I didn't think that information had actually been shared with the community and I thought it should be, and then loup followed up with MeMail which was entirely beside the point.) Or else you should be assuming that if one person has that question, unless it's bizarrely specific to that user, then more people probably have the same question and you can save time and frustration on all sides by making the answer publicly available.
posted by lapis at 9:47 AM on December 7 [29 favorites]

Also, even if I don't have the same question that someone posted, it's demoralizing to see public questions left unanswered. That's one of the things that's causing people to have little faith that the moderators are taking any accountability for anything.
posted by lapis at 9:49 AM on December 7 [24 favorites]

you just gotta change your mental framework when reading mod comments. every comment is a puzzle to be solved. gamify it.

it's a MetroidVania. you may not have the item (information) you need to solve it right now, so go try something else, see what happens. ask a different question in a different thread. you might unlock a new item that allows you to backtrack and solve a puzzle you couldn't solve 8 months ago, which sets off a cascade of going to new areas to find new puzzles.
posted by glonous keming at 9:50 AM on December 7 [14 favorites]

Oh sure, just clarifying that it was me, my decision, to answer privately and then move on, not a discussion with other mods, so blame me, not the group, if that presents a problem.

It's part of a longstanding pattern with loup and other mods. Unless loup, as your manager, makes it clear this does "present a problem" and that it needs to not happen again, I'm comfortable holding "the mods" as a whole accountable. I'll add that you (collectively) may have decided that only one mod should be interacting with the membership in Meta, but that doesn't mean only that one mod is accountable for anything. You are a team, like it or not.

The case for "this staff is not acting like professionals and therefore it doesn't make sense to employ them as professionals" shouldn't keep getting stronger and stronger. Please try to support, with your actions, the efforts of all the people who have been arguing that the current staff should not be let go. Efforts that apparently include this BND thread. Being a pro doesn't mean stonewalling with "I'm afraid that's not possible" language, or playing around with who's responsible for what. It means doing a job reliably and at a high level of quality.
posted by trig at 9:53 AM on December 7 [12 favorites]

(As a side note: I have been part of a LOT of volunteer-staffed projects where people worked a few hours every week or two. I do NOT think that this is a good idea for metafilter moderation and here is why:

1. The more volunteers you have, the more volunteer training and wrangling you need to do and you will REALLY need a volunteer coordinator/trainer who is dedicated to that role
2. The more volunteers you have, the harder it gets to have clear, consistent decision-making among them
3. The more volunteers you have, the more likely it is that one of them will be unexpectedly unable to do their shift, because it's perversely harder to commit to an infrequent but regular short shift
4. You will lack institutional memory because there will be a lot of churn - it's easy to assume that there won't be, but with that number of people doing short shifts, there will be
5. A lot of people will be super hyped when they start and then lose interest and soft-quit
6. People will take a long, long time to develop baseline skills and judgement, because they will be working infrequent short shifts.
7. When people are volunteers, you usually get a hard core of very committed people and then a bunch of extremely less committed people who either can't do what they wish they could or else semi-consciously deprioritize because it's unpaid, and the hard core burn out.

I'm not saying that there is no place for volunteer mods but a large number of them doing short shifts at infrequent intervals is IMO going to cause new and different problems rather than make everything great.)
posted by Frowner at 9:54 AM on December 7 [51 favorites]

also, just for the record, the last mail I sent to Brandon (Dec 4) ended with "Someone needs to find out what's going on and inform the community."
I did not receive a private response.
Because we pretty much just let it go and moved on I guess. Due to the holidays. That have been going on since October.
posted by bowmaniac at 9:56 AM on December 7 [8 favorites]

(There are also privacy issues wrt member data that I think any volunteer solution would need to work out. Though technically that's an issue today too, and I'm not sure there's any oversight about it - I'd trust jessamyn on privacy, but she's explicitly not holding herself responsible for anything.)
posted by trig at 9:57 AM on December 7 [4 favorites]

going to cause new and different problems

At this point I will happily take new and different problems.
posted by Diskeater at 10:01 AM on December 7 [6 favorites]

Mod note: It's frustrating that mods have been answering public questions privately, and then assuming that if no one continues to ask publicly that no one else cares, but then when people do continue to ask, we're getting painted as harassing the mods.

To be clear, after checking my mail, I was talking about a single question, so there are not multiple occurrences or even plural as far as I know.

The case for "this staff is not acting like professionals and therefore it doesn't make sense to employ them as professionals" shouldn't keep getting stronger and stronger. Please try to support, with your actions, the efforts of all the people who have been arguing that the current staff should not be let go.

At this point, I personally sleep ok with the belief i'm acting in MeFi's best interests, good things are happening, albeit slower than anyone likes, while recognizing there's always more to learn and not everyone will happy with specific acts or decisions. But in the long term, things are and will be better.

If folks and the incoming board thinks people need to be let go, on day one of the transition or day two hundred, so be it. In the meantime, we'll keep moving forward and doing the best we can and I hope we can find a place to meet where we all generally agree on what moving forward looks like.
posted by Brandon Blatcher (staff) at 10:14 AM on December 7 [5 favorites]

Out to lunch, back in little while, but focusing on doing some of the background work as opposed to replying so quickly to questions.
posted by Brandon Blatcher (staff) at 10:14 AM on December 7

For me, the first requirement of a "brand new day" is that we move on from the old one in real, concrete ways. The current "system" of no leadership or accountability is not sustainable for much longer. It's very sad to see the departure of so many long-term contributors, including those who generously donated their time to the SC, and there will only be more if this continues to drag on.

I would like to see the transfer to the nonprofit happen as quickly as possible, even if it is not a hundred percent perfect, and then an ED put in place ASAP, even if it is only an interim contract at first. That person will then need to take responsibility for project-managing the transition, and developing management frameworks including a mechanism for addressing the performance and productivity of the staff. The current practice of public performance reviews here on MeTa is unfair to both them and the community, but there are obvious issues that must be dealt with. Pretending those don't exist would not be helpful.

I've offered several times to contribute to a dedicated fund to hire a professional to stick-handle this thing through, and I reiterate that suggestion again now. I like this place and want to see it continue, but I can't be optimistic at the way things are going now.
posted by rpfields at 10:25 AM on December 7 [20 favorites]

So how many questions have been asked publicly over the years that did not receive a response publicly only privately? Why does the staff do this when this is a community that only operates as a community via text on the website. It's not like we meet in person and can relay any of that info received privately from the staff. This is mindblowing; I honestly did not realize that the mods message folks privately that much. If someone wanted a private response they would not post it on these front facing sites.... 🤯🤯🤯🤯🤯 that is what builds community for us all to hear the responses.
posted by mxjudyliza at 10:25 AM on December 7 [12 favorites]

I think management should do the right thing: The moderators should decide among themselves how to shrink the team by half or three-quarters early into the new year, then create an end-by date and stick to it. It's clear the site can't afford to pay an annual salary for an ED (or community manager) without making that money available, especially after a failed fundraiser.

Miko and Warrior Queen, how long would it take to search for, hire and onboard an ED?
posted by Violet Blue at 10:48 AM on December 7 [4 favorites]

I don’t know what kind of jobs all y’all have, but bland statements that leave a lot unsaid and have to be parsed carefully have been a feature of most of my workplaces. When I see something here that doesn’t really respond to the question, I assume that the responder is trying to help someone save face, as seems to be the case here. Is it functional, not really, but in a sense it is “professional.”

I don’t know if this is on topic enough, but my mind is spinning doing the math on paid moderation. I think having an ED is nonnegotiable given the nonprofit shift — someone needs to fill out the 990. That ED is going to need a budget that can pay for, I would think, a periodic audit by a professional and access to lawyers in a pinch (though maybe a board member will be one, it’s traditional; but they may not be able to donate unlimited lawyer time). And we obviously need someone technical at least on a contractor basis to handle some amount of site management, and possibly a lot of it in the short term if we want to continue the upgrade. After ED salary + benefits (?) + those budget items, how much is actually left for paid moderation? Will $250K even cover all of what we need before moderation? I expect this will be the ED’s job to figure out, esp in terms of whether the pie can be grown stably, but I think we as a community should not get too prescriptive about this in the context of what is ultimately not a very big budget for a corporate entity, even if it seems like a huge budget for a website.
posted by eirias at 10:48 AM on December 7 [5 favorites]

50% of the former steering commitee, 6 of the 12 of those who at one time were some of the most dedicated and caring members of this site, have either buttoned or not commented on the entire site in at least 3 months. one of them buttoned in this very thread. that's metafilter moving forward. that's the Compensated Moderation team making good things happen.

granted, someone not commenting for 3 months doesn't spell doom in-and-of-itself but as a metric it is at best, neutral, not positive.
posted by glonous keming at 10:56 AM on December 7 [27 favorites]

Is it functional, not really, but in a sense it is “professional.”

Yeah, I guess there are two main associations with the word "professional":
- responsible, skilled, competent, knowledgeable, energetic, etc.
- corporate-style language, wagon circling, bureaucracy, fear of liability, opacity and vagueness, sinecures, loyalty to one's own continued employment or comfort over any public interest, etc.

For me personally, when I use "professional" I mean it in the first sense and absolutely not the second. Professional mods would have the first set of traits. I feel like we see too much of the second here.
posted by trig at 11:09 AM on December 7 [12 favorites]

Discretion about what information should be shared, when and by whom, is absolutely part of being professional. Have y'all not had jobs with mandatory privacy training? It's not just wagon-circling or fear of liability or other descriptors from that negative bucket.

I understand there's a history of vagueness and poor communication at play here, and that this is especially contentious when we're talking about anything like deliverables, missed deadlines and accountability. But in my job, when someone is vague there is almost always a good reason, and painting that as "professionalism [derogatory]" is just not accurate.
posted by neuromodulator at 1:02 PM on December 7 [5 favorites]

But in my job, when someone is vague there is almost always a good reason, and painting that as "professionalism [derogatory]" is just not accurate.

Honestly, if you were to read through this and other recent threads, you might see things differently. Based on the site demographics, I'm sure some of the people who are deeply frustrated or have quit the site also have experience working in normal, professional jobs where people are sometimes vague for a good reason. Personally, I don't think that's the case here.

I also think that coming in and assuming that the point of view of others in the thread is "just not accurate" because you (lucky you!) have a job where people act professionally, is a little dismissive of what so many other users are saying, clearly, with examples. It could be something to consider.
posted by snofoam at 1:15 PM on December 7 [10 favorites]

Miko and Warrior Queen, how long would it take to search for, hire and onboard an ED?

I can’t give a good answer to this because time is different at MetaFilter Inc. In a functional organization where you’re hiring for a pre-existing role, then three months. In this organization? There’s no way to predict. It’s a project to manage and confidence is zero that anyone can manage it. Because what has to happen? The board and LLC need to collaborate on a job description, which is going to require some other decision making about nonprofit operation. Then, there needs to be a financial plan that can guarantee the ED will be paid. Then some hiring criteria need to be developed, some sort of screening and interview process defined, and actual interviews and candidate communications.

Could this be done with competent leadership? Sure, happens all the time. Does the existing team seem ready to pull this off? Not at all.

Regarding the volunteer hypothetical, remember the alternatives are 1) declining mefi continues in its present track until bankrupt or 2) declining mefi limos along and ends up being volunteer managed anyway but without structure and planning, just because they’re the last people standing. We can’t have 24 hour modding, but it’s probably not needed. We’ve had a lot of mystification about how hard the job is, but it’s only hard because there is no real structure. With a clear set of guidelines, clear boundaries about when to escalate, it shouldn’t be hard at all. Add in some automation, and it’s even easier. I don’t really see any other possible future. A quarter mil to run this site is just nuts.
posted by Miko at 2:12 PM on December 7 [25 favorites]

As to the new site, holidays have slowed things down a bit on a personal level, while various idiosyncratic issues have cause more problems than anticipated. Posting, commenting, and flagging are working for the most part on the site, but other aspects are proving trickier than originally thought.

Is there any way for members to help out with this? I'm thinking I can specifically help out with any of:

• coding features
• testing features
• host a demo/sandbox version so people can see what's happening (I can even pay for a VPS)
• set up a public Github repo
• set up CI / Github actions
• do code reviews for pull requests
• triage issues
• provide moral support/sympathy for coding-related misery

These are things I currently do for a day job and end up doing on weekends and evenings too, so it'd be nice to do them for MeFi.

It feels like it's not easy to give help, possibly because it's hard for the folks who need it to ask for it and be sure they're not just going to get given a hard time for what they have/haven't done or are/aren't doing, or that they're not going to spend any time they save on coordinating.

I can imagine it looks like it's not going to work, for similar reasons to Frowner's reasons volunteer moderation might not be a panacea. I also know I've had projects at my day job that I took on and was slogging through that would get slower and slower and more and more gnarly and it honestly helped to just acknowledge that and ask for help, even if all that happened was someone else came in and said, "you know, we can probably just ship this".
posted by pulposus at 2:37 PM on December 7 [9 favorites]

(lucky you!)

lol ok
posted by neuromodulator at 3:06 PM on December 7

In case it helps to clarify, I wasn’t being facetious about being lucky to have a job in a functioning organization. Or trying to imply that you don’t deserve it. I just think it is a fortunate position to be in.
posted by snofoam at 3:18 PM on December 7 [3 favorites]

I don’t know what kind of jobs all y’all have, but bland statements that leave a lot unsaid and have to be parsed carefully have been a feature of most of my workplaces.

Yes, but in those situations I was being paid to be there, not being asked to pay the people who were being vague when I asked questions.
posted by lapis at 3:33 PM on December 7 [16 favorites]

This is one nutty hospital.
posted by Lemkin at 3:49 PM on December 7 [10 favorites]

Something is known by me and others in a position to know, and I assure you everything is as it is. What is known is by some who know it, who have a right to know. Someday, things will change and the knowing will be different.
posted by CtrlAltD at 6:04 PM on December 7 [17 favorites]

The board and LLC need to collaborate on a job description, which is going to require some other decision making about nonprofit operation. Then, there needs to be a financial plan that can guarantee the ED will be paid. Then some hiring criteria need to be developed, some sort of screening and interview process defined, and actual interviews and candidate communications.

Thanks Miko. Do you, Warrior Queen or any other small business types in the house have any thoughts as to whether the nonprofit angle could be skipped for now? Thus, the task would then become simply hiring a small business "fixer" of some sort, who could come in, help set up an organizational structure, handle marketing, and plan for sustainability?
posted by Violet Blue at 6:29 PM on December 7 [1 favorite]

Rephrasing because I'm not sure if my question was clear: Would it make the transition quicker and easier to remove the nonprofit angle?
posted by Violet Blue at 7:10 PM on December 7

would then become simply hiring a small business "fixer

remember, there's a cap at $27 an hour for moderation at 19 hrs per day. first you have to ask yourself is it worth it to hire an organization to fix miscommunication between the current ownership, the transition, and the questions of community members.
I'd imagine , after studying meta filters business structure, the first thing as a fixer I would ask is what needs to be fixed and this would usually entail a list of things broken, perceived broken, miscommunicated etc.
perhaps a concentrated list of these concerns could be drawn up from this point on so it could have maybe like a fresh start of all problems that are going on that the mods could address like one big mega post of problems.I'm going on because I think some of you don't think some of these problems have been fixed so if we start again with a nice fresh list that mod team can look over, a nice comprehensive one you know put in a PDF or something and then let the chips fall were they may call the problems of the brand new day.
posted by clavdivs at 7:29 PM on December 7 [2 favorites]

Kamala Harris will be looking for work in six weeks. Maybe her talents are what we need.
posted by Lemkin at 7:59 PM on December 7 [5 favorites]

Serious question that is seeking advice on this:

If someone is able to publically share information and has not and no one has required them to publically share information and we've communicated that there are personal and technical issues going on, how would folks suggest that information be communicated more clearly on this matter?

Tell us what the "technical issues" actually are.

Tell us what the timescale and plan is for resolving the "personal issues".

E.g. "There are personal issues which we expect to be resolved by the end of January, if they are not resolved by then we will look for other developers to complete the work".
posted by TheophileEscargot at 1:31 AM on December 8 [9 favorites]

Maybe a BND for the site includes not pretending we have an editorial board and just letting people post about stuff? How does a poster know that an AP link to a detailed article about a major news event is not sufficient for a post? Who is the “we” who were hoping for something different in this case? Do all posts need to include a bibliography of context and background?
posted by snofoam at 2:14 AM on December 8 [19 favorites]

(Looks like in that case this post, from a bit earlier, would have been the one to stay up, and deleting that one was probably an easy call. But since they went with the more polite/delicate option for deletion-reason there, then the second post didn't clear that already-stated bar, I guess.)
posted by nobody at 4:10 AM on December 8 [4 favorites]

Thanks, nobody! I agree that (from what I can see) an article that's just a headline with a one minute video isn't a great post for this. A detailed article about the same topic seems fine to me. This makes me wonder, do we really have no way to moderate or comment about our moderation that can distinguish between these two things? Umpteen years of paid moderation and we're not there yet? Is the problem that the moderation team isn't able to communicate clearly enough? A more direct deletion reason (e.g., "a link to a one-sentence headline doesn't give enough info to make this a good post about this event") would have been clear, probably most people would agree with the reason, and it wouldn't create artificial criteria for an "acceptable" post about the topic. And, obviously, when the post is deleted, people making a new post about this won't necessarily have seen the deleted post or the reason for deletion, so there's no mechanism for helping people make a better post.
posted by snofoam at 4:51 AM on December 8 [10 favorites]

Haven't we also been told that it's OK to make a post on the blue with a single-sentence?

The “Newsfilter” item on the FAQ indicates only that “a short news bulletin if there's a breaking news story” would be inappropriate.
posted by NotLost at 5:06 AM on December 8 [5 favorites]

If someone is able to publically share information and has not and no one has required them to publically share information

This wording confuses me. Does this mean no one has asked for an update?
posted by Vatnesine at 6:47 AM on December 8 [7 favorites]

A Syrian executive with many years experience of keeping wayward people in line has suddenly become available.
posted by Lemkin at 7:41 AM on December 8 [8 favorites]

I think management should do the right thing: The moderators should decide among themselves how to shrink the team by half or three-quarters early into the new year, then create an end-by date and stick to it.

I'm struggling to see how managers not doing the sucky part of managing is "the right thing". Because, unless your plan also includes a generous severance package: forcing people to choose which one of them has to experience a negative life changing event is literally something that villains do in horror movies.

If Metafilter really needs to cut back on mod hours, figuring out the best way to do that is management's job. I'm confident that if you wrote into Ask a Manager and said "I'm planning on asking my staff which one of them should be laid off" you'd get soundly told to do your damn job and make tough decisions.
posted by Gygesringtone at 7:51 AM on December 8 [15 favorites]

Another aspect of the volunteer mod idea is that having read a lot of Metatalk threads, I find it difficult to think who'd want to be a mod here?

I don't entirely understand a lot of the history despite having read a lot of it, but I have very little trust that the "if you're not with us, you're against us" vibes would grow into anything I'd feel safe with being part of.
posted by Zumbador at 7:53 AM on December 8 [20 favorites]

Do you, Warrior Queen or any other small business types in the house have any thoughts as to whether the nonprofit angle could be skipped for now?

Yes, and I suggested this a few threads back. Just hiring in - even on contract - an interim ED to clean things up and reset operations is what I would do immediately. This is normal even in nonprofits and certainly in the business world - someone to straighten things out and then hand off to a future hire.

Zumbador: most of the ill will is coming from the lack of actual leadership on the site. Fix that, and we’d have happier users. There will always be issues but it’s not like users who complain are just bad people who will complain about anything. They’re seeing specific problems and needs and want them addressed. Responsiveness to those things will improve relationships.
posted by Miko at 9:06 AM on December 8 [20 favorites]

is there any plan to make an archive available of all the content of the entire site? a local backup for us users to keep?

how big is MetaFilter in terms of bytes? can frimble just tar all that up and post a link to MEGA?
posted by glonous keming at 9:07 AM on December 8 [4 favorites]

I find it difficult to think who'd want to be a mod here?

I wouldn't mind a few hours a week shift.

To be clear, I would be a terrible mod. I hate following rules and I love to watch a shit show. I do communicate reasonably well and I generally do what I say I'm going to do though, so I guess it'd be a tough call when the applications are rolling in.

But no one here scares me. I've been deep in the AskMe questions for years. You people have to ask a forum for help before calling a customer support number. What are you going to do, start a strongly worded postcard writing campaign against me? Please.

Said gently, with love. Or something resembling it. Probably.
posted by phunniemee at 9:19 AM on December 8 [51 favorites]

I’d love to be a volunteer mod. It seems fun and pretty chill.
posted by bowbeacon at 9:31 AM on December 8 [2 favorites]

Rephrasing because I'm not sure if my question was clear: Would it make the transition quicker and easier to remove the nonprofit angle?

I don't think not being a nonprofit is an option on the table currently. The "transition" is a transition to being a nonprofit, by definition. That's why there's a transition happening.
posted by limeonaire at 9:39 AM on December 8 [6 favorites]

is there any plan to make an archive available of all the content of the entire site? a local backup for us users to keep?

As grievous as the loss of MetaFilter as a living entity would be, that would be dwarfed by the loss of the historical record.

If someone ever does have to turn the lights out, I fervently hope they’ll upload all the text to the Internet Archive first. Maybe jessamyn knows someone who could help.
posted by Lemkin at 9:48 AM on December 8 [3 favorites]

i'm 100% sure Jason Scott would slurp it all up assuming he doesn't hate us
posted by glonous keming at 9:57 AM on December 8 [2 favorites]

I want to share a recent experience.

About a month ago Katullus posted

"interpretation of the entire history of jazz in one piece of music"

Katullus to my mind is one of our best contributors. His posts are on a level to which we should all aspire. They are complex, witty and deep -- Oh, I could keep piling on the superlatives until the cows come home. I feel unworthy as to so much as touch the hem of his garment. But in that post he made a typo in the next to last sentence. See if you can spot it:

She was at the height of her fame when she died in 1981, having performed in the White House and taught Mr. Roger to scat.

OK, I cheated and highlighted the obvious.

Anyhow Katullus and I exchanged emails about it. He was going to let it slide but I am fussy so I turned in a Contact Form on it and ended up getting in the most insane back and forth with loup over it.

All loup had to was add an 's' so it read Mr. Rogers instead of Mr. Roger. It was that simple. But he dummied up instead. And we went back and forth and and back forth not quite ad infinitum. I got testy and he dug in his heels.

Now take a screenshot because it will probably change soon. Or maybe it won't. We shall see.

But with something like loup's arguing and digging in his heels and not correcting an obvious typo -- that does not cut it for me. That is not moderation as far as I am concerned. So, whatever people here decide as to how we are going to moderate ourselves, that sort of petty stupid shit simply has to go. It is just too big a waste of all our time and energy.

Now on the larger context of the topic at hand, when it comes to a choice between King Log or King Stork, I am pretty much on Team Log. For all the obvious reasons.
posted by y2karl at 10:01 AM on December 8 [19 favorites]

All loup had to was add an 's' so it read Mr. Rogers instead of Mr. Roger

Hm.

The "s" is in the tag. So I think we can safely assume this wasn't Katullus indulging in some Joycean spelling playfulness.

On the other hand, unless K. asks for the change themself, I would adhere to the principle that mods shouldn't feel at liberty to unilaterally alter user comments. That way madness lies.
posted by Lemkin at 10:13 AM on December 8 [6 favorites]

I find it difficult to think who'd want to be a mod here?

It also might kind of depend on what moderation actually is in the future. Are posts that get X flags automatically hidden until a mod can check it out? Is there a transparent moderation log or hiding versus deleting so people can see what is happening? What if some mod actions are made when seconded by another volunteer? There could be a lot of ways that moderating is lesss onerous and less contentious for volunteer mods. Maybe it is a dream, but I would cut more slack if there was transparency and I could see that my shit was being flagged by many other users and then deleted by a volunteer mod. Some kind of clear three strikes rule before a timeout would also be reasonable and probably keep an individual user from creating a huge mess. Maybe that’s the bulk of the day to day modding and just a handful of harder cases get kicked up to the ED or board.
posted by snofoam at 10:13 AM on December 8 [5 favorites]

I wouldn't mind a few hours a week shift.

AskMe phunniemee would make a great mod (seriously!), but MeTa phunniemee would probably have to sneer at anyone dumb enough to suggest the whole volunteer mod thing hasn't become a trainwreck, so that might be tricky for everyone.
posted by nobody at 10:30 AM on December 8 [4 favorites]

How dare you acknowledge my ability to read the context of a situation and respond with the consideration it deserves, here on the most derisible of subsites.
posted by phunniemee at 10:37 AM on December 8 [16 favorites]

there's fuckin' room to move as a moderator. she could be site manager in two years. King. God.
posted by glonous keming at 10:48 AM on December 8 [12 favorites]

Chairperson of the gala planning committee!
posted by snofoam at 10:55 AM on December 8 [4 favorites]

I find it difficult to think who'd want to be a mod here?

Mythic Quest had a bit about this: Community Managers. In context, the organization the users are complaining about has a lot of issues, so it's not incompatible with what's going on in this thread--just a funnier way to look at it.
posted by Wobbuffet at 11:04 AM on December 8 [3 favorites]

Sometimes I feel like communication in MetaTalk is like an unpleasant game of Zork. You have to use the right word and action to get a response.

The technical term is "guess the verb".

Actually, the current woes remind me of the sad end of Infocom.
posted by Lemkin at 11:48 AM on December 8 [3 favorites]

I feel like the concept that Metafilter exists for the purpose of paying moderators s something that sort of crept up on us

I think the selling point of Metafilter has always been that it's supposed to be a real community where people are kind to each other regardless of their disagreements, and where moderators enforce that. But I think that the Covid shutdown killed a lot of our more positive community building items, like IRL meetups, and we haven't really gotten them back. Remember when most major cities had a meetup at least every month? I do, and it was a good time - when people could build goodwill as a part of this place regardless of their issues.

I also don't think the moderators have been enforcing people being good to each other for a long time now. I think it's largely because the coverage is flimsy enough that people can barely keep up with the posts, and also partially because the moderators, for better or worse, aren't really involved in Metafilter anymore. cortex and mathowie and jessamyn, for their various faults, were involved in the community. They all came to meetups and they all were reading various threads because they liked doing so and wanted to be involved. But that's not really something you can force. Things turned from a labor of love that they were compensated for, to a slog. I doubt any moderator spends much private time here.

Neither of these problems I think will be fixed with an ED (that I feel we can't afford) or switching the money to other areas. These are deep cultural problems with Metafilter but also with society, and it's not really something an external fix will solve.
posted by corb at 3:26 PM on December 8 [17 favorites]

So, in summary:
"Can we have a Brand New Day at some point?"

"Sure we can, as long as I still get to prosecute all my pet peeves every time I get a chance."
posted by dg at 3:27 PM on December 8 [3 favorites]

That doesn't seem like a very good summary.
posted by Bugbread at 3:47 PM on December 8 [24 favorites]

Maybe its like the underpants gnomes joke where one of the steps is: ????, (the humor coming from the lack of explanation before resolution of the question? My ghost Dad told me jokes are funnier when you explain them)
posted by B_Ghost_User at 4:02 PM on December 8 [7 favorites]

I know it was a joke, but I think volunteer mods by subsite would be a good idea if there were to be volunteer mods. I would probably exclude MeTa, though. I don't think it should get very moderated anyway, but maybe reading and responding here would be the Board's domain. (I don't actually think the non-profit's gonna happen, but if it did, something like that would seem to make sense.)
posted by lapis at 5:40 PM on December 8 [7 favorites]

I think that the Covid shutdown killed a lot of our more positive community building items, like IRL meetups, and we haven't really gotten them back. Remember when most major cities had a meetup at least every month? I do, and it was a good time - when people could build goodwill as a part of this place regardless of their issues.

Oh yeah! I totally meant to mention something about that and then I forgot! I'm really glad you said that, corb. It does feel like bringing back meetup culture for the community might go a long way right now.
posted by limeonaire at 5:51 PM on December 8 [4 favorites]

Wait, what, there's a Gala? Were invites sent? Did I miss it? Will travel expenses be there for those in need? If it's still on can it be 80's theme with glitter? Is there an online dance card for Jessamyn? Seems like a great fundraiser!!!
posted by sammyo at 5:31 AM on December 9 [1 favorite]

I think it's important for whoever takes up the leadership mantle for moderation - board, ED, etc. - to do an assessment first and then make recommendations.

I can think of a number of ways to handle it, but a number of them involve tech (hiding comments over X flags, snooze/block) as a first-level response so that people can see that there's something happening that will lead to a review. This allows time, which has a lot of advantages - better decision-making, and then looking at how moderation really works behind the scenes, how much time is spent on communication between mods in different time zones and what's needed and all those things.

(The reason I've been advocating for a block/snooze for a long time is that this is something users generally expect online right now, the idea that you can't block someone in any other context would be pretty out there.)

I am hoping the goal of rewriting the site so that it's easier to upgrade these things is a true one so that those discussions and decisions can be made without large chunks of development time/money.
posted by warriorqueen at 7:00 AM on December 9 [15 favorites]

large chunks of development time/money.

I sincerely hope that the new codebase will be open sourced very, very soon. There's no reason not to, and it would allow development to be mostly-free.
posted by bowbeacon at 7:51 AM on December 9 [7 favorites]

Along similar lines, it's a bit surprising that the cookbook project mentioned above wasn't being done in a shared repository - losing files to a contractor isn't something that should ever happen these days.
posted by offog at 8:08 AM on December 9 [15 favorites]

My thoughts exactly. Shared project files are the norm, and no reason not to do that when we have so many free cloud-based tools for it.
posted by Miko at 8:56 AM on December 9 [5 favorites]

But no one here scares me. I've been deep in the AskMe questions for years. You people have to ask a forum for help before calling a customer support number. What are you going to do, start a strongly worded postcard writing campaign against me? Please.

Is... is it too late for write-ins on this ballot? Because I would like to voice my support, and encourage that you all vote #1 quidnunc kid
posted by Mayor West at 10:54 AM on December 9 [12 favorites]

(NOT PHUNNIEMEE-IST)
posted by Mayor West at 10:56 AM on December 9 [4 favorites]

chavenet’s recent George Michael post made me check to see if hippybear is still around.

Not only are they gone, so is everything they ever contributed to the site??

That profoundly sucks. How does this happen?
posted by Lemkin at 1:35 PM on December 9 [5 favorites]

they presumably chose to wipe their account after various... kerfuffles, let's say, in Metatalk.

Of course, it's basically impossible to piece together what happened, but it was... not a good look.
posted by sagc at 1:41 PM on December 9 [5 favorites]

Sorry, this is where any clarification would occur. No idea if it's OK for me to mention who [a user] is or was, but one can probably figure it out 😉.
posted by sagc at 1:48 PM on December 9 [3 favorites]

Maybe the true Brand New Day is when everyone buttons and wipes their account. Unlike the various stalled initiatives, we are making incremental progress towards this goal basically every day.
posted by snofoam at 1:58 PM on December 9 [22 favorites]

I am sure that thread was a significant part of it, but hippybear posted a few things after that and so I'm not sure that was the final straw exactly. But we don't know.

I just read my first couple of comments in that thread and wow, I think I need to learn that saying the same thing over and over isn't producing results.
posted by warriorqueen at 2:10 PM on December 9 [11 favorites]

hippybear left metafilter several months after he was crappy to me, in a completely unrelated fit that I had no involvement in. I believe the final event was due to a misspelling of Barbra Streisand.
posted by phunniemee at 2:11 PM on December 9 [21 favorites]

I stand corrected! Still, always good to introduce people to the wonderful living history that is Metatalk.

hint: search for the staff tag, and read the surrounding comments! See if you can spot anything that feels familiar from the past few threads!
posted by sagc at 2:18 PM on December 9 [5 favorites]

(at the end of that thread, they said they would need to "regroup internally and come back to this addressing the feedback provided". I really don't think that ever happened.)
posted by sagc at 2:24 PM on December 9 [5 favorites]

Anyhow Katullus and I exchanged emails about it. He was going to let it slide but I am fussy so I turned in a Contact Form on it and ended up getting in the most insane back and forth with loup over it.

If someone got in touch with me about correcting something I wrote, and I said "eh, nah, who cares," I would be a little annoyed if they then took it upon themselves to ask for an edit ostensibly on my behalf but in reality against my explicit wishes, and I would be more than a little annoyed if a mod then actually did edit the post I'd said to just leave.
posted by solotoro at 3:04 PM on December 9 [15 favorites]

First Babora Stridesdan and now Mr. Rodgers! Let's try to live and let live, brothers and sisters, and find peace with our fellow 'fites before it is too late.
posted by snofoam at 3:19 PM on December 9 [6 favorites]

> I believe the final event was due to a misspelling of Barbra Streisand.

as implausible as that sounds when stated bluntly, i do wish to second the notion that that, to my recollection and interpretation, was indeed what happened; the final straw following a cascading series of frankly bizarre interactions and some masterful (if unintentional) trolling on the part of the administration regarding the concept of "deadnaming", the misinterpretation and misuse of the term's meaning, and the conflation therin that proper spelling of usernames must be followed at all costs

but really the less said about all that the better so i'll drop it
posted by glonous keming at 3:20 PM on December 9 [8 favorites]

link.
posted by phunniemee at 3:26 PM on December 9 [1 favorite]

[slams head on desk]
posted by Lemkin at 3:43 PM on December 9 [1 favorite]

I swear to God the next time I see a Rogers and Hammerstein production I'm just going to see Mr Rogers making a shoe box into a treasure chest as King Friday XIII decides to turn Trolley into Snowpiercer.

1034 problems long.
posted by clavdivs at 3:45 PM on December 9

I am a little late to this party, but I thought Barbra Streisand was spelled, "Babs".

(Did she leave the country after Trump's victory?)
posted by JohnnyGunn at 4:02 PM on December 9

Mod note: Popping my head in for a minute while this frozen pizza defrosts...

is there any plan to make an archive available of all the content of the entire site? a local backup for us users to keep?

No and there are currently no plans for this. If the site did go

There is an Infodump of public site data available for number crunchers. Members can download a copy of their comments on Metafilter, MetaTalk, and Ask Metafilter as a text file (see links at the bottom of your Preferences page)

Anyhow Katullus and I exchanged emails about it. He was going to let it slide but I am fussy so I turned in a Contact Form on it and ended up getting in the most insane back and forth with loup over it.


Checked the moderation email and all we have is the single original email from you and a single reply from loup, sent Wed, Nov 20, 1:45 PM ET, asking for clarification.

The correction has been made.

I think that the Covid shutdown killed a lot of our more positive community building items, like IRL meetups, and we haven't really gotten them back.

One of the random ideas I've had was to have MeFi offer to pay for some pizzas or appetizers to hopefully jumpstart some IRL. Haven’t actually voiced that out loud, but it’s a thought.

Yes, hippybear did request an account wipe.
posted by Brandon Blatcher (staff) at 4:10 PM on December 9 [2 favorites]

If the site did go

... to the mall? Back to school?

More seriously, this is something that it would be nice to have considered in the new site design. At some point - fingers crossed it's a long time in the future! - being able to neatly package the site as a static archive, spanning from the 2000s on, will probably be valuable.
posted by sagc at 4:26 PM on December 9 [6 favorites]

Mod note: And thank pulposus for the offer! We'll have to look at some things, but will keep this in mind as we do.
posted by Brandon Blatcher (staff) at 5:13 PM on December 9 [2 favorites]

"No and there are currently no plans for this. If the site did go"

One thing that you have to keep in mind, though, is that if
posted by Bugbread at 6:05 PM on December 9 [16 favorites]

a way a lone a last a loved a long the
posted by Lemkin at 6:17 PM on December 9 [3 favorites]

One thing that you have to keep in mind, though, is that if
Well, that's true, of course. But it's pretty unlikely and, should that come to pass
posted by dg at 6:41 PM on December 9 [5 favorites]

One thing that you have to keep in mind, though, is that if

Have you considered the implications of
posted by B_Ghost_User at 6:50 PM on December 9 [2 favorites]

Pizza parties to help morale.
posted by lapis at 6:54 PM on December 9 [5 favorites]

What if this has been a "Dilbert" cartoon all along?
posted by lapis at 6:54 PM on December 9 [7 favorites]

Go what? That's it? "If the site did go here's a million favourites"... or "If the site did go here's your own subsite"... I mean what the f...
posted by polytope subirb enby-of-piano-dice at 7:13 PM on December 9 [1 favorite]

on a winter's night a traveler
posted by trig at 7:33 PM on December 9 [5 favorites]

Go Hang a Salami! I'm a Lasagna Hog!
posted by ericost at 7:36 PM on December 9 [2 favorites]

A way a lone a last a loved a long the

riverrun, past jess and mathowie's, from swerve of longboat to bend of beans, brings us by a commodius vicus of recursive coldfusion errors back to catscan.com and environs.
posted by nobody at 7:58 PM on December 9 [14 favorites]

Checked the moderation email and all we have is the single original email from you and a single reply from loup, sent Wed, Nov 20, 1:45 PM ET, asking for clarification.


So, since you're likely waiting for someone to publicly ask before you provide any more info, what conclusion can be drawn between Y2Karl's account of the email exchange and the lack of email evidence in the mod account? Is the official account broken or compromised? Or are official mefi communications being done from private email accounts? Does this present a problem for transparency? If someone is loup's accountability partner as previously stated by loup, what steps will they take to hold loup accountable? #pleaseanswer
posted by donnagirl at 8:17 PM on December 9 [22 favorites]

is there any plan to make an archive available of all the content of the entire site? a local backup for us users to keep?

That would negate the point of account wipes, and in fact make it easy to highlight what has been removed.
posted by Tell Me No Lies at 9:11 PM on December 9

Huh, I’ve been misspelling Barbra Streisand’s name this whole time. On this point, at least, I have some much needed clarity and certainty.
posted by Jon Mitchell at 10:42 PM on December 9 [5 favorites]

Let's just hope you haven't also been misspelling Joni Mitchell's name!
posted by mpark at 10:47 PM on December 9 [22 favorites]

Now that's a joke! Thank you
posted by kensington314 at 11:36 PM on December 9 [2 favorites]

That is clearly an apples to oranges comparison, as the total cost to run that site is orders of magnitude less than it would cost for a single FT employees salary. I don't doubt that a niche site that's lightly moderated, has a volunteer mod, isn't too fussed about legal compliance, uses off the shelf bulletin board software and doesn't deal with contentious topics could be done on the cheap. That's just not what Metafilter is and this feels almost like a bad faith argument.

Just as a data point, somethingawful has around 20,000 posts a day to Mefi's ~650, is vigorously moderated (with an open moderation log) and costs around $8k for hosting (iirc) and pays a part-time coder. Against that it has regular bust-ups, the next one of which is surely overdue, it's been a while, but that's part of the joy. Somehow we have managed to maintain multiple strands of leftist posters in separate but equal subforums, though i do not want to suggest it has been in the slightest bit easy. we all love the place dearly, though, so it trots along.

Another parallel is the penny arcade forums, though i don't have numbers for those.
posted by Sebmojo at 12:05 AM on December 10 [31 favorites]

are official mefi communications being done from private email accounts?

This was quite usual in the past. It's a good point that that shouldn't be happening.
posted by Miko at 6:21 AM on December 10 [8 favorites]

only the best moderation, only the most mod notes.
posted by sagc at 8:16 AM on December 10 [8 favorites]

Chef's kiss.
posted by bowbeacon at 8:22 AM on December 10 [2 favorites]

What on earth is that thread?!
posted by mittens at 8:24 AM on December 10 [3 favorites]

nouvelle-personne buttoned as a result of moderators silencing her on that thread. How many blatantly murderously racist comments were left to stand while her comments kept getting deleted? Count em and weep.

I cannot even begin to describe what a loss that is to our community. We are all that much worse now for not having her in our midst, for not having her voice here. To my absolute shame I did not speak up sooner and more strongly in that thread, even I was pulled into the anti-Black madness of putting a white man's clearly irrational feelings first - I wrote a comment coddling him and speaking "nicely" to help him understand. In my mind at the time I was doing the right thing because the priority was to nudge the poster into not literally trying to murder a Black man. But in my concern for white feelings I failed to support a Black sister at all, someone who was genuinely hurting on that thread unbeknownst to me. "Unbeknownst" - more like "refusing to knownst". I discounted her feelings in favor of coddling the white OP.

NP has noted more than once on this site that it's always Black women's blood spilled first in the struggle for POC rights. I am ashamed and we should all be ashamed that her words played out so exactly on this thread.
posted by MiraK at 8:32 AM on December 10 [17 favorites]

To my absolute shame I did not speak up sooner and more strongly in that thread, even I was pulled into the anti-Black madness of putting a white man's clearly irrational feelings first

While we're all being messy, thank you for recognizing and apologizing. I will also gently suggest that this is your standard M.O. in nearly every conversation and it's okay to think a problem through to sort your own feelings out on it before blazing in. Best.
posted by phunniemee at 8:42 AM on December 10 [12 favorites]

Yikes, no, I do not routinely blaze in leaning towards anti-Black views and putting white men's irrational feelings first.

Please let's pay nouvelle-personne the respect of not turning this conversation into your unrelated concerns with me. If you'd like to give me feedback, let's do it off-thread - I promise to listen carefully. But right here is the time to pay attention to our own failure to listen to NP and take in what she was saying there, how many of us failed to speak up to support her when her first comment was deleted, how many of us did not send the mods an email asking her comments to be reinstated, how many of us thought she was fine and the OP of that thread was who needed care.
posted by MiraK at 8:53 AM on December 10 [2 favorites]

Well, as someone who was clearly in the wrong on that thread, I appreciated nouvelle_personne's second post in it. I also have the balls to keep reading and listen when I'm wrong - I favourited that second post last night. I wish I had known they were feeling that way as I would have commented earlier.
posted by warriorqueen at 8:53 AM on December 10 [6 favorites]

To go back to the topic at hand: there's clearly a moderator on duty. The mods aren't idiots, they know this thread is happening. Why can't they hop in and address this?
posted by bowbeacon at 8:54 AM on December 10 [9 favorites]

today black men yesterday trans women tomorrow who can say
posted by phunniemee at 8:58 AM on December 10 [9 favorites]

Maybe the real being ran off the site was the friends we made along the eay
posted by june_dodecahedron at 9:02 AM on December 10 [4 favorites]

phunniemee, is there a reason you're singling me out personally in an unrelated thread like this? Yeah I did make a big mistake in that thread when I failed to consider the implications of my statement on trans women, and I apologized for it on that same thread. I still feel unreservedly apologetic about it.

I hope you will stop using that to derail this discussion here and now. What happened in this thread was nothing like the other one you are referencing. They are two very, very different types of mistake, not just two different topics.

Please let's focus on this for now? Thanks.

I am wondering if the mods have any comment about why all of the racist comments advising OP to report the driver to the police were allowed to stand?
posted by MiraK at 9:08 AM on December 10 [1 favorite]

AAAAAND n-p's last comment on that thread has also been deleted. WOW.
posted by MiraK at 9:14 AM on December 10 [7 favorites]

wild to see some of the moderation decisions on the site; np's comment, upon second, third, and fourth read doesn't seem to really hit any of the items on the content policy? Like why are y'all trying to memory hole np's very valid points and frustration and anger?

but we do know that phunniemee's link two comments up links to a thread with a big fucking microaggression--maybe even aggression, really given how cis people use the terms "AMAB/AFAB", and that gets to stay.

even as I've pointed to it multiple times before

and like, y'all had to be shamed in that thread about Charlet Chung before you followed your own policies

You ever think maybe inconsistencies might be corrosive to trust in moderation? Especially when those inconsistencies seem to hit marginalized groups far more often?

Maybe it's just me, what do I know, I'm just an annoying tranny gook.
posted by i used to be someone else at 9:14 AM on December 10 [19 favorites]

Posting this here, as a response to the below note from loup in the thread, so that it doesn't derail/get deleted and so that the mods can respond publicly (as requested)

A couple of comments deleted. Please abide by the Content Policy and remember that Ask MetaFilter comments should address the main question being asked.
posted by loup (staff) at 12:05 PM on December 10 [+] [⚑]

what parts of the content policy were broken? how does saying 'suggesting calling the police terrifies me, a black woman who is present on this site and in this thread' do anything but address the main question, which is "is this worth filing a police report?"?

why wasn't a mod note posted originally, before people got upset about the original deletion?
posted by sagc at 9:20 AM on December 10 [17 favorites]

And now there’s the usual potato-bland, no explanation mod note by loup, because of course.
posted by mochapickle at 9:20 AM on December 10 [6 favorites]

Hey, it's only the modern industrial farmed potatoes that are bland. In the Andes, there are hundreds of delicious potato varieties!
posted by snofoam at 9:22 AM on December 10 [2 favorites]

I agree with the above, and I've frequently agreed with "i used to be someone else"'s comments in the past asking why my comment was left standing on the thread phunniemee linked. And the same thing is happening here, too: racist comments are being left standing while n-p's comments challenging racism got deleted.

What guidelines did n-p's previous deleted comments break? She was talking to the OP and responding to his question. As the thread went on she became critical of the moderation and other commenters, so I guess that's breaking the guideline of "respond to OP", but by then the damage was already done and the moderation was already an issue. Would she have been allowed to make a MetaTalk post, if she hadn't buttoned? Would it have been approved? Would the mods have responded in any way to the racism on the thread, and to n-p's repeated exhortations to pay attention to the racism?
posted by MiraK at 9:22 AM on December 10 [9 favorites]

That deletion message is shockingly adversarial. Was nouvelle-personne offered a private discussion for how her concerns could be addressed, before her comments were deleted? Was she counseled on opening a MetaTalk as an option to discuss the thread and the deletions? Or was she simply run off to limit the tension in the thread?
posted by mittens at 9:24 AM on December 10 [9 favorites]

What on earth is that thread?!

All I know is that it made me have to use the bathroom.
posted by Lemkin at 9:28 AM on December 10 [1 favorite]

Is this kind of "community management" worth $250K a year?
posted by Miko at 9:28 AM on December 10 [27 favorites]

depends on the kind of community you want.
posted by i used to be someone else at 9:32 AM on December 10 [2 favorites]

Here is one of n-p's later comments that was deleted. (thanks to phunniemee who originally posted the screenshot)

Here's her last comment on the site, also deleted.

I'm wondering if anyone remembers or has screencaps of what she posted earlier in the thread that was deemed so horrible as to get deleted? Do the mods care to share and justify their decision?
posted by MiraK at 9:36 AM on December 10 [14 favorites]

This is fucking appalling.
posted by chococat at 9:41 AM on December 10 [13 favorites]

There's no doubt those posts were confrontational and were certain to get people's backs up -- I have no doubt they got tons of flags -- and were outside the AskMe rules, but at some point you have to wonder what the point is of all those guidelines about microaggressions and such if we're just going to tone police the hell out of an impassioned black woman arguing for the safety of her family and her community.
posted by jacquilynne at 9:43 AM on December 10 [27 favorites]

My head is going to explode. I have tried so hard to understand the mindset here. I understand that we have set aside any idea that this site must grow to survive, postponing that to some future date. But if the mods can't handle basic user retention, if conflict is handled by--forgive me for saying this, but truly passive-aggressive rules-lawyery mod notes--then who on earth is going to be left on this site?

I realize Metafilter is not a business-business. But oh my god! If I threw away revenue the way you people throw away users, I would have been fired a thousand times over!

The concept is so simple! You don't throw away a customer you have now, because if you can convince that customer to stay, then you've got a chance to grow the business--either through increasing their footprint, or having them refer someone new to you. I would never in a million years speak to a customer in such a bland, tepid, yet aggressive fashion! I would never wave vaguely at rules no one ever reads as a rationale for forcing them to shut up!

You have to be GOOD to people! You have to value them! If you want the site to survive in any fashion at all, you have to respect people enough not to do this!

And you can say "oh, it's just one person," but IT'S ALWAYS JUST ONE PERSON, this is how businesses die, one lost person at a time!

I look back at old threads and--jesus, someone's going to make fun of me for being emotional here, but what the hell--I look back at old threads and get SO SAD when I see all the folks who used to be here, who aren't anymore. And so many of them left because of moderation decisions. Because the moderation on this site--this liberal, liberal site, this "in this house we believe" site--still cannot understand how to not be racist, not be sexist.

You don't have to get things right politically. You really don't. There is no mod purity test necessary. What you have to do is moderate in such a way that people don't get disgusted and leave.

And you are failing at that.
posted by mittens at 9:46 AM on December 10 [45 favorites]

> There's no doubt those posts were confrontational ...and were outside the AskMe rules

That's the point, isn't it? BEFORE nouvelle_personne was reduced to shouting to be heard, she wrote other comments directly responsive to OP pointing out the inherent racism of reporting a Black man to the police for having diarrhea. They were deleted. We know not why.

Furthermore, the many, many, MANY comments in the rest of the thread that urged and cheered OP on to report a Black man for having diarrhea were left standing on the thread.

This is what reduced her to yelling and expressing herself in guideline-breaking ways. She was trying desperately to be heard. And that's our fault. Obviously it's in very large part the moderators' fault for aggressively shutting her down while letting racists stay, but damn, you guys, this community as a whole needs to do so much better.
posted by MiraK at 9:47 AM on December 10 [21 favorites]

My shift is almost over but I am meeting with Brandon later today and will make sure to cover this so that we can report back.
posted by loup (staff) at 9:49 AM on December 10

Was n-p's comment right? I tend to think so, but I also don't think it matters. It was REAL, it was heartfelt, it was a fully legitimate answer to the question as asked, and it was deleted with no note. And why? Like, what the hell did that do to advance the conversation? Why wasn't the response just "Let's take a step back, and maybe not suggest that the extremely-anxious OP was trying to literally murder someone, but your point is valid and should be heard." Instead, it was deleted with no note for an hour, and the mod walked away dusting off their hands, job well done. But all deleting the comment does is make everyone angry! Leaving it up, a person could read it and say "Well, n-p is absolutely correct. I value that perspective!" Or they could say "Nah, I think that's going too far." But it certainly wasn't anything that the community couldn't handle reading.
posted by bowbeacon at 9:52 AM on December 10 [25 favorites]

> My shift is almost over but I am meeting with Brandon later today and will make sure to cover this so that we can report back.

I am wondering why you waited until your shift was almost over to pop in here and say, whelp, my shift is almost over.

If we counted up all the moderator notes in these MeTa threads which mention "my shift is almost over" as the reason for not engaging, and then stack that list up against the moderator notes which do engage with the questions on the MeTa, I wonder what that balance would look like.
posted by MiraK at 9:55 AM on December 10 [31 favorites]

gnfti: blink twice of you're ok, yawn if you need rescue
posted by glonous keming at 9:57 AM on December 10 [4 favorites]

Loup isn't a good moderator for MetaFilter. They fail repeatedly at understanding context, tone, site history; they fail to follow thru on even the most basic of tasks they set for themselves (like make a MeTa post in a couple days); they have said more than once that they hate talking to users on this subsite; and they have wasted time on unasked-for projects like "editing the guidelines". Multiple long-time, thoughtful, interesting site members have left as a direct result of loup's actions, and at least one person has been banned for their public call for resignation.

At this point I believe that in the 20+ years I've been here literally no one has been so harmful to the site in so many varied ways. I'm calling for change, not when the transition happens, but now. Ban me if you must, I'll just be another body on the pile.
posted by donnagirl at 9:57 AM on December 10 [70 favorites]

"I am meeting with Brandon later today and will make sure to cover this so that we can report back." Okay, cool, can you two please work up some kind of preferably honest explanation for how that bizarre thing could have happened? Because the deletions were for not answering the question, supposedly, but this was the question:

"I was asked if they should send police. I wasn’t sure because it was a sticky situation and thought he might just had to go #2 then everything would be fine, but wasn’t sure. I didn't want to waste police resources/be overreacting, and he was black, didn't want potential police brutality to happen over what might have been nothing."

If "Yes, overreact! Yes, waste police resources! Who cares about police brutality, damn the torpedoes, full speed ahead! You should be on the horn with the cops right now!!!1!" are okay answers to that question but "don't call the cops on somebody for experiencing peristalsis while black" breaks the guidelines, somebody really needs to explain why on Earth that is.
posted by Don Pepino at 9:59 AM on December 10 [25 favorites]

"This isn't on topic, delete" is NOT an okay response to "I feel like this whole thread is veering racist and as a Black person it makes me feel like you hate me and my community and don't care if we die". It may not be easy to identify a best response in the moment, but it should be easy to identify some things not to do.

I understand that this is Ask and there's protocols, but identifying when the protocols aren't adequate is really important. Protocols that are really intended to cover "people are getting judgey about your relationship" and "intense fandom dispute" have to kick into "this is more serious, we can't just resolve it by deleting and gesturing at the rules" at some point.

This is just really crummy, not least because of the indifference to novelle-personne's escalating distress. "I'm getting more and more distressed because this community is doubling down on racism" shouldn't just provoke more deletes. It's just an unacceptable way to treat someone.
posted by Frowner at 10:03 AM on December 10 [39 favorites]

I have really been holding out hope for Metafilter and have maintained my monthly donation but I am considering cancelling seeing how that thread was handled. Arghhhh.
posted by samthemander at 10:03 AM on December 10 [11 favorites]

I would say something here but I’m just a ghost who doesn’t want to get banned so instead have an emoji: 🥔
posted by B_Ghost_User at 10:03 AM on December 10 [4 favorites]

As an accused harasser, I will also not comment further.
posted by bowbeacon at 10:04 AM on December 10 [2 favorites]

If we counted up all the moderator notes in these MeTa threads which mention "my shift is almost over" as the reason for not engaging

It reminds me of the episode of the Simpsons where the Mensa dweebs take over town government and they decide to get rid of green traffic lights in favor of only yellow and red.
posted by phunniemee at 10:05 AM on December 10 [2 favorites]

I’m too new to start a new MetaTalk thread about this. But it seems like something that deserves more visibility than it’s going to get down here.
posted by Lemkin at 10:14 AM on December 10 [8 favorites]

Hopefully the mods start a MetaTalk thread with an apology.
posted by warriorqueen at 10:16 AM on December 10 [13 favorites]

Lemkin: believe it or not, new MeTa threads go into a queue and await approval by the mod "team" before going live on the site. it hasn't always been thus but when the Operation is this well-run you can afford to slack up a lil bit
posted by glonous keming at 10:17 AM on December 10 [9 favorites]

Mod note: Apologies, NP’s comment got a few flags, no other comments up to that point had gotten any.

The comment was heated, which is discouraged in AskMe, but it is timely to larger issues, so upon feedback and review, it’s worth letting it stand.

Not on shift until later this evening, so not much more to say until then. Please have patience, thank you.
posted by Brandon Blatcher (staff) at 10:21 AM on December 10 [1 favorite]

1099 contractors don't have shifts btw
posted by glonous keming at 10:23 AM on December 10 [18 favorites]

believe it or not, new MeTa threads go into a queue and await approval by the mod "team" before going live on the site. it hasn't always been thus but when the Operation is this well-run you can afford to slack up a lil bit

Ah.

I haven’t been around much since the end of Obama’s first term.

Guess things done changed.
posted by Lemkin at 10:26 AM on December 10 [1 favorite]

But…loup was the anti-white supremacist hire!!!
posted by snofoam at 10:35 AM on December 10 [4 favorites]

the number of times it seems like brandon has had to come in to clean loup's mess is, well .
posted by i used to be someone else at 10:36 AM on December 10 [12 favorites]

The comment was heated, which is discouraged in AskMe, but it is timely to larger issues, so upon feedback and review, it’s worth letting it stand.

Thank you, Brandon. I am sorry you're routinely put in this position. It's not your fault that you've been effectively installed as a human pessary to keep loup from pissing on themself, and I see it keep happening over and over. From one person who has worked shitty jobs for shitty bosses to another, please know this isn't a normal role to be placed in. Even if you don't mind it, this isn't normal job stuff.
posted by phunniemee at 10:37 AM on December 10 [17 favorites]

Positing that it was a difficult modding situation and that the needs of the moment were… not met, how might some of the alternative modding structures that have been proposed handled it better?
posted by Lemkin at 11:01 AM on December 10 [5 favorites]

Well, if they consistently left notes, there would be a note. If there was a mod log, there'd be a note in the mod log.

Both of those would deal the the fact that it was a silent deletion.

I personally feel that that even this modding structure could have easily lowered the temperature in thread by a) not deleting the comment and b) redirecting users 1) away from suggesting the asker call the cops, and 2) toward MetaTalk to discuss the general direction of the answers, and what they say about Mefi.

A mod would have had to agree that there were problems with all the suggestions to go to the police, and would have had to have enough awareness to see how a silent deletion would look. We'd also need a Metatalk where these conversations can actually happen, with mod engagement, to make users feel heard.

Instead, we have silent deletions, an undeletion after the commenter has already buttoned, no attempts to address the actual problematic aspects of that thread...
posted by sagc at 11:08 AM on December 10 [18 favorites]

A mod could have just...not done anything. Because it was a discussion, where people were expressing their views, and nobody was being hurt by n-p's comment, and it was a somewhat nuanced situation where either "call the cops" or "don't call the cops" are potentially right answers, my own opinions on the matter put aside.

Like, a person asked a question: "It is unclear what I should do!" and then the community discussed the two options, which would lead a person reading along to say "There are many conflicting intersectional concerns here, and it is a difficult question to answer with a factual correct decision."

And that's ok! What problem was the mod trying to solve?
posted by bowbeacon at 11:12 AM on December 10 [25 favorites]

What was the problem or ratinale for loup to not post a deletion note?
posted by Diskeater at 11:12 AM on December 10 [10 favorites]

The fact that the site is being rebuilt in the dark says it all about Metafilter's actual commitment to community. If it had been built publicly we wouldn't be doing these absurd dances for trivial features whose absent delivery is justified with increasingly irrelevant excuses. Building a new site is something I've advocated for probably 15 years here and to see how incredibly bungled it has been really sucks. You ignored years of advice and now are off in the weeds. This new site and the nonprofit and everything else all took too long and it's clearly deck chairs on the Titanic now, which is a really sad outcome
posted by feloniousmonk at 11:38 AM on December 10 [13 favorites]

Physicists trying to figure out if magnetic monopoles could exist should have a look at these work schedules that consist entirely of the ends of shifts.
posted by Wolfdog at 11:38 AM on December 10 [33 favorites]

You don't throw away a customer you have now

Plus, one of this site's historic selling points is that it's not a soulless, profit-driven place, run by impersonal algorithms. It's supposed to be one of the few places on the internet run by decent people who can apply human nuance and human caring to moderating and communicating with the humans on this site.

Because we aren't just customers - we're also people, who matter, and with each of whom the site has a relationship, whether it recognizes that or not. This is a place that plays a role in our lives.

Mefi definitely still has the no-profit part down, but the humans running things for the past X years haven't just been (shockingly) bad at business admin and project management. They also have been really, shockingly bad at applying intelligence and nuanced judgement to moderation, using tools other than deletion, learning from their mistakes, and so on. And to treating members as either valued customers or valued people.

Less than a month ago we had the idiotic - and I don't say that lightly - rice cooker thread. In which a user was concerned about a real issue (specifically, like in this case, racism) and a mod (loup, once again) just came in with the bluntest possible tool - deletion - fucked up hugely, failed to realize it, and will now, once again, probably claim to have learned some lessons.

How many chances does a person get? On the same issues?

The mods already seem to be giving themselves BNDs after each fuckup. It needs to stop.
posted by trig at 11:41 AM on December 10 [26 favorites]

(BTW - has any of the mods reached out to nouvelle-personne, in the actual traditional meaning of the phrase where you reach out a metaphorical hand to extend assistance, empathy, and so on? Has anyone given her an apology, and offered a genuine listening conversation with her?)
posted by trig at 11:44 AM on December 10 [26 favorites]

Apologies, NP’s comment got a few flags, no other comments up to that point had gotten any.

The comment was heated

This seems inconsistent with the point that the user wrote multiple (subsequently deleted) comments.
posted by one for the books at 11:51 AM on December 10 [6 favorites]

Less than a month ago we had the idiotic - and I don't say that lightly - rice cooker thread

I’m almost afraid to ask. But just in case this time next year I’m editing MeFi’s Wikipedia page to explain its demise, may I have a link?
posted by Lemkin at 11:56 AM on December 10 [3 favorites]

That one's still on the front page of Metatalk.
posted by sagc at 11:57 AM on December 10 [3 favorites]

You should APOLOGIZE to nouvelle_personne unreservedly, I am shocked and appalled you would delete that very kindly and patiently and rightfully upset comment of theirs because we need MORE comments like theirs like wtf are you even doing to this site
posted by tiny frying pan at 11:57 AM on December 10 [20 favorites]

Here you go.
posted by Diskeater at 11:57 AM on December 10 [2 favorites]

The hypocrisy of having all these anti racist guidelines and the like and this site hurts people all the time especially lately, it's so sneaky it's making me wonder if it's a bad thing to even be here. I don't want to support this kind of decision making with my posts and contributions that hurts valuable users regularly because you were too inconsiderate to listen to what people are saying and take it in.
posted by tiny frying pan at 12:03 PM on December 10 [14 favorites]

Also, a point that comes up a lot in Metatalk threads is that Metatalk is not a good channel for community feedback. Especially on contentious, complicated topics including racism. I disagree - I think it's a difficult channel but potentially an extremely useful and informative one - but regardless, I'd like to point out that Metafilter LLC's answer in the specific case of racism was "we'll set up a BIPOC board". Which as I understood it was supposed to be a way for the mods to learn what BIPOC users are experiencing and concerned about without, horror of horrors, having to wade into Metatalk and hear too many voices at once.

That too was an opportunity for a Brand New Day. A whole panel of members who cared enough to give up their time to try to clue mods in to things they should be aware of, so that they could start doing better.

Since we don't have minutes from the most recent meeting (or any meeting from nearly the past year), I don't know if or how the rice cooker thread was discussed and what kind of reckoning, if any, the mods there participated in.

But they don't seem to be learning much.

So the overall impression I get is that mods need to at least be reading Metatalk threads. All the mods. Because while in theory maybe they could implement less demanding ways of learning, they're not doing that in practice. They're not trying to understand the issues involved and constantly working to improve their own grasp of the issues, their own sense of nuance, their own judgment, or their own relationships on this site.

Not that reading Meta regularly would necessarily change that, but at least ignorance would be more difficult to maintain.

On preview: here's the rice eater/NovemBIPOC thread, and another thread that one was discussed in.
posted by trig at 12:14 PM on December 10 [13 favorites]

Here you go.

Thanks.

I’ve just gotten to the part where BB says “That's various moving factors here, not all of them public, and my shift is about over, so I don't have much more to say about this for now.”
posted by Lemkin at 12:18 PM on December 10 [6 favorites]

'Complicated moving factors behind the scenes' is a recurring and popular theme.
posted by trig at 12:21 PM on December 10 [12 favorites]

Or was she simply run off to limit the tension in the thread?

I didn't want this to get lost in the discussion. I have wondered for a bit whether moderation is just going way overboard on not letting people argue, and in not taking time to review things but instead rushing to delete anything that might turn into an argument. This came up in the Palestine threads and in the rice cooker thread and a few other times.

The problem for me is that moderators don't really articulate what values or decision-making process they are using to make their decisions (it seems rules-based, but it visibly isn't. I cannot for example for the life of me understand why a comment was deleted for mentioning boundaries, although I did appreciate that the mod was pretty clear on their view and left a note. The pushback in the thread was allowed to stand.)
posted by warriorqueen at 12:30 PM on December 10 [27 favorites]

That's exactly what I was trying to say above, wq, thanks. Why was ANY action necessary in that thread? Nothing bad was happening. People were arguing, which is like half the reason to have a conversation on the internet. You argue, you learn things, you disagree, you make up. n-p's comments did not make this a worse web site. They made it a better website, EVEN IF YOU DISAGREE with her.
posted by bowbeacon at 12:34 PM on December 10 [18 favorites]

I am regretting getting mad at loup herein. I was mad about how difficult it was to get someone to make what I thought was a simple fix but now that it's resolved -- thank you Brandon Blatcher! -- I feel I just do not have that much history with them beyond that to have any lasting animus. So, count me out of the pile on.

What comes to mind is the form of government, regulation and punishment in Jack Vance’s Emphyrio. The ostensibly government -- the Welfare Agency -- tracks recipients by assigning them a metal rod kept in a bin which is magnetized by degrees until it reaches enough charge that it flies up to the lid. And then the recipient is 'rehabilitated' -- which is not a pretty result. These are very stressful times and any thinking person is sweating bullets while counting down the weeks until the inauguration. Whatever loup has done to anyone else, I do not have that much history with them and really do not want to add to their charge. Your mileage may vary but that's mine.
posted by y2karl at 12:34 PM on December 10 [1 favorite]

My mileage is that it's not about loup, it's about this being a good (and alive) site.
posted by trig at 12:37 PM on December 10 [7 favorites]

I am regretting getting mad at loup herein. I was mad about how difficult it was to get someone to make what I thought was a simple fix but now that it's resolved -- thank you Brandon Blatcher! -- I feel I just do not have that much history with them beyond that to have any lasting animus.

I'm not trying to instigate, and obviously feel free not to respond if you're drawing a boundary of not wanting to discuss this further, but I'm confused -- you had said that you had an extensive back and forth, and then Brandon said that only one email was received from you, I guess implying that you were mistaken? Is that the case?
posted by dusty potato at 12:44 PM on December 10 [6 favorites]

Or was she simply run off to limit the tension in the thread? … I have wondered for a bit whether moderation is just going way overboard on not letting people argue, and in not taking time to review things but instead rushing to delete anything that might turn into an argument.

I can sympathize with acting to reduce one’s workload, especially if not working with adequate resources. But at some point that crosses into actually not doing one’s job.
posted by Lemkin at 12:48 PM on December 10 [5 favorites]

Why was ANY action necessary in that thread?

An appropriate deletion would have been of the question itself as Chat/TherapyFilter.
posted by Alvy Ampersand at 1:06 PM on December 10 [11 favorites]

An appropriate deletion would have been of the question itself as Chat/TherapyFilter

Is TherapyFilter disallowed now? Is “DTMFA” just standing in the barn doing nothing?
posted by Lemkin at 1:26 PM on December 10 [2 favorites]

My mileage is that it's not about loup, it's about this being a good (and alive) site.

Man, that's for sure.

How about a general effort to quit driving away the very people that add the most value the instant they stand out from the bland a little bit because their comments are smart? AskMe is famously the healthiest, most teeming-with-users subsite, and people like n-p who routinely give thoughtful, sensitive, insightful responses are who make it that way.

Like n-p's answers early on in the uber thread under discussion and in the earlier uber thread from the same asker that was about tipping. Nouvelle-personne pretty much singlehandedly kept the tipping thread from devolving into a stupid pile-on about OP's not "deserving" to take ubers if they couldn't afford to tip generously every time.

Learn from MetaFilter's storied past, and if the comments getting "multiple flags" are antiracist comments, pause and count to ten before deleting those comments. Better yet, just pause and count to ten and then don't do anything; your shift is likely over, anyway.
posted by Don Pepino at 1:51 PM on December 10 [39 favorites]

Positing that it was a difficult modding situation and that the needs of the moment were… not met, how might some of the alternative modding structures that have been proposed handled it better?

So, i know some MeFites think of me as a Problem MeFite, but i am on the mod team for a fairly large, fairly active community elseweb. We have two main loci of operation—a Mastodon server and a Discord—and the populations there overlap but not entirely (some folks are only members of one or the other). We're an all-volunteer mod team of roughly 25 people, and we're known for being fairly high-touch moderators, so i think i can speak to this a little.

WARNING: extremely long comment incoming:

Right off the bat, we have a few really important principles that MetaFilter definitely used to have but doesn't really seem to anymore:
1. We are members of the community first. The community has given us special powers as mods, which are to be used to assist and support the community, not to police or smother it.
1a. Because we are community members first, we are accountable to our community. They are allowed to question and criticize us, in private or in public, and they are entitled to expect a response.
2. Our job is to help our community members have the conversations they want to have. It's not to arbitrarily stop conversations or steer them in a particular direction (other than away from violating our rules or our values, when necessary), and it's not to decide arbitrarily, or without damn good reasons, that a member of our community needs to be silenced or booted.
3. Conflict is part of being in community. People need to be protected from aggression and harassment, but they don't need to be protected from conflict per se. Rather, community members need to be given tools to manage conflict, and shown examples of managing it in healthy ways.

Now, neither Discord nor Mastodon are an exact analog for the structure of MetaFilter, but Discord comes relatively close—instead of Posts there are Channels, and comments in a Channel are flat, not threaded. (People can spin side conversations off into threads, but mostly they won't bother unless it seems likely to be a long conversation that they would rather not interrupt with irrelevancies.) So we've got a similar situation to any given post on MetaFilter: there's a broad topic of discussion set by the Channel, people can pop in to say whatever they want within that framework, and it will appear at the bottom of the Channel in chronological order. (Channel topics are way broader than they are on any given MeFi post except the Free Threads, which is why it's not an exact analog, but the considerations are at least similar.)

So what do we do, on the Discord server, to keep conversations on some sort of rails? (Our strategies on the Mastodon server are different, because it's a very different structure, so i'm not gonna talk about those, but they're certainly consistent with what i'm going to say below.)

1. Well, first of all, we participate as members. Not that we have some sort of quota system for how often mods need to show their faces, or anything, but every single one of us is active in conversations that interest us when we have time and energy. We create and build trust by being community members, so when we do have to exercise Mod Powers, the community perceives us as trusted and valued comrades, not as weird cop assholes who think we're better than our users.

2. If someone says something mildly inappropriate or two members get into a fight, we do not reach immediately for the delete button. First, one of us will put on a mod hat and say something inline in the channel. Like, "hey, putting my mod hat on, this is an inappropriate thing to say because [X]" or "hey, speaking as a moderator, you two are both clearly invested in this, but the temperature in here needs to be lowered right now." (Different mods have different strategies for this; i think of mine as the Weaponized Mom Voice, even though i'm not a mom myself.)
At least nine times out of ten, this is literally all the action that needs to be taken; we get a change of behavior, with or without an apology, and the channel moves on. No deletions are necessary, because people don't need to be protected from seeing conflict!

2a. We empower our users to also say "hey, that isn't cool, because [X]". Backseat modding is one thing, and we don't allow that, but saying, in public, that someone isn't living up to our values as a community in a specific interaction isn't backseat modding. Again, this goes back to our principle that we are community members first; we have extra powers to enforce the norms and values of the community, but every member is allowed and encouraged to uphold them, including by asserting (politely) that someone isn't living up to them in the moment.

3. In the less-than-10% of cases where a polite mod note in the thread doesn't resolve the issue, we take further action, but even so, we escalate gradually rather than running straight for deletion or banning. When we get to this stage, there is basically always more than one mod involved; in general, we don't make non-emergency mod decisions without consulting other mods. (There are enough of us, spread out among many timezones, that this is basically always possible.)
Steps we might take at this stage include:

• If a couple of users are fighting, we might tell them they need to take a break from the channel for an hour or a day.
• We might reach out to one or both users via DM to discuss what happened, explain why we think their behavior was inappropriate, and listen to what they have to say.
• If someone seems to have a long-running issue with a particular topic or conversational trigger, we would again reach out to them and talk with them about the situation and how to manage it in a way that isn't disruptive to the community. Again, this is a conversation with them, not an edict issued to them.
• If some people are having a conversation that is valuable to them on its own but is, for whatever reason, disrupting or upsetting the broader Channel, we'll ask them to take it to a thread where folks who don't care can avoid it.

Again, at least nine times out of ten, this resolves the situation effectively; fewer than 1% of incidents hit stage 4.

4. If someone continues to escalate a situation, or if someone has said something wildly inappropriate or bigoted, at that point we will start breaking out the deletions. (We may also put the channel in Slow Mode, which is a tool MeFi doesn't have but the rebuild probably should!)
Every deletion is accompanied by an immediate, detailed note in the channel about why we deleted shit and how, exactly, it violated our expectations and values. Every deletion is also accompanied by a private message to the person or people whose messages we've deleted, to discuss what's up, explain our thinking, and get their thoughts. Because even when we have to take drastic action, and even when they are pains in our ass, we want our users to feel valued and listened to. In order to get trust and community feeling, you have to extend trust and community feeling, even when that's difficult.
We'll always communicate in the mod workspace about our deletion messages and opening salvos for private conversations, and get a rough consensus from whoever is around at the time.

4a. In the case of an emergency deletion (someone has said something so incredibly inappropriate that it really does need to be removed immediately), a single mod may act alone if no other mods are around to discuss. But even in this case the deletion needs to be immediately called out in the mod workspace, along with any messages sent privately to the user/s involved. Other mods will review later. (See #6 below.)

5. If someone has a persistent pattern of behaving wildly inappropriately, or goes sufficiently off the rails in a single interaction, we may eventually decide to ban them. This will always have been preceded by at least one, and almost certainly several, private conversations about what's going on with them and why they keep Doing The Thing, whatever it is. Someone has to show a persistent inability or unwillingness to adhere to the community's values and standards in order to get kicked out. (We've only had to do this … three times, i think, across the several-year life of our community?)
We don't announce bans publicly with a mod note, for a number of reasons, but we will discuss them in general terms if we are asked.

6. Any incident that hits stage 4 or higher gets a postmortem discussion in our mod workspace. We talk about what seems to have gone wrong, how we can account for it in the future, and what (if anything) we could've done better.

7. Any public criticism of moderation gets discussed in public, to the extent that that's possible (without violating anyone's privacy, etc.) We don't need to shut down public discussion of our actions as mods, because we are accountable to our community.

And look: our mod team comes to community management from a lot of different backgrounds & experiences, but i, personally, learned a lot of my mod philosophy from MetaFilter, back in the day. MetaFilter mods used to do most of these things. They don't, anymore!
posted by adrienneleigh at 2:22 PM on December 10 [86 favorites]

One of the things I value here is that unpopular opinions don't disappear under downvotes via algorithm. Metafilter is genuinely responsible for helping me pop a huge number of bubbles I grew up in.

On reddit or elsewhere a large group of users can vote in a way that disappears dissenting opinion or anything that goes against the echo chamber. I've always believed the expectation here was that you could FIAMO and a human would check on flagged comments and make a reasoned decision to let the comment stand or delete. Yes, obviously all these METAs are making me question that belief, but that's where I'm working from.

(on preview - I agree with Don Pepino's comment and that is exactly the sort of instance where I wish the human review of a flagged comment had opted for non-action. I still want to say the rest of this)

Ready for my unpopular opinion? I think a lot of folks in this thread and other recent META threads are incredibly unfair, and often downright cruel, to the moderators. I do not believe moderators are just looking for comments to delete on a whim. I believe they are responding (largely) to user flags. There are two possibilities - 1) I'm correct, in which case we all need to sit with what that for a minute and what it says about our user base at large as opposed to the mods specifically, 2) I'm wrong in which case I apologize to the users I just criticized and you're right, we should just shut the whole mod thing down.

Going back to my belief that there is a human reviewing flagged comments - in the same way I am glad we have a human and not an algorithm responding to flags, that human needs to be responding to METAs (literally, by commenting, and metaphorically, by changing behavior), and that is where we have a clear gap at this point. I'm not even concerned about the $ figure so many folks seem worried about. Paying humans decently to moderate online content should be expensive. The difference I have with a lot of commenters in this thread is how to get moderators to respond. I am incredibly adverse to confrontation (thank my mother, I'm working on it), and if I were a mod I would also be incredibly reluctant to stick my head in here. God bless BB for being willing to try, even as folks hate on his attempts, I don't know how you do it.

I know META is the place for venting. I've been here long enough to remember the pissing elephant gifs. But as with all things: more light, less heat. (I'm not saying no heat, some heat is required. I'm saying if you're about to make your 20th jokey or angry or ranty or pithy comment...just ask yourself if you're actually hoping the mods will have a dialogue with you, and if you're acting in a way that facilitates dialogue)
posted by jermsplan at 2:25 PM on December 10 [12 favorites]

tell me, what light is there in keeping up a transmisogynistic aggression (one that goes against their own microaggression policy) in a thread that had nothing to do with trans people, that multiple trans people have spoken out against, that the author herself regrets?

what light is there it keeping up ridiculously racist dismissals for over a day, even when there's considerable pushback, requiring the mod team having to be shamed into upholding their own policy, ostensibly one they strive for after consulting with a bipoc board they don't seem to actually listen to?

the problem is not that they are deleting on a whim. it is that they do not fundamentally seem to understand their own published policies. it is that they try to rules lawyer and back-justify their inexplicable decisions, even over the tiniest, most trivial things, particularly when there's blowback. it is that they seem to fail to understand just how corrosive and destructive it is to people's trust in the moderation team.

if they make it clear that they will not abide by their own policies around microaggressions, that's one thing. but they don't do that. it is the completely haphazard application of rules and rationales that has led us to this situation now, and causing the ridiculous amounts of heat you see instead.
posted by i used to be someone else at 2:42 PM on December 10 [32 favorites]

just ask yourself if you're actually hoping the mods will have a dialogue with you

As it has now been 93 hours without a reply from loup to my MeFi Mail asking why my first Ask MeFi question got deleted, I am not expecting the mods to have a dialogue with me.
posted by Lemkin at 2:53 PM on December 10 [14 favorites]

nouvelle-personne begged you not to delete their comment which shared a perspective MeFi needs, and you deleted it anyway. Did you even read it before you deleted it because you saw a word that violated something?
posted by tiny frying pan at 2:55 PM on December 10 [20 favorites]

As it has now been 93 hours without a reply from loup to my MeFi Mail asking why my first Ask MeFi question got deleted, I am not expecting the mods to have a dialogue with me.

To be fair, it’s the holidays.
posted by bowbeacon at 3:16 PM on December 10 [5 favorites]

To be clear, I don’t think Ask MeFi will be greatly impoverished by not offering an answer to “Who was in the shower scene in Porky’s?”

But it was a perfectly legitimate question, properly framed. The FAQ told me to expect a deletion notice that never arrived. And the post URL it told me to expect the deletion reason at doesn’t exist any more.
posted by Lemkin at 3:44 PM on December 10 [5 favorites]

This isn’t the first instance of racism on the site. The BIPOC board was created as part of the response to complaints of racism. I don’t expect them to be firemen rushing in with cooling water at each micro- (or macro-) aggression but it’d be nice to hear from them on the topic of the past few Metatalk threads that have discussed the racism still present here.
posted by Vatnesine at 4:11 PM on December 10 [4 favorites]

I feel like the massive delays regarding BIPOC meeting minutes is effectively silencing them.
posted by JenMarie at 4:16 PM on December 10 [14 favorites]

What would a successful BND look like to you?

Anyone who had ever commented in a Metatalk thread, for good or bad, would be immediately and permanently banned.
posted by Tell Me No Lies at 5:02 PM on December 10 [12 favorites]

Mod note: About the original deletion of NP’s original comment: I can see the justification for it, as it was flagged and wasn't so much about answering the question, which is a major feature of AskMe.

BUT the comment had a point about racism in America and how it affects black people. The mod team was reminded of that by everyone's feedback, which prompted a review and reinstatement of the deleted comment.

Bottom line, the deletion seemed straightforward at first glance, but really was in more a gray area. The moderation team came down on the wrong side of deleting it and unwittingly silencing black anger. We are sorry about that and will strive to be mindful of larger contexts when relevant.
posted by Brandon Blatcher (staff) at 5:17 PM on December 10 [3 favorites]

>No and there are currently no plans for this. If the site did go

>We are sorry about that and will strive to be mindful of larger contexts when it's

Forgive me but at this point I am having visions of loup being in the room with you periodically snatching away your keyboard So The People Can Never Know The Truth
posted by phunniemee at 5:19 PM on December 10 [19 favorites]

Mod note: As it has now been 93 hours without a reply from loup to my MeFi Mail asking why my first Ask MeFi question got deleted, I am not expecting the mods to have a dialogue with me.

I did that deletion and emailed you what the reasoning was back on Dec 6, 2024, 8:21 PM ET (4 days ago)

That was a fantastic comment and bit of advice, adrienneleigh, thanks for taking the time to post it!
posted by Brandon Blatcher (staff) at 5:27 PM on December 10

Why wasn't a note posted in the thread?
posted by sagc at 5:28 PM on December 10 [3 favorites]

This isn’t the first instance of racism on the site. The BIPOC board was created as part of the response to complaints of racism. I don’t expect them to be firemen rushing in with cooling water at each micro- (or macro-) aggression but it’d be nice to hear from them on the topic of the past few Metatalk threads that have discussed the racism still present here.

IIRC it was learned in a recent MeTa that at least half of known active members of the BIPOC Committee are moderators...
posted by dusty potato at 5:31 PM on December 10 [9 favorites]

I did that deletion and emailed you what the reasoning was

Am I misremembering, or weren't all the communications about non-anon Ask questions done via memail back in the day? When did things switch to email first?

I understand contact form reachouts going back via email, but I was surprised when I got an unprompted email a couple weeks ago about the queued MeTa I had submitted. I would have expected those conversations to happen on site unless email was specifically requested. Maybe it's always been like this, but not in my own personal memory.
posted by phunniemee at 5:32 PM on December 10 [7 favorites]

Mod note: Why wasn't a note posted in the thread?

Honest distraction by other tasks. We talked about that and agreed that leaving notes for deletions should be a priority

IIRC it was learned in a recent MeTa that at least half of known active members of the BIPOC Committee are moderators...

That has changed, I stepped down from the BIPOC board, there are only two staff members on it now, the other three people are non-staff.

And the post URL it told me to expect the deletion reason at doesn’t exist any more.

Heads up, you had the wrong link there, it has been corrected to point to the URL of that AskMe post.

Am I misremembering, or weren't all the communications about non-anon Ask questions done via memail back in the day? When did things switch to email first?

That particular AskMe was 404'd, completely wiped from the site. Several of the mods talked about it and decided we did not want web crawlers "thinking" MetaFilter was a place for people where people should visit for information about unnamed actresses in a nude scene.

Not sure about the MeFiMail thing. I suspect the 404ing the page breaks something in terms of alerting a user about deletion. Will have to see.
posted by Brandon Blatcher (staff) at 5:40 PM on December 10 [1 favorite]

That particular AskMe was 404'd, completely wiped from the site. Several of the mods talked about it and decided we did not want web crawlers "thinking" MetaFilter was a place for people where people should visit for information about unnamed actresses in a nude scene.

I can imagine the disappointment of the theoretical horny googler upon discovering an Ask MeFi wasteland of shopping advice and "Is it safe to eat this?" questions.

But what harm to the site was feared? That upon seeing what we are, they would start regularly reading the site? Or God forbid, pay $5 to become a member?

It doesn't seem like the site is so awash in members or money that your concern should be with proactively defending it against more of either.
posted by Lemkin at 6:03 PM on December 10 [12 favorites]

I think Brandon is referring to web crawling bots, which may change how the site is indexed on Google. But I don't know enough about that to say how it works exactly.
posted by brook horse at 6:14 PM on December 10 [2 favorites]

Top. Men.
posted by snofoam at 6:25 PM on December 10 [7 favorites]

> Several of the mods talked about it and decided we did not want web crawlers "thinking" MetaFilter was a place for people where people should visit for information about unnamed actresses in a nude scene.

FWIW: Deleted post pages get a robots meta tag which will exclude the page from search indexes, so 404-deleting the ask is unnecessary to achieve this goal.
posted by grandsham at 6:25 PM on December 10 [15 favorites]

now come on why would you expect the moderation staff of a website with that functionality built in to, like, know about it
posted by Kybard at 6:33 PM on December 10 [6 favorites]

as it was flagged and wasn't so much about answering the question, which is a major feature of AskMe.

The thing is, flags (as I understand them) are supposed to alert mods to take a look at a thread or a comment. The mod is then supposed to take that look and exercise their judgment regarding the thread or comment in the context of the whole of the thread, the community, and so on.

A lot of deletions have instead seemed completely rote. Flag something, a mod comes and deletes it, that's it. Even when there's very little nuance or judgment needed. As a bit of an extreme example, earlier I flagged a weird, not very coherent, and misleading comment in an AskMe as noise. There were several comments in response to it, which were largely more polite versions of "wtf is this?" Because it looked like the start of potentially a big derail I also made a comment saying that I'd flagged the original to hopefully get it removed, and that I was also flagging my own current comment for deletion.

What happened? A mod came pretty quickly and deleted the original comment and mine (i.e. the two flagged ones). Okay! But they left alone the other "wtf?" comments, which I hadn't flagged. Which made the thread not make any sense; those comments didn't stand on their own. To the extent that I find it hard to believe the mods made a conscious choice to leave those comments in; it seems much more likely that they just didn't bother reading them at all, looked quickly at the flagged ones, thought "okay", deleted, and never glanced at the rest of the (short!) thread. It was only when I flagged the remaining ones that they were deleted.

I could see that happening now and again because of absent-mindedness, but it felt in line with many of the other mod actions I've seen.

If mods are now just deleting things with minimal or absent thought, then an algorithm can do that for far cheaper. If mods are deleting things while applying some judgment, but that judgment is not very sophisticated or careful or nuanced, then these days frankly algorithms can do that too. Non-humans can probably even leave comments for every deletion - the deletion reasons would probably be bullshit much of the time, but that would not be all that different than the current situation.

I am absolutely not asking for modding via LLM. I'm asking for human modding that actually involves care, nuance, and discernment at a high level. I'm also asking for modding that uses tools beyond just deletion - tools like first making thoughtful comments in the thread to nudge it, tools like getting in touch with commenters not in order to ban them or yell at them but to have a thoughtful conversation with them, and so on. "We deleted because it got flags" is not something I want to hear from mods again - flags are to draw your attention, they can't be the deletion reason.

And if the response here is "no the real deletion reason was that those comments weren't answering the question", then I'd say a nuanced, discerning mod, having read that thread and understood where nouvelle-personne was coming from and the importance of what she was saying, would have either let the comments stand and written a note in thread to try to avoid a fight breaking out, or possibly deleted the comment(s) for somewhat attacking the OP, but also posted a comment making n-p's points more diplomatically or otherwise nudging the thread with demonstrated awareness of the larger, important, context. And ideally written n-p, not to fight with her but to explain, apologize, and listen, because her point mattered and she as a person mattered.

I think funding that kind of modding would make sense. The kind of thoughtless modding we've been seeing - not so much.
posted by trig at 6:39 PM on December 10 [34 favorites]

While I also have a mental image of Brandon perpetually being at the end of his shift, I think this is just a combination of (1) Brandon announcing when his shifts end, (2) the frequency illusion, and (3) some weird shifts.

I looked at all of the comments Brandon has made on Metatalk in December and checked the time between first comment and last comment. I omitted December 1 because I'm in a different time zone and it wasn't December 1 for BB.

There was one day with only one comment, so 0 minutes from start to end, but the comment didn't mention it being the end of the shift.

There was one day with only two comments, 2 minutes apart, but neither mentioned it being the end of the shift.

The next shortest day was 1 hour, 3 minutes. This one also made no reference to being the end of the shift.

The next shortest day was 2 hours, 27 minutes. This one did mention the shift ending. (It also mentioned when the shift started, see below)

From here on, I stopped checking if "it's the end of my shift" was mentioned because if you're commenting for at least 3 hours, I don't think the "every time he comments its at the end of his shift" humor really kicks in.

The next shortest day was 3 hours and 34 minutes.

The next was 5 hours and 47 minutes.

The next was 7 hours and 28 minutes.

The next was 7 hours and 55 minutes.

So that covers the first two factors (announcing shift ends + frequency illusion): it's not that he's always at the end of a shift, but when he is, he always announces it, so that sticks in your head and you forget the times he didn't. The third factor, "weird shifts," relates to that 2 hours and 27 minutes day. On that one, unusually, his first comment indicated (a little indirectly) that he was starting his shift, and his last comment indicated that he was ending his shift. So he only commented for about 2 and a half hours, but it looks his whole shift was only 2 and a half hours.

Sorry to suck out the entertainment value of the perpetually-ending-shift theory. And I only looked at December, maybe November was different.
posted by Bugbread at 6:39 PM on December 10 [8 favorites]

note: About the original deletion of NP’s original comment: I can see the justification for it, as it was flagged and wasn't so much about answering the question, which is a major feature of AskMe.

Is this NP’s first answer?

It’s a textbook very good Ask answer! Validating OPs point of view and their experience ( “Sorry it was so scary.”), providing a different perspective (surely the point of the question- to get perspectives) through a very plausible explanation of OP’s situation broken down in a way that thoroughly explains the logic behind NP’s answer (particularly important since OP seems understandably frazzled so probably needs a calm, thorough answer), then an exact answer to OP’s question (question: should I file police report? Answer: “ It's good that you reported it to Uber, but personally, I wouldn't involve police, and would try to reframe it with sympathy for a fellow person who had a poop problem.”)

If this counts as “wasn't so much about answering the question” then most of ask does beyond just yes or no. I want to see more answers like NP’s in Ask, not less.
posted by hotcoroner at 6:40 PM on December 10 [28 favorites]

I think Brandon is referring to web crawling bots, which may change how the site is indexed on Google. But I don't know enough about that to say how it works exactly.

If the bot, seeing "shower" and "actress" in the post/tags ("nude" was not mentioned), would figure us for pervs and demote us to a red-light ghetto, that would be a legitimate concern.

But if so, something had better be done about the 318 Ask MeFis that mention "rape" and the 43 that mention "incest".
posted by Lemkin at 6:42 PM on December 10 [11 favorites]

"We deleted because it got flags" is not something I want to hear from mods again - flags are to draw your attention, they can't be the deletion reason.

We've gone from Flag It And Move On to you should NEVER call the mods on a comment because you are essentially calling the death squad on that comment.
posted by phunniemee at 6:47 PM on December 10 [23 favorites]

Is this NP’s first answer?

That wasn't what was deleted, but yeah, early in the thread nouvelle-personne was very careful to leave a thoughtful and super-gentle comment for the OP. Several of those, in fact.
posted by trig at 6:48 PM on December 10 [14 favorites]

Upon reflection, I guess there's also the issue of "if you make a comment at the start of your shift, then nothing else for 7 hours, and then a flurry of comments right at the end, then you'll have large numbers for 'time spent commenting' but realistically you're just commenting at the end of your shift for the most part."

As far as that goes, it's really a day-by-day thing.

On the 7 hours and 55 minutes day, the comments weren't evenly spaced, but they weren't at the end of the shift, either, the brunt of them instead being about 3 hours before the end of the shift.

The 7 hours and 28 minutes day is today, and comments are still going, and BB hasn't said when his shift will end, so the jury is still out.

The 5 hours and 47 minutes day was very evenly spaced over the course of the shift.

The 3 hours and 34 minutes day was also evenly spaced over the course of the shift.

I didn't look at the rest because when the total commenting time is that short, it's kind of hard to distinguish between "at the end of the shift" and "not at the end of the shift".
posted by Bugbread at 6:52 PM on December 10 [1 favorite]

Oh right, I just assumed “NP’s original comment”= first comment. Thanks for clarifying!

Regardless, NP answered in such good faith there and deserved some good faith in return. Drive by “you’re a terrible person OP” comments are so common in Ask, NP was doing the opposite of that which is just really good to read, it’s Ask at its best.
posted by hotcoroner at 6:55 PM on December 10 [13 favorites]

I didn't look at the rest because when the total commenting time is that short, it's kind of hard to distinguish between "at the end of the shift" and "not at the end of the shift".

jessamyn often rubbed me the wrong way, but I don’t believe anyone was ever motivated to research when her modding was administered.
posted by Lemkin at 7:04 PM on December 10 [4 favorites]

Oh, don't get me wrong, I didn't crunch the numbers because of any particularly strong pro- or anti-BB feelings, I just thought it was funny how it seemed like he was always at the end of his shift so I wanted to see if it was a real pattern, frequency illusion, or a mix.
posted by Bugbread at 7:13 PM on December 10 [3 favorites]

Honest distraction by other tasks. We talked about that and agreed that leaving notes for deletions should be a priority

Was this the first time you spoke to them about this? What did you tell the staff a week ago about leaving notes when a comment is deleted? Have you spoken to any of the other mods?

If a mod has a reason to delete a comment, put that reason in a note. Why is that so hard? This should be a layup.
posted by Diskeater at 8:14 PM on December 10 [19 favorites]

It all comes down to the fact that the mods are accountable to no one except themselves. The only external factor is money. As long as the donations keep coming in every month, the mods have no incentive to change their behavior. It's in their best interests to maintain the status quo and make vague promises like "we promise to do better next time" every time a crisis pops up, ad infinitum.

True change is too risky. Difficult choices need to be made by strong leadership, which MetaFilter doesn't have, and it has a chance of backfiring and alienating existing donors. The status quo of bleeding users slowly over time is preferable because it's predictable.

The transition to the nonprofit is most valuable to the LLC if it always appears to be on the verge of happening without ever actually happening. An actual transition is extremely unpredictable and risks disrupting the current staffing situation. But the idea of a transition happening at some point in the future is the best of both worlds: you can use the "imminent" transition as an excuse to avoid implementing any changes, while using the promise of the nonprofit as an explanation for why everything will still somehow be better in the future.

The lack of clear leadership is an advantage for this strategy. No one is in charge, so the community is never quite sure who to be upset with; the current spokesperson can be rotated in and out as needed to relieve pressure and provide the illusion of change.

The disorganized nature of MetaTalk is similarly useful: discussions are long and meandering and nothing is being tracked, so it's extremely difficult for users to even know what the outstanding issues are and the promises that have been made about them, let alone hold the staff accountable for resolving them. Users who don't spend a lot of time on MetaTalk are unaware of the full extent of the broken promises, by design. The chaos provides cover.

All of this is possible because the LLC has enough donation income and savings to squeak by, which it uses to pay the mods who maintain the status quo. Nothing will change unless enough people cancel their donations.
posted by april of time at 9:57 PM on December 10 [45 favorites]

I'm ruefully chuckling? to myself? about 20 years of not being able to wholeheartedly recommend this site to people who hadn't already chugged the Flavor Ade. (I fully, eagerly chugged the Flavor Ade, so gradually I didn't notice, I guess).
posted by german_bight at 10:34 PM on December 10 [2 favorites]

Is this an Alex Reynolds post?
posted by klangklangston at 12:25 AM on December 11 [2 favorites]

This thread is becoming what metatalk used to be, in that it's covered several issues that could have been standalone posts, but this thread has been the outlet because queue.

I remember writing in the contact form "hey, looks like a glitch happened and my comment is missing fyi" and Jessamyn writing back (paraphrased) "no, we deleted your comment because it perpetuated stereotypes." And it stung but I learned.
posted by freethefeet at 1:31 AM on December 11 [4 favorites]

klangklangston: "Is this an Alex Reynolds post?"

You mean the guy running a quite successful business selling videos "revealing Illuminati secrets"?
posted by Bugbread at 1:31 AM on December 11 [1 favorite]

It all comes down to the fact that the mods are accountable to no one except themselves...The transition to the nonprofit is most valuable to the LLC if it always appears to be on the verge of happening without ever actually happening...

I don't think the staff are quite that Machiavellian. E.g. consider loup's serial failures to do basic fundraising activity: that's how the mods get their salaries paid so it would be more in their interests to fundraise effectively. It's not in the mods' interests to fail at fundraising.

The non-profit transition isn't being done by the mods, so they can't directly obstruct it, though they can be uncooperative.

I think the main issue with the non-profit team is that they were given a needlessly difficult and complicated brief. The smart thing to do would have been to decide on the purpose, activities, and org structure of the non-profit, then implement it. Instead the theory was that there would be an interim committee that would spin up the non-profit, then later a real committee would decide exactly what it would do and how it would function. The difficulty the interim committee is finding is that when setting up a non-profit, it helps to know this stuff.

I think the main issue with Metafilter LLC is that it's a wildly dysfunctional organisation. It lacks any form of leadership, any system of tracking tasks, any job descriptions for the staff, any central repository of important files, and any ownership of projects. (E.g. the site rebuild is stalled due to unspecified "personal and technical issues" and it's apparently no-one's job to resolve whatever those issues are.)

The common theme between the non-profit team's problems and the LLC's problems is that there is no-one in charge making decisions (and no mechanisms for leaderless consensus) so everyone else has to operate in a world of ambiguity and chaos.

I think the mods would actually be happier if there was a simple set of rules to enforce so they don't get yelled at so much, and if there was a clear path to a rebuilt site and a non-profit, and if recipes and fundraising graphics didn't keep getting lost. But they have no idea how to achieve those things.
posted by TheophileEscargot at 4:02 AM on December 11 [41 favorites]

Honest distraction by other tasks. We talked about that and agreed that leaving notes for deletions should be a priority

Feature request for the new site, comment deletions can't be submitted unless the 'reason for deletion' field is filed out.
posted by Tenuki at 5:02 AM on December 11 [26 favorites]

Feature request for the new site, comment deletions can't be submitted unless the 'reason for deletion' field is filed out.

Yes. It’s absolutely incredible to me that at under 8 deletions a day - I’m not exactly sure of our coverage but that seems like about one per hour - and the amount of discussion here over the last 6 weeks that someone deleting a comment about racism, the same mod who apologized in the global BIPOC thread, could not focus long enough to leave a comment. But there is a way to code a solution.

Actually having written that out, I don’t know how any of this is okay.
posted by warriorqueen at 5:15 AM on December 11 [38 favorites]

This is going to sound crazy but please hear me out.

-Write the words "leave a deletion note" on a post it
-Stick that post it on your monitor
posted by phunniemee at 5:27 AM on December 11 [28 favorites]

Whoa! Whoa! You can't just go writing things on a post-it and sticking it somewhere all willy-nilly. You have to go to the Office Supply Board to get approval for the post-it size and color first, then the Reminder Note Committee to get approval of the wording for the note, then get a consensus from the userbase as to where on the monitor to stick the note, then...
posted by Mr. Bad Example at 5:35 AM on December 11 [9 favorites]

(NOT STICKYIST)
posted by Diskeater at 5:47 AM on December 11 [3 favorites]

Sooooo...a Year Zero? Ummmm...no?
posted by Thorzdad at 5:53 AM on December 11 [2 favorites]

Actually having written that out, I don’t know how any of this is okay.

It definitely is not okay. If nothing else, I'd think that under a period of extremely high scrutiny, after several repeated threads where the same topic is hammered home repeatedly, that deletion decisions would be made with an eye to not inspiring another discussion about it. It's a pretty low bar: Read the thread, understand the context, understand the reason for the flag, determine if the cost of deletion is worth it, leave a note either guiding the thread in a different direction or explaining the deletion. Stop multitasking; do not let "honest distractions" keep you from the extremely brief (but thought-requiring) task at hand. Consider whether you're going to put a coworker in the awkward position of apologizing for you yet again.

Moral: Live your life in such a way that your actions don't inspire a MetaTalk.
posted by mittens at 5:56 AM on December 11 [16 favorites]

Let's not go doing a harassment.
posted by bowbeacon at 6:00 AM on December 11 [5 favorites]

If Steiner attacks, everything will be all right.
posted by Lemkin at 6:04 AM on December 11 [2 favorites]

Watching nouvelle_personne progress from a gentle and patient response to anger and fear and sadness over people's basic indifference to the concerns she raised was heartbreaking. And then the deletion with boilerplate, which effectively treated her response as so inappropriate as to be net harmful or worthless to the community. She has been a long-standing valuable contributor to this site; I have benefited from reading her opinions even if I haven't always agreed with them.

nouvelle_personne, I'm sorry this happened to you. It shouldn't have.
posted by praemunire at 6:37 AM on December 11 [66 favorites]

I think even giving credit for "boilerplate" is being too generous. The boilerplate wasn't added until an hour of outrage in this thread. There was nothing at all.
posted by bowbeacon at 6:55 AM on December 11 [21 favorites]

And then the deletion with boilerplate

Point of clarification, it was deletion without even the boilerplate. The boilerplate wasn't added until more than a full hour after the deletion, after it started blowing up on this thread too.

So even with an opportunity to see the flags and assess the comment in context (the comment was in place for less than 15 minutes before deletion), a full hour to review the thread and the comments here in response to it, that basic ass miss the whole damn ass point boilerplate was the best they could manage.
posted by phunniemee at 6:56 AM on December 11 [15 favorites]

The staff has to go. Every one of them. Anything less will doom new Metafilter.

Why, so you can attack and run out the new staff after 3 years? That’s been the pattern here since forever.

I keep coming back to this comment.

I’m not a prolific commenter, but I read every MetaTalk thread and I’ve been a member of Metafilter for almost 17 years. Mathowie was the site founder and hands-on owner for more than 15 years. Cortex was site owner for another five, and that was indeed increasingly hard on him. Under loup’s guidance, the moderators and site management are actively driving off the members. I am having trouble seeing the pattern described here.
posted by kate blank at 7:24 AM on December 11 [30 favorites]

That comment was completely inaccurate, but favorited by over 50 people. It is strange that some folks have such a wildly different perception of the site.
posted by snofoam at 7:41 AM on December 11 [7 favorites]

I think this mega-comment is more for me, as I'm going to try to get the collective in my head to really take a break from here at least until holidays actually arrive. But here goes

(Brandon, I've tried to respond to your MeMail a few times but each time I got this message: Sorry, this member has temporarily disabled MeFi Mail.

Brandon Blatcher is a MetaFilter administrator. Individual administrators can't be available at all times. If you have a request that requires immediate attention from a site administrator, please use the contact form.)

I'm trying to take a break for a least a while because it's fucking heartbreaking.

When I was on the Transition Team, one of the plans I wrote for business development (we never had a meeting because as I found out, that wasn't our mission) was to partner with people on Substack like this:
- they post twice a month or once a month in line with their substack and pop in on that discussion a bit, to build their brand but also for us to have the real authors engaging here
- we give them free memberships for their paid subscribers, and their regular subscribers can just pay the $5 to participate
- we moderate the discussion and provide the broader community, so they get a sort of Discord-lite to dip their toes into the community end without having to do the labour of getting people set up, moderating, etc.
- they promote MetaFilter 1/2x a month in their substack

I figured this would be kind of a 6 month package and different newsletter owners of different sizes and interests would take us up on it, and we would have to limit the spots so that our team wasn't overwhelmed. But I thought offering up our quality of discourse and moderation would have value and that it would be a neat way to keep growing our 'thinky' community.

I'm unsure I could make the value proposition for that any more - both because our community is shrinking (and it is, the stats are lagging a bit but if you look at how many people are posting and how many answers AskMes get etc., it really is indicating bad things.)

But also because I think the moderation wouldn't hold up.

Look, I really believe most people want to do a good job, and feel best and do their best when there are structures and supports to facilitate that. Some people need fewer and some need more and that's totally okay.

I don't believe in micromanaging. In media, my role as a manager (and I sucked at it the first time) was to clear the way and keep my team from impaling themselves on their own sharp expectations while making sure we didn't cut editorial corners (or at least consciously chose any). The print-to-web transition was training, get buy-in, training, data, training...etc.

As a martial arts manager over a couple locations and overseeing about 43 staff, part-time and full time, senior drivers and 17 year olds on their first jobs, I found that not-micromanaging held to a fairly large degree.

95% of the time, if things are sliding off the rails there's a systemic reason or some kind of external challenge.

However, sometimes you do have a situation where a person or a team is not performing. Your stats show it, or complaints come through, or people quit.

What you have to do at that point is say "hey, help me understand why things are visibly slipping? Can you tell me what you understand our goals are? I hear that conversation went badly, can you tell me what happened?"

I have asked people who were visibly screwing up work regularly to use a time logger like Togglr. Not to justify to me what they are doing with their time, but to understand for themselves what they are doing with their time so that they can bring me their issues.

In one case I had a talented but unfocused 21 year old admin, who we had promoted probably too early, who never ever got to XYZ tasks, like oh, making sure people were being billed correctly. (Which shows up in rage real fast, I promise you.)

But he did track his time for a week and found that like, half his time was conversations in the lobby with parents. That was actually part of his job - but not half of it. So we worked together on "ways to extricate yourself from conversations with parents" and within a couple of weeks there was a huge difference. He figured it out. At 21 years old. He's doing great and is profit sharing and experiencing a lot of success.

Anyways, I do not understand what is going on with this moderation team. I do see an uptick in positive comments/blog/side bar stuff, and appreciate it. And I know these threads are draining. I used to think the technology must be just terrible and you had to scan all the posts, but loup set me straight a few MetaTalks back.

Something is really, really off the rails and I hope you all look into it. Productivity is one thing. How many emails are you writing in a day, 60-80? That's ridiculous. Be proactive. Start a MetaTalk with whatever your issue is so people can help - if you need ideas. I don't think you do. I think you need to decide you want to do this job enough to figure out for yourselves why only a few people post to the front page, why questions are getting fewer answers, why these endless MetaTalks are happening.

Judgement is another. I don't really know what to say about that. I've had staff say dumb things -- I had a kid who couldn't pronounce two Anishnaabe twins' Xmas campers names decide on a whim to call them Thing 1 and Thing 2 (after the Dr. Seuss story)...can. you. imagine?? But that kid only did that ONCE. (FTR they quit, we apologized and refunded their money and my cheeks burn in shame to this day. The kid is now 24 and doing excellent work.)

Anyways - if your answer is 'our members are just cranky' then you're writing the death certificate for either your jobs or the site and hey- that's your prerogative.
posted by warriorqueen at 7:48 AM on December 11 [53 favorites]

It really doesn't have to be either/or on "moderation quality is an issue and causes users to quit" and "hovering over this issue in a browbeating/trolly way kills the vibe here and that also turns users off."

I bet I am not the only one who reads some of the comments criticizing the mods above and thinks "Yes, this is a valid and serious point about how we uphold (or fail to uphold) the site's shared values through moderation" but also thinks "back on this bullshit again??!?" to others.

But then, maybe it's a matter of exhaustion. Folks can get exhausted at making these points over and over again. I might get snarky and drift towards a kind of IYKYK shorthand after a while, too.

I just hope this place lives long enough to come out on the other side of this.
posted by DirtyOldTown at 7:58 AM on December 11 [14 favorites]

DOT, my feeling is that it won't unless there is change. I don't have a dog in the Mod Fight, but I do see the userbase shrinking, FanFare (which I like best) is shrinking too because people can post all the movies and tv they want but no one seems to engage routinely in there. So many posts have zero comments! (I post erratically because I see media a lot slower than other folks so I can't participate in most lengthy posts about movies or tv.)

My beef is that there has been no actual work on making this place a non-profit, the staff give vague answers to inquiries, and I am not convinced this place can survive with restructuring and clearly defined goals by management. "Oh we're gonna be a non-profit!" is nice until you realize not much work has been done on it. We are limping along. It sucks. But again, this won't be fixed by MeTa or any of us until the staff take the survival of this site seriously. I am sorry, but it doesn't feel like they do.
posted by Kitteh at 8:09 AM on December 11 [15 favorites]

This is going to sound crazy but please hear me out.

-Write the words "leave a deletion note" on a post it
-Stick that post it on your monitor

Hey now, it's the holidays, we can't be expecting people to do such things during the holidays!
posted by maryellenreads at 8:19 AM on December 11 [6 favorites]

My beef is that there has been no actual work on making this place a non-profit ... .

I don't think this is fair to say. Although it might help if the nonprofit board more frequently gave updates on what it had done. And many nonprofits can start more easily because it's a singular vision that one person can drive. Those are also in one place and starting fresh.

Also, I think some people get confused between the staff and the volunteers working to make MeFi a nonprofit.
posted by NotLost at 8:21 AM on December 11 [1 favorite]

What is the target date for when the nonprofit will be able to start receiving donations? What is the target date when Metafilter LLC will stop soliciting/receiving voluntary payments from users? When will the $5 entry fee be collected by the nonprofit and not the LLC? When will decision making for the website be managed by the nonprofit and its staff/contractors rather than the LLC and its staff/contractors? Who, if anyone, is responsible for making these timelines for each organization? Are there any binding agreements governing performance on these commitments?
posted by ohneat at 8:38 AM on December 11 [16 favorites]

I bet I am not the only one who reads some of the comments criticizing the mods above and thinks "Yes, this is a valid and serious point about how we uphold (or fail to uphold) the site's shared values through moderation" but also thinks "back on this bullshit again??!?" to others.

I managed a fractious web forum for a few years a very long time ago and it was an accepted part of my life that people gravitate toward the action or heat and latch onto a broader carrier wave that's host to a bunch of signals.

The Great My Boss Has Troll Sockpuppets to Goose the Comment Count Metric Debacle that ended with me in charge of the site? By the time it was over only 25 percent of the action in that thread was about George Tirebiter, and the rest was about our comment moderation, which stories we accepted as front page posts, and why run of network ads included Microsoft Office. People were uniformly scandalized over the pro-Microsoft sock puppet, and sentiment was randomly distributed on the rest.

It's just part of community management life to compartmentalize and prioritize. And it's part of life in a community to compartmentalize and prioritize for ourselves. Everyone's got their own way of managing that (or not). I start from "the staff has agency and can manage their own feelings about eating a shot or two, I don't need to crawl into the Octagon with them."
posted by mph at 9:10 AM on December 11 [3 favorites]

I don't think the staff are quite that Machiavellian. E.g. consider loup's serial failures to do basic fundraising activity: that's how the mods get their salaries paid so it would be more in their interests to fundraise effectively. It's not in the mods' interests to fail at fundraising.

That's true, but after the failed fundraiser, the staff reassured people by explaining that they didn't really need the money right now anyway. The staff didn't feel an urgent financial threat to their paychecks, so they did the bare minimum in running the fundraiser.

But when asked if the LLC's financial situation was enough to cover both the current expenses and the future expenses of hiring an executive director for the nonprofit, the staff ignored the question. As far as I know, they still haven't answered it.

The staff are, if anything, not ambitious, so they don't need to raise a huge amount of money every year. Just enough to maintain the status quo for the short term.
posted by april of time at 9:10 AM on December 11 [13 favorites]

What is the target date for when the nonprofit will be able to start receiving donations? What is the target date when Metafilter LLC will stop soliciting/receiving voluntary payments from users? When will the $5 entry fee be collected by the nonprofit and not the LLC? When will decision making for the website be managed by the nonprofit and its staff/contractors rather than the LLC and its staff/contractors? Who, if anyone, is responsible for making these timelines for each organization? Are there any binding agreements governing performance on these commitments?


These are the questions that need answers. The answers can only come from the staff and owner. The transition cannot be completed without action from the owner and staff. The people who receive money for work on the site need to act with urgency to get the transition done.
posted by CtrlAltD at 9:11 AM on December 11 [5 favorites]

I just hope this place lives long enough to come out on the other side of this

As do, fervently, I.

But I can’t see us making it to the next holiday season if we don’t stop bleeding money and memebers. Whatever good faith efforts the leadership may be making towards that end, they are not succeeding.
posted by Lemkin at 9:14 AM on December 11 [3 favorites]

The answers can only come from the staff and owner.

Aren't they questions for the nonprofit, which is not being driven by the current staff and owner?
posted by NotLost at 9:15 AM on December 11 [1 favorite]

It really doesn't have to be either/or on "moderation quality is an issue and causes users to quit" and "hovering over this issue in a browbeating/trolly way kills the vibe here and that also turns users off."

Sometimes I imagine Metafilter as a site where there's a real, good boss in charge. Someone who has good judgment. Good skills. Energy. And a willingness to use all three.

That boss would be someone who could and would fire employees when they turned out to be a bad fit for the site. That would be after training them carefully, and working with them to help them improve, and setting things up to make it easier for them to not fail. It would be after shielding the employee from Metatalk anger and taking responsibility, as their manager, for the employee's mistakes. But if the employee kept not improving, and kept hurting the site and the people on it, they would be replaced.

With a boss like that, I really think there would be easy less "hovering over issues" here in Metatalk. Because there would be much less need. You'd be able to make a point once or twice and know that somebody competent was On It. You might not always agree with their judgment on specific things, but you'd have an overall sense that this person knows what they're doing - and cares about the site no less than you do.

But today there's nobody like that. loup, Brandon, et al can do things that anywhere else an employee would be disciplined for, or given extra training and handholding over, or eventually fired for because dear lord. Nobody is managing this team. There's no oversight. They're not motivated to do better by things like failing at fundraising for their own pay, or failing at modding, or failing at keeping promises or meeting deadlines or pulling off projects.

The only form of sort-of accountability that exists is pushback on Metatalk, and I think that's a huge part of why there is so much of it, and why it feels so "negative" to people who haven't been following along.

Metafilter doesn't have an acting boss with good judgment. The result is that Metatalk is the closest thing to supplying that judgment. But without the power to do more than speak and then watch helplessly as input is ignored, or mishandled.

I used to feel that people calling for cortex to quit were being mean and chasing him out. I think I eventually changed my mind on that after watching him become outright abusive to some users, and lie about it. But it felt bad.

I can't feel bad about calling for this team to be replaced. I don't think they're malicious. I think they just do not have what it takes, on any of the multiple levels this site requires.

Metafilter is a site trying to swim upstream in today's internet. That's a really difficult proposition to begin with. It can't afford a staff like this.

Again, we're in a period where people are talking openly about how mods should be replaced ASAP. In a period where (supposedly, hopefully) we can expect an ED to be hired soon. In a period where mods have made some super visible modding mistakes bad enough to be outright fiascos.

A normal employee in a normal job, who wanted to keep it, would be trying extra hard in a period like this.

If this is the mods trying extra hard, then it's as clear as ever that they are not up to the job. If they're not trying extra hard, then that makes it even clearer.

Metafilter should absolutely have moderation logs and mods should absolutely have to post deletion reasons when deleting a comment. But that still doesn't give you good modding if the mods in question lack judgment. It gives you this.

It doesn't make me happy to ask for anyone to be fired. I just don't see a way for Metafilter to survive in these hands.
posted by trig at 9:16 AM on December 11 [24 favorites]

These are the questions that need answers.

I asked some of ohneat's questions earlier in the current nonprofit update thread. No answers as yet.

That thread is worth reading for anyone interested in what's going on with the transition.
posted by trig at 9:20 AM on December 11 [3 favorites]

I'm wondering if there's anything we, as users, can do to try to increase the probability that if the ED hiring process ever happens it produces someone with good judgment on moderation. (This is specifically about modding, separate from other types of organizational competence.)

Ideally the people doing the hiring would have solid judgment themselves and be able to recognize its presence or absence in a candidate. But we don't know who those people will be or how they think about modding.

Would it make sense to compile some kinds of test cases, like real threads where candidates would explain what they would do, and what they think about how those threads were handled in reality? Or other kinds of questions, or ideas for what the hiring process should look like?
posted by trig at 9:52 AM on December 11 [3 favorites]

I can't feel bad about calling for this team to be replaced. I don't think they're malicious. I think they just do not have what it takes, on any of the multiple levels this site requires.

I am of the personal belief that loup engaged in a bullying campaign in re. not every day big moggies and I am thoroughly done feeling any supportive or charitable way toward their moderation actions ever again. Between the lying in the rice cooked cats thread, the permaband copypasta, and the PhD level thesis one could probably write about which comments loup mashes a favorite on, I am done.

I also think that if your reading comprehension is so poor that you interpret The Moggies Situation as a "mod trying to be helpful" then maybe work on an entirely text communication based website isn't for you.

ALSO, since this current temperature has been consistently high ever since the Halloween Gala failure, I have a sneaking gut suspish that some of this outsize reaction from loup is in specific retaliation to moggies because of their (now memory holed) comment here. The comment was "Are you planning to actually post it?" three full days after loup said "Yup, I'm making a post for the Gala today." and everything that's happened since then on MetaTalk has devolved from that point onward. Maybe this isn't an explicit motivator, but with everything I've watched happen, I can't help but see them as related events.

I'm sad about it y'all.
posted by phunniemee at 9:54 AM on December 11 [28 favorites]

I'm wondering if there's anything we, as users, can do to try to increase the probability that if the ED hiring process ever happens it produces someone with good judgment on moderation.

Maybe also contact the ED search team.
posted by NotLost at 9:54 AM on December 11

Point of clarification, we're really searching for something closer to a PTO President than the executive director of Planned Parenthood, right?
posted by bowbeacon at 9:59 AM on December 11 [3 favorites]

Shepherd was approached to help with ED search and since agreeing, he hasn't heard back from anyone since late spring. He said, "I guess they don't need help, after all?"
posted by Kitteh at 9:59 AM on December 11 [20 favorites]

Maybe also contact the ED search team.

Yeah, but who's on it and does it even exist?
The nonprofit update thread from August says "The search committee is headed by ourobouros and Shepherd". But that thread is very out of date. Also, according to comments from Kitteh, Shepherd has not been contacted by anybody in months.

On preview, yeah.
posted by trig at 10:02 AM on December 11 [7 favorites]

Serving on any of those committees seems like a really thankless task, both from upstream and downstream. I really wish we were hearing better feedback.
posted by DirtyOldTown at 10:06 AM on December 11 [5 favorites]

I'm imagining Shepherd showing up on mefi's doorstep one day, new ED in his arms like a wormy kitten he just pulled out of the gutter. Aw shucks Jessamyn, can we keep it?
posted by phunniemee at 10:10 AM on December 11 [11 favorites]

Several of the mods talked about it and decided we did not want web crawlers "thinking" MetaFilter was a place for people where people should visit for information about unnamed actresses in a nude scene.


What?? That kind of question is not the type of thing that interests me, but are we really now doing that kind of morality policing of content on the site?? So what if somebody shows up here looking for that kind of thing and ends up disappointed? I don’t think we need to be scared of a reference to “nudes.”

This place needs someone competent in charge, stat.
posted by rpfields at 10:20 AM on December 11 [17 favorites]

So what if somebody shows up here looking for that kind of thing and ends up disappointed?

It may well not be that, but more the risk that Metafilter tips over some opaque ML threshold & gets a domain-level flag that dumps all our search traffic that isn't explicitly SafeSearch Off from a signed-in Google user that's verified 18+. At one point I worked somewhere that got one of those & I was one of the people working on figuring out how to undo it, it took *years* to undo even with some amount of connection to Google that meant we hoped a human may eventually hear about our case. We were able to survive it (with layoffs, and a lot of pain), but Metafilter's already faced one Google Algorithm crisis and I wouldn't blame the team for being on-edge about anything that may prompt a second go of it.
posted by CrystalDave at 10:25 AM on December 11 [9 favorites]

But this is the problem! Was the rationale on that deleted Ask a carefully considered decision that took Google's algorithms into account, or was it, ew gross we don't want that here? I can actually sympathize with that second rationale, and wouldn't complain too much about it...unless of course someone didn't want to admit to that 'ew' and instead decided to backfill a reason that sounded more Official and Technical!
posted by mittens at 10:34 AM on December 11 [7 favorites]

haha right that's their reasoning, the fear of declining revenue
posted by glonous keming at 10:36 AM on December 11 [10 favorites]

Yeah just say “dude it was feeling creepy regardless of your intent, sorry you’re frustrated but I don’t think the question works here”

For me the mods often make good calls but for strange reasons. Or for certain specific mod(s), for reasons that seem like bullshit

Deleting for strange reasons reflects a lack of leadership and an echo chamber due to limited feedback over the past x years; it’s a structure problem

Reasons that seem dishonest, I wouldn’t say the same thing
posted by knobknosher at 10:43 AM on December 11 [7 favorites]

(oh no what if webcrawlers think metafilter's a place to find gay hookups on the mexican subway??!!)
posted by mittens at 10:43 AM on December 11 [6 favorites]

FWIW, the Porky's question was constructed in such a way that the asker was looking to identify the actors in a specific promo photo, and then get a sense of what their careers/lives were like after.

I can see being skeptical, because it would--necessarily--also tell you whose naked bodies those were in the scene. But having gone through the trouble to frame it in as non-creepy as way as possible, and referring as it did to a hit mainstream theatrical movie from a famous director that a lot of people saw, it seemed to me at least like benefit of the doubt was in order.

If there's an algorithm concern, okay, but if we do discuss that actual question even peripherally, its framing makes a difference, at least to me.
posted by DirtyOldTown at 10:43 AM on December 11 [6 favorites]

I didn’t find it creepy but I get why some people would and on balance I think the call was defensible. But the stated reasoning is weird af
posted by knobknosher at 10:46 AM on December 11 [3 favorites]

I agree, but recapping the framing is only fair, as otherwise it sounds like a straight-up case of do not pass go, go directly to horny jail.
posted by DirtyOldTown at 10:48 AM on December 11 [3 favorites]

Horny Jail wasn't in Porky's, it was some other teen grossout 80s comedy.
posted by bowbeacon at 10:52 AM on December 11 [5 favorites]

So first the content warning on a Raiders of the Lost Arc still frame, and now a complete deletion of a Porky's question? Is there a popular 80s movie that is safe? I'm starting to think no.
posted by donnagirl at 11:16 AM on December 11 [16 favorites]

We need to come up with a list of banned movies. I will submit a MeTa and form a committee when my shift begins tomorrow evening.
posted by Diskeater at 11:19 AM on December 11 [11 favorites]

save time to just block everything and allowlist Big Lebowski and Old Boy
posted by glonous keming at 11:24 AM on December 11 [4 favorites]

Ordinary People is a beautiful film about seeking therapy. Allowed.

Ghostbusters famously features the undead in various forms. Permaband.
posted by phunniemee at 11:25 AM on December 11 [11 favorites]

50% of my ghostness has been permaband. It's like getting hit in the face with salt rock and sage.
posted by B_Ghost_User at 11:29 AM on December 11 [12 favorites]

I am of the personal belief that loup engaged in a bullying campaign in re. not every day big moggies and I am thoroughly done feeling any supportive or charitable way toward their moderation actions ever again. Between the lying in the rice cooked cats thread, the permaband copypasta, and the PhD level thesis one could probably write about which comments loup mashes a favorite on, I am done.

Uh sorry, also, I just realized that snofoam is the one who made the adverb joke in that thread and snofoam is also the one who was deleted, lied about, and put on an entirely uncalled for temp ban in the cat recipes thread. Coincidence?? Sure maybe.

Boy I hope my secret quonsar is sending me tinfoil this year because I'm running out of hats.
posted by phunniemee at 12:00 PM on December 11 [12 favorites]

my favorite Porky's knockoff was the one where Permaband played a show on the roof of the horny jail
posted by secretseasons at 12:18 PM on December 11 [5 favorites]

the Porky's question was constructed in such a way that the asker was looking to identify the actors in a specific promo photo, and then get a sense of what their careers/lives were like after

The women were participants in an iconic 80s film scene. If the girl in the red bikini coming out of the pool in Fast Times at Ridgemont High was both uncredited and unknown, I think people would be curious about her too.

My mention of Kaki Hunter’s unusual post-film career and the early deaths of the other two were only meant to provide some extra value to clickers-through.
posted by Lemkin at 12:19 PM on December 11 [4 favorites]

This is like the Fall of Rome if the last emperor was just really sleepy
posted by theodolite at 12:20 PM on December 11 [21 favorites]

what if the savior of metafiler.com is actually just making metatalk into the main feature?

wind down the rest of it and we just fight and argue all the time. we could have themed monthly fights, bring back the alphabet threads except each comment has to insult the previous poster, contests for the most outlandish yet plausible reason to deny a sensible pony request. i'm sure we can come up with more if we just put our minds to it, you asshole.

by purposefully running the site straight into the ground we could make this a real comeback story for the ages
posted by glonous keming at 12:40 PM on December 11 [18 favorites]

A mod could have just...not done anything. Because it was a discussion, where people were expressing their views, and nobody was being hurt by n-p's comment

Howdy. I pulled back my involvement with MetaFilter a fair amount over the past couple of years, mostly with the exception of AskMe. I am one of the people who flagged n-p's comment in Ask that began, "I can't believe that THREE DAYS AGO..." I flagged that comment because n-p went on to attack the person who posted the question.

And the fucking irony that it's XXX, the man who literally writes MONTHLY ARIAS about his poo, who tentatively led the lynch mob in debating getting a Black man murdered over ... a toilet problem. XXX was holding the lighter to the torches here and asking, "so nothing actually happened and i'm home safe now, but still ...should i flame up this motherfucter and ruin a Black man's life?" and THIRTY SEVEN OF YOU were like "Favorite added" or even YES YOU ARE O B L I G A T E D!!!!! OBLIGATED! THIS BLACK MAN MIGHT SHIT AGAIN!!!

n-p's early comments were validating and supportive. If they had posted a similar comment raging about the THIRTY SEVEN and not directly attacking the poster, I would not have flagged it. But we are not supposed to attack fellow MeFites. The person who posted the question is not Black. They are deaf, however, they have cancer, and they have struggled in a variety of ways. I can understand why n-p lost their shit in the face of current and historical racism against Blacks and watching it come to life in the responses.

But the poster was ridiculed for posting about poo, they were accused of leading a lynch mob, and more. Traditionally in Ask me responses, we are asked to walk away and not comment if we cannot be civil. Is that tone policing? Maybe. But was it really okay for the poster to be attacked when they asked IF they should call the police and noted the driver was Black, which was why they were concerned about calling?

Like, how should intersectionality play out in a racist, white supremacist, patriarchal anti-trans and queer capitalist society that treats disabled people like shit as well? Fuck if I know how we can play nicely together. In any case, I flagged that particular comment because I did not see how attacking the poster directly was going to fix American racism or the 37 folks who thought the police should be called.

I am deeply sorry that n-p left this site. I will be sorry if the original poster of the question decides to leave this site. I miss a lot of people who used to be here, including aniola. I hate that we are losing more.

My ideal would be that Jessamyn steps up as owner by hiring a consultant (or whatever temporary position was recommended way up in this thread), give that consultant authority to make major decisions (maybe in consultation with J), and then get out of the way.

Nobody is currently authorized to do shit, apparently, apart from deleting comments without an explanation. Yes, I would like to see explanations for deletions as well. Of course, my opinions are probably worth what they cost you.

MetaFilter has been my online home for more than a decade. This home seems to have radon, mold, and maybe dragons. I only live here part time now. I don't want to move but also, I dunno how we get ourselves out of this. warriorqueen, Miko, adrienneleigh, and others have good ideas. Maybe J will make some of them happen. Thank you, mochapickle, for volunteering to rescue the cookbook project.
posted by Bella Donna at 1:37 PM on December 11 [35 favorites]

BD, it seems to me that if those were the concerns, given the history of the thread, the competent mod response would've been to make an official comment acknowledging the emotions expressed generally but requesting deescalation in discussion of the original poster's character. (Perhaps also inviting n_p to make a post here about we discuss perceived safety issues.) Yes, it would've taken significantly longer to draft a kind but effective comment like that than just to delete. But that should be the benefit of paid human moderation.
posted by praemunire at 1:53 PM on December 11 [24 favorites]

This is like the Fall of Rome if the last emperor was just really sleepy

I will abide no slander of the reign of Emperor Somnus
posted by B_Ghost_User at 2:24 PM on December 11 [6 favorites]

MetaFilter has been my online home for over two decades and I'm heartsick at watching it devolve into chaos and hatred. For every improvement in how we interact with each other (and there have been lots of genuine and important improvements), it seems we find another way to hate on each other. I have a long-standing and deep respect for jessamyn, but they are failing in the role as owner of MetaFilter. A role they took on reluctantly and with clear boundaries about what they were prepared to do. I'm grateful they did so, but someone needs to step up and put a stop to this bullshit. I don't know how we move on from all this hatred, but someone needs to try and draw a line in the sand and there's nobody else with the authority to do anything at this point. People have put forward lots of good ideas over and over again, but nothing ever gets acknowledged, even to say 'nope, not gonna do that'.

MetaFilter has become a rudderless ship, lost in the fog and heading straight for an iceberg.
posted by dg at 2:31 PM on December 11 [18 favorites]

My ideal would be that Jessamyn steps up as owner by hiring a consultant

Has anyone here been in contact with jessamyn recently about the situation and suggestions like this one?
posted by umber vowel at 2:34 PM on December 11 [4 favorites]

Hi all, just a quick update that I'm in touch with the cookbook designer, who is a longtime mefite and has been working on this project all along. Brandon, if you wouldn't mind getting in touch with loup, loup should have more details. Thanks, everyone.
posted by mochapickle at 2:44 PM on December 11 [14 favorites]

Brandon, if you wouldn't mind getting in touch with loup, loup should have more details.

Sweet, thanks!
posted by Brandon Blatcher (staff) at 2:54 PM on December 11

It may well not be that, but more the risk that Metafilter tips over some opaque ML threshold & gets a domain-level flag that dumps all our search traffic that isn't explicitly SafeSearch Off from a signed-in Google user that's verified 18+.

With the non-picture content and number of posts and new posts MetaFilter has I think that’s extremely unlikely. But let’s pretend it is - there’s an Ask on oral sex on the front page of Ask right now and there are somewhat regular BDSM posts that appear on Ask, and NSFW links from the blue from time to time. So if this is a concern, make a policy change and announce it and enforce it. I’m not sure in what world a reference to Porky’s is going to upset Google more than this, this, this, this etc.

If you don’t want to host a discussion on Proky’s just own it. Do you mods not understand that spewing stuff like this (when a regular deletion isn’t even crawlable, too) erodes trust??? Why would any of us believe you on the next thing?
posted by warriorqueen at 3:05 PM on December 11 [28 favorites]

If you don’t want to host a discussion on Porky’s just own it.

I feel like Mel Gibson in Payback when everyone keeps thinking he wants more money than he really does…

There wasn’t going to be - nor was I interested in - any discussion of Porky’s. Just, hopefully, the provision of some information that IMDB uncharacteristically lacks.

But since you mention it, 80s teen sex comedies are a historical film genre with some surprising names attached to them. (Tom Cruise may have forgotten Losin’ It but I haven’t.) I think they would make a good FPP and attract some engagement.

If any mods would like to officially discourage that, I’d be interested in their reasons.
posted by Lemkin at 3:44 PM on December 11 [10 favorites]

If you don’t want to host a discussion on Proky’s just own it.

The post went up. The post was flagged by someone not on duty. I was on duty, didn't quite understand the flag, asked the person. They responded, pointing out it was kinda like doxing. Another member concurred and that it was kinda creepy. The post was being commented on and the OP of the post made a comment that came off as a bit skeevy. The three of us, one male and two females, agreed it was worth deleting.

This is the note I wrote:

This post was deleted for the following reason: Asking for the identities of unknown women from a nude scene to share their names and current activities comes across as skeevy and doxxing, so we're removing this post. -- Brandon Blatcher

Then we discussed whether it should be 404'd and decided to do so, as we didn't want the site to be seen as anything like a boyzoneish/pervy site.

That's what happened. I understand if folks don't believe that, but there's the rationale of the various decisions.
posted by Brandon Blatcher (staff) at 3:50 PM on December 11 [11 favorites]

hey so is this a good time to come back to mefi after having been gone for a little over nine years or ...
posted by brina at 3:59 PM on December 11 [24 favorites]

brina sure you can help moderate since apparently the paid staff can't do it
posted by glonous keming at 4:01 PM on December 11 [5 favorites]

it's always a good time. the water's warm, but you'll have to guess whether it's because it's a comfortable temperature or if it's because of all the piss
posted by i used to be someone else at 4:01 PM on December 11 [11 favorites]

Has anyone here been in contact with jessamyn recently about the situation and suggestions like this one?

Take a look at the nonprofit thread.

tl;dr - multiple people (including me) asked jessamyn directly in the thread for something like this to make the transition actually happen. I have not seen any response to that.

(In addition, loup has (in their own telling) offered to resign multiple times to jessamyn, and each time she apparently told them to keep on keeping on.)
posted by trig at 4:03 PM on December 11 [8 favorites]

hey so is this a good time to come back to mefi after having been gone for a little over nine years or ...

HIIII!!!! 🤩
posted by knobknosher at 4:04 PM on December 11 [4 favorites]

> I understand if folks don't believe that

i believe it. i believe it more than anything else i've heard today irl or online. i believe that is exactly what happened. not to #SpeakForOthers but i suspect almost everyone will believe what you've said.
posted by glonous keming at 4:15 PM on December 11 [11 favorites]

Asking for the identities of unknown women from a nude scene to share their names and current activities comes across as skeevy and doxxing

I did not ask for their current activities.

Perhaps you were too skeeved out to notice.
posted by Lemkin at 4:19 PM on December 11 [8 favorites]

Mod note: Hi brina, welcome back! Glad to see you again!
posted by Brandon Blatcher (staff) at 4:28 PM on December 11 [1 favorite]

I think doxxing describes identifying like, nonconsenting people in TikTok videos, not actors who signed on to be part of a film? It was much more common historically for cast members to be missing from the credits. But that doesn't mean that these women don't deserve to be credited for their work, even if it's in a role that some might find questionable or involves nudity.
posted by brook horse at 4:44 PM on December 11 [13 favorites]

I think doxxing describes identifying like, nonconsenting people in TikTok videos, not actors who signed on to be part of a film?

"Doxxing" seems a big stretch.

"Boyzone" less so. I can accept that.
posted by Lemkin at 5:07 PM on December 11 [4 favorites]

I am a little confused on the doxxing angle. Wouldn’t the source for the actors names be public info, like the credits of the movie or something? The poster wasn’t explicitly looking for something that might be private, like the real names if some of the actors used stage names, right?

Also, skeevy really seems to imply something about the intent and I thought that presuming what others think was against the guidelines.

Like many other deletion explanations, it’s not that clear how this violates guidelines. I think it’s another case where the language used is pretty vague, but if a more direct deletion reason was given, people could at least agree or disagree with it. (If the whole page didn’t completely disappear.)
posted by snofoam at 5:11 PM on December 11 [9 favorites]

FYI, you guys accidentally forgot to include a link to this thread in the new header banner. For some reason, it has a link to the November 6 chill vibes thread that was last commented in on Nov 22nd and is now over 30 days old and closed.
posted by snofoam at 5:14 PM on December 11 [8 favorites]

Also, skeevy really seems to imply something about the intent and I thought that presuming what others think was against the guidelines.

He did say "comes across as" skeevy. He's entitled to characterize what the mods felt came across.

In any event, the n-p buttoning is at least 25 times more important a modding issue than this one. I hope there will be a post in the gray about it soon.
posted by Lemkin at 5:19 PM on December 11 [11 favorites]

So if this is a concern, make a policy change and announce it and enforce it. I’m not sure in what world a reference to Porky’s is going to upset Google more than this, this, this, this etc.

If you don’t want to host a discussion on Proky’s just own it. Do you mods not understand that spewing stuff like this (when a regular deletion isn’t even crawlable, too) erodes trust???

I'm not sure how I was promoted to Mod here, but I'm just some random person speculating with a possibly-related experience, much like makes up a lot of threads. (At least, I hope I haven't been combat-promoted. I've been in the modding trenches before, I've seen some stuff, I'm not racing to get back in)
posted by CrystalDave at 5:30 PM on December 11 [2 favorites]

Step onto the field, be named king.

Thanks for the explanation BB. I missed that - or was it only visible before the 404? In any case at least it’s owning it.
posted by warriorqueen at 5:51 PM on December 11 [1 favorite]

If "that's a bit skeevy" is a deletion reason, there's a lot of AskMe that needs culling.
posted by Dysk at 10:59 PM on December 11 [16 favorites]

If they had posted a similar comment raging about the THIRTY SEVEN and not directly attacking the poster, I would not have flagged it. But we are not supposed to attack fellow MeFites.

This makes no sense to me - the Asker is a fellow mefite and thus sacrosanct (a rule I think is untenable anyway, precisely because of situations like the one under discussion, sometimes it is just not possible or appropriate to say what needs saying without someone reading it as an attack) but the 37 people who favourited it, also mefites, they're fair game?
posted by Dysk at 11:11 PM on December 11 [5 favorites]

"Favorites" are just MetaFilter's super-unintuitive word for "Bookmarks," right? We're still doing that kayfabe, aren't we?
posted by Bugbread at 11:29 PM on December 11 [5 favorites]

My understanding has always been that clicking that little cross under a comment signifies that one believes Jesus Approves of it, if I've just been bookmarking
Him a reading list wow do I feel like a goof.
posted by riverlife at 1:54 AM on December 12 [25 favorites]

For me they’re an IV drip of self-satisfaction that nourishes my soul.

I don’t know if that was the design intention, but please please please never take it away.
posted by Lemkin at 6:13 AM on December 12 [6 favorites]

sometimes it is just not possible or appropriate to say what needs saying without someone reading it as an attack

There are ways to convey contempt for a commenter’s value system that do not involve screaming at them that they’re a piece of shit.

This is not a criticism of n-p, who was doing the best they could under adverse circumstances. But if I had been King of the Forest, I would have locked down the Ask thread before it exploded, pointing people to a fresh Talk post as a place to thrash things out, and given n-p both a personal outreach and some latitude to vent in the gray.

It still might not have avoided a costly buttoning, but it would have had better odds than what was actually done.
posted by Lemkin at 6:26 AM on December 12 [7 favorites]

new compliance tactic for the mods to deploy against resistive problem users: withhold faves
posted by glonous keming at 6:27 AM on December 12 [4 favorites]

The post went up. The post was flagged by someone not on duty. I was on duty, didn't quite understand the flag, asked the person. They responded, pointing out it was kinda like doxing. Another member concurred and that it was kinda creepy. The post was being commented on and the OP of the post made a comment that came off as a bit skeevy. The three of us, one male and two females, agreed it was worth deleting.

This is the note I wrote:

This post was deleted for the following reason: Asking for the identities of unknown women from a nude scene to share their names and current activities comes across as skeevy and doxxing, so we're removing this post. -- Brandon Blatcher

Then we discussed whether it should be 404'd and decided to do so, as we didn't want the site to be seen as anything like a boyzoneish/pervy site.

Just to clarify a little bit, it looks like the flagger was a mod right? Was the "another member" a mod as well?
posted by bowmaniac at 6:36 AM on December 12 [8 favorites]

rmrgr, were the "multiple flags" on the Boston Museum of Art post in 2019 from LobsterMitten and cortex? That would be chef's kiss.
posted by Don Pepino at 6:56 AM on December 12 [4 favorites]

This is not a criticism of n-p, who was doing the best they could under adverse circumstances. But if I had been King of the Forest, I would have locked down the Ask thread before it exploded, pointing people to a fresh Talk post as a place to thrash things out, and given n-p both a personal outreach and some latitude to vent in the gray.

It is not weird to me that n-p's last comment got flagged - but if someone has snapped because of really existing fears and frustrations, the answer is not just to delete their comment. (So I think your suggestion would be a reasonable way to handle it)

Further, and I recognize that this is maybe a whole underground lake of worms, because in this country experience of the police is radically different between white middle class people and everyone else, especially people of color, and where many mefites have maybe not secure utopian wealthy careers but the kind of careers where we're not heavily dependent on working for a platform service, there is going to be a radically different understanding of "yes, call the cops" depending on what your life is like. Or depending on what the lives of people you care about are like.

Not every question where metafilter is split like this is going to really go off the rails, but that's because (as n-p basically pointed out) not every question could end in the cops killing someone and getting paid administrative leave. If you don't tip, you might be screwing someone over (or you might just literally not have the money and truly need the service) but no one is going to get shot. (Although in the larger scheme of things, there's always social murder.)

What I'm trying to say here is that n-p's concerns appear to me to be not just stemming from bad moderation but stemming the fact that you can't be neutral on a moving train - calling the cops on a Black working class guy over something like this could wreck his life or kill him and would at the very least destroy his immediate livelihood. This is particularly striking when there was a pretty obvious explanation - he needed to shit and there was a miscommunication with Dubious Dude because as a society we fail to teach hearing people to communicate well with Deaf people. It is absolutely true that white people can genuinely experience something scary, frustrating, deeply unpleasant, etc and those can be real feelings based on real experiences that deserve real sympathy and care but we always translate that into "call the cops".

(A side note: IME white middle class people tend to assume that we can just will appropriate police response into existence. We just cannot believe that the choice is very often between "something bad happens" and "something bad happens and then the police make it immeasurably worse and someone is punished unfairly and excessively". We assume that there must be a good outcome in there somewhere and there generally isn't.)

There's obviously plenty of issues that are pure moderation issues, and there also seem to me to be issues of inclusion and anti-racism that are matters of moderation, outreach and day to day stuff.

I do think that changing the site's make-up would change its culture and that might solve the "call the cops" problem but I also think it's going to be harder to change the site in this way because of the "call the cops" problem. We could just not have questions about whether to call the cops, we could have a moderation hack for any question like that, we could decide that it is site policy that in general you should not call the cops unless it is a literal physical emergency in the moment, but as they tend to go, these questions are bad for the site because they bring to the fore how white supremacist this society is and how many white people unthinkingly participate in and accept white supremacy.
posted by Frowner at 7:27 AM on December 12 [41 favorites]

(Participate and enforce! white supremacy, by shutting down valuable voices like n_p's)
posted by tiny frying pan at 7:50 AM on December 12 [8 favorites]

People have flipped out on Metafilter many, many times over the years. Remember neu?

Some of the time, its passive-aggressive: people want to get kicked off so they start acting inappropriately. I remember someone using the (American) C word at a mod, and they haven't been back since.

Some of the time, it's mental illness; people start screaming that they're being treated like a child because no one understands how their tin foil hat works and F everybody.

Some of the time, it's legitimate. But what does the person hope to accomplish? Yelling at a stranger on the internet has never changed anyone's behavior.

Legit or not, I don't like yelling here, but that's me. I knew that taxi thread was problematic on so many levels so I just moved on, but I know I'm just going to get yelled at for WHADDYA MEAN YOU DON'T CARE ABOUT RACISM?? so whatever.
posted by Melismata at 8:05 AM on December 12 [1 favorite]

There are many comments that I don't think are accomplishing anything and which I don't like. That's not a reason to delete a comment, particularly from a black woman expressing distress at racism on the site that has not been addressed or contained. At the very least, not without also dealing with the racism.

If n_p's comment had been deleted along with others suggesting this man is a obviously a threat to others, and a mod statement had been made about not bringing racist assumptions to analysis of black people's behavior, we might be having a different conversation.
posted by brook horse at 8:16 AM on December 12 [21 favorites]

as they tend to go, these questions are bad for the site because they bring to the fore how white supremacist this society is and how many white people unthinkingly participate in

There's always the question of what the purpose of metafilter is. Is it building a space where people will encounter the kind of thinking that they want, or building a space where everybody gets to be offended, or building a space where people come in with different backgrounds and perspectives and, by encountering conflicting takes, end up learning new things.

In this case, you could say white people (and other people who see themselves as being part of the in-group) will proceed unthinkingly until confronted with something that makes them think, like the comments in every "should I call the police?" thread I've seen here that spell out explicitly how dangerous calling them can be. From that perspective threads like this are (if moderated well...) an important and valuable thing.

You could also say "it's not anyone's job to teach these people, they should be learning on their own time, and having to constantly try to teach them is distressing to people for whom this isn't some academic discussion but real life."

I think that's the real tension, more than anything else. I don't think it's an easy one to resolve. I personally (as someone who's encountered my own "wtf are these people blissfully clueless or hateful" moments about things that affect me) fall on the side of "this is at least potentially a chance for people to learn", because I also know I've learned a lot that way about my own blind spots. But that approach really relies on good, sensitive moderation to work - both to enable threads to be illuminating rather than shitshows, and to encourage members to stay and continue to add their perspective without feeling like all the educational onus is on them or like they're shouting into the wind or surrounded by an ignorance brigade.

When I wrote that for me this whole debate about staff is about Metafilter being "a good site", that's a big part of what I meant. To me Metafilter is most valuable because of what I have learned and still occasionally learn from it, and I think the ham-handed, ignorant, minimal-effort moderation approach over the past years has made this place much less valuable in that respect than it used to be.
posted by trig at 8:19 AM on December 12 [13 favorites]

Some of the time, it's mental illness; people start screaming that they're being treated like a child because no one understands how their tin foil hat works and F everybody.

That is not a useful description of mental illness. Plenty of well adjusted people come to the conclusion that they are being persecuted, and often times they are right.
posted by Tell Me No Lies at 8:21 AM on December 12 [10 favorites]

To me Metafilter is most valuable because of what I have learned and still occasionally learn from it, and I think the ham-handed, ignorant, minimal-effort moderation approach over the past years has made this place much less valuable in that respect than it used to be.

I am unquestionably a better person because of Metafilter than I'd be without it, and that's because I've got to read perspectives from conflicting viewpoints. Conflicting viewpoints expressed loudly and imperfectly. I love it, it's useful and good.

Sometimes a position of "hey when you say something like this about a trans person you sound like a real cunt" is a valuable datapoint to take and carry with you through life.
posted by phunniemee at 8:26 AM on December 12 [42 favorites]

Some of the time, it's legitimate. But what does the person hope to accomplish? Yelling at a stranger on the internet has never changed anyone's behavior.
I thought the idea was that we want to be a community, not a bunch of strangers on the internet? Anyway, a fairly sizeable lot of people seem to be reporting right here in this thread that they've changed their behavior because someone yelled on the internet.
posted by Don Pepino at 9:14 AM on December 12 [7 favorites]

Surely it depends on how fair the yelling is - I think it would be reasonable to say that one of n-p's comments was pretty shaming to Dubious Dude about his posting history in a way that was not going to bring light. To my mind, things should never have escalated to that level, and if they did, deleting that particular comment seems reasonable if it was accompanied by "let's pay attention to people in this thread, especially people of color, when they point out that it is dangerous, unfair and racist to call the cops in these situations".

I'm really of the opinion that "should I call the cops on this Black service-provider" is one of those questions that should be EXTREMELY heavily moderated from go, to the point of a mod warning at the front of the thread. It's not like there's no benefit to the discussion in terms of educating participants, but the discussion should really start from the American reality that working class people generally and people of color generally face outsized and unfair consequences at minimum when the cops are called. That's not debatable any more than, eg, statistics about POC and medical neglect. If I began a question like, "my sister in law, who is [a person of color] claims to face medical discrimination in her pregnancy, should I believe her" we would start from the point of view that it was well documented and factually true that women of color face medical discrimination in pregnancy, we wouldn't start from a position that this was some kind of unknowable or subjective thing. (Or if we DID, it would be fucked up and I think most of us can see why.)
posted by Frowner at 9:33 AM on December 12 [23 favorites]

Several things in recent days have brought my mind back to a memorable comment from several years ago, about how we are "socialized to be more outraged at breaches of etiquette than breaches of justice".

It seems to me that a great deal of what people are angry about here can be explained in those terms.

The whole approach to moderation here seems to be simply to delete comments that are breaches of etiquette; and thereby to maintain the illusion of civility, the peace of the status quo.

But the effect of that approach is inevitably to silence the disaffected in favour of the comfortable; to punish those who are openly emotional while rewarding the passive-aggressive; to silently demonstrate who is welcome and who is not, without even leaving a record of the action.

The experiment I would really love to see is to disable the moderators' delete button entirely. What would it mean if you had to actually had to steer the conversation with words, with explanation, with diplomacy - towards mutual understanding - towards justice?

A team that showed they could do that would be worth paying $250k a year for, and then some.
posted by automatronic at 9:43 AM on December 12 [45 favorites]

I'm really of the opinion that "should I call the cops on this Black service-provider" is one of those questions that should be EXTREMELY heavily moderated from go, to the point of a mod warning at the front of the thread.
Yeah, agree. That comment wouldn't have happened in the first place had the thread been moderated effectively. But mods appear to be either not reading threads at all or speed-reading and, inevitably, misreading, thus getting an out-of-focus, inaccurate picture of what's going on. It's pretty basic: you have to read carefully enough to understand what people are saying to do this job effectively. We should be able to trust moderation enough that flagging a comment lwould be safe to do--we could trust that a moderator would come and read the room and then respond appropriately. The current situation is too hideously ironically much like flagging a comment is "calling the cops" on the comment and the person making the comment, with predictable results.
posted by Don Pepino at 9:58 AM on December 12 [16 favorites]

The comment was heated, which is discouraged in AskMe, but it is timely to larger issues, so upon feedback and review, it’s worth letting it stand.

The comment appears to have been reinstated, but there's a lack of a mod note owning the prior error. Also, I'm really horrified by all this - I had not realized deletions were happening quite like this.

I have a perhaps inconvenient question: is loup the only not-from-the-community moderator? I am wondering if 1) this may be explaining the serious errors going on and 2) if so, this gives me serious concern for an outside-the-community ED, who could create such mistakes on a larger scale.
posted by corb at 10:22 AM on December 12 [4 favorites]

is loup the only not-from-the-community moderator?

No, both loup and travelingthyme came from outside the community (and were hired at the same time) .

loup is certainly the only non-invisible external hire, though I wouldn't say they're the only visible bad-decision maker.
posted by trig at 10:43 AM on December 12 [6 favorites]

Do we know approximately how many comments are deleted in a day? A month? The mefi stats site doesn't have it unless I missed it.

I honestly can't tell from reading all these threads if we're in a position where mods are deleting a lot and that's the biggest issue, or if they are deleting relatively little but what they choose to delete is so poorly considered that nearly every deletion is problematic.

The call for a mod-log is much needed. I assume the time to build an automated/integrated mod log feature on this site is not something the current team wants to do at this moment in the site's life. But honestly considering we get ~700 comments a day it feels like the number of deleted comments must be small enough that mods could simply be copy/pasting the text of the comment into a Google Sheet, noting the post it was on and the time of the deletion along with mod name and calling it a day without adding a significant burden.

And just giving the community that google sheet link might go a long way to improving the situation.

And if I'm wrong and there are enough deleted comments per day to make that manual effort unworkable? What would that mean? that 10-20% of all comments are deleted every day?
posted by jermsplan at 10:47 AM on December 12 [7 favorites]

The experiment I would really love to see is to disable the moderators' delete button entirely. What would it mean if you had to actually had to steer the conversation with words, with explanation, with diplomacy - towards mutual understanding - towards justice?

That really would be an interesting experiment. And a sorely needed skill-building exercise for the mods. And it wouldn't even need hacky workarounds or new site code!

Brandon, you've been looking for fun things to raise enthusiasm. How about a contest week where the contestants are the mods, and the winner is whoever pulls off the fewest deletions-per-work-hour while maintaining a high discourse level throughout the site. Any mod who keeps deletions at 0 while fostering quality discussion wins a bean.
posted by trig at 10:51 AM on December 12 [8 favorites]

Do we know approximately how many comments are deleted in a day?

We do not.
The staff does not know, either.
posted by phunniemee at 10:57 AM on December 12 [11 favorites]

I'm curious to know what people would consider the absolute clear line of "this should definitely be deleted even when we're not deleting" for example doxing anyone, death threats, or threats to a person's livelihood, or drumming up support for harassing a person?
posted by Zumbador at 11:14 AM on December 12

I feel like we’ve seen some estimates that there are maybe about 20 deletions a day across all sites on average. Maybe less and I could be wrong. I think the number is hard to figure out exactly because account wipes are also included in the main way to determine deleted comments.
posted by snofoam at 11:16 AM on December 12 [1 favorite]

The staff does not know, either.

But that may change in the future!
posted by Lemkin at 11:37 AM on December 12 [2 favorites]

I'm curious to know what people would consider the absolute clear line of "this should definitely be deleted even when we're not deleting" for example doxing anyone, death threats, or threats to a person's livelihood, or drumming up support for harassing a person?

I’m also curious about how often spam is a problem behind the scenes. Does the $5 signup truly stop most of it? When I think about an internet with no delete key, that’s what I think of.

I’ve found this extremely long MeTa thought provoking, if not particularly encouraging where the prospects of a sitewide BND are concerned.
posted by eirias at 11:43 AM on December 12 [1 favorite]

If I began a question like, "my sister in law, who is [a person of color] claims to face medical discrimination in her pregnancy, should I believe her" we would start from the point of view that it was well documented and factually true that women of color face medical discrimination in pregnancy, we wouldn't start from a position that this was some kind of unknowable or subjective thing. (Or if we DID, it would be fucked up and I think most of us can see why.)

i mean, you'd think, but over on the blue in a thread about charlet chung experiencing racism, for over a day we had a bunch of white men basically saying shit like "maybe she was the problem," "does racism really exist?" "how is a white woman being racist racism?" "i'm white and this isn't racist," and so on, and most of the commenters did not seem to understand why it was fucked up and repeated shaming had to take place before the mods did anything.

this was in november of 2024, too. basically the whole situation was a worse moderation and discussion than before the big race metatalks of 2015-2018.

so i'm completely not surprised that the moderation team not only fucked the pooch here with the deletion of np's response, but then beheaded the pooch, shat in the skull, and then presented it all as "the aristocrats"
posted by i used to be someone else at 11:49 AM on December 12 [22 favorites]

This is not a new complaint, but it's very disorienting how when deletion notes are provided, they just occur at some random point further down the thread. I know that feature requests are a non-starter on Metafilter, but deleted comments should really be replaced with some sort of generic placeholder-- if not the mod explanation itself-- in each spot where a comment was removed. The Charlet Chung conversation mentioned above is more or less illegible to me as someone who did not read it in real time.
posted by dusty potato at 12:05 PM on December 12 [15 favorites]

I’m also curious about how often spam is a problem behind the scenes. Does the $5 signup truly stop most of it? When I think about an internet with no delete key, that’s what I think of.

I imagine it is pretty minimal. I feel like back when cortex revealed there were only 1-2 signups a day, we also got a figure for the amount of folks who started the process and even that was really low.

I know that it is natural to imagine that there must be SOMETHING going on behind the scenes that requires all this moderator and admin time. (Some imagine subpoenas!) I think, in fact, even the people who are most disillusioned with the current status quo started as good faith believers that there were hard working folks actively making this site awesome. I think that was true at some point in time. I think that it's true now of at least some of the people, if we include volunteers and board members. Personally, though, I don't think it is helpful to imagine there's something big happening behind the scenes. We could imagine anything (subpoenas, even!) but it is much more practical to just assess the state of things based on what we see and what we are told.
posted by snofoam at 12:22 PM on December 12 [8 favorites]

Every once in a while I do see spam posts before they get deleted, so it is a thing that happens, but I don't get the impression that dealing with it takes up much time (especially since mods these days seem to be just responding to flags and not really reading the site much or at all).

What I'm kind of curious about is how much of a mod's shift is spent on one-on-one emailing with users, and what part of those interactions could have happened as a one-to-many thing on Metatalk instead. (Acknowledging of course that it's impossible to know for sure which approach would ultimately take up more mod time, but still curious.)
posted by trig at 12:49 PM on December 12 [2 favorites]

Do we know approximately how many comments are deleted in a day?

We do not.
The staff does not know, either.

Maybe they jot hash marks on a paper towel or something and someone adds them up the next day.
posted by jgirl at 12:55 PM on December 12

Do we know approximately how many comments are deleted in a day?

We don't, although we do have comments by deletions - unfortunately this database when compared to numbers given for last year shows a significant rise in comments that were retroactively deleted via account wipes. I was going to run some numbers but ran out of steam, especially since it's hard to identify trends if you have random wipes changing the numbers all the time.

However if you take these numbers as if the mods were doing them for the last three months, add up FF, Ask, Meta, and here, and then divide by the number of days in the month you get:

8.5 comments per day

So that's the most it could be and is for sure fewer, as we know comments were wiped during that time.

It's a good point that comments deleted shouldn't be a goals metric -- maybe the goal is deleting fewer comments.
posted by warriorqueen at 12:57 PM on December 12 [5 favorites]

Wow. I missed that thread until now. It's horrifying as it is; what it would be like with all the JAQing intact I don't want to imagine.
posted by Don Pepino at 12:58 PM on December 12 [3 favorites]

Maybe they jot hash marks on a paper towel or something and someone adds them up the next day.

That's an interesting idea for a tool! A tool where one could record decisions for future reference, to better judge success, guide efforts, and provide accountability. A ... a log of sorts!
posted by mph at 1:01 PM on December 12 [11 favorites]

One way a mod could steer the conversation is to ask commenters for source material in the case of controversial, or even offensive, opinions.

On the matter of police and people of color, Emily Bazelon, a white reporter and law professor, who authored "Charged: The New Movement to Transform American Prosecution and End Mass Incarceration" advocates for not calling the police on people of color.

But police statistics, generally, are not rosy. USA Today did a year-long nation-wide investigation with the aim of publicizing the names of police with several charges or accusations against them. The title of their story was "We found 85,000 cops who’ve been investigated for misconduct. Now you can read their records."

On a personal level, I know of several cases in a majority white state with higher-than-average levels of police corruption where the police abetted the criminal — for a fee. Based on my experience — and I am a white person — I think a certain percentage of police have personality disorders, and the "blue wall of silence" means if one commits or abets a crime, everyone else keeps their mouth shut. That alone, is, to my mind, reason enough to avoid the police if at all possible. FWIW, however, I don't think we need to defund them. I think we need to retrain them, and ensure the lobbyists for the police unions aren't allowed to influence lawmaking.
posted by Violet Blue at 1:23 PM on December 12 [6 favorites]

one can see why users are starting to think the mods aren't putting a *ton* of effort into reading comments, y'know?

Wouldn't be even remotely the first time this has happened lately.

As usual, I recommend reading the various comments around what I've linked directly to; it truly does feel like we're dealing with an organization that simply cannot be bothered to even half-ass things.
posted by sagc at 1:38 PM on December 12 [12 favorites]

Both mefites and former mefites (at MetafilterMeta) have repeatedly wanted to give the mods the benefit of the doubt, to a point beyond reason, I'd say.

Given the contentiousness of the issue, however, I think the question of mod accountability needs to framed in a more practical way: Can we afford them? Given the last two fundraisers and the astronomical annual cost compared to other websites of comparable size, I think the clear answer is no. I mean, even the mods' supporters were unwilling or unable to kick in enough to pay for another full year of moderation in the last two fundraisers.

Many folks have commented in this thread on the site's lack of leadership, and I think it's worth saying the sooner Jessamyn frees up enough money to pay the salary of an ED for a year, the sooner she is relieved of responsibilities she has repeatedly made clear she never wanted.

So from what I'm seeing here's the choice:

(1) Provide the mods with generous notice, and then relieve them of their duties.

OR

(2) Scrape along in a massively shrinking and increasingly underfunded site until the site can no longer afford to continue. But know if you choose the mods over the site, chances are the site's remaining life won't last long.
posted by Violet Blue at 2:01 PM on December 12 [12 favorites]

Hi all -- I just dropped a brief comment into the most recent Nonprofit Update thread regarding the current state of the ED search. Here's what I added there:

Chiming in here as someone who volunteered to help with the ED search. As I understand it, work on the ED process slowed/paused as the Interim Board focused on tasks related to incorporation. The Interim Board recently reached back out to me about re-starting the process. I'm still available and happy to help. To start, I've asked the Interim Board some questions about the budget and scope for the ED position. As I understand it, there are some resource constraints and trade-offs that they are working through. I don't have all the information, but we are working on setting up a meeting. I haven't spoken to Shepherd in a while, but I hope they're still available when the time comes to get the search re-started. That's what I know for now.

I'll put it out there that I unfortunately don't have the bandwidth to keep up with this particular thread, given that it's moving fast and that I'm in end-of-year crunch time at my job. That said, I've been trying to keep an eye out for ED-related suggestions in this and other threads. Feel free to MeMail me with anything you'd like to make sure I don't miss.
posted by ourobouros at 2:16 PM on December 12 [14 favorites]

someone using the (American) C word
Now I'm intrigued as to what the non-American C-word is.
posted by dg at 2:45 PM on December 12 [3 favorites]

Coño?
posted by Bugbread at 2:48 PM on December 12

No, wait, that's just non-English in general, not specifically non-American.

Cack?
posted by Bugbread at 2:49 PM on December 12

Communism?
posted by one for the books at 2:54 PM on December 12 [4 favorites]

Clearly codswallop. And Communism is very much an American c word.
posted by ssg at 3:15 PM on December 12 [3 favorites]

Do we know approximately how many comments are deleted in a day?

About two years ago I ran a script that recorded deleted comments for a week. There were four or five a day on average and none of them looked like a moderator was on a pogram. Just seemed to be cleaning up.
posted by Tell Me No Lies at 3:19 PM on December 12 [3 favorites]

Communism?
Clearly codswallop

so communism was just a red herring?
posted by bowmaniac at 3:28 PM on December 12 [8 favorites]

It’s the same c-word, but in British and Australian it isn’t nearly the nuclear bomb of a word that it is in American.
posted by bowbeacon at 3:54 PM on December 12 [8 favorites]

Mod note: What would a successful BND look like to you?

As I was sitting down to start this shift as a moderator, I noticed how many new comments there were in MeTa, my thought was "what now?" I'm not proud of that, but y'all can understand that feeling if not the particular reasons a moderator might think or feel that.

So let's be real, the current situation completely fucking sucks. It is sad and ridiculous and could have been (should have been) avoided or at least not the bad if other decisions had been made.

There's been little explicit direction from past or future management (not a diss, y'all be busy) but I remain positive that things will get better, even if I don't have a timeline. Some of the staff met briefly with the upcoming board a few months ago and there's no reason to doubt they want to best for the site. But even if they took over right now, nothing much would change instantly, there's still a lot of work to do (adopt bylaws, approve (with community input) a policy and procedures manual, obtain insurance, and transfer the existing LLC).

And the world is currently ugly and going to get uglier as as a 2nd Trump presidency becomes an actual thing, JFC. I'd hope MeFi will be able to cope with that.

But as 1adam12 (one of the members of the upcoming board mention in the above link), that does present the site with an opportunity to appeal to people who seek a different online space.

What if we took some small efforts towards that goal?

That idea is partially inspired by adrienneleigh's thoughtful comment about moderation and their kindness at letting me join to discord to look around.

I really liked the welcoming page and how it laid out what that community is about and for. MetaFiilter could use something like that, because current signup page and process feels overly long, and intimidating.

What if we rewrote it? I like that idea and it feels more productive and helpful for the future site. So here's some verbiage I slapped together real quick in a Google document. It's not great at all and very much a first draft. Hit me up via MeFiMail for the link if you'd like to help me rewrite. Or if's there's a better way to share and do this, we can set that up, let me know!

None of the above is meant to excuse or ignore the current crappy situation. But in light of not much coming from the current or upcoming management, it would be good to draft out some idea of how we'd like the site to be, IMO. No doubt the upcoming board may change or ignore it, but it's good to focus on the positive potential of this site, IMO, the place we all come home in one way or another. #pleasehelpmakemetafilterbetter
posted by Brandon Blatcher (staff) at 4:11 PM on December 12 [9 favorites]

Brandon, have you read a single thing in this thread? This isn’t about wording on the signup page. It’s about Loup, you, and the rest of the mods not being willing to do a single one of the suggested things, and about users feeling ignored.

Do the comment hiding. Do the deletion notes. Start a moderator log. Don’t endlessly rewrite meaningless documents that nobody reads.
posted by bowbeacon at 4:17 PM on December 12 [41 favorites]

Bowbeacon, to be fair, it’s also about bad moderation decisions.
posted by snofoam at 4:28 PM on December 12 [9 favorites]

more gaslighting.

rewrite the welcome page? That's a non sequitur. Flagged as a derail.
posted by sagc at 4:29 PM on December 12 [19 favorites]

Brandon, did you and Loup discuss the feedback document last week to determine next steps? That was the plan last I heard.
posted by brook horse at 4:29 PM on December 12 [19 favorites]

Seriously. Try addressing even one of the responses to your past several comments, rather than the one cherry picked one that you've spun into another group project. Give us some signs that you're trying.
posted by sagc at 4:31 PM on December 12 [11 favorites]

Maybe I'm reading far too much between the lines, but the vibe I heavily get from Brandon's comment is "making decisions like comment hiding, or requiring deletion notes from all mods (not just me), or creating a moderator log that would be filled out by all mods (not just me) requires either (1) all the mods to come to an agreement or (2) for management to issue orders. The people responsible for making these kinds of team-wide mod policies just aren't doing their job, so all I can do is stuff that is doable by a single mod and doesn't require team-level consensus."

I know there's a tendency to think "well, if that's what you mean, then just say that," but it's the dude's job. While maybe you could tell a customer "sorry, I'd love to help you out, but I'd need manager approval and my manager is a slacker" in a whisper, this is a public forum that your manager could read at any time, so that's not nearly as viable.

Do I know for sure that that's what he means? No, of course not. But the way he phrased his comment is the same way I'd phrase my comment if the situation I hypothesized were true and I were in his shoes, so it doesn't seem (to me) like an outlandish inference.
posted by Bugbread at 4:34 PM on December 12 [39 favorites]

Brandon, it looks like your comments may be bleeding through from another reality. The ideas are not very helpful in this universe, but it would be fascinating to know what Metafilter is like in your timeline. If you are still able to connect, please tell us more!
posted by snofoam at 4:36 PM on December 12 [8 favorites]

Then they should all resign and let Jessamyn get blamed for destroying the site. Otherwise it’s on them, too.
posted by bowbeacon at 4:37 PM on December 12 [6 favorites]

Also, Brandon... It kinda sounds like you're throwing Jessamyn and the board under the bus? There's been no change since the comment that everything was paused, because decisions are hard and beyond the remit of the mods?

What about that sentence fragment you left a while ago? No clarity there.

Any word on an apology to nouvelle-personne?

Have you re-asked the question about the DB now that you know what "atomic" means in a question about databases?

Has anyone been in contact with the cookbook contractor? Who has the details regarding this, and if it's not the entire mod team, why not?

When was the last time anyone heard from kirkarcha about the site? Why are the mods being so evasive about it?

It's like talking to wall.
posted by sagc at 4:37 PM on December 12 [13 favorites]

FYI, it looks like you guys updated the banner again, but still forgot to include the most active MetaTalk thread!
posted by snofoam at 4:41 PM on December 12 [8 favorites]

I appreciated the brief candidness.
posted by lucidium at 4:42 PM on December 12 [7 favorites]

"Then they should all resign and let Jessamyn get blamed for destroying the site. Otherwise it’s on them, too."

Eh, I don't know about that. It kinda reminds me of the terrible Willy's Chocolate Experience event in February. I think of the Oompa-Loompa actress who went viral. She didn't have shit to work with, but she wanted to do the best she could for the children at the event. I wouldn't say that she should have quit and that she was partially responsible for the event being a nightmare by not quitting.

Of course, it's not perfectly analogous. But if you believe in the site and want to make it better, get a job as a mod and find that you're powerless to do almost anything that people suggest but unable to say so, you might still want to do what little you can while the site is still around, especially if there's a light at the end of the tunnel and you believe that one day the management will switch to management that actually does things. I don't think not quitting makes you culpable for your manager's laziness.
posted by Bugbread at 4:49 PM on December 12 [10 favorites]

But Brandon isn’t doing the best he can. He’s actively setting user trust on fire.
posted by bowbeacon at 4:53 PM on December 12 [6 favorites]

I get sad when Mommy and Daddy fight.
posted by Lemkin at 4:57 PM on December 12 [6 favorites]

You mean by suggesting an improvement so trivial that it angers people more than it improves the site? Agreed, but I don't think that's his intention.

If the argument is "if you can't do anything useful, quit or you're responsible for your manager's laziness," I disagree.

If, however, the argument is "if you can't do anything useful, don't suggest something trivial, instead" then I wholeheartedly agree.
posted by Bugbread at 4:57 PM on December 12 [8 favorites]

Fair enough.
posted by bowbeacon at 5:00 PM on December 12 [2 favorites]

(And, of course, this is all just speculation on my part, and MeTa doesn't have a strong track record with speculation, neither on the pro-mod side ("they must not get anything done because they spend their shifts dealing with subpoenas") or on the anti-mod side ("the rice cooker suggestion is so racist it must have come from a white mod, because a PoC wouldn't even think of asking something like that"), so take my comments with the bag of salt they deserve)
posted by Bugbread at 5:01 PM on December 12 [4 favorites]

But this is like if the oompa loompa gal looked around and said wow this place sucks, everyone is disappointed. How about if I grab a clorox wipe and go clean up the front door knobs, brb.
posted by phunniemee at 5:06 PM on December 12 [6 favorites]

Mod note: Brandon, did you and Loup discuss the feedback document last week to determine next steps? That was the plan last I heard.

Yes, doing small things that are recommended there in terms of transparent moderating, setting small goes and giving timely updates.

Brandon... It kinda sounds like you're throwing Jessamyn and the board under the bus?

Nah, it's a long process that is frustrating in how long it's taken, but I have faith that it is happening and it's a good thing. The board is doing the best they can.

Any word on an apology to nouvelle-personne?
A apology was sent.

Have you re-asked the question about the DB now that you know what "atomic" means in a question about databases?

No, because the answer will be same.

Has anyone been in contact with the cookbook contractor? Who has the details regarding this, and if it's not the entire mod team, why not?
Yep, will will

When was the last time anyone heard from kirkarcha about the site? Why are the mods being so evasive about it?

This morning. Because as mentioned before there were personal and technical reasons work slowed down.

Fuller update on the progress in next week's site monthly update. I'm positive about the work continuing and overall goals are good in terms of open sourcing the rewrite.
posted by Brandon Blatcher (staff) at 5:13 PM on December 12 [2 favorites]

But this is like if the oompa loompa gal looked around and said wow this place sucks, everyone is disappointed. How about if I grab a clorox wipe and go clean up the front door knobs, brb.

Right, like I said, not a perfect analogy and I didn't mean to imply that Brandon rewriting the signup page is anywhere on the level of what she did. I just gave it as an example of someone doing something because they were powerless to do much but they wanted to somehow make some improvement, no matter how small.

I really should avoid analogies.
posted by Bugbread at 5:18 PM on December 12 [2 favorites]

Yep, will will

Perhaps proofreading could be added to the list of things to look into.
posted by sagc at 5:37 PM on December 12 [4 favorites]

Yes, but in those situations I was being paid to be there, not being asked to pay the people who were being vague when I asked questions.
posted by lapis at 3:33 PM on December 7

I’ve been mulling over this good response to my comment about vagueness being typical in workplace communications. I hadn’t thought of it like this and I agree that we aren’t the workers here and so my mental model isn’t right. But in “paying” to be here we also should remember that we are not the bosses. We are the donors, and while we should be able to expect some transparency about how resources are spent — like periodic reports, or forums for asking questions — we aren’t owed explanations of the personal crises of the employees of the organizations we donate to. Employees report their stuff to the ED, who passes on only what the board needs to know; the board in turn only passes on what we donors need to know, which truly is pretty vague. “Is there an ED vacancy” and “are we meeting our mission,” that sort of thing. But it works, because it is someone’s job to keep track of the details.

I think it does all come back to that missing layer. The difference between board vague and employee vague actually is huge because in the board case it is someone’s job to manage the employees, it is someone’s job to manage the executive, and the right people have the right tools. I think how well this present leaderless structure is working should absolutely inform whatever comes next. If we couldn’t have an unpaid steering committee for legal reasons, we also cannot have an unpaid Iowa permacaucus for reasons that are less codified but equally compelling.
posted by eirias at 5:43 PM on December 12 [3 favorites]

"overall goals are good in terms of open sourcing the rewrite"
"Yes, doing small things that are recommended there in terms of transparent moderating, setting small goes and giving timely update"
What do sentences like these mean, in practical terms? Because obviously the last time you said mods would leave notes, that clearly did not take effect. You've been made the accountability partner for loup - what does that look like, in terms of setting small goes [sic], or transparent moderating?

Taking into account that you've also said you can't make decisions without jessamyn's approval, what *can* you change, other than rewriting pages nobody looks at? (Show me the evidence that our acquisition funnel fails on that page. I'll wait)

What are the technical reasons the site was delayed, and why would they be something not to share with the community?

By what logic do you know that the answer re: atomic changes to the site DB before you've asked the question? Was your question to frimble accurate (ie, reflected what people in the thread wanted to know), despite you later misunderstanding the term in your public answer? I'm just so confused - do you think the definition of the word just doesn't matter? Did you direct frimble to the thread, and then repeat what they said in response to the comments? (If so, why didn't they reply in thread?) If you can't ask because they broke their arm, and nobody else on staff knows or can find out, why not just say that, rather than saying you refuse to ask the question?
posted by sagc at 5:50 PM on December 12 [6 favorites]

What if we rewrote it?

Rewriting the signup page is a solid idea that I suggested five years ago.
posted by Diskeater at 5:57 PM on December 12 [5 favorites]

nooo don't give it approval next thing you know there'll be another metatalk and committee and banner and eventual lack of action.
posted by sagc at 5:58 PM on December 12 [5 favorites]

But Brandon isn’t doing the best he can. He’s actively setting user trust on fire.

I don't know if you've been following this thread, but as much as the small group of people yelling in here can be considered to be the users, there is no user trust.
posted by Tell Me No Lies at 6:03 PM on December 12 [2 favorites]

BB, in case you're not aware, whatever input method you've been using for the past week or so is randomly dropping words so your comments lately are coming across a bit word-salad at times. it reminds me of a wireless keyboard with a dying battery or like when my leg blocks the bluetooth signal.
posted by glonous keming at 6:15 PM on December 12 [11 favorites]

like the flagger was a mod right? Was the "another member" a mod as well?

#pleaseanswer
posted by bowmaniac at 6:19 PM on December 12 [4 favorites]

As a ghost, therefor incorporeal, I can often find it frustrating when I can't interact and move objects easily in the material world. Newspapers, ohhh boy.

Perhaps in an analogy, Brandon is also a spirit, and 'making changes/doing anything' is his newspaper.
posted by B_Ghost_User at 6:35 PM on December 12 [6 favorites]

When was the last time anyone heard from kirkarcha about the site? Why are the mods being so evasive about it?

This morning. Because as mentioned before there were personal and technical reasons work slowed down.

To be clear, from the other thread the discussion was regarding publishing the database schema:

"Can you publish the database schema, please?

Talked it over with the developers, kirkaracha and frimble, and they both thought it wasn't a good idea to do that and I see no reason to disagree with them on that."

So yes it's technically true that the last time anyone heard from kirkarcha about the site was this morning. So I'll reword the question. When was the last time anyone heard from kirkarcha about the ongoing work of recoding the site.
posted by bowmaniac at 6:37 PM on December 12 [4 favorites]

the vibe I heavily get from Brandon's comment is "making decisions like comment hiding, or requiring deletion notes from all mods (not just me), or creating a moderator log that would be filled out by all mods (not just me) requires either (1) all the mods to come to an agreement or (2) for management to issue orders

This is something that has long perplexed me about current MeFi leadership - who is ultimately responsible for things like setting policy? Who is responsible for what, in general? There’s the owner and one person who does general admin stuff in addition to moderation and now Brandon has taken over looking at MeTa (which used to belong to someone else, but they didn’t seem to do it most of the time)? And everybody else deletes stuff and approves asks and writes the occasional note and replies to emails? That’s how it feels like it’s broken down but I don’t know if that’s correct. I guess some other mods have their own thing like I know the BIPOC board was TT’s idea.
posted by atoxyl at 6:40 PM on December 12 [9 favorites]

if you check goodnewsfortheinsane's comment history it seems that they are handling "nights"
posted by glonous keming at 6:51 PM on December 12 [2 favorites]

General answers:
Few people change overnight, so you work with them as they do. Yes, it's a process.

Going back and forth about developer questions is usually copy and paste, but sometimes I do ask for a broad picture explanation just to get my non-developer brain around some things.

The developers have not been directed to a MeTa thread, their time is better spent developing, and there's no reason not to trust their decisions, IMO.

like the flagger was a mod right? Was the "another member" a mod as well?
Yes.

So yes it's technically true that the last time anyone heard from kirkarcha about the site was this morning. So I'll reword the question. When was the last time anyone heard from kirkarcha about the ongoing work of recoding the site.

This morning. Will have information in next week's site update.
posted by Brandon Blatcher (staff) at 6:51 PM on December 12

like the flagger was a mod right? Was the "another member" a mod as well?
Yes.

Thank you.
I'm glad the time zones aligned for you such that you were able to get 3 mods together so quickly.
posted by bowmaniac at 6:56 PM on December 12 [6 favorites]

"Few people change overnight, so you work with them as they do."

What is this an answer to? What aspects of "leave mod notes" or "don't set deadlines you can't meet" are "processes"? They seem binary. How long can we expect things to be a process? People have been pointing out concerns and being ignored for years. What's different now?

Going back and forth about developer questions is usually copy and paste, but sometimes I do ask for a broad picture explanation just to get my non-developer brain around some things.

Ok, I'll give the mod-tea-leaf reading a try. Does this mean that the answer to my question is "I didn't understand what 'atomically' meant when I asked, but I think I asked in a broad enough way that, now that I know what it means, I can confirm that the answer is no based on my understanding of the original answer and the site database"?

I'd genuinely love to drill down on this, either to see where I'm wrong, or to see how we're getting to what you wrote, rather than something closer to the above, which feels much more explanatory to me.
posted by sagc at 7:05 PM on December 12 [6 favorites]

”I didn't understand what 'atomically' meant when I asked, but I think I asked in a broad enough way that, now that I know what it means, I can confirm that the answer is no based on my understanding of the original answer and the site database"?

This is such a silly game of telephone to be playing. Of course Brandon doesn’t know what “atomically” means in this context (but that also means these kinds of questions should not be routed though a middleman who wouldn’t be expected to know).
posted by atoxyl at 7:21 PM on December 12 [7 favorites]

Anyway I think Brandon’s response actually implied there is no timestamp on deletions anyway so in fact he’s right that the answer to the question about whether the timestamp could be used to distinguish account wipes doesn’t matter?
posted by atoxyl at 7:27 PM on December 12 [2 favorites]

I’m not 100 percent sure where the question came from but I get the sense that it’s about following a specific line of inquiry to the end of the earth when we all know the gist of the answer anyway, that the number of deletions day to day is Not Many. Or were we actually interested in counting account wipes?
posted by atoxyl at 7:29 PM on December 12 [2 favorites]

I think an answer of whether it's atomic or not would reassure people that it's not something that can fail halfway through and leave various scraps in the DB.

It's not super important, but boy, was it ever a struggle to get here!
posted by sagc at 7:35 PM on December 12 [1 favorite]

the vibe I heavily get from Brandon's comment is "making decisions like comment hiding, or requiring deletion notes from all mods (not just me), or creating a moderator log that would be filled out by all mods (not just me) requires either (1) all the mods to come to an agreement or (2) for management to issue orders. The people responsible for making these kinds of team-wide mod policies just aren't doing their job, so all I can do is

I get that vibe too, but it's hard to buy at this point. For example, killing the comment-hiding experiment before it even started may have been "management's" decision, but Brandon definitely made his negative feelings about it known before that (for all the criticism about how negative members who ask for change are, that comment was the only negative response to the news the experiment was being launched). Not long after, the reasons he listed as personal reasons were pretty much the same reasons he attributed to the mods as a whole in announcing the end of the experiment (again, before it even began).

Is loup the person solely making decisions? If so, it seems like Brandon is still in a position to be pretty influential. Are decisions instead made by the mods as a group? Brandon is currently the interface between these user-input threads and the rest of the mods and the devs, who apparently don't read Metatalk anymore. If that's the case, Brandon (and loup, if they're lurking) are the ones communicating to the rest of the mods what members think is important, good, bad, an embarrassment to the profession of moderation, etc. Brandon is in a position to help things happen or not happen.

Everything I've seen from Brandon indicates he's very enthusiastic about doing things like fun posts, enthusiastic mod comments, and now the perennial loup favorite - rewriting documentation. And entirely uninterested in doing anything else, to the point where it feels, at least, like he's actively ignoring the suggestions slash pleas actual users make. So when or if Brandon transmits to the rest of the mods the messages he's taking away from these threads, how similar is what the mods hear to what these threads are actually saying?

Even using terms like "management" is a conscious decision to obfuscate who's responsible for making decisions and what the process looks like. It was frustrating and ridiculous when loup used it, and still frustrating and ridiculous when Brandon uses it. This is a community-funded site, dependent for its existence on the community and 100% intended (supposedly) to serve the community. There's a tiny group of employees. Why this corporate-style obfuscation? Why do we not even know who's making decisions? (If the purpose is to protect anyone from flak, I don't think it's working. So maybe give transparency a try for a change.)

And Brandon has played a plenty big part in the problematic moderation decisions and site communications I've seen over the last several months at least.

tl;dr Brandon's not some powerless mod who would be making this an amazing place if only it weren't for "management" not permitting him to. Instead Brandon - whose good intentions overall I'm not actually questioning - has a vision for making this site better that is significantly different than what people have been asking for and talking about for, oh, years. And it really seems like Brandon is putting his energy into his own vision, rather than into representing users and addressing their requests and needs.

Maybe I'm wrong. I feel like there's room to prove me wrong with some concrete actions, if that's the case.
posted by trig at 7:36 PM on December 12 [19 favorites]

I think an answer of whether it's atomic or not would reassure people that it's not something that can fail halfway through and leave various scraps in the DB.

Well sure but that wasn’t the original context, as far as I can tell. The original context was “does an account wipe update every comment atomically and with the same timestamp such that we could identify which comments were deleted as part of an account wipe?”
posted by atoxyl at 7:44 PM on December 12 [2 favorites]

Speaking of DB questions, the revelation that comment deletions and account wipes are recorded in the same way in the database raised the question of whether wiped account data is actually deleted, or just hidden like "deleted" comments. I asked about that earlier in the thread and was excited to get an answer (not to be bitter, but that's fairly rare!) The answer was that indeed, wiped accounts are not actually wiped, just made (mostly) "inaccessible". To me that's more troubling than the sloppy comment deletion DB practices.

As I said in that thread I'm not a GDPR expert and maybe someone has a different perspective on why only (mostly) removing access is practically, ethically, and legally what the site should be doing instead of real deletion.
posted by trig at 8:34 PM on December 12 [8 favorites]

Practically that’s how everyone handles regular deletions. It’s not how one should handle requested data wipes but it’s rather predictable that it is how this site does just as a result of being an ancient site that doesn’t put a lot of resources into development.

Though just overwriting the text with [deleted] seems straightforward enough as a solution.
posted by atoxyl at 9:02 PM on December 12 [2 favorites]

For regular comment "deletions" it's fine, especially since restoring mod-deleted comments is something that needs to happen sometimes (and since there's a real case for making their content public anyway). But I think account wipes, where someone is explicitly saying "I want all my content removed from this site", are a different story.
posted by trig at 9:18 PM on December 12 [7 favorites]

Some thoughts after reading the explanation for the extra-deleting of the deleted post about Porky's. (And, to clarify, I've never seen Porky's, never saw the text of that AskMe, and don't know who Lemkin is or have any connections to them afaik. I don't really care about the AskMe question itself, but find the actions around it's deletion… concerning.)

So, you decided that the question was kinda gross (Okay, sure.), so you established a new, vague, and unwritten rule against that (Maybe not the best way to go about that?), wrote up a deletion message explaining it (Doing better here!), but then were afraid that someone (Who?) might see the fact that such questions were banned and considered delete-worthy as evidence that MeFi was a boyzoneish/pervy site (Wait, what? This seems backwards. Is the goal to paper over things and pretend that not only the site and it's mods, but also the users, are perfect and can never err?), and then put the post on double-secret probation and not only deleted it but any trace that it or it's deletion reason existed (So that nobody, including the poster, could understand what happened, read that reason they wrote, or learn by example where the boundaries are?).

This feels like it's coming from a similar place as the apparent reluctance to have any sort of moderation log or record of deleted comments and the difficulty with consistently noting deletions (or if a message is left, descriptions of what was deleted that… don't seem accurate to someone still has that comment loaded or has it shared with them). Deleting things and acting like they were never there, prioritizing a polished looking archive and historical record (For who?) over the experience of the users in the thread and the ability of people to “read the room” and learn the boundaries by using the site. It's a reminiscent-of-gaslighting effort not only to (or just not to) resolve conflicts, but to pretend that they never happened.

Or, also from a similar place (and with similar downsides) as the insistence that's been made multiple times that it's better for all questions, answers, and feedback to be handled in private one-on-one conversations rather than on the site we all use, with the dual effects of hiding any conflict and hindering anyone not making the effort to be directly involved from understanding what's going on.
posted by JiBB at 12:42 AM on December 13 [27 favorites]

I think it's a good idea to smooth the new user process. Not sure it's the top priority, or if these pages are going to be overwritten by the new site anyway, but it could definitely be improved.

If we're getting an update on the new site, it would be good if it had more information about it.

1. Is it an exact reimplementation of the existing site on a different tech stack, or a new site with similar features?

2. Will it connect to the same database as the current live site, or does it need a different database structure?

3. If it's a different database, how will the migration work? Will the old site be made static, and a new one created? Will the old and new sites run parallel for a while? Or will the data be migrated as a whole on a particular date?

4. Who decides what features are necessary and what bugs are tolerable before the preview and live versions appear?
posted by TheophileEscargot at 1:44 AM on December 13 [6 favorites]

don't know who Lemkin is

I’m an OK guy after you get past the skeeviness.
posted by Lemkin at 6:15 AM on December 13 [22 favorites]

My opinion wrt a lot of the deletion discourse is that the moderators have been deleting a lot of stuff since the late-cortex era in response to what they see as desire of the community. We, collectively, seem to have decided that a lot of stuff that used to be fine to post around here is no longer fine to post--there were various lengthy discussions about this over the course of the 2010s and the delete-lots-of-stuff faction won. The current moderation regime is largely (though not completely) composed of people who have limited history of actual engagement with the site as an ordinary user and so they are trying to follow the lead of the community, they don't have their own Metafilter "internal compass" for what they want the site to be like, in stark contrast to a cortex or a mathowie or a jessamyn. The community collectively flags a lot of stuff and gets mad about the existence of various stuff, so the moderators delete a lot of stuff, and they're just trying to be responsive to what we say we want. And when a lot of stuff is getting deleted, inevitably some of the stuff that gets deleted, from the perspective of any given user, should not have been deleted, or was deleted in a clumsy way. And then when there's friction about it, the mods don't really have anything convincing to say. They're firefighters. What was the building trying to be before it was on fire? They don't really see that as part of their purview. The fire is out, what else are you looking for? Rebuilding the building is your job, citizen.

That's the big shift: the people running the show, by and large, have come to see themselves as responding to the expressed desires of the users, rather than executing their own vision of what the site should be as longtime users themselves. Until that changes, the bad trajectory will continue.
posted by Kwine at 8:37 AM on December 13 [35 favorites]

the vibe I heavily get from Brandon's comment is "making decisions like comment hiding, or requiring deletion notes from all mods (not just me), or creating a moderator log that would be filled out by all mods (not just me) requires either (1) all the mods to come to an agreement or (2) for management to issue orders. The people responsible for making these kinds of team-wide mod policies just aren't doing their job, so all I can do is stuff that is doable by a single mod and doesn't require team-level consensus.

I think part of the problem, from my experience handling situations like these, may be that there's no clear guidance on how decisions get made, because in the past, there used to be a different process that now no longer exists.

I was on a board once, where a certain process was supposed to be handled, per bylaws, 'by the board and X staffer'. In the past, the board and the staffer had been on the same side, pulling together, so it was never a problem that had to be quantified about what happens if there's disagreement. Then there was. It became the most excruciating thing, because the only thing we could assume is that unanimous decisions were okay, but we had no way of handling decisions where there was disagreement, because no process had been created. It became a huge thing and blew up the board and ultimately the organization.

In this case, I have a clear question for Brandon: not what is the process for making decisions, but is there a clearly outlined process for making decisions in the absence of management direction?
posted by corb at 8:55 AM on December 13 [8 favorites]

We, collectively, seem to have decided that a lot of stuff that used to be fine to post around here is no longer fine to post--there were various lengthy discussions about this over the course of the 2010s and the delete-lots-of-stuff faction won.

For the record: I am persuaded that my Porky’s question was boyzone-adjacent and I support the collective mod decision to remove it.

All I would ask that they have done differently is notify me by MeFi Mail (which I would have seen almost immediately) rather than contacting my registration email (where I would never even have thought to look).
posted by Lemkin at 9:17 AM on December 13 [10 favorites]

“ What was the building trying to be before it was on fire?”

I love this so much. Taking it into consideration as I plan my own 2025.
posted by samthemander at 9:49 AM on December 13 [16 favorites]

Speaking of notifying me by email, I wish loup had tried that before “fixing” the video link in my morning FPP.

Why would anyone assume that a YouTube URL with a timestamp ended up that way by accident?
posted by Lemkin at 9:57 AM on December 13 [19 favorites]

I've flagged it with a note saying something like, 'the user commenting about the video URL was not correct--if you clicked the link, it took you directly to the point in the video illustrating the point of the post, so the OP is asking for it to be restored.'
posted by Wobbuffet at 10:03 AM on December 13 [10 favorites]

Rebuilding the building is your job, citizen.

That's the big shift: the people running the show, by and large, have come to see themselves as responding to the expressed desires of the users, rather than executing their own vision of what the site should be as longtime users themselves.

In terms of automatically deleting things without thinking about them, that mostly holds up.

In terms of management actions and setting mod protocols? They're not responding to users' expressed desires. Cf. nearly every site update thread and blowup thread since forever.

They're executing their own vision, which is one of low effort jobs, a quiet membership, document tweaking. Limping along. The only real initiative and movement we've seen has been on two projects that literally no user asked for: refactoring the entire site, and then rewriting it from scratch.

"Rebuilding is your job, but we won't cooperate, or step aside to let you do it."
posted by trig at 10:05 AM on December 13 [8 favorites]

oh ffs mod, i ask you again: please just stop.

you fuck up almost everything you touch. stop. you consistently find the worst possible interpretation, and your judgement is abysmal. you should be embarrassed how bad you are at this.
posted by glonous keming at 10:07 AM on December 13 [10 favorites]

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posted by warriorqueen at 10:34 AM on December 13 [16 favorites]

Also recommend links to the Wiki be removed from the site until someone can look at it - the admin list alone is completely wrong, and the orientation page is antiquated and awful.
posted by warriorqueen at 10:37 AM on December 13 [7 favorites]

MetaFilter: antiquated and awful
posted by Lemkin at 10:42 AM on December 13 [6 favorites]

I'm sure I missed more typos because I am doing this on a break but: Your user name cannot be changed once your account is created.
posted by warriorqueen at 10:43 AM on December 13 [2 favorites]

For anyone compiling a list of what mods will and will not do with regard to user comments:

1. Will add content warning and thereby make you look unhinged
2. Will not correct spelling of famous person's name, maybe you spelled it wrong on purpose
3. Will edit links in your posts bc someone doesn't understand timestamps
4. Will delete freely when you point out a racism
5. Will reinstate said deletions and offer to wipe their own crap commentary so no one ever knows they made a bad decision
6. Will ban if you point out these things kinda should disqualify you from being a mod

I'd offer you links to each of these but so much of it gets wiped (but not truly wiped, I guess?) that the links aren't reliable
posted by donnagirl at 10:46 AM on December 13 [24 favorites]

It is honestly hard for me to understand how the current mods exercise such consistently poor judgment on the micro level. I am really someone who tries to understand where people are coming from when they make a decision that is different from the one I would have made, but the skill level of current moderation feels like if you took a random person off the street and then somehow anti-trained them.
posted by dusty potato at 11:24 AM on December 13 [13 favorites]

Metafilter: evidence that MeFi was a boyzoneish/pervy site (Wait, what?
posted by sammyo at 1:14 PM on December 13

All right, which of you jokers did this?
posted by Lemkin at 3:13 PM on December 13 [5 favorites]

(there's enough backstory on that, it pretty much requires its own entry in the wiki at this point)
posted by mittens at 3:58 PM on December 13 [2 favorites]

I agree with warriorqueen’s (much earlier) observation about the lack of leadership in MeTa and Kwine’s recent comments about deletion expectations. It all overlaps with the change from a boss/owner/face of the organization dynamic over time. And by time I mean the last 15 years, post-mathowie, during which I’ve spent a lot, a lot, a whole lot, of my disposable minutes and hours on this site and in MeTa when it gets interesting.

MeTa is for the passionate and intense to interact with the people in charge. It’s a behind the scenes, backroom, private office kind of place where you have an opportunity to bend the ears of the bosses and hear their opinions and decisions first hand. There’s a big appeal in that for some people. When Jessamyn and/or Cortex were the “face” of MetaFilter they were also more directly involved and connected with MeTa. That’s changed, as all things do, and since then it’s been awkward for many and infuriating and hurtful for some.

Like deletion expectations changing, I think a public deletion log is also a post-Cortex era concept that would have had less support a decade ago. I don’t believe a moderation log will fix the situation, but just become an endless source of evidence that decisions were made and not always the best ones.

However, the public log seems to have a lot of support and momentum. Perhaps once it is up and running there should be a new subsite for moderation discussion. Maybe MeTa isn't the place for it anymore?
posted by Paid In Full at 4:05 PM on December 13 [3 favorites]

Some folks could benefit from looking up what doxxing actually means.

I'm not gonna post a flag to die on a hill over frigging Porky's but I will say every bit of this is stupid as hell.
posted by DirtyOldTown at 4:10 PM on December 13 [19 favorites]

Third Porky’s post removed. The velociraptors are testing the fence.
posted by mochapickle at 4:40 PM on December 13 [23 favorites]

Some interesting mefi history at the 2013 metatalk thread shakesBlatcher's sole comment appears in. A more innocent jokey time.
posted by freethefeet at 4:44 PM on December 13 [6 favorites]

Some interesting mefi history at the 2013 metatalk thread shakesBlatcher's sole comment appears in. A more innocent jokey time.

I don’t even understand! Does time travel exist? Does 2024 Blatcher have to delete 2013 Blatcher to prevent a singularity? Is this like Louper or something?
posted by snofoam at 4:54 PM on December 13 [10 favorites]

Third Porky’s post removed

The idea that they waited eleven years to spring this trap chills my blood.
posted by Lemkin at 4:57 PM on December 13 [9 favorites]

People you gotta stop asking about the mainstream R-rated movie with a nude scene. You're making people uncomfortable.

Can't you just ask for porn recs or BDSM advice instead? (Those things are fine, apparently!)
posted by DirtyOldTown at 4:58 PM on December 13 [16 favorites]

Frankly, the thought of people getting all hot and bothered over actors who would now be around 60 years old cheers my elderly heart.
posted by JanetLand at 5:04 PM on December 13 [31 favorites]

Just imagined a scenario where a continued barrage of stunt posts forces a separate MeTa on “the Porky’s issue”, in the course of which someone actually answers my question, just before the collective rancor destroys the site for good, and I end up - like Othello - killing the thing I love.
posted by Lemkin at 5:05 PM on December 13 [22 favorites]

The best stunt posting on this topic would be to create sockpuppets in the names of each of the actresses in the scene and then have each sock post to Ask, asking which 80s movie they appeared in.
posted by snofoam at 5:22 PM on December 13 [11 favorites]

Can't you just ask for porn recs or BDSM advice instead? (Those things are fine, apparently!)

Yeah the repeated reticence to allow this question given all the shit that is allowed to fly on Ask its truly baffling. Like, full on mind boggling, like an addict pausing in administering his seventh speeball this hour to tell you not to smoke that joint, it's like, bad for your health man.
posted by Dysk at 5:24 PM on December 13 [8 favorites]

I end up - like Othello - killing the thing I love.

Jeez! Didn't you read the spoiler policy? Use the details tag (assuming you can handle the associated tech demands).
posted by GeckoDundee at 5:32 PM on December 13 [11 favorites]

Looks I'm gonna be tied up all weekend.

I gotta visit 1400+ movie posts I've made on FF and apologize for doxxing the actors.
posted by DirtyOldTown at 5:34 PM on December 13 [15 favorites]

Well MetaFilter is now the #6 hit on Google for "Porkys shower scene", so apparently it's just that kinda place.
posted by automatronic at 5:36 PM on December 13 [45 favorites]

I suspect the genuinely skeezy naked roommate voyeur question from earlier this year, the one that took a ton of us flagging it as legitimate fetish content to bring down, might have resulted in an internal policy of overcorrection.
posted by mochapickle at 5:37 PM on December 13 [8 favorites]

Well MetaFilter is now the #6 hit on Google for "Porkys shower scene", so apparently it's just that kinda place.

I don't know whether to laugh or cry.
posted by Lemkin at 5:39 PM on December 13 [12 favorites]

Hey, here are some general answers to questions:

I going to refrain for now from getting into the technical details about the new site. We'll have a more involved discussion in the new year about those aspects, but for now there's not much to publicly share. Don't take that as it's not going to happen or things are falling apart, but rather that we over promised and under delivered before, so we're keeping quiet about specifics for now and look forward to sharing information in 2025, obviously sooner than later.

For the record, I'm in favor of a moderation log and being transparent about moderation actions.

As to the Porky's post, mods do have discretion on edge cases and "this is kinda doxxing/skeevy like" falls into that category. The original poster was emailed. Turns out there's a bug (I think) where a 404'd post doesn't show the deletion reason to the general membership, only to mods. Will ask frimble about that when they're back.

Thanks for the write up warriorqueen, will add to the document.
posted by Brandon Blatcher (staff) at 5:54 PM on December 13 [1 favorite]

As to the Porky's post, mods do have discretion on edge cases and "this is kinda doxxing/skeevy like" falls into that category.

Lest people's imaginations run wild on "skeevy", this is what happened:

Someone replying to the original post said "Have you considered writing Kaki Hunter and asking her?"

To which I replied - wittily, I thought - "The (full) frontal approach, eh?" Then I added something about how she's probably happy to have left the legacy behind.

Again, I support the deletion on boyzone grounds. But the charges of doxxing and skeeviness seem to me... unfounded.
posted by Lemkin at 6:07 PM on December 13 [4 favorites]

Again, I support the deletion on boyzone grounds.

Again, given the shit that just flies without comment or concern in Ask, that makes no sense.
posted by Dysk at 6:22 PM on December 13 [12 favorites]

Offered without judgment, one of the stars of Porky's explains here how boyzone-adjacent overlaps with skeeviness and career impacts of being associated with the film:

"Casting directors were not at all happy with the movie, because for the next five years they had to cast raunchy sex comedies," Herrier says, adding that he and his co-stars "paid a bit of a price" for being associated with Porky's. "I know for a fact that when some of the other guys were brought in [for roles], the casting directors would say, 'Oh, you were in Porky's,' and that was the end of the conversation. That movie was stigmatized by the industry for awhile."

These days, Porky's serves as the literal poster child for the kind of comedy that likely wouldn't be made in contemporary Hollywood. And Herrier agrees that moments like the shower scene are out of step with the times. "It's not so much the bawdiness — it's the objectification [of women] that would be completely inappropriate to do today," he notes. "The focus on the women is from a purely physical point of view, and the film's focus on getting laid is also purely from a physical point of view."

If one of the uncredited people in that scene has posted somewhere on the internet, "Hey, I was in that scene!" then I think that'd be a fine answer on AskMe. I don't know if the framing to the question was limited to connecting dots already well-connected or easily connected.

FWIW this is a kind of choice about an actor's privacy I've had to make on this site. On Metafilter chat, someone asked "whatever happened to ..." an actor who had seemed to disappear. I looked around, found them, and also found some good albeit very unexpected reasons they might not want to be associated with their former career--nothing you'd guess, more like a career that maybe wouldn't mesh well with being a public figure. Fortunately all the person in chat wanted to know was that this person was doing OK, and I was like yeah I'd say good.
posted by Wobbuffet at 6:30 PM on December 13 [9 favorites]

Turns out there's a bug (I think) where a 404'd post doesn't show the deletion reason to the general membership

I'd be shocked if this were a bug - in the years since completely-deleting Asks became a thing, normal users have never been able to see anything but a generic error page.
posted by sagc at 6:37 PM on December 13 [9 favorites]

I don't know if the framing to the question was limited to connecting dots already well-connected or easily connected.

I believe the exact wording of the question was "Who was in the shower scene in Porky's?"

That's not meant to sound facetious.
posted by Lemkin at 6:38 PM on December 13 [4 favorites]

a difference between your scenario, Wobbuffet, and The Porky's AskMetaFilter situation is that you did research instead of just deciding off of vibes and moderator dominion
posted by glonous keming at 6:39 PM on December 13 [6 favorites]

Mod note: Just want to point out that the phrase was "kinda doxxing" as opposed to straight up doxxing, which no one is claiming. It's a grey area and the decision to remove it was reached after discussion with two women essentially saying "this is creepy and a bit weird".

So the insistence on stunt posting to try and keep the post and information up and connected to MetaFilter comes as oddly forceful and underlining the feelings of being uncomfortable with the post.

No one on the mod staff or in the community is insisting that '80s films are outta bounds for making a post or that AskMe shouldn't contain questions about sexual health or pleasure. But asking for the identities of women from a shower scene has a certain vibe to it on the internet and that vibe isn't something that MeFi is about.
posted by Brandon Blatcher (staff) at 6:41 PM on December 13 [6 favorites]

And in fairness, you were apparently right about it advertising the brand in an unsavory neighborhood.
posted by Lemkin at 6:43 PM on December 13 [2 favorites]

Maybe for questionable Asks, instead of letting them be on the main page, they could be on a page behind the main page, but we could have a little hole in the main page that users could look into if they wanted to see the question.
posted by snofoam at 6:45 PM on December 13 [22 favorites]

serious question: what if the information being sought were readily available on IMDB? Would the question be deleted? Would answers?

Also, you're implying a lot with the below. Can you confirm that it's only one user stunt posting, as you've implied in mod notes? Are you really saying that people reposting the question are inherently forceful and making the mods uncomfortable, rather than just protesting what they see as a bad deletion?

So the insistence on stunt posting to try and keep the post and information up and connected to MetaFilter comes as oddly forceful and underlining the feelings of being uncomfortable with the post

posted by sagc at 6:46 PM on December 13 [4 favorites]

rather than just protesting what they see as a bad deletion?

Hey, this can be like than scene in Gandhi where protesters keep marching up to the gate one after the other to get billy clubbed.
posted by Lemkin at 6:58 PM on December 13 [8 favorites]

Yeah, the Pet Tax Wall and the Cookbook are great ideas, but we could Googlebomb our way back to pre-November 2012 page ranking and fix all our problems!
posted by GeckoDundee at 7:12 PM on December 13 [5 favorites]

I am protesting what I see as a bad deletion, yes.
posted by Chrysostom at 7:39 PM on December 13 [9 favorites]

Wow, guys, people trolling the mods with Porky’s questions has got to be some kind of Gen-X nadir.
posted by warriorqueen at 7:56 PM on December 13 [19 favorites]

I'm not a complete naïf to believe that there isn't shit-stirring going on with the repeated posting of the P*rkys question, but haven't we been told in the past that if something is deleted we can try again with the same question/post/reply but reworded to avoid whatever the original problem was?
posted by h00py at 8:56 PM on December 13 [8 favorites]

So this thread and my subsequent re-watching for like the 30th time the movie Stripes has me wondering, does anyone know the names of the actresses in the shower scene where the moron commander wishes he was a loofah?
posted by JohnnyGunn at 10:03 PM on December 13 [4 favorites]

it took a lot of searching but i found a sleazy underground website selling posters of the shower scene
posted by glonous keming at 10:10 PM on December 13 [3 favorites]

#vividentertainment
posted by clavdivs at 10:40 PM on December 13 [3 favorites]

Just want to point out that the phrase was "kinda doxxing" as opposed to straight up doxxing, which no one is claiming.

This makes no sense.

(Also that should mean it is, at best, kinda deleted, not super double plus deleted, like you did.)
posted by Dysk at 11:12 PM on December 13 [7 favorites]

Is anyone going to open a meta about nouvelle-personne's departure? Porky's deletion seems to be getting a bunch of attention, are we just going to quietly let the very not "high-touch" sensitive deletion of N-P be handwaved? Have N-P just disappear from the site? She was a damn good answer-er, the number of good answers is dwindling, I'm really going to miss her perspective.
posted by hotcoroner at 11:15 PM on December 13 [22 favorites]

The mods control the meta queue, so probably not. That said, you could try be the change your want to see?
posted by Dysk at 11:24 PM on December 13 [4 favorites]

Is anyone going to open a meta about nouvelle-personne's departure

Go for it!
posted by tristeza at 12:23 AM on December 14 [5 favorites]

shower scene where the moron commander wishes he was a loofah?

Speaking of trolling, Rush Limbaugh rather notoriously had some kind of fetish about Loofahs, but a merciful fog has rolled in over my memory of the details.
posted by jamjam at 1:22 AM on December 14 [1 favorite]

I’m a fairly prudish woman in my early 30s and I would have quite liked to hear any stories - if available - about the Porky’s shower scene and the impact it had on the participants.

I’m a female leader in an extremely male-dominated field. I know a Boyzone well.

This is nonsense. Let people have fun. Boyzone is becoming a thought-terminating cliché. Mods could have engaged to reframe the ask. Or steered the conversation in a constructive direction. But that would have required skilled moderation. 🤷‍♀️

The treatment of n_p and the poor accountability in the aftermath has shown the absolute hypocrisy of the stated values of the mods and management here.

Failing at moderation. Failing at community engagement. Burning piles of cash.

I’d say the emperor has no clothes, but maybe that’s a little too sleazy? Is that kinda doxxing the emperor?
posted by AntiMemetic at 1:42 AM on December 14 [33 favorites]

re: Loofahs and right wing media goons, that may have been Bill O'Reilly? (CW: sexual misconduct)
posted by mph at 1:45 AM on December 14 [4 favorites]

(Pretty sure "thought-terminating cliché" has, itself, become one. Autological!)
posted by nobody at 4:17 AM on December 14 [2 favorites]

Y’know, if cortex were still the owner he’d have deleted the stunt posting with a note saying “Knock that shit off.” You can’t attack him anymore, so now you’re attacking the mods who now apparently can’t do anything right. How about knocking that shit off?
posted by Melismata at 6:18 AM on December 14 [8 favorites]

Why couldn’t I have just asked if it was safe to eat something?
posted by Lemkin at 7:12 AM on December 14 [12 favorites]

nobody, your response made me laugh. Thanks. :)

I think the people speaking up recently are fairly diverse in background and site history. I had never engaged in discussion about past leadership, participated in MetaTalk, or really thought about mods beyond mildly positive sentiment. I doubt I’m the only one who doesn’t have baggage from previous eras.

Users trying to support a more vibrant and sustainable MetaFilter have often seen their efforts and good will misdirected or tossed into a void.

I’d like to see the remaining spark of MetaFilter stop being smothered by poor decisions and poor leadership.

If that’s against the guidelines, kick me out.
posted by AntiMemetic at 7:32 AM on December 14 [21 favorites]

Why couldn’t I have just asked if it was safe to eat something?

What like "I was in the girls' shower and a penis appeared out of the wall, is it safe to eat"?
posted by automatronic at 8:32 AM on December 14 [3 favorites]

The December site update post is gonna be lit.
posted by Lemkin at 9:07 AM on December 14 [9 favorites]

Was O'Reilly, mph: came here this afternoon to add a correction myself, though I didn’t really think the sharp memories and sharper minds of Metafilter would’ve let me skate on that one.

Fog is thicker than I realized. I had Limbaugh in mind because his personal assistant was caught trying to smuggle Limbaugh's Viagra supply in her luggage on his Carribean vacation:

His ego is so huge he didn't realize how carefully the caller had set the hook and manipulated the man who spends three hours a day manipulating people who are supremely uninformed.The guy had one thing wrong: Limbaugh wan't smuggling Viagra into the country; he was bringing it to a vacation in the Dominican Republic. One can only wonder.

I wondered too, but that was before I knew about Epstein's private island.
posted by jamjam at 1:03 PM on December 14 [2 favorites]

Mod note: In this case, I have a clear question for Brandon: not what is the process for making decisions, but is there a clearly outlined process for making decisions in the absence of management direction?

No. It's mostly asking the team "is this good for the site, and if so is it on the short or long term basis".

I am protesting what I see as a bad deletion, yes.?

Trolling the site to the point where a mod has to stop what they're doing to deal with that and another mod has to "come in" when they're not on shift to help out doesn't do anything constructive, IMO.

Please, just submit a MeTa or send an email.
posted by Brandon Blatcher (staff) at 1:10 PM on December 14

Mod note: serious question: what if the information being sought were readily available on IMDB? Would the question be deleted? Would answers?

That's not what was happened, just pointing that out. As to the rest, it really does depend on what actual content was created on the site.

Also, you're implying a lot with the below. Can you confirm that it's only one user stunt posting, as you've implied in mod notes? Are you really saying that people reposting the question are inherently forceful and making the mods uncomfortable, rather than just protesting what they see as a bad deletion?

Don't know that I'd say inherently, but if someone says "This post is bothering some women" and someone insists on repeatedly making the post, I personally do not think it's not a constructive action. I say that as a male person who was initially confused by the flag, asked for an explanation, got it from two women, and thought "Oooooh, yeah ok"

Protest is fine, trolling the site isn't the way to do it.

posted by Brandon Blatcher (staff) at 1:19 PM on December 14 [4 favorites]

i just reviewed over 100 AskMe posts in the range containing yesterday's 'Porky's trolling incident'

i found 3 total posts that were deleted: 2 Porky's questions and one other unrelated one

the 2 deleted Porky's posts are AskMe #383490 and #383488

it took me 12 minutes to perform this sweep and type this comment

but the MetaFilter World-Class Compensated Moderation Team had to pull someone off the bench to get help running the site while dealing with this staggering avalanche of two posts.

[blink] $250-thousand-dollars-a-year website [/blink]
posted by glonous keming at 1:31 PM on December 14 [14 favorites]

Protest is fine, trolling the site isn't the way to do it.

Please enjoy your right to free speech.
posted by bluloo at 1:33 PM on December 14 [1 favorite]

"I personally do not think it's not a constructive action"

So it is constructive? For the love of god, can we get paid mods who can write one comment without a typo that completely flips their meaning around?
posted by sagc at 1:35 PM on December 14 [6 favorites]

Mod note: but the MetaFilter World-Class Compensated Moderation Team had to pull someone off the bench to get help running the site while dealing with this staggering avalanche of two posts

It was a matter of figuring out who's doing what and why, along with discussing a course of action to deal with it among two {edited to add: actually it was four total who were involved in the discussion} and then having two do the work did take a few, yes.

For the love of god, can we get paid mods who can write one comment without a typo that completely flips their meaning around?

My Apollogies.

posted by Brandon Blatcher (staff) at 1:42 PM on December 14 [4 favorites]

I'll buy that maybe multiple people were involved in Porkys Decision 2024, but it takes two people to unpublish an Ask? Is it like a nuclear launch, where you both have to turn a key at the same time? Or more like two-factor authentication, where a second mod has to say "yeah it's ok if Brandon does that"? Or is it more like this but somehow virtual?
posted by donnagirl at 2:00 PM on December 14 [5 favorites]

So it is constructive? For the love of god, can we get paid mods who can write one comment without a typo that completely flips their meaning around?

It's forever astonishing to me that there are people in the world who think it's perfectly OK to talk to other people this way. Over and over and over again. Like, over some comments, on a website.
posted by kbanas at 2:12 PM on December 14 [23 favorites]

It's not over "comments on some website". It's about "official communications from the leadership of a community we are part of". It's frustrating, and only commented on because it's bad in a way that makes it hard to understand at all what is being communicated. If it doesn't bother you that a text-based community is staffed by people who routinely fail to effectively communicate their intentions via written words, then I don't get why you are bothered enough about anything to tone-police someone else. Words are the thing we have here.
posted by donnagirl at 2:24 PM on December 14 [11 favorites]

it's just getting a bit tiring to see again and again, if you're wondering why I sound exasperated.
posted by sagc at 2:25 PM on December 14 [7 favorites]

My Apollogies

Protest is fine. Trolling the site isn't the way to do it.
posted by GeckoDundee at 2:25 PM on December 14 [20 favorites]

That's not trolling the site. It's trolling the ridiculous overreaction to a typo by a single user.
posted by biffa at 2:28 PM on December 14 [9 favorites]

Exactly what one wants from professional moderation ☺️
posted by sagc at 2:31 PM on December 14 [3 favorites]

For documentation purposes, here's the text of the MetaTalk thread I just submitted to the queue:

Ad-Hoc Moderation Log


With the topic of a moderation log discussed more frequently in recent weeks (see here, here, and here), but no clear indication if the "new version" of MetaFilter will implement it, it falls to users to do so. The purpose of this thread is to record instances of moderators deleting or editing posts or comments, and leaving their own comments, in other threads (including MetaTalk, AskMe, MetaFilter, etc.)


The intended purpose of this thread is ONLY TO COLLECT DATA in one place. This thread is NOT for: (1) Reposting a deleted comment, (2) asking (politely or otherwise) why something was edited or deleted, nor (3) critiquing mod actions.

If you become aware of a mod editing or deleting a comment, leaving a "staff" comment of their own in a thread, or removing a thread, please note it below. That’s all.

Optionally, if you have received a message from a mod (either by email or MeMail) concerning the above actions, and you are willing to share it, AND it does not involve another member other than the mod and yourself, consider sharing those as well.

It was submitted 14 December 2024 at 1732 Eastern.
posted by The Pluto Gangsta at 2:32 PM on December 14 [12 favorites]

it seems like that a lot of the time that moderator is doing their job from a phone
posted by glonous keming at 2:41 PM on December 14 [6 favorites]

The Pluto Gangster: my only suggestion is to host the people's modlog offsite
posted by glonous keming at 2:42 PM on December 14 [4 favorites]

My Apollogies.

Whatever differences we may have, this is a really great god-typo-response. Respect.
posted by snofoam at 2:44 PM on December 14 [13 favorites]

I give 4 out of 5 divs
posted by clavdivs at 3:19 PM on December 14 [12 favorites]

It would be ironic if the mods let this post go up in the hope that everyone would start acting nicer to them and this is where we've ended up.
posted by Lemkin at 4:01 PM on December 14 [2 favorites]

That's not trolling the site. It's trolling the ridiculous overreaction to a typo by a single user.

Just like the stunt posts weren't trolling the site, they were telling the ridiculous overreaction to an Ask by a single mod team.
posted by Dysk at 4:07 PM on December 14 [2 favorites]

(Also a fucking mod should not be mocking or belittling users like that. It was a serious, good faith for it feedback, and all that was offered in response was a sneering dismissal. Unprofessional AF, and the opposite of fostering community and feedback. If you wanted to kill the idea that constructive feedback was going to be possible in any way, I can't think of a more word-for-word efficient way to do it.)
posted by Dysk at 4:09 PM on December 14 [8 favorites]

The Pluto Gangster: my only suggestion is to host the people's modlog offsite

Place the log in a location where a mod cannot edit it and then gaslight members about what it contains.
posted by qi at 4:40 PM on December 14 [7 favorites]

Also a fucking mod should not be mocking or belittling users like that.

I agree that normally we should Castorgate him for that breach of propriety, and we should be Zelus about upholding standards for the mods, but Hera me out: technically he did Apollogize.
posted by snofoam at 5:07 PM on December 14 [12 favorites]

(On a serious note, I think some people are more prone to typos than others. I think it is legit to point out that at some point this really starts interfering with communication. It could have been pointed out in a more tempered way, but I have a deep understanding of being frustrated with the management of this site, so I also fully understand that this was a natural way of presenting something when frustrated. As much as I enjoyed the "Apollogy," it would have been more appropriate to acknowledge that typos, though human, can be problematic. On a personal note, I would rather accept typos than, for example, wait for mod comments to be posted until an admin can proofread them.)
posted by snofoam at 5:16 PM on December 14 [4 favorites]

(Also a fucking mod should not be mocking or belittling users like that. It was a serious, good faith for it feedback, and all that was offered in response was a sneering dismissal. Unprofessional AF, and the opposite of fostering community and feedback. If you wanted to kill the idea that constructive feedback was going to be possible in any way, I can't think of a more word-for-word efficient way to do it.)

lol
posted by kbanas at 5:24 PM on December 14 [3 favorites]

→ Metatalk is not the community and is not a good way to get community feedback

I'll say. I haven't looked at MeTa for over a year, opened it tonight, and — I don't recognize or understand anything that's going on here. It's nothing like the rest of the site. There seem to be changes suggested as a done-deal that are like "wait, what?"

And please don't suggest I should have been reading here all along.
posted by scruss at 5:28 PM on December 14 [24 favorites]

Man, I understand like 99% of the beefs people have with the mods, but getting all bent out of shape about someone making a self-deprecating joke in an apology is in that leftover 1% that I totally don't get.
posted by Bugbread at 5:40 PM on December 14 [29 favorites]

if typos are a form of communication like that double tundra thing, reverse irony, polarized positive statements, microsneers, history blotting, join the bad day committee of unreposed resilience, alllusion of grandeur pastures, the synecope, meddling proparalepis, secretive anthimeria... whispering, turabian, turabian, turbian as the God(s) shall have blood in in the style of Chicago's manual.

I'm your huckleberry.

absolutely goddamn right probably what cortex would have written knock that s*** off. not really like tapping on the ceiling with the broom kind of hey cut it out but running upstairs and flinging open the door. Porky(s), it's sort of lame really.
brandon, do I have permission to launch my stunt post been working on for approximately 3.5 minutes. it would entail one subject posted through most of the metafilter sites resulting in one paragraph at each sub site would get a sentence and then posted meant to metalk culminating into, I don't know, I'll let you pick the subject matter.

the verbal coup(s) of metafilter.

let me ask the crowd this, I've heard legitimate voices about the mods and how it seems like they're in a bunker or something.
would you want stunt posting of that caliber on the new site.
you see, the evolution of stunt posting and the stunt postings I have seen is that that
energy culminates into a sort of thing, that internet thing with people, that brief connection when three or four posts in a row will be about the same subject matter.

while it is funny to see various deities grammatically realigned, perhaps that might make some of us users whose user names are minor deities, those associated with the monarchy, or past rulers that in order to qualify would have had to control at least 1/6 of the world at one point,
nervous.

my favorite type of stunt post is when a link goes to another site that redirects it back to metafilter.

haven't seen one of those in a while.

trashing the old house while inquiring about the new houses design when one doesnt have the complete plans is once again a common staple on metatalk

711 comments long.
posted by clavdivs at 6:05 PM on December 14 [8 favorites]

getting all bent out of shape about someone making a self-deprecating joke in an apology

See that's the thing, it undermines the supposed apology. And the deprecating, it does not feel directed toward the speaker's self.

If you asked me to stop slurring my speech because of whatever reason (misophobia, triggering something, coming across as mocking your accent, whatever, doesn't matter) and I respond with "why yesh of courshe, shure thing" does it then seem to you like I'm taking that request seriously, or like I'm mocking it and the person who made it?
posted by Dysk at 6:21 PM on December 14 [7 favorites]

JFC people. You do know that Jessamyn was known for having lots of typos, right?
posted by Melismata at 6:55 PM on December 14 [3 favorites]

if typos are a form of communication like that double tundra thing, reverse irony, polarized positive statements, microsneers, history blotting, join the bad day committee of unreposed resilience, alllusion of grandeur pastures, the synecope, meddling proparalepis, secretive anthimeria... whispering, turabian, turabian, turbian as the God(s) shall have blood in in the style of Chicago's manual.

So true bestie. [kermitnod.gif]
posted by brook horse at 7:05 PM on December 14 [4 favorites]

> You do know that Jessamyn was known for having lots of typos, right?

A decade ago? Bit uncharitable.
posted by lucidium at 7:21 PM on December 14 [1 favorite]

Just wanted to note that I’ve been seeing a lot more mod notes generally and with deletions and I really appreciate it. Thanks mods
posted by knobknosher at 2:29 AM on December 15 [13 favorites]

I have never been a hugely active participant here, but I have been here since 2003-ish (I read long before I joined), and I have organized some community things, like the winter gift drive. I have attended meet-ups, I have made friends I still have today, and I just feel attached to this place. I have complicated feelings and thoughts on many issues, but I do want to say one thing.

What we have here is words. Text. And when those in charge cannot type coherently, proofread, or go back to edit, the whole thing feels careless. But, mods, your words are what we have. These are not minor typos. There are full sentences that make no sense at all. And we, the members, have to decipher them like they're the Sunday New York Times crossword clues.

There was a time where a particular user, very witty, used to type in all lowercase. And that was the subject of debate more than once. She was perfectly understandable and also hilarious. But that breach of text etiquette was too much for some.

I don't think it's asking too much of mods to be legible. It's not a matter of an errant letter or whatever. Members should not have to meet staff more than halfway to understand WTF is going on.
posted by houseofdanie at 6:33 AM on December 15 [25 favorites]

There was a time where a particular user, very witty, used to type in all lowercase. And that was the subject of debate more than once. She was perfectly understandable and also hilarious. But that breach of text etiquette was too much for some.

Not quite as obnoxious as Film Crit Hulk’s all-caps gimmick, but equally disqualifying in my view.

Though in fairness, I’m the type who makes sure his periods go outside rather than inside his italics tags even though there’s no visible difference.
posted by Lemkin at 8:04 AM on December 15 [8 favorites]

> There was a time where a particular user, very witty, used to type in all lowercase.

not her, not witty, not hilarious, but yall im right here i can hear you
posted by glonous keming at 8:14 AM on December 15 [6 favorites]

Um, the typos are the least of what’s going on here. Give me plenty of typos from a sensibly-run organization with skilled moderation.
posted by umber vowel at 8:14 AM on December 15 [10 favorites]

Is it a tpyo or an ianitibly to cmomniutace efeftivlcey in a txet-bsaed miedum? The wrlod may nveer konw.
posted by phunniemee at 8:23 AM on December 15 [2 favorites]

Mod note: Hi all! The mods are discussing the Ad-Hoc Moderation Log post and a response will be made within 48 hours. Your patience is greatly appreciated.
posted by travelingthyme (staff) at 8:25 AM on December 15 [2 favorites]

#teamelizardbits
posted by riverlife at 9:11 AM on December 15 [17 favorites]

Um, the typos are the least of what’s going on here. Give me plenty of typos from a sensibly-run organization with skilled moderation.

Well, that was kind of my point. They're not just typos. It's full-on disrespect for the task of communication. And communication is the very least of what should be happening here.
posted by houseofdanie at 9:27 AM on December 15 [1 favorite]

> even though there’s no visible difference.

I had to see, these are plain: ......, these are jaunty: .......
posted by lucidium at 9:28 AM on December 15 [6 favorites]

O.k., so there are some people in my family that I can't stand to be around. Like on a good day I maybe able to get through the small "so still working at _____?" talk, but that's it. One in particular has a verbal tick that I don't actually care about when anyone else does it, but I can use how annoying I find it as a barometer to measure how much more of the conversation I can stand before I start an argument with them in the middle of a Christmas party over whatever dumb shit they're on about now. I'm not necessarily annoyed at the tic, I'm mostly just mad that I have to spend time with them, and the tic is a convenient thing for my brain to latch onto as "a problem," since the real problem is something that's WAY too big to process with a glass of eggnog in one hand and a cookie in another.

I actually also have a related situation that pops up thanks to my Autonomic system just being screwed with from COVID. Occasionally it'll over-react to SOMETHING and my body just goes into high alert for no reason. My brain figures "Oh hey, there must be a reason for this" and starts looking around for something for me to be upset about, and I've got to be careful not to work myself into a a rage about some little thing that isn't actually a problem, but my brain decides is, because there must be a problem right? And again, the real problem is something too large and abstract to really focus on.

Anyway, my point is that sometimes it's useful to ask yourself if you're really mad about the thing you're focusing on, or if you're just choosing that as the problem because it's an easy one to see and describe.

(also not for nothing, but as someone who frequently makes typos because of various processing issues, it sure doesn't feel great to read about how awful my communication is)
posted by Gygesringtone at 9:30 AM on December 15 [3 favorites]

Perhaps MetaTalk could host a "Straw Man Burning: Socks on Fire Festival" where everyone piles their grievances into a big digital bonfire bundle and sets it floating on fire into the digital ocean. There could be ritual hate songs, sock puppet cage matches, we could shape the figure like a cat trapped in a scanner or a goat. Sell resurrection/renewal memberships. Spicy popcorn. Strange outfits. Weird installation art. The angry socks could have their comments autocorrected and deleted by the general public, AI or mystery moderators. Axes ground to diamond dust, with nothing to show for it. Member badges issued according to lurk date or membership date. Public buttoning. The Cabal and the Banhammer Credo. We could get a Netflix deal out of it. Solstice is the season for the reason.
posted by effluvia at 9:35 AM on December 15 [3 favorites]

elizardbits aeterna
posted by phunniemee at 9:39 AM on December 15 [15 favorites]

We, collectively, seem to have decided that a lot of stuff that used to be fine to post around here is no longer fine to post--there were various lengthy discussions about this over the course of the 2010s and the delete-lots-of-stuff faction won.

On the topic of deletions:

1. Deletions are a tool. A means to an end.
   • The discussions you refer to were about addressing various forms of bigotry.
   • That sometimes involves deleting comments, but it's not the point.


2. Most deletions do not address bigotry. They address off-topic or fighty comments. This is anecdotal.


3. Bigotry produces fighty or off-topic comments.
   • People feel justified posting rude comments towards even polite bigots.
     • Sidenote: "Flag it and move on" requires trust in moderation.
   • Bigotry sometimes hides itself in context or dogwhistle. If you address the context or dogwhistle directly, it is sometimes interpreted as off-topic or an escalation.


4. Deleting a comment for being fighty or off-topic does not address bigotry.
   • When a mod says, "We recognise such-and-such offensive stereotype in your comment. We don't do that here," that establishes community norms.


5. Deleting bigotry for being fighty or off-topic, over time, contributes to bigotry.
   • Treating an offensive comment as "fighty" or "off-topic" is the kindest possible interpretation.
   • Often, it results in both bigotry and the response-to-bigotry being deleted. It's easier for bigots to write offensive speech than for a witness to debunk it, so this is a losing game.

I don't have any silver bullets for rebuilding trust with the community. I agree a moderation log is a good idea. I also have appreciated when mods have eased off on deleting comments because the community wanted to have a particular discussion. Even in contentious topics. Even when the discussion involved comments that expressed views I disagreed with or find objectionable.
posted by ftrtts at 9:44 AM on December 15 [6 favorites]

FOR GOD'S SAKE, I AM NOT TALKING ABOUT SIMPLE TYPOS. No need to feel deficient, anyone. I am talking about sentences that make no literal or figurative sense. Sentences that trail into nothing.

It's not a typing or a processing issue, it's a communication and respect issue.

Ahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh.

Also: ahhhhhhhhhhhhhhh!
posted by houseofdanie at 10:02 AM on December 15 [18 favorites]

hello, hello

i’m also a multi-decadian lurker, although with a very different take than houseofdanie’s, above

over the years i’ve sometimes been surprised by the moderation… and very often at those junctures been educated about how to communicate, what is important to tolerate, how to approach debate, and a host of good things

as much as p-e’s final post in that askme discussed earlier was important, it was also fighty. accusing the poster of attempted murder was over the top. i would have deleted it, too, albeit hopefully in a way p-e still felt and was heard. that said, good god am i glad i am not a mod. i am nowhere near kind, disciplined nor remotely smart enough.

this site has again and again improved me as a person just by being a freewheeling gaggle of incredibly smart idiots, somehow “moderated” (in both senses) into a humane and fascinating collaboration

this thing going on in metatalk now does not feel collaborative. it feels entitled and mean. some of the complaints might be valid. like i said: i wouldn’t know. don’t have a fraction of the brains required

i’m not buttoning because it would be meaningless. i’m just a lurker. but i want to, to protest the herd mentality, the brute force passing as discussion. you want to be moderated better? lead by example.
posted by ~ at 10:15 AM on December 15 [9 favorites]

you want to be moderated better? lead by example.

If the users were leading the way to better moderation, we wouldn’t need moderators at all. Or is it just that in general we should be training the mods? (Which would only work if they listened.)

Are we supposed to try to build the perfect mod? I fear we would end up with Dr. Frankenstein’s modster.
posted by snofoam at 10:38 AM on December 15 [7 favorites]

the brute force passing as discussion

There's been a breakdown of trust and respect between the community, the mods and the owner. Personally, I think we should have a scheduled site-wide conversation about this, keeping strictly on topic, and ideally with a means of voting attached.

The main focus of the agenda would be on how to move forward after two failed fundraisers: At minimum, we need a plan, a deadline, and enough money to pay for Jessamyn's replacement.
posted by Violet Blue at 11:37 AM on December 15 [8 favorites]

Jessamyn's replacement

Do you mean here, "purchasing the site and its assets from Jessamyn"?
posted by german_bight at 12:11 PM on December 15

No.*

The longstanding "plan" was to turn the site over to the community by turning it into a nonprofit, which would then allow for legal volunteer work and tax deductible donations, as well as create structured committees to plan and oversee the site, with a paid Executive Director ensuring its business and tax practices were legal, and possibly also being charged with marketing and the like.

But some of the paperwork proved tricky, and timelines were also proving murky. Eventually, it was suggested that rather than try to turn Metafilter into a nonprofit now — given that that neither Jessamyn nor the staff are experienced in business — we simply bring in a community manager to help plan out next steps now. That person would also inevitably relieve, or help relieve, Jessamyn of leadership duties she has said she never wanted.

The trouble is the last two fundraisers failed to raise much money, and we need at least one year's salary to pay a community manager. But all we've got banked now is six months worth of money, or app. $125,000, which, as is, is mostly earmarked for moderation costs, leaving us precisely nowhere.**

That's the bare bones of it, but there's a lot more:

• One mod, in particular, failed to meet their responsibilities repeatedly for more than a year, and there is much documentation to this effect. When people called for their dismissal, they were instead put on an accountability plan — which means we're still paying their salary, which we can ill afford;
• A completely new website that looks exactly like this one(!?!) is supposedly being created, but it's unclear how much this costs, as the whole thing was done in secret, and preview dates have repeatedly been missed;
• Another minor project related to the fundraiser was paid for, but has also gone missing;
• Nearly half of the Steering Committee seem to have left the site after serving. One commented recently that a glimpse at behind-the-scenes management led him to believe either Metafilter was more incompetent than anyplace he had ever seen or a financial scam. That's not meaningless given that annual salaries for the mods cost a quarter-of-a-million — $250,000 — dollars.
• There have been no attempts at user retention, and there has been no interest in user experience, even while MetaFilterMeta, where I also spend time, has quadrupled its membership — from 200 to nearly 800 — in a few short years. Although some folks there still participate here, many are not that happy with this place, or no longer visit at all.

I was the one who originally pushed for the banner to be used for news. But is there any news that any of this is going on up there? No, of course not. So if folks don't know what's going on, that was somebody's choice.

*If money were owed to Jessamyn, I assume repayment would be planned in. I've never heard anyone address it.
**Miko or Warrior Queen know the most about where the site stands vis-a-vis its nonprofit status; others can point you to the various committees working on related issues.
posted by Violet Blue at 12:58 PM on December 15 [21 favorites]

Brute force is loup et al. just doing what they like, with little regard for what people are asking for and have been asking for for a really long time. (I know plenty of people don't pay attention, but that doesn't mean things haven't been happening, it just means you don't know about them and miss the context to understand the people who have been following all along.)

Deciding to use the site's money to spend three years refactoring the code, while explicitly telling users there was no dev time to spend on fixes or ponies, including the really simple fix (changing the flag symbol from [!] to [⚑]) that inspired the giant refactoring project? Despite members spending years asking to de-prioritize the refactoring in favor of other work?That's a brute force decision.

Deciding not to use money the steering committee set aside to hire an admin, and then deciding to hire another mod, and another dev to work solely on a giant site rewrite that nobody asked for? That's a brute force decision.

Announcing fundraisers and then neglecting them as actively as a thing can be neglected, while users spend literal months asking for even slightly more active efforts? And keeping users in the dark about earnings from those fundraisers? Those are brute force decisions.

This ridiculous thread? Full of brute force decisions.

You can't have brute force without power. What power do users posting on Metatalk have? Only to post words (which can get deleted), to withdraw funding, or to stop being members of the site. It's not site members who are acting with brute force.

There's a recent thread about the transition to a nonprofit. (An idea which was originally brought up by some users and shut down with force by the mods. And then jessamyn took over the site without wanting to run it or to hold on to it, so she said "the site will become a nonprofit". Good or bad, that was also a brute force decision - the cards were and are in her hands.)

In that thread, I and a bunch of people asked some imo pretty basic, important questions. Questions it would make sense to answer, I think, if the goal is a community-run site that members can support and feel good about. There have been no answers to those questions. What power do I, as one of the askers, have? None. I can take it or leave it; I can keep bringing it up, which might feel annoying to some; but I can't force answers. While jessamyn and the nonprofit committee can force silence and force everyone to be in the dark. I don't think (?) they're actively trying to do that, but in practice, that's the effect.

So let's drop the idea of the users as the powerful, dictating group here.

As for people saying "I don't know what's going on but I don't like how angry it seems in here" - maybe read up on past stuff, or lurk for a while to get a sense of the current stuff? Or just go back to ignoring it, I don't know. Bad vibes suck, I do know. But also it gets old to keep patiently explaining to newcomers the whole ridiculous torrent of things they've been missing that's created the vibes in the first place. Partly because so many of those things have been so ridiculous and stupid that it's frustrating even to try to describe them.

Bonus observation: I don't much care about typos; I do care about being coherent and non-obfuscating. There've been a lot of mod comments I've spent too much time trying to parse and it wasn't because of typos or input issues.
posted by trig at 1:03 PM on December 15 [37 favorites]

Eventually, it was suggested that rather than try to turn Metafilter into a nonprofit now — given that that neither Jessamyn nor the staff are experienced in business — we simply bring in a community manager to help plan out next steps now.


They could both be done in parallel. Any manager could be running things while the nonprofit becomes operational.

Miko or Warrior Queen know the most about where the site stands vis-a-vis its nonprofit status.

I would think the people who know the most about MeFi nonprofit status would be the people working on it, such as 1adam12.
posted by NotLost at 1:09 PM on December 15 [6 favorites]

They could both be done in parallel.

Sure, but do we have the money to retain the staff we have — and hire yet another person without knowing if we'll be able to pay them after X date?

MeFi nonprofit status would be the people working on it, such as 1adam12.

Absolutely. No offense intended. I simply haven't seen enough of the committees to remember the names.
posted by Violet Blue at 1:14 PM on December 15

Sure, but do we have the money to retain the staff we have — and hire yet another person without knowing if we'll be able to pay them after X date?

Maybe we're not understanding each other. But I don't see how hiring a manager would preclude, or even affect, the nonprofit work. The staffing is not dependent on, or based directly on, whether or not there is a nonprofit. Under a nonprofit, the leader would an executive director. Otherwise, the leader would have some other title. It's not as if we would have two different leaders, or an executive director and a manager underneath.
posted by NotLost at 1:19 PM on December 15 [1 favorite]

I think we're passing in the night, too. :)
The issue isn't whether the business manager/ED/nonprofit status happens in a certain sequence. The issue is how money is being used now, and what's left to pay a business manager.

After paying all of the mods, and two part- or demi-time developers (with Jessamyn not taking a salary), what's left? Certainly not enough for a year, which is reasonable minimum time for someone to come up with a plan, and put everything in order. As is, in my understanding according to what Jessamyn said, unless the mod staff shrinks, there is no money to also pay a business manager/ED.
posted by Violet Blue at 1:29 PM on December 15

There are still donations coming in, so presumably an ED salary for a year doesn’t have to be sitting in the bank on day one. I think we also really want to have the ED before doing the actual switchover of everything. It is easy to imagine the current team bungling things in a way that is impossible to recover from.

I think it would make sense to cut back on moderation hours since that is by far the biggest expense and the only place where it’s really possible to get a chunk of funds to reallocate. We could bring it down to maybe 1/4 of the current cost and spend the rest on ED or interim manager.

I think most members would be willing to be on extra special good behavior during this time with less moderation. Another alternative would be to bring on a few volunteers who could respond to flags. We have to/want to figure out how volunteer moderation can work, might as well start now. If necessary by law, we could pay them as contractors. Since they wouldn’t necessarily have any shifts where they are on the clock, we would still probably save a lot for the management role.

We should also be making sure someone knows all the admin stuff. It’s unclear if there is anyone on backup who knows it now, should anything happen for any reason. That seems to be a potentially dangerous thing.

This line of discussion really shines a light on the gross negligence of the “we don’t really NEED a fundraiser” approach of the last two years. I feel like the persons responsible for that have really done their best to bleed the site to the point where it may be too weak to succeed in transitioning. It is shameful.
posted by snofoam at 2:03 PM on December 15 [8 favorites]

I think most members would be willing to be on extra special good behavior during this time with less moderation.

HAHAHAHOHOHEEHEEHEE
posted by Melismata at 2:11 PM on December 15 [13 favorites]

In retrospect, mistake #1 may have been disbanding the Steering Committee entirely a year and a half ago, instead of keeping it around but declaring they can no longer do worklike volunteering (until the nonprofit handoff), and, if legally need be, paying out a stipend to cover a twice-a-month meeting where they just make site-direction decisions.

Did that possibility even ever get raised?
posted by nobody at 2:12 PM on December 15 [4 favorites]

1. Whether we have an executive director or a manager with some other title, it's likely that a priority of their job would be to raise money, at least some of which would go toward their pay.

2. My understanding is that, for some time, the mods have been contractors. Whether we are thinking of them, or future mods in whatever capacity, I think the contractor setup is questionable. See this from the U.S. Department of Labor.
posted by NotLost at 2:12 PM on December 15 [3 favorites]

Would it be legal if the site paid X per month to someone and then that person happened to donate X per month to the site?

I'd be happy to do that.
posted by Diskeater at 2:20 PM on December 15 [1 favorite]

Whether we have an executive director or a manager with some other title, it's likely that a priority of their job would be to raise money, at least some of which would go toward their pay.

Obviously, but the site has shrunk, the last couple of fundraisers didn't do well. Like, they would have to prove themselves a little before their odds at fundraising success might reasonably amount to something. An awful lot of good will has been burned up. Speaking of which, I really don't think the site should be paying for anyone's accountability plan... (If you haven't seen the BIPOC minutes, there are many more details there.)

I think the contractor setup is questionable.

Are you on MFM too? There was a lot of discussion about that there recently, agreeing with you. The notion of a "shift" alone seems to contradict the standard description of contract services.

Would it be legal if the site paid X per month to someone and then that person happened to donate X per month to the site?

That sounds good-intentioned as a suggestion, but sketchy as a practice, but I'm not a lawyer.
posted by Violet Blue at 2:41 PM on December 15 [4 favorites]

Are you on MFM too?

Apparently not. I don't know what that means.
posted by NotLost at 2:53 PM on December 15

MetaFilterMeta (MFM)
posted by Violet Blue at 3:00 PM on December 15

posting twice in a thread and abandoning (i repeat for clarity) multiple decades of successful lurking is pretty rough for me - but just to clarify:

brute force is loup et al. just doing what they like...

i agree. some deletions have been bad and called for truckloads more grace and clarity. (i say this with love) also agree completely about the breakdown of trust, the opacity about what work is being done and how money is being spent. for folks who love the site, it's frustrating that we can't throw volunteer effort, or donations, or anything at metafilter in a way that seems likely to benefit it. (speaking as an ios dev that spent years dreaming of building an app for metafilter as a volunteer)

we need a plan, a deadline, and enough money to pay for Jessaymn's replacement...

reasonable! i think i'd pony up regularly for that.

if the users were leading the way to better moderation, we wouldn't need moderators at all

😿 here's where i think we've met the frenemy, and they is us. since this site is literally nothing but the words we write and some slap-dash coldfusion from 1982 (soon to be updated in 2025 to php. metafilter, i love ya.), i sure hope we can expect both mods and users to feel a sense of ownership.
posted by ~ at 3:07 PM on December 15 [9 favorites]

TIL there is actually a visual difference between normal periods and jaunty periods.

Zoomed in, italics at top, non-italics at bottom.

Also, TIL that there are variations in how the exact same periods on the exact same page are displayed (presumably some sort of Windows TrueType adjustment?). I had just assumed that each one would be completely identical.
posted by Bugbread at 3:39 PM on December 15 [4 favorites]

(Er, in case it's not clear because literally every one of the periods is represented slightly differently: while they all differ from each other, the italicized ones all share something that the non-italicized ones don't: the top left pixel is considerably darker than the pixel below it.)
posted by Bugbread at 3:50 PM on December 15 [1 favorite]

Bonus observation: I don't much care about typos; I do care about being coherent and non-obfuscating. There've been a lot of mod comments I've spent too much time trying to parse and it wasn't because of typos or input issues.

I think the mention of typos and input issues was a benefit of the doubt thing. "You're not making much sense, maybe your wireless keyboard is dropping inputs out something?" would've been a great way to let someone cop to a thing without copping to it, saving face.
posted by Dysk at 4:07 PM on December 15 [6 favorites]

I think the contractor setup is questionable.
The reason organisations do this is to deny people their rights as employees. Not only questionable (if true), but reprehensible.
posted by dg at 4:39 PM on December 15 [2 favorites]

Yeah, typos don't bother me, which is why people getting bent out of shape about "Apollogies" felt weird to me. But aside from typos, Brandon's comments have just got weird omissions:

"Brandon: No and there are currently no plans for this. If the site did go"

and:

"Has anyone been in contact with the cookbook contractor? Who has the details regarding this, and if it's not the entire mod team, why not?

Brandon: Yep, will will"

A typo can easily be figured out. Even a single dropped word is usually pretty clear. But these two...I still have no idea what they mean.

And that "still" is important, because everyone makes mistakes, and I can see myself typing something up, editing it, accidentally deleting too much of the comment, and posting it. And then someone would say "Uh, Bugbread, 'if the site did go' what?" and I'd say "Oh, sorry! Accidentally cut off the end of my sentence! I meant to say "If the site did go {X}, we have plans to {Y}" or the like. What's bizarre is that those half-sentences were just...dropped. Six days and three days later, respectively, and still no idea what they were meant to say.

One thing is "making a mistake so obvious it doesn't even need clarification" (basic typos)
Another thing is "making a mistake that needs clarification to understand, and then providing clarification" (omitting important text and then coming back to provide it)
But just "making a mistake that's big enough that nobody knows what you were trying to say, and then...nothing" is a very different matter.
posted by Bugbread at 4:42 PM on December 15 [20 favorites]

well if they just had the ability to edit comments i'm sure they'd fix them
posted by glonous keming at 4:45 PM on December 15 [7 favorites]

Yeah, typos don't bother me, which is why people getting bent out of shape about "Apollogies" felt weird to me.

It's the fact that it's clearly intentional, not a typo. Whatever the intention, it comes across as mockery. (And it's doubly bad when you consider that the typo description was a way of downplaying what the actual issue is/was. Rather than respond to that actual issue, it's just mocking the very idea of taking more care with their communication.)
posted by Dysk at 4:56 PM on December 15 [7 favorites]

1) Miko or Warrior Queen know the most about where the site stands vis-a-vis its nonprofit status

Just to correct this - I just pay attention and have some institutional history but I'm not involved. I have volunteered, as of Friday, to help run elections for the more permanent board. Apparently I'm the only person who caught the ask for help in one of the threads a ways back where 1adam12 ask for help with that. Happy to have others help out once that gets off the ground. I know we have voting mechanisms somewhere on this version of the site because that got set up for the SC elections. More info to come (and that will be its own MetaTalk, both for help and for elections.)

Historically, it is harder to find people to volunteer than to really need to vote on them, so something for everyone who cares to think about. I am not willing to sit on the board at this time, but can help for one-off things, especially if they do not involve meetings.

2) Did that possibility [Steering Committee] even ever get raised?

So here's my institutional memory on that: the SC called for the next set of elections, which is when the 'infamous' posting happened that outlined a ton of administrative work, rather than say a meeting a month and a few hours of follow-up work. It sounded like a full-time job.

It was at that point that people said What Is This Legal? and that's when the plug got pulled. So it was a bad time because the original SC - who were amazing!! - had terms that were ending. There wasn't anyone to ask anyone.


3) Money for ED etc.

According to the last P&L, which was in the middle of a fundraising period, here's what what was:

Regular contributions were 17,050.77, down from 21,167.38 the year before.
Ad revenue was 3,494.43, up from 2,994.31 the previous year
There were one-time contributions (disastrous fundraiser) of 1,092.95

Total revenue was $21,638.15
Expenses were $27,234.78

Deficit was: -5,596.63 in October 2024.

The previous P&Ls are "in the owner's bin" and not visible, even though Brandon let me know he was going to fix that. If he would I would do some more analysis.

However I've gone through the individual updates (I couldn't find June's P&L easily and only went back as far as April because when I clicked on the March P&L it was missing as well.)

Here's the bottom line.

For the months of Apr-Sept 2024, minus July, of this year, MetaFilter LLC has a loss of 7,329.82

For the SAME MONTHS in 2023, MetaFilter had an operating surplus of 53,248.66

There's still money in the bank but the trend line is not good.
posted by warriorqueen at 5:02 PM on December 15 [26 favorites]

Also, I suspect that the 2023 numbers are why current mods and owner keep saying that MetaFilter is healthy - they adjusted last year and haven't necessarily taken a good close look at this year.

Additionally...I admittedly worked for a bit of a hoarder small business owner so my perspective may be skewed, and many businesses float on credit from time to time.

But I don't think anyone is ever going to be able to borrow money for MF, nor should they, so to me 6 months' current operating expenses is around the minimum you would want to have and isn't really transition/expansion money. It isn't flush with cash in my opinion - my jaw kind of dropped when that was stated recently.

It is however true that right now donations cover most of the expenses most of the time. However, like I said - that trend line is absolutely shocking as a year-over-year change.
posted by warriorqueen at 5:07 PM on December 15 [18 favorites]

There's still money in the bank but the trend line is not good.

ah heck dang it guess this was just one of her famous typos
posted by phunniemee at 5:08 PM on December 15 [5 favorites]

Also, just on the thing that the community should be better so the moderation is less.

First of all, there will always be a much wider variety of participants than mods, so...that's sort of not realistic? You would hope that even volunteer mods would not post on their worst days, post drunk, etc., but all of those things can and should be expected from the general membership. It's just a part of internet life. If you've never modded a large and diverse community you may not have any idea just how different members' perspectives can be on what's acceptable or even good conduct. This is just as true in a lot of workplaces. When I went from a white collar to a service/blue-ish collar organization, whoa, was it a culture shock what you can and can't say. All those coworkers could easily be on MetaFilter.

Second, in a healthy community you would also always have new people coming in who don't know the norms yet. You would expect that there would always be work to do moderating those things.

And third, I agree that the members definitely can impact the culture here. But the last 5 years or so of moderation have really, really pushed 'flag and move on,' and have eliminated 'fiesty' or 'off-topic' posts which generally means member-to-member feedback. (Not always, but a lot.) Over the last year or so it seems anecdotally like communication has gone even more opaque - fewer notes, fewer deletion notes, and a lot of emphasis on MeMail/email communications over MetaTalk or other public discussions.

So the moderation team has chosen to create a community where norms are actually hidden. And frankly...I don't know if this is still the case but the very few times that I'm aware that I've had a comment deleted (I think this is 2-3 but not sure, I don't really track them), I've never gotten any feedback on why or a note about it. So it's not really been much of a learning opportunity. Again, this is a choice and I can see arguments for and against it, but it's a big much to come in and say that it's the members who are responsible.
posted by warriorqueen at 5:22 PM on December 15 [21 favorites]

Warriorqueen: "There's still money in the bank but the trend line is not good."

phunniemee: "ah heck dang it guess this was just one of her famous typos"

The quote linked by phunniemee:

jessamyn: "We are actually nicely not bankrupt!"

So...am I missing something here? If there's still money in the bank, then, yes, MeFi is not bankrupt. Why would that be considered a typo/gaffe?
posted by Bugbread at 5:25 PM on December 15

> So the moderation team has chosen to create a community where norms are actually hidden.

[loup] can't stress enough how much policy can change what a website can look like.
-BIPOC board minutes, May 2022

posted by glonous keming at 5:30 PM on December 15 [4 favorites]

You've put in a tremendous amount of work, warriorqueen, and it is noticed and appreciated. By me, obviously, but I'm sure also by many others.

to me 6 months' current operating expenses is around the minimum you would want to have and isn't really transition/expansion money.

It's 6 months' expenses at *current spending levels.* There is a lot of money in the bank and coming in relative to fixed costs like hosting fees. The question is, how should the rest of that money be allocated? And that's also the source of the current stalemate, because nobody but Jessamyn can decide that until we transition to a nonprofit.
posted by night traveler at 5:40 PM on December 15 [9 favorites]

i'm with Bugbread in that i see no inconsistency there phunniemee - but putting that aside, what are you hoping to accomplish? is there something about specific financial transparency you could just ask for instead of alluding to? (although, if your take is that jessamyn's post is contradicted by an annual loss, you may be fishing for outrage.)
posted by ~ at 5:43 PM on December 15 [2 favorites]

phunniemee - but putting that aside, what are you hoping to accomplish

Rackin' up the faves!
posted by kbanas at 5:48 PM on December 15 [2 favorites]

Actually this is the comment where my jaw dropped. I do want to say that's not a slam on Jessamyn; I can see why it feels like a lot of money in the bank. But not to me. For the record, my boss at martial arts had about 5 times that (based on our expenses) in funds that could be freed up at the start of Covid, plus a start-up fund for the academy we were about to open. He is unusual that way though, and a lot of that surplus was built up because he didn't take a salary out of that business for about 20 years but had other gigs to fund his modest lifestyle.

The question is, how should the rest of that money be allocated?

Fair.
posted by warriorqueen at 5:48 PM on December 15 [7 favorites]

Would it be legal if the site paid X per month to someone and then that

technically yes as long as there is no quid pro quo. the best way to avoid that situation is for that person, if they are a member of metafilter, disband their account, sign a letter that they are not involved in any way forward with metafilter™ other than the work they are doing and that prior to the work being done, no arrangement was a made for the employees paycheck to be donated back to the site.

also technically your comment could be the first piece of evidence if an arrangement like this was formed and it went wrong
of course always consult an attorney.
oddly, it's exact opposite of like a crime drama or underground situation where someone gets paid not to show up to work and no one ever suggests hiring an attorney.
you see what I did there and there was no allusion to the mods being part of organized crime.
you know I really wanted to put out the Hat light on the grammatical brouhaha if anything just to see the sparks fly from this keyboard, like like Odysseus in the Long boat with twin Evinrude engines sputtering bolts as Dylan Thomas in blue cornonets with a bottle of single malt, 40 years old.

I'd love to conjure Mr final dark just to see his three paragraphs rest gently upon the membership we're even Brandon might not dare to delete that.

I fought with a lot of people, even some in this thread, and I don't like to concentrate on singular names as example so I'll just use Brandon because there are a few times I can recall that I gave Brandon before mod, guff, willy-nilly challenged his comment you know just being V and then I listened and the more I read, wise, creative, not necessarily a dry sense of humor truly well balanced. as a member, projects he's done, the encouragement, posts, all these things are the combination of a good member and I realized, Brandon wasn't just the only one! In some sense, one slowly rids itself of a script or stance or persona to simply become the person who they are in the desire of becoming the person they should be. I say this because I think I realize or just realizing now that within Brandon's job there's an element holding two diametrically opposed ideas and still be able to function as a moderator to the community at Large.
and I'll be blunt, that must be a mother f*****.
(exit stage left-slow curtain)
"So - who wants to form the Star Chamber, stop all this 'not worthy of the FRONT PAGE!!!' whining, and replace it with the benevolent dictatorship so many pine for? Or maybe someone would like to put up a link to the SECOND page of Metafilter, where all of the lesser beings can put their contributions..?

narrator: I do beg the audience and moderator to let stand that link as the most interesting aspect is, other than at the time, the time and date, is:

[This thread is over 30 days old, and has been closed for archival purposes.]

these few comments that allude to the cracks and crevices of metafilter within and out, hence that staff really is doing something like the equivalent of taking out student loans and just sipping coffee all day. it's conjecture. it's smoke.
entre"brazen" stunt posting, flowing cavalcade of clever comments, bland staple, a fence-run, perhaps we should commodify, thing is people react they adapt and then they get more clever and I will admit that will become a problem because from experience, when deployed, it didn't feel like I, per se, was the problem in doing so justification wise. this could led to more confusion, perhaps more banal subject matter posting, this is a matter of taste of course which leds to counter posting, those really good ones.


Whatever the intention, it comes across as mockery

mockery is seldom deployed parenthetically...and made me wonder about the phrase itself for God's sake. I understand the 's to appeal to their sake but shouldn't it really be for god sakes, it's not as accurate but at least we can get the monotheistic back in.
so there's that. I believe what we have here is responding tone for tone with humor.

ultimately, I believe it is human free will to be able to use god sakes to address someone whether its smockpants on fire or minor question about a detail on a website on the internet.

but now with perceived hyperbole it's as if moderators are using pneumatic tubes and discussing if they should
on metatalk
765.. 766..767 comments Iong.
posted by clavdivs at 5:51 PM on December 15 [5 favorites]

Rackin' up the faves!

get more faves than mefi has cash flow heyyy
posted by phunniemee at 6:02 PM on December 15 [7 favorites]

At a bare minimum, it would be prudent to cut back on moderation until we at least aren’t operating at a loss. That seems obvious.
posted by snofoam at 6:06 PM on December 15 [5 favorites]

(Like, at least until the cookbook money comes rolling in.)
posted by snofoam at 6:07 PM on December 15 [8 favorites]

willy-nilly challenged his comment you know just being V and

What does V mean in this sentence? Is it a roman numeral five? A letter U? A letter V? A down arrow? A flock of birds flying south for winter? Short for a mystery word starting with V? Or starting with U?

clavdivs sometimes your comments are understandable and other times clear as mud.
posted by qi at 6:28 PM on December 15 [3 favorites]

The previous P&Ls are "in the owner's bin" and not visible, even though Brandon let me know he was going to fix that. If he would I would do some more analysis.

Hope this gets fixed quickly.
posted by trig at 7:36 PM on December 15 [1 favorite]

"What does V mean in this sentence?"

V
posted by Bugbread at 7:42 PM on December 15 [2 favorites]

V

clavdivs linked to a 5-comment MeTa thread containing six usernames I wish we still had.
posted by dg at 7:45 PM on December 15 [3 favorites]

You've put in a tremendous amount of work, warriorqueen, and it is noticed and appreciated. By me, obviously, but I'm sure also by many others.

Seconding this, thank you
posted by knobknosher at 8:14 PM on December 15 [17 favorites]

V
posted by Bugbread at 10:42 PM on December 15 [+] [⚑]

CW!
posted by mittens at 4:50 AM on December 16 [2 favorites]

Mod note: Hey y'all, asked a question about collecting feedback over in AskMe, please chime over there if you have any suggestions, thanks!
posted by Brandon Blatcher (staff) at 6:30 AM on December 16 [1 favorite]

Mod note: Removed a comment about how to make a salad under the assumption of it was meant for a different thread.
posted by Brandon Blatcher (staff) at 7:14 AM on December 16 [3 favorites]

Do I recall correctly that people often start posting recipes in contentious threads?
posted by tristeza at 7:35 AM on December 16 [12 favorites]

Brandon, please repost to this thread my comment from your Ask MeFi question, which you deleted. Please keep any links intact.
posted by sagc at 7:35 AM on December 16 [3 favorites]

"assumption it was meant for a different thread" is either Brandon being amnesiac about hundreds of past MeTa threads, or trying to help the poster save face for what is generally seen as intentionally-derailing behaviour.
posted by sagc at 7:37 AM on December 16 [8 favorites]

To be fair, the mods rarely read a MetaTalk thread for longer than a week.
posted by bowbeacon at 7:38 AM on December 16 [3 favorites]

Since we can't see what's in the MetaTalk queue, does anyone know whether a MeTa regarding nouvelle-personne was actually submitted? There were a few requests for it and I assumed we'd be seeing one as this thread began to die down.
posted by mittens at 8:58 AM on December 16 [7 favorites]

Oh my god use google sheets. It's not about having a fun new tool, it's about changing your behavior. Do not task this nonfunctional, nearly broke team with acquiring, training on, and implementing some random software package that is likely complete overkill. For the 10000th time, do not let the perfect be the enemy of the good.

Just stop.
posted by donnagirl at 9:21 AM on December 16 [41 favorites]

Oh my god use google sheets. It's not about having a fun new tool, it's about changing your behavior. Do not task this nonfunctional, nearly broke team with acquiring, training on, and implementing some random software package that is likely complete overkill. For the 10000th time, do not let the perfect be the enemy of the good.

Just stop.

How dare they.. wait, what are we mad about this time? Let me spin the wheel. Oh yeah. How dare they ask that community about the best way to collect feedback! You tell 'em!
posted by kbanas at 9:44 AM on December 16 [1 favorite]

You have a bunch of feedback all in one place already, right? Try this:

Read it and highlight anything that seems doable. Even if you don’t like it, if it’s potentially viable at all, highlight it. Don’t be picky, err on the side of inclusivity.

Copy/paste the highlighted text into a new document. Try to put similar/overlapping feedback together but don’t be perfectionistic.

Copy/paste into a new document again, putting similar/overlapping feedback together. Put loose headline/categories.

Delete anything that is mentioned elsewhere. Shorten suggestions as much as feasible but don’t spend a ton of time on this. It’s okay for a suggestion to be long if it is long.

Now you have a categorized list.

Circulate to decisionmakers and ask them to read in advance of a meeting.

Have a meeting with the agenda being to decide on items from each category. Have a notetaker. For each category spend about 5 minutes. Decide “yes” “not sure” “more information” “no” for each suggestion. If you don’t have consensus, put it in the “not sure” category. Don’t get fancy. Just denote which is which. Example:

—Ban capslock day —NO
—Give knobknosher $1mm —YES

Move “yes” items to a to-do list. Prioritize these.

Move “no” items to a “no” list. Don’t worry about these, but as a very low priority, you can assign someone to think about reasoning for turning them down.

Now you have a list of “not sure” and “ more information.” DO NOT wait to implement “yes” items until you address these; address “yes” items ASAP. I hesitate to try to figure out a workflow for these but using this process you can at least identify the easy “yeses” and get a sense of what needs more work, either in terms of consensus building or research.
posted by knobknosher at 9:48 AM on December 16 [15 favorites]

How dare they.. wait, what are we mad about this time? Let me spin the wheel. Oh yeah. How dare they ask that community about the best way to collect feedback! You tell 'em!

At this point they’ve already paid someone to do this AFAIK; it has basically been done. They’ve also been collecting feedback for years at this point. They need to start implementing.

There is not a technical solution for making decisions.
posted by knobknosher at 9:51 AM on December 16 [32 favorites]

How dare they ask that community

Correct.

The staff is 'asking the community' instead of doing anything. Because it's important to get community feedback on the color of the Post-It notes that loup does not use. Now the staff needs suggestions for a better shared Google sheet that no one will use.
posted by Diskeater at 9:55 AM on December 16 [19 favorites]

Also, Brandon, if you’re going to spend money on a productivity tool, the best bang for your buck is probably two monitors, if you don’t have two already. Pretty easy on a windows computer. Cheap monitors are fine.
posted by knobknosher at 9:55 AM on December 16 [6 favorites]

How dare they.. wait, what are we mad about this time? Let me spin the wheel. Oh yeah. How dare they ask that community about the best way to collect feedback! You tell 'em!

I gave them a suggestion. One they've been given dozens of times. One they've been begged to accept. "We" aren't mad at anything new, I and many others have been very consistent in what's being asked for. I get that you don't want to go back and like, read literal years of MeTas asking for change, you just wanna show up and pretend to be the good, reasonable member caping for the mods against all the meanies. But the truth is letting this site that you and I have both been members of for more than two decades die an ugly death due to mismanagement, laziness, and extremely poor communication isn't good or reasonable.

Right now you're being the mefi equivalent of a "don't like America, just leave" Trumper. It's not a great look. I'm trying to keep something that I value. What are you doing besides drive-by potshots at other users?
posted by donnagirl at 10:12 AM on December 16 [22 favorites]

What are you doing besides drive-by potshots at other users?

Rackin' up the faves!
posted by phunniemee at 10:18 AM on December 16 [25 favorites]

The OP of the removed comment was notified of the removal.

Sagc has been MeFiMailed their removed comment from the AskMe thread.

The only MeTa regarding nouvelle-personne was submitted by them right after they left. They were emailed that it would not be published and that they were welcome to return and rewrite it to be less fighty.

I'm ok with posting that AskMe regarding software and workflow in terms of MeFi and will definitely do so again in the future. Doing so is based on the idea it's good to have a solution (Google Sheets), but it doesn't hurt to ask if anyone has a better/more efficient solution. Thank you to everyone who has chimed in, I just ask that you do so in the actual AskMe instead of in this thread.

Finally, knobknosher, this is America, we don't do millimeters here, sorry. And while I think the two monitor suggestion is a good one, three monitors is even better.
posted by Brandon Blatcher (staff) at 10:26 AM on December 16

The only MeTa regarding nouvelle-personne was submitted by them right after they left. They were emailed that it would not be published and that they were welcome to return and rewrite it to be less fighty.

This was not the right way to handle this
posted by knobknosher at 10:28 AM on December 16 [32 favorites]

The only MeTa regarding nouvelle-personne was submitted by them right after they left. They were emailed that it would not be published and that they were welcome to return and rewrite it to be less fighty.

I have a suggestion that I hope is collected: Get rid of the MetaTalk queue.

It was not a good decision in the first place. Fighty posts can be handled in more skilled ways by mods.
posted by trig at 10:32 AM on December 16 [31 favorites]

This would probably be doable by paying someone to hook a chrome extension up to Google Sheets; a Google Sheet that does this + copy/paste would work fine in the meantime for a low-volume site such as Mefi.

Also, all the software in the world won't solve the problem of having an inactive manager and no board. Collating feedback for literal years, in various forms, and never managing to act on it - that's not a software issue.

I don't know, man. Is this "adding dismissive commentary", or is it highlighting something the asker should be aware of? Those initiatives being paused don't exactly speak to the ability to get, eg. sociology coding tech, and probably are something to be aware of.

Even if that last sentence was a step too far, best practice can't be for mods to moderate their own AskMe's. At the very least, I would imagine part of best practice would be the standard 'repost without the fighty part', which I did.
posted by sagc at 10:38 AM on December 16 [3 favorites]

Also, the title of the question raises the possibility of the software acting on feedback, so it seems like the answer is in scope.
posted by sagc at 10:41 AM on December 16 [3 favorites]

One more suggestion. I hesitate to say this, because making perfect the enemy of the good is basically the motto for how this site has been led the past few years, but:

While compiling suggestions from these threads, compile another thing too: the things users are most frustrated about.

If most mods are not reading user input thread, and are doing their work totally clueless of the zeitgeist, that's a problem. Mods need to know how people feel about the site - especially if they're actually involved in decisions like "nah let's not run this experiment people have asked for".


Regardless: yeah, please minimum futzing around with new software and maximum just doing the work, even if it's a slog. I am a champion at escapist futzing around and I know the outcome all too well (the outcome is time flies and work is not done).
posted by trig at 10:44 AM on December 16 [8 favorites]

The only MeTa regarding nouvelle-personne was submitted by them right after they left.

Surely right before they left? I don't know the mechanics of posting after you've buttoned.

But I hate this. Can I just say? Garbage. Back in the day, "take it to MeTa" is how things worked. N-P sees issues with the tenor of some of the comments in the thread? N-P can open a Metatalk, the community can talk about how shit we are at racism yet again, N-P can feel heard (or not) and decide to leave (or not), and everyone gets to discuss this openly. The d_d uber question doesn't get derailed by mod action mystery meat and spinoff bad vibes into existing, unrelated threads.

Instead, what we have now is instead of take it to MeTa, you take it to the void. Users who are upset (rightly or wrongly, don't have anywhere to blow off steam, because their feedback disappears into a queue. Obligatory HomerSimpson_ButImMadNow.mov please. So instead you get people dumping in the original thread, dumping in other threads, getting mad, leaving, literally silenced all their life, because of the queue.

And somehow, even though a queue exists and a post only comes through when a mod allows it, sensitive MeTas still somehow manage to get posted without an immediate commentary from a mod to frame and set the tone for the thread, and somehow manage to get posted during times when mods are apparently unprepared to cope with the inevitable attention it'll get. I literally can't understand how this can be so mismanaged from both directions.

The N-P buttoning is a perfect example of why the queue is no longer working.
posted by phunniemee at 10:44 AM on December 16 [77 favorites]

Agree completely about the queue. And tone policing n-p like five seconds after we had a whole conversation about tone policing snofoam (IIRC) is not surprising but I’m registering that it’s bullshit and almost certainly a huge contributor to n-p buttoning. She is awesome so that is bad.
posted by knobknosher at 10:49 AM on December 16 [15 favorites]

tone policing n-p like five seconds after we had a whole conversation about tone policing snofoam

...is tone deaf.

Tone deafness is fatal if you're a mod making tone judgments.
posted by trig at 10:58 AM on December 16 [9 favorites]

why is the mod defense squad working harder than the mods and how can we harness this power
posted by Why Is The World In Love Again? at 11:00 AM on December 16 [7 favorites]

I’m just a ghost who isn’t trolling, but I want to say it’s very clear that Brandon is working hard and cares about this site, but he has no power to unilaterally make things actually happen. Must be super frustrating.

#ghostswantModLogandnoMetaQueue
posted by B_Ghost_User at 11:10 AM on December 16 [11 favorites]

it’s very clear that Brandon is working hard and cares about this site, but he has no power to unilaterally make things actually happen

I wonder if Brandon started actually implementing some of the feedback how long it would take for the other mods to notice. Ask for forgiveness instead of permission.
posted by phunniemee at 11:24 AM on December 16 [10 favorites]

Also, all the software in the world won't solve the problem of having an inactive manager and no board. Collating feedback for literal years, in various forms, and never managing to act on it - that's not a software issue.

Okay, I have been at least that dismissive in AskMe answers and people have let it stand. Let’s assume the responder is right — that’s information you need, isn’t it, before purchasing software?
posted by eirias at 11:35 AM on December 16 [6 favorites]

Well see usually the person who asked the question doesn't also get to moderate the answers to that same question.
posted by phunniemee at 11:38 AM on December 16 [11 favorites]

The queue should stop.

The tone policing is not okay. Can we also not use the word "fighty," which sounds faux-cutesy, like you're talking to first-graders?

Finally, we appear to have a leadership vacuum going on. What would happen if Brandon just started doing stuff? Anything? Would anyone object?
posted by Miko at 11:39 AM on December 16 [22 favorites]

Finally, we appear to have a leadership vacuum going on. What would happen if Brandon just started doing stuff? Anything? Would anyone object?

If loup can "quiet quit" his job and suffer no ill effects -- because the site is at once entirely dependent on mods and yet unable to enforce minimum work levels -- then logistically there's no reason BB can't make unilateral choices.

What could Jessamyn do? Fire him and have larger mod gaps?
posted by The Pluto Gangsta at 11:46 AM on December 16 [4 favorites]

Would anyone object?

Here? Surely not!
posted by paper chromatographologist at 11:46 AM on December 16 [4 favorites]

(I mean, it sounds like Brandon's been the one objecting to some things, like the comment-hiding experiment, and the one being drawn to "fun" suggestions like making game posts and rah-rah comments in threads rather than all the less-fun suggestions. I do think Brandon's been stepping up of his own initiative and placing himself in a more active position than the other non-loup mods, which deserves props. But I think his idea of "doing stuff" is pretty different than what people here have been asking for.

But hopefully I'm wrong?)
posted by trig at 11:47 AM on December 16 [12 favorites]

Like, I would be interested to see n_p's comment and be able to judge for myself how "fighty" - or, in better words, combative, angry, pointed, demanding, concerned, frustrated - it actually is. Because I'm not sure I trust whatever tone-meter mods are applying, especially when ascribing tone to a person of color who has already been handed a full plate of microaggressions.
posted by Miko at 11:48 AM on December 16 [22 favorites]

FYI I believe loup’s pronouns are they/them
posted by knobknosher at 11:48 AM on December 16 [16 favorites]

Finally, we appear to have a leadership vacuum going on. What would happen if Brandon just started doing stuff? Anything? Would anyone object?

Which action items don't require frimble or the other mods though?
posted by warriorqueen at 11:49 AM on December 16

Yeah, by "doing stuff" I don't mean distracting from the core issues of concern - site survival and participation - with games and attempts at happy-family-feel-goodism. I mean making changes that address the issues of general concern - which we could readily list yet again without new software or even a Google Sheet.
posted by Miko at 11:50 AM on December 16 [5 favorites]

Would anyone object?

I do.
posted by phunniemee at 11:53 AM on December 16 [5 favorites]

(I'll also add that the most visible big thing Brandon has done lately on his own was... writing and posting the tone-deaf-as-hell "tell us about your rice cookers" post. In which it seems he believed he was doing what the BIPOC board had discussed, but was apparently doing the exact opposite of what the BIPOC board had decided. And where, whosever the misunderstanding actually was, he acted unilaterally and gave the board minimal time to respond before posting. So.... I don't actually want to see Brandon acting unilaterally because I don't think he should be that confident in his own judgment and/or comprehension. But again, hopefully I am wrong.

Still, if Brandon takes over, continues to act in the same way he has been acting, draws tons of complaints, and then someone comes in saying "see, you're just driving another one away! Nothing can make you happy!" - I'd like to say in advance that new people pulling the same nonsense is indeed not going to make me happy.

Yes to more energy. Please no to more energy applied against the current of what people are asking for.)
posted by trig at 12:17 PM on December 16 [15 favorites]

If the mods/management want to improve user experience, they could cordon off or give time outs to the I/P or Die crowd who've followed me around three threads now. This is the third.

I flagged the two opening threadshitting comments on a post about civil conversation, and Brandon removed them, which was great. But then Taz concluded an error had somehow been made, and far as I can tell removed a perfectly good comment and then replaced it with one of the original threadshitting comments. If that was it, that would have been fine, too, but then I get some guy plopping down (three times!) "Zionist PR Points," which were completely off-topic. Then a bunch of others wandered in shitting on the links until eventually the I/P or Die Honcho shows up, whom I've now flagged three times, and he once again tried to hijack the thread, which seemed to only give courage to his friends.

Let me be clear: I see this as a problem with this group of users, but above all I see it as a mod problem. Several people have complained about bullying from the I/P crowd before, but Loup did nothing, and Brandon just directed me to the flags. But flagging after a while does not solve the problem.

Meanwhile, In between all this, lots of nice folks were making good conversational points. But something like 30 comments strong the page is littered with threadshitting and removal notices.

It shouldn't be this hard to have a decent on-topic conversation on civil conversation, no less. This is why hordes of people have quit Metafilter, stopped posting altogether or, like me, almost never post on the blue.
posted by Violet Blue at 12:37 PM on December 16 [7 favorites]

Not to derail, but in the Ask where n-p’s answers were deleted, are we absolutely sure that the OP hadn’t accidentally ordered an Uber Brown?
posted by snofoam at 12:39 PM on December 16 [1 favorite]

The only reason I'm posting here is I don't trust the queue, and on the rare occasion I email a mod no one responds.
posted by Violet Blue at 12:48 PM on December 16 [6 favorites]

Thank you to everyone who has chimed in, I just ask that you do so in the actual AskMe instead of in this thread.

Feedback and decisions regarding the site should absolutely be in MeTa, not Ask.
posted by Dysk at 1:11 PM on December 16 [13 favorites]

What is the current MeFi leadership/management/supervision structure?
posted by NotLost at 1:11 PM on December 16 [9 favorites]

Guys, this bike shed is going to be so fucking sweet.
posted by Mr. Bad Example at 1:23 PM on December 16 [7 favorites]

Living up to the name.
posted by y2karl at 1:30 PM on December 16

Bike shedding is precisely what is going on.
posted by 922257033c4a0f3cecdbd819a46d626999d1af4a at 1:34 PM on December 16 [5 favorites]

What is the current MeFi leadership/management/supervision structure?

The current structure is
posted by april of time at 1:35 PM on December 16 [14 favorites]

I/P or Die Honcho

blazecock pileon is back?
posted by Why Is The World In Love Again? at 1:44 PM on December 16 [7 favorites]

https://metatalk.metafilter.com/26520/Proposing-a-Brand-New-Day#1431797

I'm suepr excited that the mods are going to give us permission to talk about things eventually maybe
posted by B_Ghost_User at 1:47 PM on December 16 [4 favorites]

Sent the OP a note concerning the work/donate aspect. Also, I'm taking the +4 vebal shunt out of my phone as it does not add. I do this as respect for the OP and the mere fact that I can.
I do think one aspect going forward would be to aggregate the many concerns in this thread and start a new one.

What does V mean
good, nice phrasing, have you read the monograph on dice... a discarded amalgamation of the word me and the letter v auto corrected back to the v, I just capitalized it because it rhymes with me.

oh bugbread, I cannot remember the last time I had a comment deleted but there was no note because I got this implicit feeling from the other end a voice, saying, come on you know better.
to me, those are the most instructive.

just one more thing yes I do miss some of those people in the thread that are linked but of they came back and started getting guff, trashed upon, why would they want to stay.
perhaps it feels like, in my opinion, a lot of these people had verbal skills of a ninja and may feel constrained to use them if the need did arise.
posted by clavdivs at 2:04 PM on December 16 [2 favorites]

This may become a modding issue soon, so I’ll mention it here…

Apparently the Arthur Treacher’s story I linked to, while on a page with no objectionable content I can see in Chrome on iOS, is published by a site with dodgy politics.

Since my page was clean, it never occurred to me to vet the rest of the site. It doesn’t seem practical to hold a poster responsible for anything not on the page they’re actually linking to. So I’m not going to flag myself.

But if someone else does, what’s the policy here? Would a proactive substitution of a Wayback link - so people can enjoy the content without rewarding the site with views - be the best approach?
posted by Lemkin at 2:54 PM on December 16 [2 favorites]

Oh, for fuck's sake, the preciousness about politically correct sites is suffocating.
posted by Violet Blue at 2:56 PM on December 16 [15 favorites]

"oh bugbread, I cannot remember the last time I had a comment deleted but there was no note because I got this implicit feeling from the other end a voice, saying, come on you know better.
to me, those are the most instructive."

What are you talking about, and what does it have to do with me?
posted by Bugbread at 2:56 PM on December 16 [8 favorites]

MetaFilter: What are you talking about, and what does it have to do with me?
posted by Lemkin at 3:00 PM on December 16 [13 favorites]

Oh, for fuck's sake, the preciousness about politically correct sites is suffocating.

Your quest to label people who argue with you as bullies is tedious but people are polite about it anyway. Maybe you could be courteous as well.
posted by knobknosher at 3:05 PM on December 16 [15 favorites]

it never occurred to me to vet the rest of the site.

Sorry to sound impatient but ABCNews just agreed to settle with Trump for defamation.* The Trump people have already sued several other media outlets. The goal is to scare them, especially at a time when the media is severely contracting. They'll fear lawsuits and not print news. This kind of censorship will give Trump more freedom to operate. Metafilter at its baby level should not be doing the same. The original intent and the leftover impulse may have been good but we don't live in that world anymore.

*This is happening in Italy too. PM Meloni who leads a party once run by Mussolini has been suing journalists for calling her short. If they're scared to call her short, think what else they won't say?
posted by Violet Blue at 3:10 PM on December 16 [2 favorites]

Oh, for fuck's sake, the preciousness about politically correct sites is suffocating

[“eh…” tilting hand gesture]

It feels like an edge case. And since the last deletion of my content on edge case grounds went… sub-optimally, I encourage any mod taking action to “measure twice, cut once”.
posted by Lemkin at 3:10 PM on December 16

It was rude, Knobknosher, I apologize to Lemkin.
posted by Violet Blue at 3:11 PM on December 16 [1 favorite]

It was rude, Knobknosher, I apologize to Lemkin

No apology necessary, I thought it was a complaint against the person who pointed out the rest of the site content.
posted by Lemkin at 3:18 PM on December 16 [1 favorite]

Finally, we appear to have a leadership vacuum going on. What would happen if Brandon just started doing stuff? Anything? Would anyone object?

Interestingly, in a memail to Brandon 4 days ago, I made this very suggestion. As a former COO of a division of a publicly traded company, that is exactly what BB should do. I am not suggesting major changes to policy, just start making the small changes that he can implement such as his rewrite of the sign up page.

I hate to make this comparison, but that is exactly what Trump is doing right now. Biden has seemingly put himself out to pasture so Trump is running foreign policy out of Mar-a-Largo right now. It is what Harris should have done earlier, made herself more visible in the administration. Then, she could have defined herself in the election rather than letting the Republicans define her. The absence of a "NO" is a yes. Not the absence of a "YES" is a no.

Before it is pointed out that if everyone started doing that it would lead to chaos, everyone is NOT doing it despite having at least a year to do so. Most are not even doing what they have authority to do, they will not do more than their job. Think about your own jobs and how you have had to find ways around obstacles even if those obstacles were people. And you do.

Brandon is optimistic in the face of many challenges and much criticism. He is the one willing to stand up in front of the crowd and take the shouting. He may not get everything right or right to the complainer's satisfaction, but he is in the ring flailing away. I give him credit for that and thank him. Instead of criticizing how he is going about it such as his askme about the log, thank him for deciding to make the log.

just my $0.02 as us olds say.
posted by JohnnyGunn at 3:26 PM on December 16 [22 favorites]

Lemkin, I really liked that Arthur Treacher's post. While I guess I should consider the source, it was an article about a fast food joint not about some weighty topic. Who cares what the rest of the site is? (I just looked at it and it appears to be satire to me. They wrote an article about the last AT's. I do not expect that to come from Gourmet or the NY Times. I figure it came from a bunch of old stoners reminiscing about going to Treacher's.)
posted by JohnnyGunn at 3:32 PM on December 16 [1 favorite]

the piece itself is really the kind of weird little thing that i love finding on mefi, and i hope people check it out, through archive.is if that's what they feel they need to do. there is some...odd stuff on the rest of the site, but it's a sort of sincere "internet weirdo" political mishmash. i much prefer this kind of thing to be posted to the front page than the slate star codex guy's weird missives about how anyone who likes art is performing for liberal elites.
posted by Why Is The World In Love Again? at 3:43 PM on December 16 [9 favorites]

I'm kinda surprised to discover there are zero duckduckgo results (and fewer than ten google results) for "no justice, no tweets."
posted by nobody at 7:12 PM on December 16 [1 favorite]

Finally, knobknosher, this is America, we don't do millimeters here, sorry

I regret praising Apollogies.
posted by snofoam at 2:34 AM on December 17 [6 favorites]

And somehow, even though a queue exists and a post only comes through when a mod allows it, sensitive MeTas still somehow manage to get posted without an immediate commentary from a mod to frame and set the tone for the thread, and somehow manage to get posted during times when mods are apparently unprepared to cope with the inevitable attention it'll get. I literally can't understand how this can be so mismanaged from both directions.


I first brought up the mismanagement of the MeTa queue four and a half years ago and have commented on the consistent deployment of a chatty MeTa to bury a contentious MeTa or the mods deciding to post a MeTa from the queue but then being fully and completely unprepared for it several times since then. The system isn’t broken and the site isn’t broken, it’s just that Metafilter used to be a place to share the best of the web and now is a place for users to pay far too much for moderation that is not happening. I think Brandon is trying his absolute best in a very tough situation. I understand that Loup says they have offered to resign and Jessamyn told them to stay on. I think both sides of that conversation should be revisited. I think we should then examine the phenomena of the site having both no money and plenty of money, and how much longer it will be feasible for users to pay one American dollar in moderation costs per comment posted. I tried to post this comment and the site glitched and threw up blank pages repeatedly. Maybe that is something that could be looked at too.
posted by kate blank at 6:57 AM on December 17 [22 favorites]

I'm just putting this out here as a thought experiment:

When Matt closed the site to new members, the demand for membership increased and many people were begging for the chance to join. Maybe we should adopt a "Small is Beautiful" approach and only offer access to the site to those who paid something to support it. Any non paying members would not be able to use or access the site, and anyone who has closed or wiped their account would not be able to participate, rejoin or open a sock puppet account. Then we would not need moderation, and the design could probably proceed more quickly and the community could progress forward without a specific owner.

If this idea troubles you, and you're angry about the suggestion, you might want to rethink your strategy for supporting the site while it's undergoing some difficulties.
posted by effluvia at 7:20 AM on December 17

The idea troubles me because this site should not need money. The amount of spending this site does is damn near criminal. Spending $250,000 per year of people's money to run this site is immoral and unethical. The amount of money that this site churns through is not high, it's not very high, it's astronomical.
posted by bowbeacon at 7:30 AM on December 17 [14 favorites]

Bowbeacon, if you're addressing my comment above, there have been a lot of alternate suggestions listed in this thread about moderation and development.
posted by effluvia at 7:38 AM on December 17

I'm addressing the idea that we should be limiting things to people who pay, yes. Because people shouldn't be paying.
posted by bowbeacon at 7:43 AM on December 17 [3 favorites]

Yeah, I didn't expect the suggestion to garner a lot of favorites.
posted by effluvia at 7:44 AM on December 17

Spending $250,000 per year of people's money to run this site is immoral and unethical.

It stops being "people's money" the second they give it to Metafilter. While there's obvious problems with the company, I don't think they're raising the money under false pretenses, or hell even dark pattern type tactics. Obviously the people giving the money find enough value in the site as they currently experience it to keep their donations going. And like even if were to agree that everyone here is the absolute worst, on the giant list of ethically bad things to do with money "pay some people who aren't good at their jobs" or even "pay some people who are crappy to their customers" rank pretty low.
posted by Gygesringtone at 7:45 AM on December 17 [13 favorites]

don't be an underachiever! what if only people who signed up before Matt's $5 gate was installed can access the site? at long last, purity could be realized once and for all.
posted by glonous keming at 7:45 AM on December 17 [5 favorites]

I think they are raising money under false pretenses, the false pretense being "There is $200,000 worth of work being done here, because it costs $250,000 to run and host a website like this one."

People are asking what would happen if the site ran out of money, would the site die. And the simple answer is no, it would not, because the site really CAN'T run out of money, if it is managed in anything approaching a reasonable way. The site can run, indefinitely, for decades, on the money currently in the coffers, and if it's still earning a few grand a year in ads, it can run forever.

This is NOT normal. This is NOT sustainable. HUNDREDS OF THOUSANDS of dollars going to this site from something close to 1000 donors is just bonkers. BONKERS.
posted by bowbeacon at 7:48 AM on December 17 [5 favorites]

I think they are raising money under false pretenses, the false pretense being "There is $200,000 worth of work being done here, because it costs $250,000 to run and host a website like this one."


But it IS costing them that much. You can argue that it shouldn't be, but spending too much money is not the same thing as lying about costs. Unless you think that they're cooking the books.

Like, hey I care about this site too, and I think that there are plenty of questionable decisions made, including business wise. I'd go as far as to say that like every part of a racists\transphobic\misogynist society the decisions here often serve to reenforce those biases, and like if you draw your line at giving money to an organization that has made those particular decisions, that's a choice you get to make.

But, what I'm saying is there's a difference between lying in order to fleece people out of their money and just being bad at running a business.
posted by Gygesringtone at 7:57 AM on December 17 [15 favorites]

I just think that a number of non-technical users simply don't understand that this site is an outlier in the world of spending by 100x or so. It's not that they spend a lot of money, it's that they spend an amount of money that is SO out of range of normal or acceptable that by holding these fundraisers and saying things 2 years ago like "The site is almost out of money!" they are implying that there's some funding crisis that can only be solved by throwing more money at the fire, rather than by running the site in a reasonable way.
posted by bowbeacon at 7:59 AM on December 17 [15 favorites]

But, what I'm saying is there's a difference between lying in order to fleece people out of their money and just being bad at running a business.

I wouldn't really want to be giving money to either case
posted by Kybard at 8:04 AM on December 17 [2 favorites]

THE MODERATION IS TOO DAMN HIGH!
posted by snofoam at 8:11 AM on December 17 [3 favorites]

My sense is that the lion's share of the cost is paying generous wages to the staff. I've worked for many employers who are happy to complain at length about wages being their greatest operating cost. I cannot fault MetaFilter for wanting to pay people good wages. A smaller site would require a smaller expenditure of wages.

I find the community valuable enough to subscribe to it. I am concerned that users who cost a lot of staff time with various demands, public callouts, doom spirals, trolling, et cetera are bleeding the energy of the site to oblivion, and I hope that can be avoided. Users who don't contribute any money to the site who are very demanding are also costing the site financially.

If you are using an inordinate amount of staff time and contributing to staff turnover, consider the the fact that you are also costing the site money through lengthy arguments and trolling, as well as costing community involvement.

I don't really think it's appropriate to excoriate the people who work for or own the site in MetaTalk.
posted by effluvia at 8:21 AM on December 17 [1 favorite]

A smaller site would require a smaller expenditure of wages.

This is exactly my issue. This isn't true. There ARE no smaller sites. This is the smallest the site can be, and paying ONE DOLLAR per comment posted is theft.
posted by bowbeacon at 8:23 AM on December 17 [3 favorites]

Not going to back and forth with you, Bowbeacon.
posted by effluvia at 8:24 AM on December 17

as usual, it's the users who are wrong (and who should be paying for the privilege of being ignored)
posted by sagc at 8:26 AM on December 17 [5 favorites]

Maybe we should adopt a "Small is Beautiful" approach and only offer access to the site to those who paid something to support it.

How do we define support? And what is this place if not the community of the people involved in it?

I have contributed YEARS of generally well-received content to the most revenue-generating part of this site. I also was a (small dollar, but consistent) monthly contributor for over a decade, which ended earlier this year. Am I still supporting Metafilter? I participate actively in the community, so I think I am.

I think I've certainly earned the right to have an opinion over how Metafilter is run. Whether my opinion is valued/acted on/etc? Not my business. But I sure do get to have it. Someone who still feels like personally funding activities like this is certainly welcome to continue. But thinking that only the simps with deep pockets are the ones who have value here would be a terrible mistake and ruinous to the community.

My take, if you contribute ANY comment AT ALL to metafilter, you are part of the community and get to have an opinion about it.
posted by phunniemee at 8:33 AM on December 17 [28 favorites]

When Matt closed the site to new members ... while it's undergoing some difficulties.
posted by effluvia

eponysterical?
posted by snofoam at 8:34 AM on December 17

I hold both things in my head, which is that very few other environments have been able to pay for moderation to the level that MetaFilter does. And it is outside the norms by a lot.

BUT, MetaFilter is actually on both the trailing end (as a dinosaur) and the leading edge on that, because what I'm seeing as the media model collapses and social media enshittifies is that there is a trend towards people paying for access to both good content and good community. One of my very minor frustrations with how things have gone down is that two years ago was an excellent time to jump on that wave.

I cannot fault MetaFilter for wanting to pay people good wages.

I also support good wages, although I'm not sure the current configuration is right (and we know the tech wages are way off.) If the site numbers were healthy - if participation and engagement were going up and new people were joining and integrating and seeing the value; if our BIPOC members could recommend the site with joy and so on - there wouldn't be an argument.

But it's not. Recurring donations did a slight bounce up, but are down from last year. I truly believe, from experience, that the early softness in our data is about to turn into a big problem, because the value of the site depends on participation on the site. The value of the site is the content and community. Moderation certainly contributes to that, but the best moderators and no posts results in no MetaFilter.

Where shrinking resources go is really tricky and I think it is going to take someone with vision, and who that person or people are is going to be key.

I hope the next board holds a lot of that and can either find people to work with on it or motivate current staff to grow into that. I really don't like talking about the value of people's work in front of them as customers/donors/whatever because although it definitely is a thing, from wait staff to lawyers, it's hard to hear. But I do think right now things are off and need adjusting from multiple angles.

I don't think it's quite as simple as everyone volunteers to moderate tomorrow, because we haven't built that culture and understanding here. I can see why people are jumping to that but it's not the only possibility.
posted by warriorqueen at 8:36 AM on December 17 [32 favorites]

But thinking that only the simps with deep pockets[...]

Only bothering to say anything because it's not the first time someone's used it: the "simp" thing is a little gross, no? Your impression is that there are people, like, simpering for the mod team's affections? (Or I can't imagine you mean the older 'simp,' like 'simpleton,' right?)

But, yeah, only opening the site to people making monthly donations would be even grosser. (I thought maybe effluvia had only raised that as a rhetorical gambit, not a real suggestion, but I wasn't sure.)
posted by nobody at 9:39 AM on December 17 [3 favorites]

effluvia, I believe you are 100% commenting in good faith with this comment. I am linking to it instead of quoting pieces as I believe the context of the entire comment matters and I am commenting in good faith as well and don't want it to come across as me cherry picking sentences.

I agree the mods should be paid for their work. Without digging in to the P&L (which we can't see anymore?), I believe they have been generally paid well for their work.

I have been one who has significantly contributed in the past. For the first 6 of the 8 years where I was a non-lurker, I have always bumped my monthly contribution up a bit to adjust for inflation, etc. Then, we had that AMAZING fundraiser where I contributed a lot because it did sound like Metafilter might just close. (Keep in mind, we didn't hear that from staff at all. AT ALL!. IIRC, it came from the steering committee, and they were the ones who pulled of the successful fundraiser. Not staff.)

I have not bumped up my contribution over the last two fundraisers. The amount of time staff needs to deal with me is negligible. Look at my comment history. Taking everything into consideration, I am posting less than 1/2 a comment day. I don't troll here at all. I don't get into lengthy arguments with the staff OR the community.

I am not even sure where to go with the idea that the community is responsible for staff turnover.

**********************************

So, that's the foundation of what I am about to say and how I think we are looking at differently.

1. The amount of money I was contributing was due to the value Metafilter was giving me. This is both from the posters and commenters as well as the staff.

2. It seems the staff have been told not to communicate with the community at all, other than through a figurehead. loup was not the best choice for that. It already seems to be wearing on Brandon Blatcher as well, which is unfortunate. I have always enjoyed BB's non-staff related comments but it sure feels like as the face of the team, he is getting worn out.

3. I absolutely disagree that the community (the ones who are contributing money) are, generally speaking, asking for anything egregious. Just as one example, "Hey, you said the beta site would be up 09/30. It's not up. What's going on?" DNS issues were mentioned which is usually 24 - 48 hours resolution. Not almost three months. And when questioned about it, the answer shouldn't be "We told you we don't have any more information. Just wait." No. The answer should be something more along the lines of, "Hey, sorry. We're still working on that. We hope this is our new timeline."

4. So that we are on the same page. You mention those being a financial burden on MeFi LLC through trolling, extended arguments, etc. should just stop. Okay. To wrap this all together, I don't think I am one of those people. Staff can call me out if they want to. I AM one of those, like you, who contributes. Can I then vent when I see my (monetary) contributions not being used in a way that I like? Further, should I raise those concerns before stopping my contributions? That monthly money is my literal investment in keeping this site alive. I feel like you are saying I should just go away instead of letting the staff know what I want from the site. I just don't understand that.

Again, I see your point and don't want to come across as confrontational. I am just at a hard disagree that those who are asking begging for some better choices are the ones who are not contributing enough.
posted by a non mouse, a cow herd at 9:40 AM on December 17 [17 favorites]

Every month you have to pay $5 or create a FPP. (Like an avoiding a bank account’s monthly service charge by receiving a direct deposit.)

Gas, grass, or ass… no one rides for free.
posted by Lemkin at 9:54 AM on December 17 [1 favorite]

I am not even sure where to go with the idea that the community is responsible for staff turnover.

So, I was a moderator for an extremely fighty site once, and let me say it sucked out the joy in my soul. I think that as politics threads have gotten bigger and the world has gotten worse, there has been more of that and less of the good/fun stuff, it's entirely possible that mods have started to hate their job. And it does make a difference if people generally trust your calls versus if there's inherent distrust.

That said, the fightiness of a site - at least the bitter stuff - is a reflection of the health or lack thereof of its community, not any individual user. Even little stuff - I get that the idea was to make there be less in-jokes, that's why we renamed Secret Quonsar to 'metafilter gift swap'. But I used to look forward to Quonsmas, and I didn't even participate this year. And there's just...I peeked at the thread and it just doesn't see as joyous as ones in the past. And some of it seems to be that people don't really *know* each other, aren't remembering consistent contribution by others. And I would bet some of that is that people just don't read Metafilter as much these days as they used to.

I'm not really sure why. I'm not really sure why I don't comment as often as I used to. Possibly that I use my computer less, and my phone more, and Metafilter sucks on mobile. But also possibly because there's just less here.
posted by corb at 10:03 AM on December 17 [10 favorites]

I think some of the lack of community is due to deletions, too. It seems like a lot of the back-and-forth riffing that used to build community gets deleted as noise or derail or whatever. Like the site has become more about answering the question correctly (not just on AskMe, though also there) as opposed to sharing ideas and building connections.
posted by lapis at 11:06 AM on December 17 [9 favorites]

I'm going to follow The Pluto Gangsta's lead in posting the text of the MetaTalk post I just submitted to the queue.

but queue don't really care for MeTa, do ya?

Let's talk about the MetaTalk queue.

There is currently a very long thread with discussion on a wide variety of topics, and I think this is one that could benefit from the clarity of a new, focused thread.

The Metatalk queue was originally stated to be for holidays, weekends, and periods of less mod coverage. At some point, the queue became year-round, also in response to shifts in moderator coverage.

I would argue at this point that there is not enough moderator attention for the queue to be used in a way that fairly serves the purpose of Metatalk ("People often use it for discussing policy and etiquette questions with the mods and other users, making feature requests, or asking questions about the site itself.") Straightforward site-policy discussion questions are languishing for days. The causes and potential solutions for this lack of mod time are a subject of continuing debate, but I do not think we need to agree about why the queue is being neglected to agree that it is being neglected.

Since the queue got implemented, people got used to a mod statement early in the thread. I do not think this has been, on the whole, a positive for mods or users. I think it frequently leads to defensiveness and digging in that could be (sometimes) averted by letting the conversation develop for a little while. This will require adjustment for everyone; users should be less quick to demand mod comments in non-urgent meta threads, and mods should print out that Idris Elba meme that the sigma-grindset guys like.

But won't this lead to more fighting in Metatalk?

Maybe! However:
-There's plenty of fighting in Metatalk now, it's just swallowed up in a sea of 800 comments where it doesn't get seen and grievances are left to fester.
-Not all conflict is bad. phunniemee had a very thoughtful comment in the last thread about the ways in which it can be constructive.
-It seems clear at this point that the modding is largely guided by flagging (which is fine), and I don't see why this can't work for Metatalk. A neater Metatalk (with actual new threads for new topics and not a rolling 850-comment behemoth) means more eyes on comments that might need flags.

Submitted Dec. 17, 11:11 PST
posted by Why Is The World In Love Again? at 11:11 AM on December 17 [21 favorites]

Maybe we should do a crowdsourced metatalk post submissions log. Maybe a google doc and then post that to Projects?
posted by snofoam at 11:18 AM on December 17 [3 favorites]

will a google doc work? maybe we should we ask for opinions about the best thread queue tracking software
posted by Why Is The World In Love Again? at 11:25 AM on December 17 [4 favorites]

The Pluto Gangsta -- did you get any feedback about your post? That was submitted 3 days ago, I hope someone has heard something by now.
posted by Sparky Buttons at 11:26 AM on December 17 [6 favorites]

The staff has to go. Every one of them. Anything less will doom new Metafilter.

This is horseshit - honestly, the number of people here who don't realize how good we have (and have had) it.
posted by ryanshepard at 11:26 AM on December 17 [6 favorites]

The Pluto Gangsta -- did you get any feedback about your post?

Actually, yes. I woke up this morning to find that Brandon had responded sometime yesterday evening:

The team discussed this proposal and we don't think this MeTa should be published at this point for a couple of reasons.

1. It wants to oppose [NOTE: I think he meant "impose"] structure where there is none, aka it should be about one thing and several other things would not be "allowed". That puts the moderators in the position of possibly removing comments or even having to decide what should and should not be in this particular MeTa.

2. Short to mid range, and definitely long term, it won't be necessary. Yes, we're working on a moderation log, there's not much we want to say about it now, especially with frimble still out from their surgery. But it will be happening under the current site and obviously added to the new one.

I wrote back to him (this would be about 7-and-a-half hours ago) saying he had my permission to repost the answer, but he hasn't so I guess now it's done. So there you have it: No new post in MeTa but confirmation from Brandon that an official moderation log is in the works. What will be the specific features of the log? Will it cover all the subsites? Why was this a big secret and not announced? I don't know.
posted by The Pluto Gangsta at 11:47 AM on December 17 [19 favorites]

don't all posts to metatalk (and all other subsites) "want to oppose structure where there is none"? Like, isn't that what a thread is?

The only metatalk posts that *don't* meet that criteria are either free threads, or ones created by the moderators (where presumably they've already decided what's on topic). Otherwise, everything will have a subject and be "about one thing".

Or am I misunderstanding that? Do mods prefer this sort of 800-comment thread, and would prefer that we don't stick to a single subject?
posted by sagc at 11:56 AM on December 17 [7 favorites]

That puts the moderators in the position of possibly removing comments or even having to decide what should and should not be in this particular MeTa

This is a very Bartleby the Scrivener approach to moderating.
posted by sagc at 11:57 AM on December 17 [9 favorites]

"A response will be made in 48 hours" posted 52 hours ago with no response made yet.

Very much dating myself but it's this Seinfeld bit over and over and over again.
posted by Diskeater at 12:13 PM on December 17 [6 favorites]

Can we get a set of guidelines on what would be an acceptable MeTa post? Because based on the above the queue is being used to circumvent public discussion of topics.

*spooky chains rattling, haunted groans of horror*
posted by B_Ghost_User at 12:26 PM on December 17 [15 favorites]

Non mouse and cow heard, I did intend the post you linked as a thought experiment. It actually arose out of going to Redditt to look at the Metafilter meta post. The Reddit thread is nothing like the Metafilter website; it only made me want to go back to Metafilter.

I think of Matt and Josh and Jessamyn, the three people who were instrumental in beginning this site, and I feel really sad about the way they all have been worn down by people who just insisted on having their way, enjoyed trolling, dominated a number of threads completely with their jokes and snipes and "everything is shit" comments. Matt, Josh and Jess are very bright, patient, very compassionate, very good people, and none of them want to shepard the site anymore and I don't blame them, it's thankless. I'm not surprised, I've seen the same dynamic play itself out over the number of left political campaigns I have been involved with since my teens, but it still breaks my heart.

So, I knew and lot of people would be offended, but I realized on visiting MetaFilter Meta how much of a loss it would be to me if I lost this community. I've said this otherwhere on the site, but I need this community of bright, compassionate well-read people to get me through the next four fucking years.
posted by effluvia at 12:30 PM on December 17 [9 favorites]

That puts the moderators in the position of possibly removing comments or even having to decide what should and should not be in this particular MeTa.

You can fool, I dunno, 3 of the people some of the time, but is this really meant to be a believable excuse?

Until there is a reasonable, logically-believable standard for approving Metatalk posts, it seems like the best thing would be to approve all of them as they are submitted.

tldr: If you aren't capable of moderating comments in a Metatalk post, you aren't capable of moderating the Metatalk queue.
posted by snofoam at 12:31 PM on December 17 [6 favorites]

So, I knew and lot of people would be offended, but I realized on visiting MetaFilter Meta how much of a loss it would be to me if I lost this community. I've said this otherwhere on the site, but I need this community of bright, compassionate well-read people to get me through the next four fucking years.

Please understand that most of the people in passionate disagreement with the current site management agree with you on this, which is how come we are so vocal in asking for better management of this precious and currently dying resource.
posted by phunniemee at 12:36 PM on December 17 [26 favorites]

I'm going the take the Fifth on that, Phun.
posted by effluvia at 12:41 PM on December 17

That puts the moderators in the position of possibly removing comments or even having to decide what should and should not be in this particular MeTa

I'm giving Brandon a charitable reading on that particular clause: If the post had been approved, and people (despite my request in the beginning of the proposed post) had decided to use it as a new place to argue about the reason for deletions or to continue commentary on moderator actions, then those comments themselves could be flagged for being off-topic -- I would have flagged them myself, even if no one else did.

The mods would then be in the weird position of being asked by the OP to remove comments from a thread regarding the tracking of removing comments, potentially creating a weird spiral where the removal of the comments would itself be added to the moderation log and cause more arguments which would need to be flagged and removed and logged and oh no I've gone cross-eyed.

I personally don't believe it was a high-likelihood that this would have happened, but I can see the reasoning.
posted by The Pluto Gangsta at 12:44 PM on December 17

That does make more sense than just a broad refusal to do mod work, but it felt confusingly broadly worded.

I'm excited to see the new mod-approved moderation log once it debuts; since it's not (apparently) part of the new site, I'd imagine the mods would be able to spin it up pretty quickly. Copying and pasting into a google spreadsheet (or a text file!) can't require that much dev time to set up, right?
posted by sagc at 12:47 PM on December 17 [2 favorites]

How many days ago now since n-p buttoned?
posted by Lemkin at 1:04 PM on December 17 [8 favorites]

I am not even sure where to go with the idea that the community is responsible for staff turnover.

I think one direction to go with it is examining the reverse - that the staff itself is responsible for a fair amount of community depletion (not so much turnover, because I think fewer people are coming here than are leaving it - which is also connected to staff's management strategy, or lack thereof).

Another direction is thinking through a lens of how dealing with this specific, famously vibrant and contentious community is the job, not just a small ancillary part of it that should be minimized however possible.


1. It wants to oppose [NOTE: I think he meant "impose"] structure where there is none, aka it should be about one thing and several other things would not be "allowed". That puts the moderators in the position of possibly removing comments or even having to decide what should and should not be in this particular MeTa.

This is really some serious bullshit and gall. Especially considering this explicit line item from the November site update:

We want Metas to stay on topic (fundraising in the fundraising thread, marketing in the marketing thread, and so on).

Which in itself is some deeply problematic stuff: the mods don't actually need to be policing what the topic is in a metatalk thread. That is their own choice, and frankly a fairly bad one in my opinion.

If mods are saying
a) metatalk threads need to stay on their supposed narrow topics
b) we won't let you open threads for various narrow topics

then what the hell? And how tone deaf, at this particular juncture, can you possibly be?

The Pluto Gangsta, I appreciate your attempt to find a charitable reading of this. But to me it boils down to "we don't want to do the work of supporting this thread, we don't actually have the first clue how to support this thread because we lack professional skill, and we'll use 'the vague potential of a failed experiment is worse than no thread at all' as an excuse."


For anyone who hasn't been paying attention, the post that The Pluto Gangsta submitted to the MetaTalk queue was an attempt at setting up a space for logging deletions. This was because other attempts for transparency on deletions - getting mods to set up a moderation log, or commit to leaving accurate deletion notes rather than doing invisible deletions, or even experiment with hiding comments with a note rather than deleting them - have all been stonewalled or rejected outright. Over the course of years. While the bar for deletion has been getting lower, and seemingly more arbitrary. Every few months tensions explode because of this: the rice cooker thread and the deletions of nouvelle-personne's comments in an Ask question are recent examples. nouvelle-personne's case has also brought up, for the hundredth time, how the MetaTalk queue is not fit for purpose. Both of these discussions have been happening in the context of years-long discussions about how mods have been intentionally shutting down criticism and discussion in Metatalk, and hamstringing, neglecting, and not actually listening to the few alternative input channels they do offer.

Recent threads this decision was made in the context of: this current one about whether it's possible to give this staff enough benefit of the doubt for a Brand New Day; the previous Site Update thread; the latest update thread on the volunteer effort to turn this site into a community-led nonprofit; and this thread that was an outcome of insane mod behavior in the rice-cooker thread.

In all of those threads, a repeated theme brought up by many commenters (including me) has been "we need this staff to be replaced for any hope of any of these issues getting better."

That's the context this decision was made in.
posted by trig at 1:04 PM on December 17 [26 favorites]

Short to mid range, and definitely long term, it won't be necessary. Yes, we're working on a moderation log, there's not much we want to say about it now, especially with frimble still out from their surgery. But it will be happening under the current site and obviously added to the new one.

I hope we get more information on this in the December update. If they're planning on implementing it on the old site, and something like changing the (!) to a tiny flag took years, I am worried that the new site is a long time away.
posted by Sparky Buttons at 1:51 PM on December 17 [9 favorites]

I think pay to play for a community that already requires a fee to join is edging towards classism. I also think that it’s questionable to say that no one who has ever changed their name or wiped their comments should be able to participate. People have dealt with really serious privacy issues here. Or simply regret comments that were maybe made during a bad time in their lives, when they were depressed, when they were just young and silly (guilty as charged)…

Generally, considering one’s primary contribution to this website as being completely linked to paying the mods or not bothering the mods is the wrong direction to go in. People should endeavor to be reasonably respectful as they should be to everyone. However, the community does not exist to support the mods, rather, the other way around.
posted by knobknosher at 1:56 PM on December 17 [10 favorites]

Off-topic, it's interesting to see that the implementation of the "Details" tag is apparently OS-dependent.
posted by Bugbread at 2:37 PM on December 17 [2 favorites]

Bugbread: this is why the recommended practice is to always include a <summary> element inside your <details> tag!
posted by adrienneleigh at 2:47 PM on December 17 [5 favorites]

Since there presumably won't be a separate Metatalk post about the moderation log, but we have received the good news that the staff are working on a moderation log, I guess the most logical think to do is to move discussion of the moderation log to the new Chill Vibes thread, which is specifically for good news. As was mentioned earlier, if we want to be moderated better, we can lead by example, and take it upon ourselves to move the moderation log discussion into the most relevant thread.
posted by snofoam at 3:03 PM on December 17 [6 favorites]

Yes, we're working on a moderation log, there's not much we want to say about it now, especially with frimble still out from their surgery

GAAAAAHHHH! This is not a technical thing. Best case would be to build it into the site, but you can just have a public spreadsheet! It is so easy! Just.... do a thing! Improve on it as time goes on! Show us something!!!! Please? Pretty please?

If we are actually going to a new platform relatively soon, there is no reason to code it into the ColdFusion site we are on. Freeze the features here and put all dev time on the new site. Seriously.

And, why the secrecy all the time? Why not just say, "hey, we're going to try a mod log. It's probably going to be a little rough. Bear with us." or the other one just this week which was "we will have more information in the monthly update next week." But, you know the information! The information can be shared! WHY the secrecy?

I specifically avoid commenting in these MeTas because when I do comment, I hope that I am heard rather than being ignored for saying the same darn things that so many of us say all the darn time.

I cannot speak for the entire community, obviously. Please, PLEASE, listen to the community that is asking for just a smidgen of transparency. Please, PLEASE, listen to the community that is asking for the smallest steps towards rebuilding the community via more transparency, good faith efforts of trying something ANYTHING to show staff cares about the community.

I am leaving this as the first draft that it is. Apologies if this is a bit strong, but, "I was driven when I wrote this. Forgive me if goes astray."
posted by a non mouse, a cow herd at 3:25 PM on December 17 [35 favorites]

I don't understand why the emphasis is on getting the attention of the mods here. The target is really Jessamyn and whatever steps will lead to the hiring of a business manager. Not only will that business manager largely (fully?) replace her, they will be charged with managing the business end, and the mods don't make business sense, by any standard, so that, theoretically, will solve the problem for us.
posted by Violet Blue at 3:33 PM on December 17 [3 favorites]

a non mouse, a cow heard

I'm on record to just avoid MetaTalk, but I can't help myself and I just want to say.. your comment comes across as someone who just really wants to see something get done, or at least piloted, because some things need to improve.

There are people posting here like a firehose, and they're so angry and/or sarcastic and so much of what they're posting amounts to blatant attacks on other people not to mention the moderators (who are also people) and I don't see how that will lead to anything good.

There's a big difference, imo
posted by ginger.beef at 3:38 PM on December 17 [4 favorites]

dealing with this specific, famously vibrant and contentious community is the job, not just a small ancillary part of it that should be minimized however possible.

This needs to be highlighted more.

Honestly, I think a large part of the job is kind of like being an RA. But the thing is - RAs live in the dorms. That's how they know how things work and what suggestions to recommend.

I don't think this job can be done by people who don't live in the dorms and put themselves out there, as it were. At the same time, that's a lot to ask of new people being hired.
posted by corb at 3:38 PM on December 17 [13 favorites]

Before anyone gets too excited about a mod log getting spun up, remember that we're talking about something orders of magnitude more involved than changing [!] to [⚑]. Maybe it will happen, but I wouldn't get my hopes up too high.
posted by Bugbread at 3:48 PM on December 17 [5 favorites]

Agent Cooper : Can I ask her about her log?
Sheriff Truman : Many have.
posted by paper chromatographologist at 3:56 PM on December 17 [9 favorites]

Everyone wants a log.
posted by phunniemee at 4:03 PM on December 17 [6 favorites]

The reason the log needs to be technical is so the log won’t happen, and as a bonus, we’ll be mean meanies who are picking on frimble if we ask about it too often. In other words, I don’t believe there is any actual interest in making a moderation log happen, instead, I think that this whole thing is a deflection specifically of a suggested crowdsourced moderation log that doesn’t have to go through the moderators themselves.

Or the decision is just being made out of incompetence. It can also be that.

(This is not a knock on frimble. Making a mod log into a technical task is ridiculous. I am not at all suggesting that they are doing anything wrong.)
posted by knobknosher at 4:19 PM on December 17 [12 favorites]

Mod note: Regarding the moderation log:

It's being nudged forward, no concrete news because frimble is recovering from surgery, so things will be a bit slow on that front. They are recovering nicely though. Hope to have a better update with this month's site update, due out by this Friday.

To be clear the log, at least when first implemented, will be pretty basic, probably along the lines of reproducing the various mod notes from around the site on a single page.

I'm happy that a simple and basic moderation log will be implemented and particularly for the current site. Because if we're switching to a new site that mimics the old one, well we have to bring along the mod log feature, right? And in the process, we might as well upgrade it to do X, Y, and Z.

That's it on that front. When it's available, we'll talk more about how it came out, but for now, not much to say.
posted by Brandon Blatcher (staff) at 4:40 PM on December 17

To be clear the log, at least when first implemented, will be pretty basic, probably along the lines of reproducing the various mod notes from around the site on a single page.

So, it's not a moderation log? The point was to have a log of all moderation, not a collection of the sporadic notes that are sometimes left. This is not what people have asked for.
posted by snofoam at 4:42 PM on December 17 [19 favorites]

I think of Matt and Josh and Jessamyn, the three people who were instrumental in beginning this site, and I feel really sad about the way they all have been worn down by people who just insisted on having their way, enjoyed trolling, dominated a number of threads completely with their jokes and snipes and "everything is shit" comments. Matt, Josh and Jess are very bright, patient, very compassionate, very good people, and none of them want to shepard the site anymore and I don't blame them, it's thankless

So...I have held the moderator job as a real job, for pay (there were other responsibilities as well) for a community about 100 times MetaFilter's current size. I also have moderated communities on a volunteer basis, and cut my teeth (shittily) as a MUSH wizard back In The Day.

Like any customer/public-facing position, and especially on the 'net, yes, it is a burnout-prone role for a number of reasons. Most people aren't full-time moderators for decades and there's a reason for that. As a business you have to plan for that turnover.

Here's the thing - if you think people are not going to snipe at you, and get gripes, and get caught in complaint loops, you are in the wrong business. And you will be angry and frustrated.

I actually love that MetaFilter tries to be different, and trust me, this community is way, way, waywayway the fuck nicer than the community I moderated. I have stories. I'm sure I don't know all the mod stories, but I am reasonably sure they did not have their email address signed up for spam and I'm sure they did not have a banner member drive 6 hours to come protest in the middle of our office, blocking the door, until removed on threat of calling the police.

I also held a senior online editor position where, if we did not meet our traffic and audience goals for three months in a row, I was automatically fired by the HR system. This almost happened once, when the ad team let through an ad with malicious code into our server and Google delisted us for over a week and it took almost 3 months to recover the traffic. Our mods have no such pressure and goals. This is how online media goes in some environments.

I am not saying we should follow suit. But if you have a job where you have not chosen a field that depends on the eyeballs of The Interwebs or dealing with conversation on the Internet, I would slow down a bit before blaming the community for people burning out. That's the job, as was stated above. It's never not the job.

Professionals - and Matt kind of wasn't and Josh sort of wasn't either although he had more of a sense of what he was getting into - do not stand in the middle of the airport screaming at upset travellers that they are Burning Them Out. They don't refuse to rebook tickets or give out vouchers because their anxiety is spiking. That's not how a job works. You take a break, you create those boundaries, etc. I would love us to have more resources to create better workplace supports but...no one's really worked to grow the business. (The SC was amazing though.) These are choices the people running the site have made. Block/snooze tools could be developed so that mods don't have to be so immediate. And a bunch of other decisions.

I mostly get where those things come from. I'm frustrated, but generally not angry. But if your expectation is that the community will be markedly better - that's just not realistic, especially if we ever grow again. Unrealistic expectations lead to burnout. I think it's fine to ask people to be better. But don't expect it.

Do I think the community can be led in a better direction than this month? Yeah, I do. But it requires leaders.
posted by warriorqueen at 4:46 PM on December 17 [35 favorites]

It's being nudged forward, no concrete news because frimble is recovering from surgery, so things will be a bit slow on that front

You're just reproducing mod notes, just copy paste into a google doc. That's literally it. An actual moderation log would also be doable without tech changes, but it would be harder. This is just...just copy paste.
posted by knobknosher at 4:47 PM on December 17 [12 favorites]

I do think it would be illuminating to the community, in a variety of ways, to know what "being nudged forward" means in practical terms. Being mooted to other mods? Having a spec drawn up for development? Awaiting approval from loup or jessamyn? I'm curious.
posted by sagc at 4:55 PM on December 17 [3 favorites]

"Being nudge forward" means being implemented, in a very basic form.
posted by Brandon Blatcher (staff) at 5:00 PM on December 17

Will the mod log include text of (or working links to) all deletions, rather than just ones that merit a mod note?
posted by knucklebones at 5:08 PM on December 17 [5 favorites]

Warrior Queen, I'm not really looking for the toughest, most grizzled moderators on the planet who have seen it all, or even those that want the job more than anyone else. Matt, Jess and Josh were deeply embedded in the community in addition to providing guidance for the community. I think we have our first taste of somewhat detached moderation and guidance since Josh let go of the site in this last year. I accept that it's difficult to replicate and probably not possible. I feel the loss to the community.
posted by effluvia at 5:47 PM on December 17

In general the concept of a "moderation log" includes every moderation action, not just deletions but timeouts, bans, etc.
posted by adrienneleigh at 5:47 PM on December 17 [11 favorites]

"We don't want to make a moderation log in Google Sheets or anything because Frimble is working on a proper log. Also, Frimble's not working on a proper log because he recently underwent surgery."

Dude, just make a Google Sheet. If/when Frimble makes a proper log, you can copy and paste the contents from the Google Sheet to the proper log.

Just for shits and giggles, I timed myself making a super-basic log. It took me 4 minutes and 3 seconds to make this. That's 0.00022% as long as the 1,241 days it took to change [!] to [⚑]. Even if y'all mods worked 10 times slower than me, you could have this done in less than an hour. Even if y'all mods worked 100 times slower than me, you could have this done in less than 7 hours.

Frimble's recovering from surgery. Leave him the fuck alone to rest and recuperate and just make a Google Sheet. You can task him with a 5 year moderation log project next week or next month or something.
posted by Bugbread at 5:56 PM on December 17 [24 favorites]

"In general the concept of a "moderation log" includes every moderation action, not just deletions but timeouts, bans, etc."

Good point. I added another sheet to the above Google Sheet. This took an additional 2 minutes and 59 seconds.
posted by Bugbread at 6:01 PM on December 17 [7 favorites]

Let's expand that moderation log to include mod notes that don't require a deletion, as well as to include (and differentiate between) user-requested account wipes and bans.
posted by knucklebones at 6:10 PM on December 17 [5 favorites]

My new TV show is going to be called Being Nudge Forward, and the main character will be named Nudge Forward.
posted by snofoam at 6:14 PM on December 17 [8 favorites]

pronounced "Nooj"
posted by glonous keming at 6:21 PM on December 17 [4 favorites]

I would like things to change, I would also like for a Christmas truce so that I can be blithely day drunk until approximately February.
posted by lucidium at 7:04 PM on December 17 [4 favorites]

Is there anywhere I can see at a glance the "structure" of Metafilter? The About page isn't terribly useful. Some of the things I'd love to know:

- Who are the mods? Why is there no obvious listing of them? Are mods equal to staff, or are their other staff?
- Who is currently on the Steering Committee? Is there a Steering Committee still? What is their role?
- What other committees are there and who is currently on them?
- Who is currently doing dev work on the site? What is their brief?
- What's the ownership structure of the site? Jessamyn, I gather, but what does that mean in practice? Does she make decisions on things?
- What is Metafilter trying to become? I gather "something something become a non-profit", but is there anywhere this is succinctly outlined?

I appreciate that I'm not active on MetaTalk, and that these questions might be answered elsewhere, but I'd have thought at least some of these things should be very obvious and up to date on the site.

Ok, I see there's this FAQ but it's pretty hard to work out who the current mods are.

Ok, and there is a web development team, but it's not clear who is on it and what their roles are.

Is it just me, or would it help others if information like this was succinctly and readily available, and up-to-date somewhere?
posted by maupuia at 8:45 PM on December 17 [19 favorites]

To be clear the log, at least when first implemented, will be pretty basic, probably along the lines of reproducing the various mod notes from around the site on a single page.

I'm happy that a simple and basic moderation log will be implemented and particularly for the current site.

I’m not sure I can articulate all the levels on which this is worrisome. Right-off, it sounds like a half-measure that nobody asked for. And we all know that adding things to the old site takes forever, and there’s not even a start date - in fact the sole old site dev is officially medically incapacitated for the time being. Also a new site (known to be a risky endeavor but justified as an investment specifically because doing things with the old site takes forever) is right around the corner, no? Well, around some corner, at an unknown distance, after it was perhaps prematurely suggested to be right around the corner, but there should be something tangible within, say, six months, right? Why are we talking about adding things to the old site, after the holidays, after frimble recovers from surgery, and then iterating on them because we already know that the first pass won’t actually do what people want? Maybe there’s a timeline that makes it make sense, but given that the timeline for the new site is “when it’s done” and the timeline for the old site feature is “when it’s started,” to coin a phrase, what are we even doing here?
posted by atoxyl at 8:49 PM on December 17 [15 favorites]

To be clear the log, at least when first implemented, will be pretty basic, probably along the lines of reproducing the various mod notes from around the site on a single page.

The purpose of the log will be to meet a need articulated by members of the site. That need is transparency: to be able to see what has been deleted, and the reasons for deletion. Similarly for other mod actions. Frustration about the lack of transparency is at a boiling point.

The purpose of the log will also frankly be to at least contribute to meeting what should be a need for the employees of this site, which is to let Metafilter members - the site's main source of income - feel like the employees are worth the cost of keeping them.

Given those two needs, seems to me the current priority should be opening a log now. Like, within a day.

That log won't be state-of-the-art. It won't have fancy mod tools, or any mod tools. You can't do that in a day. But in a day, as Bugbread and common sense demonstrate, you can set up a basic Minimal Viable Log. Where every mod manually enters every deletion and other log-worthy action they take. Will that be annoying to the mods? Sure, maybe. But given that there do not seem to be many of these actions, this should not increase workload by more than a minute or two per action. If loggable mod actions are actually so numerous that this becomes onerous - well, the log will be able to show that in a way that might actually be convincing.

Then - when you've already got your Minimal Viable Log and are manually, tediously taking a few minutes to meet the two fundamental needs of transparency and bolstering the case for the current staff's continued employment - that's you can start building better, fancier solutions.

On your end, I'm sure you care about the difference between logging with the click of a button versus doing a few seconds' or minutes' worth of manual copy-pasting.

But I don't think any of us who has been asking for a moderation log cares about that at this point.

So seriously: please don't design your solution to the log issue based on what's the elegant solution, the ideal solution, or the most pleasant-for-mods solution. Design and prioritize based on speed and doing what people have actually asked for. Roll your sleeves up for now.
posted by trig at 9:57 PM on December 17 [21 favorites]

Does anyone remember the tag you're supposed to put on questions that you want answers to? It was something like #pleaseanswer or #answerthisquestion or #answerrequested or something, right?
posted by Bugbread at 9:58 PM on December 17 [5 favorites]

The manual, tedious tagging users were requested (told?) to do to save on paid mod effort, and not be ignored? It was #pleaseanswer.
posted by trig at 10:01 PM on December 17 [4 favorites]

Thanks.

Maupuia, you mentioned that you're not very active on MeTa, so maybe you don't know this, but writing "#pleaseanswer" increases your likelihood of getting answers from mods. Even without it, you can sometimes get answers, and even with it, you can sometimes not get answers, but it does appear to increase the likelihood of getting an answer. In video game/roleplaying game terms, it's like a bonus modifier.
posted by Bugbread at 10:07 PM on December 17 [3 favorites]

Thanks Bugbread. I vaguely remember something about that, but I guess even if my questions were answered here, it's not very useful. The information would get lost or forgotten. Ideally, I think at least, this is basic information about the site that should be somewhere fairly visible and accessible. And maybe would help inform discussion here.
posted by maupuia at 10:19 PM on December 17 [6 favorites]

The purpose of the log will be to meet a need articulated by members of the site. That need is transparency: to be able to see what has been deleted, and the reasons for deletion.

Seems to me a deletion log that includes the deleted content isn't so much a deletion log as a repository for shit that people who are so inclined can copy and paste back into the thread from which it was removed.

*Problematic derail*
posted by Goozlebopper on December 29

[Problematic derail removed, let's just enjoy these kittens and their antics.]
posted by Mod on December 29

Kittens are okay
posted by Goozlebopper on December 31

Uh, you sure about that? Cuz this was you two days ago: *Problematic derail*
posted by APhimisterProctor on December 31

posted by Alvy Ampersand at 10:23 PM on December 17 [2 favorites]

Hypothetically, sure.

But that's putting users' hypothetical bad behavior over mods' concretely demonstrated bad behavior. For example, hugely misrepresenting both the contents of deleted comments and the reasons for deleting them. And then hugely hiding/misrepresenting the temporary banning of the commenter.

(This is making me realize the moderation log should also include posts rejected from the MetaTalk queue.)

If a user abuses the moderation log, then that user can always be warned and, if that proves insufficient, given a timeout. And if that proves insufficient, banned. It's not like there aren't existing tools for bad behavior.

For the sake of transparency, out-of-bounds usage of the moderation log should also be defined prominently on said log, so people are aware of what they could get in trouble over.
posted by trig at 10:33 PM on December 17 [9 favorites]

As a compromise you could also just note general info. Ideally that would already be in the note so it would be extremely easy to track
posted by knobknosher at 10:37 PM on December 17 [3 favorites]

that's putting users' hypothetical bad behavior over mods' concretely demonstrated bad behavior...

Mods' judgements are suspect, so introducing an easily-abused system that could require them to exercise their suspect judgement even more doesn't make much sense to me.

you could also just note general info. Ideally that would already be in the note so it would be extremely easy to track

Yeah, basically Bugbread's doohickey just without verbatim reproduction of the deleted comment with a link back to the relevant FPP or to the mod's note if one was left in the comments.
posted by Alvy Ampersand at 11:31 PM on December 17 [3 favorites]

Mods' judgements are suspect, so introducing an easily-abused system that could require them to exercise their suspect judgement even more doesn't make much sense to me.

I think the idea is if the log is comprehensive, then there's no decision point on what to include, and no judgment related to the logging.

People have pulled "this you" gotchas about deleted comments even without a log (and were generally told in no uncertain terms to knock it off), but I think you're right that it'll happen more if/when a log of deleted comments is introduced. The other obvious concern that presents itself is people posting things they know will be deleted with the intent of letting it live on in the logs. I don't think there's an easy solution to that, though I think the cleanest solution would be to default to logging deleted comment text, but allow mods to override that in extreme cases (slurs, doxxing, repeated/aggressive spam, etc.) To an extent that brings us back to the original problem, but I think it's okay for the log to be one step in building trust and a common perspective on the state of the site between mods and users.
posted by Why Is The World In Love Again? at 11:47 PM on December 17 [2 favorites]

Does a mod log usually reproduce the exact content of deleted comments? I feel like it doesn’t but maybe somebody can provide examples from other sites of what’s included. I’ve agreed with the sentiment expressed by others that MeFi uses deletion as a rather blunt instrument, and that we’d benefit from a mechanism for hiding things without disappearing them altogether but I think that - deleting fewer things to begin with - is the better long-term solution to a lot of the issues that arise from deletion.
posted by atoxyl at 11:50 PM on December 17 [3 favorites]

I have been racking my scattered brains trying to remember correctly, but i believe that there was once upon a time a sort of moderation log, a place were deleted comments went to die.
It was a website (?) only consisting of deleted comments, complete with deletion reason, mod name and time stamp. It was not instant but like updated every few days. It was owned not by MetaFilter but a (former?) member.
Does anyone else remember this?
posted by 15L06 at 12:01 AM on December 18 [3 favorites]

I know there was the AskMetaFilter Deleted Posts Blogspot (which only included deleted posts, not comments), but I think there might've been one other site that automatically (?) reposted deletions of some sort.
posted by knucklebones at 12:06 AM on December 18 [3 favorites]

Mod log design goal: fewer conversations about what the hell even just happened in a thread, reducing user and moderator irritation metrics by [made up percentage].
posted by atoxyl at 12:07 AM on December 18 [5 favorites]

Deleted posts? (n.b. deleted posts are scrapable because the page for the post persists, afaik there's no way to see the content of a deleted comment other than asking through the contact form)
posted by Why Is The World In Love Again? at 12:07 AM on December 18 [3 favorites]

Aah, yes, that's it thank you! And i misremembered that part about comments.
posted by 15L06 at 12:11 AM on December 18 [1 favorite]

I think it would also work to have deleted comments' full text not be logged, with the assumption that users can access the text of their own deleted comments to keep things honest. Either directly in a future site, or by mod commitment to fulfill requests for one's own deleted text (which it's weird you don't have automatically, right?)

There certainly exists material that MF should not immortalize in a public mod log, so if that's a stumbling block, take it out of the way.

as long as we're bikeshedding on the head of a pin
posted by away for regrooving at 12:14 AM on December 18 [4 favorites]

Yeah, I should probably make it clear that upthread when I was saying "just stop mucking about and make a Google Sheet," I meant "if you're going to make a mod log, then just stop mucking about and make a Google Sheet."

If you don't want to make it, say "We're not going to make it" and then don't make it.

If you want to make it, then just make a Google Sheet for the time being and then work out an arcane site-based system to replace the Google Sheet later.

Either one is good. I just find this weird middle ground of "well, we will make it, but it's a very difficult task that could take months or years" to be frustrating (and at the same time highly amusing).
posted by Bugbread at 12:34 AM on December 18 [18 favorites]

Agree. Either do it or don’t. It’s also annoying because these non-projects have been used as excuses for years at this point. Adding another non-project is not even a half step forward, it’s a full step back.
posted by knobknosher at 1:36 AM on December 18 [18 favorites]

Warrior Queen, I'm not really looking for the toughest, most grizzled moderators on the planet who have seen it all, or even those that want the job more than anyone else. Matt, Jess and Josh were deeply embedded in the community in addition to providing guidance for the community. I think we have our first taste of somewhat detached moderation and guidance since Josh let go of the site in this last year. I accept that it's difficult to replicate and probably not possible. I feel the loss to the community.

I’m chuckling because we were not all that tough as people or moderators. We did have a great boss, who had worked in a domestic violence shelter, who was great at reminding us that people will be people.But who also saw us as a professional team and encouraged us to learn and grow and behave that way. And we had a lot of fun. The media targets were worse, partly ‘cause I was the boss.

I think it’s fine to feel loss. I wasn’t really here for the Matt era, and I can’t say I remember the Josh era as being without huge fights. I’d also note that as a relative outsider at that time, Josh’s relationship to the site read as really personally-relationally-driven to me - not necessarily a terrible thing but I don’t think it was great for innovation or decision-making.

But being an owner is different from being a mod, and Josh very deliberately prevented that model from continuing when he made community-led a requirement and gave ownership of the site to someone who doesn’t want it.
posted by warriorqueen at 4:44 AM on December 18 [7 favorites]

For the mod log, I support having one at a time that makes sense, but I wonder if there’s a way to have it log at the point a moderator presses delete (or whatever the button is) in addition to scraping mod notes. Because part of the concern is that things get vanished, right? Has the team looked at other sites’ logs?

I do think there is a need to set norms and have that text on the mod log page itself that say something “if you have a concern about the moderation, take it to MetaTalk and not in-thread.” And be prepared for more discussion in MetaTalk. I think this is where as a community we can work to talk things over productively where possible.

For the concern about quoting ppl’s comments to judge them, that probably is just a great place to moderate and establish the norm that we don’t chase people around the site with their deleted words. Like, that “you are a bad person!!!!!” dynamic exists here anyway and yes, this gives an opportunity to bring all the receipts in and will probably have an uptick in moderation or norming needs for a few months. That is how change works. But it’s also an opportunity for mods to talk about the value of conversation like “hey, let’s talk about kittens, not Gozzlebopper’s comment history.”

I hope frimble has a good recovery.
posted by warriorqueen at 4:58 AM on December 18 [4 favorites]

Mod note: #summary note01 brandnewday december2024
Hi again. Gonna try something newish based on restless_nomad's summary work, where I summarize what has happened in the thread since my last comment in a thread. This means I will have to leave a comment in the thread when I sign off so as place marker. It also means I'll start each summary comment with "#summary" so that people easily find them, until a better suggestion happens.

--Members expressed frustration with having just a basic moderation log
--Members want a moderation log to record ALL moderation actions
-- Several direct questions about the structure of MeFi, to be answered in a separate comment.
--There are questions about whether to have the full text of deleted comments appear in a moderation log
--Doing a manual log has repeatedly been suggested
--Members express worry and frustration over not doing the manual mod method immediately
-- The AskMetafilter Deleted Posts blog was mentioned
-- There questions and concerns about how to handle how members interact with a moderation log. Policies about that will have to established and clearly and repeatedly communicated.

posted by Brandon Blatcher (staff) at 6:01 AM on December 18 [9 favorites]

Mod note: - Who are the mods? Why is there no obvious listing of them? Are mods equal to staff, or are their other staff?

That FAQ entry is here, rewrote it slightly to make it clearer. Yes, a staff box would be better, but doing that requires developers constructing the page, so it's not so straightforward and simple.

Currently frimble is taking care of the current, cold-fusion site, while kirkaracha is focused on building a new site built on a more modern framework (PHP).

There is currently no Steering Committee. Yes, we should remove it from the footer, but that requires a developer to do that, so bear with us.

The only other committee at the moment is the BIPOC Board

Jessamyn is the owner, loup oversees day to day things. What this means was written up in this recent comment.

MetaFilter is on its way to becoming a non-profit with the goal of involving the community more in the governance of the site. Any other firmer answers will ultimately be decided by the incoming board, their last update was here
posted by Brandon Blatcher (staff) at 6:19 AM on December 18 [5 favorites]

I hope frimble has a good recovery.

Yes, it was completely successful and recovery is going well.
posted by Brandon Blatcher (staff) at 6:21 AM on December 18 [10 favorites]

The only other committee at the moment

The interim board / nonprofit group / ED search people? Are those not committees?

If not, how many 'user groups that assist / advise with various Metafilter things' exist and who are the members?
posted by Diskeater at 6:24 AM on December 18 [2 favorites]

The interim board / nonprofit group / ED search people? Are those not committees?

D'oh, you're right they are.

Currently there are no user groups that assist /advise MetaFilter beyond the BIPOC group.
posted by Brandon Blatcher (staff) at 6:36 AM on December 18

Would it be possible to get a list of the active committees and their members?
posted by Diskeater at 6:43 AM on December 18

So, to clarify, there's:

• An owner
• A head mod
• Four other mods
• Two web devs
• An interim board
• A nonprofit board? Committee?
• An ED search group? Committee?
• A BIPOC Board

Any additions or deletions, or is that accurate?
posted by Bugbread at 6:44 AM on December 18 [2 favorites]

There’s no non-profit board yet.
posted by warriorqueen at 7:03 AM on December 18 [1 favorite]

Members expressed frustration with having just a basic moderation log

This is misleading, or a misread. Members expressed frustration with:

- a log that collects the optional comments that mods sometimes leave across the site, instead of a log that displays every single deletion/action, with a reason, time stamp, etc. for every single deletion/action.

- the approach of "we'll need to implement some whole tech-y thing in order to one day actually start this, so bear with us", instead of "we'll start immediately with a public spreadsheet and work in parallel to create a more fancy solution that we can move to when it's ready"


Nobody said "this is too basic". People said "this is not what was asked for."

By all means, please do go for a "basic" spreadsheet implemented immediately where every deletion/etc is logged.
posted by trig at 7:18 AM on December 18 [20 favorites]

Jessamyn is the owner, loup oversees day to day things. What this means was written up in this recent comment.

MetaFilter is on its way to becoming a non-profit with the goal of involving the community more in the governance of the site. Any other firmer answers will ultimately be decided by the incoming board, their last update was here

And in the recent comment link you provided:

There's not so much an explicit hierarchy as a conversation in most instances.

A random mod: "Hey, a decision needs to be made about this" They'll either be like "I'm not sure what do" or "I have an idea about this".

Then loup will be like
A. Yeah let's do that
B. Yeah, let's do that, but with this, this, this
C. That won't work because of X or Y, what about this.

Loup or Jessamyn never really say "Do this". It's more like "Hey, we have a problem, suggestions?"

I'm a former user since I think 2001? who was compelled to give MetaFilter I think the last $5 I probably ever will to comment on this. Maybe yelling into the void that is this site's leadership (such that it is) but I guess this is part of my grief process of seeing Metafilter crumble before my eyes.

Metafilter pays some $16k a month to staff and yet is now pushing the accountability for site decision making onto an interim, extremely small board of VOLUNTEERS who have exactly $0 in paid staff supporting them in any real, transparent, and accountable way. They're expected to do what the staff here either can't or won't do for FREE. It's ludicrous and quite frankly yet another way the staff of Metafilter have wiggled themselves out of any kind of accountability whatsoever. Only one staff member on this site is even accountable for reading the feedback from the community anymore.

Jessamyn, I say this as a person who has respected you for a long time and what you contributed to this community - do SOMETHING. Because this hands off approach to everything is setting the non-profit up for catastrophic failure and burnout of the brave people who've stepped up to try to get this ship off the ground. I get that you probably don't want to be involved day to day, but this site is bleeding itself dry waiting for a group of volunteers with no resources to make everything better. It's just collecting social debt that the NFP will have to carry from day one.

At a minimum, now that there's an EIN and a bank account and MetaFilter LLC is apparently capable of transferring $5000 to the new entity to hire a lawyer, you can also transfer some $$ and either Loup, or Brandon, or someone else to go work on an interim basis for the interim board only. Yes, there'd be less modding for a couple of months, but at least then the interim board has someone to fill out these forms, collect feedback, write site updates, and to be the accountable face for MetaFilter that apparently nobody at Metafilter LLC can or will be.
posted by formeruser14 at 7:28 AM on December 18 [29 favorites]

Jessamyn, I say this as a person who has respected you for a long time and what you contributed to this community - do SOMETHING.

Jessamyn isn't reading any of these threads. She briefly participated in the one about the nonprofit transition, and then stopped.


you can also transfer some $$ and either Loup, or Brandon, or someone else to go work on an interim basis for the interim board only

While I agree with the principle of it, given loup and Brandon's track record, that would be the death of the whole initiative. Possibly taz or gnifti could be up to the task. Hiring someone competent to actively drive the transition and bridge the leadership/communication gap between the LLC and nonprofit is something people have been asking for.
posted by trig at 7:36 AM on December 18 [7 favorites]

Just to add one last thing - why would Brandon working just for the NFP change anything?

Let's take the moderation log as an example. This is a long asked for thing. People have done literal mockups in this thread. But Metafilter LLC, self-admittedly above, has no person who says "we are doing this and I'm assigning person X to do it" and so this kind of thing gets a tiny amount of steam and then dies a week or two later because they're trying to do it around modding, and being the sole reader and communicator for MetaFilter LLC in MetaTalk.

Instead, the NFP says "we want a simple moderation log" and Brandon can just take the feedback, mockups above, and spend dedicated time to just make it happen without having to worry about modding, or any of the other cruft that being a mod here apparently consumes your time with. And is accountable for it to someone, ideally because the NFP, through Brandon's update, told us that Brandon's accountable for making a moderation log this month.

Yes, the NFP can still hire an ED longer-term and do all the things that it wants to long term, but it's very common for NFPs to have a staff support of some kind while they're doing that kind of thing at the start using some seed money. Getting that person out of the environment at Metafilter LLC where apparently everyone's waiting for someone else to decide on things is one way to get actual actions done.
posted by formeruser14 at 7:36 AM on December 18 [2 favorites]

By all means, please do go for a "basic" spreadsheet implemented immediately where every deletion/etc is logged.

I feel like maybe we (users) should do the work of defining what the "etc" should mean.

So:

- timeouts (temporary bans)
- permanent bans
- MetaTalk queue rejections

Anything else?
posted by trig at 7:39 AM on December 18 [6 favorites]

While I agree with the principle of it, given loup and Brandon's track record, that would be the death of the whole initiative. Possibly taz or gnifti could be up to the task. Hiring someone competent to actively drive the transition and bridge the leadership/communication gap between the LLC and nonprofit is something people have been asking for.

My impression of Brandon so far has been a person who wants to make change in an environment where change is impossible. He's been around this community for a long time, is a member of the BIPOC board before even coming in as a mod, but my sense is he's not insubordinate and if your boss (and the owner above them) can't or won't actually make decisions, then you're kind of screwed. The mod note debacle from a couple of weeks ago feels the same - he went out a little bit on a limb, and then had to go back to the govern by consensus model that MetaFilter LLC seems to operate under, and it got sunk because not everyone agreed.

But it doesn't really matter - it's the interim board's choice to make, but they can't make it without the current site offering up some resources and options for who they might bring on to help them on an interim basis that actually knows MetaFilter's processes well enough to inform them well. Even an ED search committee would ideally have a paid resource to do research, draft a job description, organize interviews and the like.
posted by formeruser14 at 7:45 AM on December 18 [6 favorites]

Getting that person out of the environment at Metafilter LLC where apparently everyone's waiting for someone else to decide on things is one way to get actual actions done.

The lack of decision making may be* one part of the problem - but another big part is that there are zero consequences for missing deadlines, or taking 50x more time/resources to implement than a competent team would, or ignoring the actual brief in favor of something that's not the brief.

*TBH I'm not even sure that's the case. It's not that decisions don't get made. A decision was made to rewrite the site from scratch. A decision was made, repeatedly, to put minimal work into fundraising. A decision was made to cancel the comment-hiding experiment. A decision was made to go with some relatively convoluted logging solution, with a "bear with us" rollout date, instead of a basic, immediate, interim solution.

Decisions are being made, they're just lousy ones that are then unprofessionally implemented.
posted by trig at 7:47 AM on December 18 [18 favorites]

The mod note debacle from a couple of weeks ago feels the same - he went out a little bit on a limb, and then had to go back to the govern by consensus model that MetaFilter LLC seems to operate under, and it got sunk because not everyone agreed.

It's impossible to know, but I got the opposite impression. It looks to me like Brandon himself just didn't like the idea. Even if the decision to cancel the experiment (and again, the initiative was to do an experiment) was made collaboratively with the rest of the mods, it would have been up to Brandon, as the only mod actually reading the MetaTalk threads, to convey members' case for the experiment, to convey how much pressure there has been for organized, mandatory transparency in general, and to convey the enthusiasm that resulted when the experiment was first announced.

To say "if we don't do this, we'd better do something else to meet the need, pronto. Because people are truly losing patience for us, fast."

Did he do that? Who knows?
posted by trig at 7:58 AM on December 18 [6 favorites]

Btw, Brandon, I don't want you to feel like I'm beating up on you. You've been, as other people have mentioned, a really valued member here for a very long and I've always appreciated your comments and takes on things.

I'm just truly frustrated with and depressed by the way loup, jessamyn, you, and the rest of the gang has been practicing stewardship of this site and this community. I don't have faith that it's going to get better without a fundamentally different perspective in charge. That's separate from my appreciation of all of you in other ways. And from my belief in your good intentions.
posted by trig at 8:20 AM on December 18 [15 favorites]

Mod note: #summary 02 brandnewday december2024

Previous summary

- members asked for clarification what the active committees currently are and who are the members. Those questions have asked of the appropriate groups (BIPOC and interim, non profit, ED search and whether the last three exist and/or exist as separate groups.)

- members clarified that the complaints about a mentiond moderation log are not that the mentioned mod log would be "too basic" but they're frustrated that "this is not what was asked for"

-proposal to use current paid staff to help the volunteer interim board to accomplish transition tasks.

- discussion on who of the current staff is capable of helping the transition staff. Further discussion of lack of decision making or consequences of bad decisions/lack of action among the current site

Clarifications:
--The first draft/version of the moderation log will be pretty basic. Users are welcome to voice features they want, we'll collect the data in this Google doc.

--Staff will not be doing a manual moderation log under the belief that this is something that should be automated to ensure trust that said log is not being manipulated.

--Brandon stepped down from the BIPOC Board on Nov 19.

-- The hiding details experiment was not favored by the staff as a whole. Brandon communicated that to the community. Since then, there has been discussion about alternatives (this is where the simple moderation log idea came from) and the best way to return to that experiment. We have no further information at this time and will refrain from commenting further until there's more to say.

That's it for response in this thread for today, will pick things up tomorrow.
posted by Brandon Blatcher (staff) at 8:23 AM on December 18 [3 favorites]

I think we’re firmly in Get Your Own Fucking Log territory. Planning and technical aspects have been discussed in excruciating detail, and i do not think that continuing in that process is going to go anywhere. Mod team is some combination of unwilling or unable to make the log in the near future; this is not a statement of blame, just an assessment of the situation.

Sometimes (often) community-led means the people who want the thing just do the thing and let the results speak for themselves rather than trying to get everyone on board with the perfect hypothetical version of the thing. We should just make the log. Maybe we’ll discover that there really are major problems that can only be addressed by a bespoke technical solution, maybe it’ll turn out to be not worth the effort, but we need to move from theory into experiment.
posted by Why Is The World In Love Again? at 8:31 AM on December 18 [1 favorite]

--Staff will not be doing a manual moderation log under the belief that this is something that should be automated to ensure trust that said log is not being manipulated.

The perfect as the enemy of the good, again.

If implementing the new logging solution is going to be a quick process (under a week? ten days?), then the manual logging would only last for a short time - there would minimal opportunity for deletion-related blowups, and you'd get to demonstrate some good-faith effort towards transparency in the meantime.

If implementing the new solution is going to take so long there's a higher likelihood of blowups over some deletion, then there's probably going to be a blowup over not having even a basic manual logging solution to cover this period.


By the way, are these summaries being passed on for the rest of the staff to read?

Can you paste these summaries into a shared document so they're viewable in one place?
posted by trig at 8:31 AM on December 18 [5 favorites]

We should just make the log.

Yeah. The Pluto Gangsta tried to do that here, but the mods rejected it. In practice I'm not sure how users could maintain a true log, unless it's by scraping the site continuously at short intervals to catch deletions.
posted by trig at 8:35 AM on December 18 [5 favorites]

- members asked for clarification what the active committees currently are and who are the members. Those questions have asked of the appropriate groups (BIPOC and interim, non profit, ED search and whether the last three exist and/or exist as separate groups.)

What does this mean?
posted by trig at 8:38 AM on December 18 [3 favorites]

I've lost track of which comment above I might have been specifically responding to, but:

My understanding is that the interim/transition board has taken it upon themselves mainly just to work toward the nonprofit handoff. After all, they were just, like, the half dozen people who were around in a MetaTalk thread a year ago who were willing to step up (plus/minus turnover in the past year). If you want accountability or the ability to make big site decisions, and if you don't trust that the handoff will happen soon enough, the thing to push for would be earlier elections for the actual board (and buy-in from the LLC to treat their decisions as though they had force, even if the handoff hasn't yet been completed).

(And I still think that if we're holding board elections, we should add some non-binding referendum questions to the form, so the board -- and the rest of us -- can start on day 1 with better assurances of what the wider userbase wants. Even with a community-elected board in place, I think semi-regular referenda might go a long way toward letting everyone feel like their suggestions have been taken seriously.)
posted by nobody at 8:44 AM on December 18 [3 favorites]

> There’s no non-profit board yet.
posted by warriorqueen at 7:03 AM

"There will be an initial board with three members, 1Adam12, Rhaomi and Gorgik. Those three will serve until the first board elections can be held and the new board installed, hopefully in the next two to three months or so. NB: We are legally required to have a small board to get the non-profit registered and off the ground."—August 19, 2024

Since the non-profit is registered as of Nov. 1, file number 7691435, it follows that there is an initial board right now. I don't mean to split hairs if warriorqueen meant "visible" or "elected" or "permanent" or "running the show now".

(that feeling when an inactive rando answers questions about the transition;)
posted by sylvanshine at 8:50 AM on December 18 [7 favorites]

--Staff will not be doing a manual moderation log under the belief that this is something that should be automated to ensure trust that said log is not being manipulated.

?

I feel like there's a constant confusion around these parts between the appearance of [work, progress, trust, etc] and the practice of same. If you just say you will log everything manually... and then actually do it??... nobody will have grounds to say you didn't do it. Because you did.

It feels every Metafilter workflow incorporates a workaround for some implied sense that it is not possible to get staff to reliably do tasks.
posted by dusty potato at 8:50 AM on December 18 [15 favorites]

In practice I'm not sure how users could maintain a true log, unless it's by scraping the site continuously at short intervals to catch deletions.

Well, sure. A crowdsourced mod log is probably going to be incomplete, but I don’t think it needs to be complete to see what the benefits and challenges of a more formalized system would be. And an ad hoc mod-maintained log is frankly going to have the same problem; yes the mods have access to more information than we do, but if we’re relying on people copy-pasting into a google sheet, someone’s going to forget something or accidentally the entry above theirs, etc. I think the fear of that (and the blowback that would come out of it in the current meta environment) is maybe an unspoken reason for resistance to the log, and that’s understandable, I’d feel the same way on their side. We make the log and we accept that it may not be the best or final version of the idea.
posted by Why Is The World In Love Again? at 8:54 AM on December 18 [1 favorite]

-Staff will not be doing a manual moderation log under the belief that this is something that should be automated to ensure trust that said log is not being manipulated.

Any potential to revisit this decision? The manual moderation log seemed like something that the userbase would like to see. It doesn’t have to be permanent. Maybe a trial basis for a few weeks to see how it goes?
posted by Vatnesine at 8:55 AM on December 18 [8 favorites]

-- The hiding details experiment was not favored by the staff as a whole.

Yes, but the community likes this.

See the problem here?
posted by mochapickle at 9:04 AM on December 18 [21 favorites]

I'm not a fan of it. Was there a community vote I missed, or is participating in threads with hundreds of sniping comments in Metatalk a criterion for being in the community?
posted by Wobbuffet at 9:25 AM on December 18 [6 favorites]

Ok so there are four active 'committees' at the moment?

BIPOC
Interim board
Non profit
ED search

Is that accurate?
posted by Diskeater at 9:29 AM on December 18 [1 favorite]

Sadly, we never got a chance to vote on it, Wobbuffet, as the staff has preemptively shot it down, as well as the concept for even the most basic moderation log that folks have been begging for for… does anyone have an idea of how many years?
posted by mochapickle at 9:33 AM on December 18 [7 favorites]

(that feeling when an inactive rando answers questions about the transition;)

No I think you're right - I thought our three members were the Interim board so now I'm confused. I'm worried if the staff don't know what the boards are.
posted by warriorqueen at 9:34 AM on December 18 [5 favorites]

Regarding the ED search committee, I posted an update upthread. Long story short: it's been inactive for a bit as the Interim Board focused on incorporation. We're currently working on gathering the information necessary to restart.
posted by ourobouros at 9:36 AM on December 18 [2 favorites]

I'm not a fan of it. Was there a community vote I missed, or is participating in threads with hundreds of sniping comments in Metatalk a criterion for being in the community?

Other than the boards I don't think there's ever been a community vote on a decision. I could be wrong.
posted by warriorqueen at 9:37 AM on December 18 [1 favorite]

There wasn't any vote. There were various requests for comment hiding, in various threads. I suggested doing it as an experiment, to see if it was worth doing long-term. Apparently there was a conversation with the interim nonprofit board. Then "we're gonna do that experiment" was announced and there were various comments along the lines of "wow, something is actually happening, that's exciting". A bunch of people participated in (what I thought was just) a preliminary sanity check on the details tag. Then Brandon said "experiment over, mods don't like it."


What I had hoped for was some site-wide announcement, like "hey, we're running this experiment for [2 weeks] across the site. Here's what it'll look like, here's the rationale, here's what we hope to learn, and here's how we're going to be collecting your feedback [2 weeks] from now. At which point, based on your feedback, we'll decide whether to devote dev time to implementing a real comment-hiding solution, to continue with the tradition of plain deletions, or to try a third approach to increasing transparency".

That would have been more democratic, and let people make an actual informed decision instead of "well, I think it would probably be good/bad". And yeah, not required everyone to keep up with every MetaTalk thread.
posted by trig at 9:45 AM on December 18 [13 favorites]

Wobbuffet: I'm not a fan of it. Was there a community vote I missed, or is participating in threads with hundreds of sniping comments in Metatalk a criterion for being in the community?

warriorqueen: Other than the boards I don't think there's ever been a community vote on a decision.

But there should be! Otherwise the only way to push for change right now is to make four dozen (and counting) sometimes-but-not-always-sniping comments each until eventually the mod tasked with paying attention bends under the weight of it and picks one they feel like paying lip service to. I'm agnostic about most of the potential changes people are pushing for, but this current setup is just going to keep burning out users.
posted by nobody at 10:01 AM on December 18 [8 favorites]

It looks to me like Brandon himself just didn't like the idea. Even if the decision to cancel the experiment (and again, the initiative was to do an experiment) was made collaboratively with the rest of the mods, it would have been up to Brandon, as the only mod actually reading the MetaTalk threads, to convey members' case for the experiment, to convey how much pressure there has been for organized, mandatory transparency in general, and to convey the enthusiasm that resulted when the experiment was first announced.

I think this recap highlights one thing that is not working with the current structure. With Brandon being the only mod in these forum, users are expecting him to be an ombuds, and other mods/site leadership (to the extent such exists) are expecting him to represent their position to users.

He cannot be both. It is an irreconcilable conflict of interest.
posted by solotoro at 10:14 AM on December 18 [18 favorites]

Metafilter pays some $16k a month to staff and yet is now pushing the accountability for site decision making onto an interim, extremely small board of VOLUNTEERS who have exactly $0 in paid staff supporting them in any real, transparent, and accountable way. They're expected to do what the staff here either can't or won't do for FREE. It's ludicrous and quite frankly yet another way the staff of Metafilter have wiggled themselves out of any kind of accountability whatsoever.

This, to me, is the crux of the problem. There’s no one driving the train. The people who are being paid to monitor the train just aren’t interested in it. A very small and very exhausted group of people who care about the train and the people on it are being asked to lay train tracks on bare ground as the train races towards them, but each time they pick up a piece of steel it’s smacked out of their hands.
posted by kate blank at 10:16 AM on December 18 [21 favorites]

FWIW Brandon's thread "Software for collecting and acting on feedback?" got one answer suggesting free, [well, cheap--I didn't see the cost for Fider] open source solutions for collecting user votes to prioritize feature requests, e.g. demoed here. I wonder if that wasn't marked a best answer (1) because standing up software like that goes beyond the scope of what the staff is able to own and manage right now and (2) because the question focused on a particular workflow--not to mention (3) the feedback here that there's already plenty of feedback to act on with obvious priority so collecting more of it isn't the priority. However, if the feedback here ever points more in the direction of a community vote on particular features, then casaubon's answer is one I'd think of as a best answer, not least because it wouldn't require users to participate in Metatalk.
posted by Wobbuffet at 10:34 AM on December 18 [3 favorites]

Casey Jones or is it The Monkey and the Engineer driving the train?
posted by JohnnyGunn at 10:36 AM on December 18

I think we should also think about whether all the money pouring into the site is actually making it worse. Like maybe volunteer moderation would actually be *better* moderation, because it would be more embedded in the community? Maybe a shoestring budget would force the conversation to be about the actual content that’s posted and less about the budget?

Someone up thread says that “form follows function,” and not only do I think that’s true, I think we also should consider what vibe and focus we want this place to have. And if that’s more homemade and human and less business-y (which I personally would like, and I think is also the point of the “community driven” model) then maybe one way of getting there is actually to be less money focused and making it so that costs are such that we don’t have to be.
posted by night traveler at 10:45 AM on December 18 [4 favorites]

And on the one hand, I hate talking like the mods/site employees aren’t in the room here with us… but for the most part, they aren’t? So.
posted by night traveler at 10:46 AM on December 18 [5 favorites]

Money aside even it seems like the site went from a model where mods were embedded in the community to one where they aren’t more or less on purpose. And there were reasons for that - at least two former staffers were known for taking things too personally, and others burned out, seemingly including the current site owner who has perhaps the most accumulated goodwill of all but seems hardly to want to have anything to do with the site these days. But as I said before, it’s unsurprising that a side effect is that people stopped treating the mods as friends and started to feel justified in picking apart their job performance.
posted by atoxyl at 10:58 AM on December 18 [10 favorites]

Brandon is the closest remaining fit to the old model of course and while I more than occasionally find his communication style frustrating - especially when he tries to put on the authoritative (passive) voice - he’s definitely in a tough spot.

(not really meaning to talk about you like you’re not here, Brandon, just maintaining a certain affectation of distance myself)
posted by atoxyl at 11:04 AM on December 18 [3 favorites]

users are expecting him to be an ombuds, and other mods/site leadership (to the extent such exists) are expecting him to represent their position to users.

He cannot be both. It is an irreconcilable conflict of interest.

I'm not actually sure that's true - I've certainly been in situations where I'm going back and forth between parties A and B, updating each one of them about what the other says/wants/needs. Negotiators do that, mediators do that, etc. The trick there is to act as a third party and not insert your own agenda into what you're picking up and conveying - and yeah, that can be a difficult tension.

This is why I think it's crucial for all the mods to actually read MetaTalk threads. Not to have them rely on a single intermediary who might - even with the purest intentions and the least personal-agenda insertion - understand members' input differently than another mod might.
posted by trig at 11:21 AM on December 18 [3 favorites]

it’s unsurprising that a side effect is that people stopped treating the mods as friends and started to feel justified in picking apart their job performance.

Personally, I think the point of the site is the discussion and community. “Community” in the sense of the mix of users who are here.

I think so much focus on the moderation and the money is counterproductive. I think maybe it would be better to have community members who are incidentally also mods, and a community that incidentally also has moderation.
posted by night traveler at 11:23 AM on December 18 [3 favorites]

But there should be!

No disagreement from me, but I think there does need to be a platform that probably includes a cost and all that has to be driven by a decision-making body.
posted by warriorqueen at 11:30 AM on December 18 [4 favorites]

Also on community engagement: noting that a member reached out to me in email and pointed out that there are two other tools: Loomio and Consider.it in relation to the upcoming elections for the board - I believe these have been mentioned in prior threads.
posted by warriorqueen at 11:38 AM on December 18 [1 favorite]

Ok so there are four active 'committees' at the moment?

BIPOC
Interim board
Non profit
ED search

I think it's

• BIPOC board
  • exists, not officially heard from since January 2024
  
  
• Interim non-profit board
  • exists
  • last membership enumeration (back in August) was 1adam12, Rhaomi and Gorgik
  • purpose is to set things up for a transition to an elected non-profit board (the estimate for this in August was "hopefully in the next two to three months or so".)
• Elected nonprofit board
  • doesn't exist yet
  • process and timeline for getting there still unpublicized, despite requests to share details and include the community in the process...
• ED search committee
  • August thread said "The search committee is headed by ourobouros and Shepherd". Shepherd has, according to Kitteh, never been contacted beyond a single time last spring. ourobouros says: "it's been inactive for a bit as the Interim Board focused on incorporation. We're currently working on gathering the information necessary to restart."

posted by trig at 11:42 AM on December 18 [15 favorites]

Communications take time but I am chatting with 1adam12 this week about helping out with the elections trig, so hoping that we will be moving on that pretty quickly after that, at least to open nominations. But it's important to get their perspective so will wait for after that.

I know we have an ad hoc election platform available because it was used for the original SC elections.
posted by warriorqueen at 11:55 AM on December 18 [3 favorites]

Sorry for the crappy formatting above.

Also, the August nonprofit thread mentioned a finance committee. Not sure who's on it, if it still exists, etc.

Brandon, as site liaison, could you please forward a request to the interim board to include updated membership and structure information in future update threads (or in the still-open November thread if the next one's going to take a while)?
... And ideally to include information about process steps and timeline

Update: thanks, warriorqueen. For the update and for doing that work!
posted by trig at 11:58 AM on December 18 [6 favorites]

I suggested a manual google sheet mod log earlier in this thread, but honestly I understand and respect the mods' decision here to have something automated or nothing at all. I could give my reasons but don't want to start another argument on it, I just wanted to express my opinion in thread since it seems folks are weighing community support based on comments one way or the other.
posted by jermsplan at 12:28 PM on December 18 [1 favorite]

I'm one of the two developers. I'm only working on developing the new site.

I was derailed by a strong negative emotional reaction to the presidential election and the outcome's effect on me, my spouse, and our daughter, but am back on track.

I'll have more details in the next site update. Responses to these questions:

1. Is it an exact reimplementation of the existing site on a different tech stack, or a new site with similar features?

It's a reimplementation of the existing site in PHP/MySQL (Laravel framework) with some improvements to accessibility and coding, and including a few requested features that will be described in the next site update.

2. Will it connect to the same database as the current live site, or does it need a different database structure?

It will have a different database structure. The original MetaFilter site was coded as a standalone site, then the subsites were copies of the same code. That led to lots of redundancy across subsites (which is one of the reason it's hard to make changes) and database field names that don't always make sense.

Among other changes, the new database has tables for subsites, posts, and comments. Each post has a subsite ID, each comment has a post ID. The code for adding and editing comments will be mostly the same across sites.

Attention database exports: if this sounds crazy please let me know.

3. If it's a different database, how will the migration work? Will the old site be made static, and a new one created? Will the old and new sites run parallel for a while? Or will the data be migrated as a whole on a particular date?

The new site will be available on a test server with dummy data for testing by mods initially, then by the community shortly after. Dates will be in the site update.

When we as a community feel the site is ready, I'll map the existing database fields to their equivalents in the new database, do a migration, and cutover.

4. Who decides what features are necessary and what bugs are tolerable before the preview and live versions appear?

Me before I share it with the mods, the mods before we open it up to the community, and the community before we switch to the new site. My goal is to have all subsites set up with adding posts, adding comments, favorites, and flags by early January. I'll develop subsite-specific features as mods are testing.
posted by kirkaracha (staff) at 1:40 PM on December 18 [64 favorites]

Brandon,

While I appreciate your new "Summary & Clarification" comment form, and I can tell it takes effort, to recap your latest Summary & Clarification:

Summary
Item 1: People are asking for clarification about the committees and members
Item 2: Members have expressed and clarified complaints about the moderation log
Item 3: Members have proposed having paid staff help volunteers in transition tasks
Item 4: Members have complained about non-decisions/bad decisions

Clarifications
Item 1: Not addressed
Item 2: Addressed
Item 3: Not addressed
Item 4: Not addressed

Like, I kinda understand not addressing Item 4. It wasn't a user question, it was just complaints, so while you certainly could address it, it's pretty optional. And even Item 3 straddles the line between "question" and "complaint," so maybe I can see ignoring it. But what on earth is the point of saying "I understand that you would like clarification about what boards/committees exist. Thank you for sharing that question with me. Well, I'm outta here! See you tomorrow!"
posted by Bugbread at 1:42 PM on December 18 [6 favorites]

kirkaracha - thanks for the update and your work so far.
posted by Diskeater at 1:48 PM on December 18 [10 favorites]

Thank you Kirk!

I was derailed by a strong negative emotional reaction to the presidential election and the outcome's effect on me, my spouse, and our daughter

I am sorry to hear that and can relate hard. I'm glad you're feeling better.
posted by trig at 1:49 PM on December 18 [9 favorites]

Thanks Kirk!! ❤️
posted by knobknosher at 2:58 PM on December 18 [2 favorites]

Also came here to say Thanks Brandon for some really solid moderation in a thread— instead of deleting, you guided a thread in a better direction and were clear about why you were doing it. Appreciate this and looking forward to seeing more moderation like this going forward!

CW: transphobia (in the thread, not in the content that was moderated)

https://www.metafilter.com/206698/blueskys-singal-problem#8660809
posted by knobknosher at 3:00 PM on December 18 [13 favorites]

Attention database exports

bit of a Freudian slip there perhaps
posted by atoxyl at 3:11 PM on December 18 [4 favorites]

Also, thanks, see that is already much better than being unaccountably mysterious about what the plan even is (not pinning that on you, Kirk)
posted by atoxyl at 3:13 PM on December 18 [5 favorites]

I am sorry to hear that and can relate hard. I'm glad you're feeling better.

Holiday spirits! Eggnog with a healthy pour of brandy.

bit of a Freudian slip there perhaps

Yeah, that's what they all say. They all say d'oh.
posted by kirkaracha (staff) at 4:25 PM on December 18 [3 favorites]

The original MetaFilter site was coded as a standalone site, then the subsites were copies of the same code.

The horror! The horror!
posted by ssg at 4:26 PM on December 18 [1 favorite]

1000! we did it!
posted by glonous keming at 4:27 PM on December 18 [13 favorites]

Have we officially qualified for recipes now?
posted by riverlife at 6:02 PM on December 18 [6 favorites]

that's a different thread
posted by glonous keming at 6:20 PM on December 18 [2 favorites]

Next stop, Chicago
on metatalk
1003 comments long.
posted by clavdivs at 6:28 PM on December 18

Pony request for a recipe queue: Queue is untouched until a MetaTalk thread reaches 1000 comments. The 1000th comment is appended with a recipe from the queue. Subsequent comments get a recipe appended with a probability of 1/n, where n is the sum of the digits of the thread id. This one should not be done manually.

At 2000 comments, thread is closed for cake.
posted by trig at 7:53 PM on December 18 [5 favorites]

Thanks kirkaracha, good to know this stuff!
posted by TheophileEscargot at 9:13 PM on December 18 [3 favorites]

The new site will be available on a test server with dummy data for testing by mods initially

That will be nice for the mods. A metafilter with no users!
posted by einekleine at 11:52 PM on December 18 [5 favorites]

Sorry to repeat myself from the November Site Update thread, but:

On December 4, Brandon promised to provide followup on Brook Horse's document by December 7.

On December 16, Brandon apologized for not having followed up, but promised to provide followup by December 18.

And now it's December 19.

Luckily, as far as I can tell, Brook Horse was paid for their work, so there's no problem there. But it's especially amusing given that here is the start of Section 3 of the Suggestions document in question, which the mods paid Brook Horse to create for them (all formatting from the original document):

----------
Improve staff responsiveness and commitment to the deadlines that they (staff) set for themselves (11 users)
● Don’t give yourself deadlines that can’t be met; it manufactures pressure and disappointment that isn’t needed
● If you do give yourself a deadline, follow through; when unable to, provide prompt updates to the community about status
----------
posted by Bugbread at 1:48 AM on December 19 [16 favorites]

Mod note: #summary 02 brandnewday december2024

Previous summary

-members expressed displeasure with mods not doing a manual moderation log and discussed doing it themselves

-discussion of the lack of a clear leader or plan overall for the site

-members expressed confusion on who is on the non-profit board and how many committees there are, that's clarified below by a statement from them.

-kirkaracha stepped in to answer some questions about the new site

-members pointed out repeated missed deadlines on the staff response to the brook horse's collected feedback from the community

posted by Brandon Blatcher (staff) at 6:02 AM on December 19 [3 favorites]

Mod note: Direct note from the board via copy and paste

"There's only one group, the board of the Metafilter Community Foundation. There are three members, 1adam12, Rhaomi and Gorgik. It's not really an interim board, it's the first board of the Foundation. Our goals are to get the organization/legal/structural things set up for the full board to take over. There are no committees yet."
posted by Brandon Blatcher (staff) at 6:03 AM on December 19 [5 favorites]

General notes and answers that are more from than some soft of official statement:

The moderation log and commenting hiding are fine, nothing against them. I do think they should automated, as it's been my experience in the business world that the people who don't have to do the actual work are fine with saying "oh just copy and paste, it's just temporary" winds up not being temporary and since you copied and pasted that one thing, what's one more.

So yeah, getting that automated makes more sense, IMO, and will work out better in the longer run in terms of establishing some basic norms about how to work.

Currently, there are no plans to copy and paste these summaries into a separate document, but will continue to put links in one to previous ones.

These summaries have been pointed out to the entire staff to help them follow along, with encouragement to read the thread also.

The moderation log is happening and will be pretty simple at first.

The comment hiding experiment will return, with a bit of tech to streamline and automate things. No ETA on that.

The site update is due out by Saturday, along with the response to brook horse's feedback document. Yes, we're running behind. The site update will be minimal, don't expect a lot, and yes, I'm setting expectations with that comment.
posted by Brandon Blatcher (staff) at 6:16 AM on December 19 [2 favorites]

Metafilter Community Foundation Board: 1adam12, Rhaomi and Gorgik
Executive Director Search (currently inactive): Ourobouros and Shepherd
BIPOC: ?

Did I miss any group / board / committee / whatever?

Who are the members of the BIPOC Committee?
posted by Diskeater at 6:37 AM on December 19

Metatalk: more from than some soft of official statement
posted by ericost at 6:43 AM on December 19 [5 favorites]

"more from than some soft of official statement"

I hate to be that guy, but... huh? This is supposed to read something closer to "More from [something - a personal perspective?] than some [sort] of official statment", right?

Other notes:

• Saying that you're scared that you're going to be copy and pasting forever doesn't really hold water unless you think that the new site will never exist. Otherwise, you'll be copy and pasting until the new site you're dictating the features of becomes available. That seems to be an important omission.
• It also highlights the degree to which the mods are being cagey about how much work this will actually be. Are there so many constant moderation actions that youre whole shift will be copying and pasting? What's the actual worry in terms of the work load the mods are actually experiencing?
• You keep saying things like "being nudge along" or "is happening". Those are not actually particularly meaningful in light of the calls for clarity on when we can expect these things, and whether we should just be trying to do it ourselves in the face of mod intransigence.

• The site update will be minimal, don't expect a lot, and yes, I'm setting expectations with that comment.

  This... I don't think this is what people wanted? We don't need posts saying you're delaying things and that we can't expect much, it's that we need insight into why things are always delayed and why the mods are always failing to meet the expectatiosn they previously set.

Finally, to circle back, I really don't think mods should be making this sort of substantive post - listing reasons why the team isn't doing something, timeline expectations, what the team is being told suggested to read, etc. - without thinking of it as an "official statement". There really isn't any level between "user comment" and "official statement" that you can occupy anymore, not while you're a moderator and stating how things are going to be. I don't know how you're choosing which posts get borders and which don't, and which posts you see as "official statements", but I think it would behoove you to start thinking of *all* your posts, especially about policy and management and in MeTa, as "official".
posted by sagc at 6:51 AM on December 19 [17 favorites]

as it's been my experience in the business world

Has it been your experience in the business world that employees are provided multiple opportunities over years of employment to miss deadlines, fail to improve, do active harm to the business, and generally refuse to answer questions about what work is actually being done? I don't think it's reasonable to apply business world standards only to the aspects of "working at MetaFilter" that get mods out of something they don't want to do.
posted by donnagirl at 7:24 AM on December 19 [12 favorites]

Who are the members of the BIPOC Committee?

Staff members are loup and travelingthyme. According to email I received from travelingthyme on 11/17:

"Active non-staff members:
Cendawanita
MiraK
Yueliang"
posted by donnagirl at 7:29 AM on December 19 [2 favorites]

The moderation log and commenting hiding are fine, nothing against them. I do think they should automated, as it's been my experience in the business world that the people who don't have to do the actual work are fine with saying "oh just copy and paste, it's just temporary" winds up not being temporary and since you copied and pasted that one thing, what's one more.

You know, I think, in theory, that they should be automated too.

With a different staff I might support waiting for automation to be implemented.

But I also know this site's history. Specifically, its history with frimble as dev and cortex/loup as managers. A history of many years at this point.

During this entire history, every "bear with us" period has wound up "not being temporary". Tech changes take months to years. Or they never happen. Even the simplest ones.

That "what's one more" attitude you describe? That's basically a summary of the current Mefi mod era.

In this reality, given a choice between doing manual copy-pasting (tedious, but a few minutes' worth of work ffs) for as long as it takes frimble/loup to deliver an automated solution, versus not actually having any kind of solution at all for possibly ever - I'm sorry, but you guys need to be copy/pasting. And feel free, on your end, to create and enforce dev deadlines for once in order to stop having to copy/paste.

The fact that the staff is awful at delivering on projects needs to be the staff's problem, not the users' problem.

What's the current deadline for delivering an automated log? Is there even one? What's its priority level?
posted by trig at 9:05 AM on December 19 [12 favorites]

It's not really an interim board, it's the first board of the Foundation

I have a sinking feeling about this.
posted by 922257033c4a0f3cecdbd819a46d626999d1af4a at 10:15 AM on December 19 [1 favorite]

Brandon Blatcher: "I do think they should automated, as it's been my experience in the business world that the people who don't have to do the actual work are fine with saying "oh just copy and paste, it's just temporary" winds up not being temporary and since you copied and pasted that one thing, what's one more."

Okay, so now you're just taking the piss, right? The suggestion was "just do it manually until the automated system is developed," your initial counterargument was "we'll just skip doing it manually and go straight to the automated system" and now your argument is "we're not going to do it manually until the automated system is developed because that means we'll do it manually forever"?

This is amazing.
posted by Bugbread at 12:06 PM on December 19 [12 favorites]

It's not really an interim board, it's the first board of the Foundation

I have a sinking feeling about this.

This has been the plan since the start. Legally, to create a corporation you need a small number of people (3, in Delaware where the Foundation is registered) to be the Board of Directors. The Corporation needs to exist to open a bank account, take over the assets of Metafilter, pay people, hire an ED, etc., etc.

But those folks are just three volunteers who stuck their hands up a bunch of months ago when the process of creating the Foundation got started. They are caretakers, and very much consider themselves Interim. The only goals they have are 1) get everything arranged legally, 2) start the process for finding an ED, and 3) hold elections for the Permanent Board.

As a side note, these three folks have now taken on significant personal legal risk. Being a Board Member is not just a legality nicety, they now each hold a Fiduciary Responsibility to the Foundation. Personally I am DEEPLY grateful to the three of them for stepping up and getting this done. To the best of my knowledge they are not being compensated in any way for their time or effort.

(source: I was also one of the original volunteers, and served on the now-paused Financial Committee).
posted by Frayed Knot at 1:19 PM on December 19 [28 favorites]

In my experience in business, the people who aren’t doing the coding complain that they need a tech solution rather than just doing their jobs.
posted by snofoam at 2:00 PM on December 19 [3 favorites]

Frayed Knot, can you tell us more about the now-paused Financial Committee and its work?
posted by NotLost at 3:53 PM on December 19 [4 favorites]

Questions about the BIPOC committee from a previous thread:

are the three staff members "on the board," or are they just attending the meetings as staff? (It seems like the board meetings were always attended by staff/admin representatives, including, for example, Cortex + nearly the entire mod team from the very start. But from meeting #4 onward, the minutes stopped specifying who was there as a board member vs merely there as staff, so it's a little ambiguous from the outside.)

Was the set of Board members who believed [the Seeking Global perspectives thread] should be posted identical to the set of mods, or were there non-mod members of the Board who shared that impression?

#pleaseanswer
posted by Why Is The World In Love Again? at 4:00 PM on December 19 [6 favorites]

Frayed Knot, can you tell us more about the now-paused Financial Committee and its work?

We had, for 2 or 3 months, four folks on the FinComm. We helped draft the Foundation's Financial Controls Document, did some research looking for the right bank for the Foundation to use, and were gearing up to some other stuff like budgeting when 2 of the volunteers stepped away, including the person who had been acting as our Chair. The remaining two of us haven't done a whole lot as a committee since. I'm still in the Slack, and have been watching things unfold and making what I hope are occasional useful suggestions.
posted by Frayed Knot at 5:05 PM on December 19 [13 favorites]

Brandon Blatcher: "The comment hiding experiment will return, with a bit of tech to streamline and automate things. No ETA on that."

Thanks, Brandon.

To add more context, after implementation concerns were raised about the initial proposal for this experiment, I put together a userscript that automates much of it -- prompting for a hide reason, wrapping the comment text in the correct tags, and outputting a log entry to the clipboard to store elsewhere for reference. This is based on the non-public/admin view of things, using source code provided by loup -- it's mostly working but needs a bit more troubleshooting before it's ready to go. Loup and Brandon like it so far though and I'm eager to get it out there -- stay tuned.
posted by Rhaomi at 10:22 PM on December 19 [21 favorites]

Returning to this thread, and I do feel like I’m gonna stop donating, at least for a while. It’s very strange. I feel like I’m doing it to spite all of the people in this thread who are mad about how much the site costs to run. This is, of course, a nonsensical position - very much cutting off one’s nose to spite one’s face. But man. Never visit MetaTalk.
posted by Going To Maine at 11:17 PM on December 19 [3 favorites]

"Have we officially qualified for recipes now?"

i tried :(
posted by Jacqueline at 2:14 AM on December 20 [4 favorites]

The supervisors who work for me have a basic sharepoint list as a 'log' of things they do that might be of interest to the others. Date/time, Comment, Who. it's that simple, three fields, and is write-only, no editing.

12/20/24 19:10 Read through the Bnd meta. Deleted three comments for being overly personal-attack-y. Left a mod note. (ctmf)

12/20/24 19:13 Fixed a typo in a post on the blue at poster's request. (ctmf)

12/20/24 19:14 Banned a spammer (ctmf)

12/20/24 19:18 Read through the BND meta again, looks fine. Traded shifts with OtherMod, now I have Tuesday night. (ctmf)

12/20/24 19:30 All quiet out there. Too quiet. (ctmf)

12/20/24 19:31 Correction to 19:30 entry - not quiet, meta's blowing up.

This isn't that hard. I could whip it up for you in 20 minutes (not as in-practice as bugbread, obviously, but I might over-deliver on the time estimate)
posted by ctmf at 2:24 AM on December 20 [4 favorites]

also lmao you can’t copy/paste because you might be asked to copy paste something else in the future? It takes 15 seconds. I’m not in favor of working people to death, but this is something I would feel embarrassed about being unwilling to do.
posted by knobknosher at 3:54 AM on December 20 [5 favorites]

More precisely: without any optimization (like using a macro to turn "8:54 PM on December 20" into "12/20 20:54"), copying and pasting (and manually typing in the post date/time because of the above formatting issue, and manually typing in the deletion date/time, and manually typing in "Bugbread") took me 43 seconds. In a real-world scenario, I would presumably have done this after deleting the comment, so there would also be a "Reason for Deletion" to copy and paste, so let's call it another 5 seconds. So we're looking at like 48 seconds for a comment. (Note: not 48 seconds of total work per deletion, because you also have to do the actual deletion and write the deletion reason. But the mod logging part would be 48 additional seconds per deletion). Let's give some benefit of the doubt and call it 1 minute.

I don't know how many deletions there are per day, but I would be very surprised if it were more than 100. Let's call it 96, because it makes the math easier. That works out to 4 comments per hour, which means that the moderation log would take up an additional 4 minutes per hour. If the number of deletions per day is more like 48, that's 2 minutes per hour, and if it's 24 comments per day, that's like 1 minute per hour.

(Once again, this isn't an argument that the mod log should be made or shouldn't be made, just wanted to crunch the numbers to look at what kind of time investment would be required if it were to be made and if it were manual.)
posted by Bugbread at 4:34 AM on December 20 [3 favorites]

I don't know how many deletions there are per day

In November 2024 there were 216 (all numbers include account wipes) for an average of 7.1 a day.

In October 2024, which was a US Presidential election month, there were 251 deletions for an average of 8.0 per day

In September 2024, which was the lead up to the election, there were 309 deletions for an average of 10.3 per day.

Source

Caveat - I added up all the sites quickly, but I did the math before and didn't save it, and it's consistent with my earlier math.
posted by warriorqueen at 6:58 AM on December 20 [3 favorites]

To translate that, if copy and pasting took 2 minutes each comment (which seems very generous, but includes opening the spreadsheet and tagging) that would be an increased workload per day of 14-20 minutes.
posted by warriorqueen at 7:00 AM on December 20 [5 favorites]

Mod note: Two comments removed at user's request
posted by Brandon Blatcher (staff) at 7:41 AM on December 20

There has to be some kind of tipping point where "maintaining a moderation log" becomes less work than "repeatedly explaining why there is not a moderation log."
posted by DirtyOldTown at 7:44 AM on December 20 [19 favorites]

The RPG.net forums, which I’ve mentioned before, have a disciplinary-action sub-board that is both instructive and entertaining.

It will have things like: [made-up example]

LilMissMuffet43, you have been warned on two previous occasions that edition wars are not tolerated. You are suspended for a month. We encourage you to use the time to consider changing your interaction style with this web site.

posted by Lemkin at 10:56 AM on December 20 [4 favorites]