but queue don't really care for MeTa, do ya?

December 19, 2024 6:19 AM

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.

posted by Why Is The World In Love Again? to MetaFilter-Related at 6:19 AM (117 comments total)

We settle this in the octagon.
posted by Lemkin at 6:27 AM on December 19 [4 favorites]

There's plenty of fighting in Metatalk now, it's just swallowed up in a sea of 800 comments

This post has been queue rotting so long that thread is now over 1000 comments.
posted by phunniemee at 7:21 AM on December 19 [18 favorites]

Yeah, get rid of the queue. The threads can't stay focused, everything ends up a confused mass of fights about dozens of different issues. If anything I think the confusion makes people more likely to fight, as you can end up drawn into an issue you otherwise wouldn't care about.
posted by TheophileEscargot at 7:27 AM on December 19 [18 favorites]

It's also good to have more consistency across the site, and starting a separate thread for a new topic is something that is reasonably consistent across the site. But people won't do that if they don't know that their new thread will be posted, or when.

I also agree with this: users should be less quick to demand mod comments in non-urgent meta threads - I think giving some time for thought is a good thing. I don't think anyone can make users not ask, but we can say 'hey give them time," and the mods can slow down their responses.
posted by warriorqueen at 7:33 AM on December 19 [9 favorites]

Fair to say there has been drift since the permanent queue on was initiated where 'twas said:

What this means:

1. A moderator will need to explicitly approve a post before it will go up. If there's a problem with a post, we'll do our best to contact you promptly to let you know; reasonably speaking that may be an hour or so if things are busy.

2. Based on past experiences with the queue, most metatalk posts will be approved as soon as someone has a chance to review them. We'll receive email notification when a post is submitted, so most of the delay for posts will be smallish and just the result of the mod on duty having other stuff going on.

3. If a post is likely to be a lot of work at a time when we're especially stretched thin, we may need to delay it on the order of hours or a day or two; weekends especially will likely be times where we'll need to for sanity's sake hold something until Monday. We'll contact you to let you know about this.

4. If a post is just not workable as submitted, or should have been a contact form issue in the first place, we'll contact you and let you know what the situation is and work out how to proceed from there (i.e. whether it's something to just discuss with mods, or something that can be rewritten/reframed to be more workable). Things that fall into this category represent the small fraction of Metatalk posts that have tended to be deleted or closed immediately; we don't foresee a significant change in what folks can expect to discuss/broach on Metatalk, including complaints and criticism about site policy and moderation, etc., we'll just be trying to help prevent trainwrecks up front rather than after the fact.

The goal is to keep Metatalk an active and central part of the community discussion and feedback process while helping reduce the incidence and intensity of the headaches that can come from a contentious metatalk showing up when we're short on resources to be around and attentive.

And by comment thereafter:

After last week's n-word in a MetaTalk post, I'm looking forward to this, because man is managing those kinds of threads a total shitshow for several days on end.

I know some will fear we're silencing dissent or fear we're only going to approve pro-MeFi posts, but I know I will gladly approve the most critical posts of the site, the community, or our behaviors, because it will lead to improving MeFi. To silence any viewpoints via moderation of the MetaTalk queue would be foolish for any of us mods to do, and for now you'll have to trust us on it, but I think you won't see much of a change in posts that end up on MetaTalk, just the occasional fighty/drunk/charged flameout post won't go up immediately.

And then:

Plus I will miss "Take it to MeTa"/"MetaTalk is your option" as a pressure release valve in contentious threads on the blue/green.

To be clear, that isn't going away as a route for relocating metacommentary or derail stuff as historically used. Taking it to Metatalk will still very much be an encouraged option in those scenarios, and in the case where a mod is specifically suggesting it it's safe to say we'll have the possibility of someone choosing to do so very much in mind as we're saying it.

Like I said in the post, most metatalk posts will still basically go straight through as soon as we see 'em rather than being intentionally delayed for mod-resource reasons; on the quick side that could be a minute; on the long side maybe an hour or so.

Fair to say there has been a pretty big drift in what the intentions/point of the queue is and what is treated as an acceptable use of Metatalk by the mods.

Given the situation, turning the queue off seems like the best solution.
posted by lookoutbelow at 7:34 AM on December 19 [16 favorites]

Mod note: Just a note to say this was pushed through for members to talk about, but there are no concrete plans to get rid of the queue at the moment, but am open to other ideas.
posted by Brandon Blatcher (staff) at 7:39 AM on December 19

I don't think the queue is serving the needs of the community. I wrote up a longer comment here, but phunniemee's comment in the BND thread is more succinct.

n-p's attempted MetaTalk post was probably the last chance we had to keep a thoughtful and helpful member, but it was denied without site members even knowing about it. The queue is demonstrably hurting the site.
posted by echo target at 7:43 AM on December 19 [31 favorites]

Would be interesting to know from staff point of view whether they feel the purpose of the queue and Metatalk has changed such that the initial intentions and expectations are no longer valid? If so, when/why? It would be useful to this discussion to know why the position is that the queue is needed and helpful.
posted by lookoutbelow at 7:45 AM on December 19 [8 favorites]

but there are no concrete plans to get rid of the queue at the moment, but am open to other ideas.

Cool cool cool, so this whole discussion is largely pointless, since the only alternative to a queue is.. no queue.
posted by fight or flight at 7:47 AM on December 19 [22 favorites]

Can you share the reasons, Brandon?
posted by warriorqueen at 7:53 AM on December 19 [7 favorites]

Adding my vote that the queue should end. Having posts be funneled and filtered through the mod staff is too heavy of a hand on shaping a site that is supposed to be community-led.
posted by Sparky Buttons at 8:04 AM on December 19 [11 favorites]

but am open to other ideas

Shitpost in open and unrelated FPPs, got it.
posted by phunniemee at 8:25 AM on December 19 [18 favorites]

IIRC, part of the reason MeTas were supposed to go through a queue was that these threads required very hands-on mod attention. They... do not seem to operate this way anymore. The mods check in... somewhat irregularly.

What we are seeing though, is that we end up with unwieldy MeTas that could reasonably be called things like "the Brand New Day/philosophy of MeFi moderation/problematic Uber question/n-p deletion/what should the new Exec Director be like/Porky's deletion/should we reconsider our moderation system/Porky's stunt posts discussion/should there be a moderation log/should there be a MeTa queue" post. That doesn't seem to serve anyone.

Maybe if we gave people clearer lanes to discuss their issues, everything wouldn't be shoehorned into such massive, ugly threads that make people miserable.
posted by DirtyOldTown at 8:29 AM on December 19 [42 favorites]

If people have beef with something, I prefer letting them just post to MeTa, rather than queue de boeuf.
posted by snofoam at 8:30 AM on December 19 [5 favorites]

If anything has ever made it clear that the staff serves only themselves, this is it. Now they're saying no to letting us talk about topics in a focused manner on a part of the site they don't even read, mostly.
posted by donnagirl at 8:38 AM on December 19 [23 favorites]

Just a note to say this was pushed through for members to talk about, but there are no concrete plans to get rid of the queue at the moment, but am open to other ideas.

There appear to be no concrete plans for anything related to this website, so not really a change, I suppose
posted by rhymedirective at 8:41 AM on December 19 [18 favorites]

Mod note: Can you share the reasons, Brandon?

Sure and a better way to put it is that there not concrete plans, right now, at this minute, but we're open to hearing what members say and their rationale.

As I think about it more this morning while enjoying frozen waffles, my initial heistance is the expectation that mods aka me (for now) will be the one responsible for replying to every single one, possibly multiple times. Admittedly there's a lot of history behind that reasoning and things don't always have to be that way, but that is informing my thoughts at the moment.

But other than a comment or two along the lines of "Yes, we agree" or "What about this and this" or "No, this isn't happening, here's the reason why" should a moderator(s) have much reason to comment? There's an argument to a majority of mod's time should not be spent in MeTa.

What If 90% of things published to the queue were just approved, with the remaining 10% being asked to rewritten because they're calling someone out or getting really nasty? Those are my thoughts, will check back in the thread tomorrow morning.
posted by Brandon Blatcher (staff) at 8:42 AM on December 19 [2 favorites]

The queue isn't even functioning as a way to prioritise discussion topics which are important to the community. This MeTa was (supposedly) pushed up the list but still took second place to a question about beans that could have been an AskMe.

If the mods have access to the entire queue, would it be too much to ask for some more consideration to time or community sensitive topics?
posted by fight or flight at 8:43 AM on December 19 [10 favorites]

I am also strongly against the queue. In a more functional organization I might be fine with it, but in practice it's been used to reject posts that should be posted, delay conversations indefinitely, and make the "Take [your issues with some post] to Meta [instead of shitting in the post]" irrelevant.

And it's in line with the mods' general stonewalling and/or ignoring approach to Metatalk, which

but there are no concrete plans to get rid of the queue at the moment, but am open to other ideas.

Well, if users keep asking for things,
and mods keep saying no,
and users are the ones funding mods,
and the mods' choices seem to lead to the site that users are funding to shrink slowly but steadily and run out of money slowly but steadily,
then it really, really contributes to the case that the site needs a different set of people running it,
and that this needs to happen sooner rather than later.


In the meantime, my "other idea" is to have a public log of the queue: Posts that were entered, with timestamp; time of review and name of reviewer; time of posting / time of rejection plus reason for rejection.

Since I don't see any mod agreeing to do that work, and since any automated solution will (given the track record) take months at best, maybe we need to set this up ourselves. For a total solution that would require anyone posting to MetaTalk to know about what unofficial queue is set up. But maybe even just having some people know about it is more than nothing.
posted by trig at 8:47 AM on December 19 [15 favorites]

There's an argument to a majority of mod's time should not be spent in MeTa.

Considering that MeTa is likely, even without a queue, to get maybe a few hundred comments a day from the handful of site users that actually hang out here (IIRC, less than 10% of the entire site or something like that), if a mod requires an entire workday to moderate those comments, then the mod isn't fit for purpose. A single glance through a post, a quick reread of comments posted since the last time you looked, should not take more than a few minutes.

Sorry to say it Brandon, but this just sounds like an excuse, and not a very good one.
posted by fight or flight at 8:47 AM on December 19 [18 favorites]

Ideas:

1. Get rid of the queue. This is apparently a non-starter, so that puts a real damper on the conversation.
2. Retain the queue, but require all mods to approve all MetaTalk queues ASAP when on shift, unless there is an obvious, pressing need not to do so, in which case mods should make their own MetaTalk post explaining why the queued post could not be approved.
3. Retain the queue, leave approval up to mod discretion, but make the queue itself public so users can see at minimum the titles and posters of outstanding MetaTalk queue entries. If posts are definitely not going to be approved, provide a reason why not similar to a deletion reason.
4. Retain the queue, do nothing significant to change how it operates and continue to have angry, 1000 post threads about anything and everything people are upset about.
posted by jacquilynne at 8:48 AM on December 19 [16 favorites]

my initial heistance is the expectation that mods aka me (for now) will be the one responsible for replying to every single one, possibly multiple times.

We know "reduce our workload" is clearly the real reason for most mod decisions.

In this case it's reasonable to not want everything to fall on your shoulders. On the other hand, relegating MetaTalk to a single mod is 100% the staff's decision.

All staff should be following MetaTalk. Like they used to. Back when the site was much larger and the volume of user activity was much greater.
posted by trig at 8:50 AM on December 19 [30 favorites]

Return the queue to its originally stated operation. Time frames of minutes, hours at most. You never had the authority to change it from that agreement, quit acting like any of you except one completely absentee human own anything here. (Jessamyn, I miss you)
posted by donnagirl at 8:53 AM on December 19 [11 favorites]

1. Metatalks are fighty
2. Only one mod reads metatalk, because Metatalks are fighty
3. We have a queue because there are limited moderator resources to go around (see 2.)
4. Because we have a queue, Metatalks are rarely posted.
5. Because Metatalks are rarely posted, they become catchalls for complaints
6. Mods feel overwhelmed by the expectation that they respond to user complaints
7. Users complain about 4. and 6.
8. Mods use the fear that responses to user complaints will take all their time while on-shift to say the queue has to remain in place
9. users get upset about 8., remain upset about 4. and 6.

If people have actual questions for the mods, then yes, the mods should be posting in MeTa as much as required. There seems to be a misunderstanding on the part of the mods of when people are having an discussion, and when they're waiting for mods to make a clear statement so that they can have an informed discussion. That's the transparency people keep on asking for.
posted by sagc at 8:58 AM on December 19 [15 favorites]

There are VERY few posts in Metatalk. There's nothing to moderate in Metatalk. The extremely long, extremely busy BND post has received 1000ish comments in 16 days, an average of 65 per day. If a mod can't read 65 comments within 20 minutes, they should just quit. Moderating that thread is simply not a lot of work. Moderating twice as much would not be a lot of work.

We're paying $200,000 a year to moderate something on the order of 250,000 comments per year. Doubling or tripling that workload would not be a big deal. If the mods can't handle that, I simply don't know what to say. The whole point of this website is to post comments. The literal only reason the moderators are here is to facilitate members posting lots of comments.
posted by bowbeacon at 9:07 AM on December 19 [37 favorites]

Were none of you around when we didn't have a queue? Lots of very bad shit got through, especially at times when there was no mod coverage at all, which people knew about. And the internet has gotten much, much worse in 20 years. We need some kind of queue.
posted by Melismata at 9:10 AM on December 19 [2 favorites]

Oh and also, queue is absolutely the BEST word when playing hangman.
posted by Melismata at 9:10 AM on December 19 [1 favorite]

What If 90% of things published to the queue were just approved

Why isn't this happening now?
posted by lookoutbelow at 9:12 AM on December 19 [13 favorites]

Why would bad shit get through to MetaTalk but not AskMe or the front page? Like, what makes MetaTalk special?
posted by bowbeacon at 9:13 AM on December 19 [21 favorites]

Let's be real about the math of this.

The low number of approved/posted MeTas is leading to posts with 1000+ comments.

If we were to say, quintuple the amount of posted MeTas, that would not mean five posts with a combined 5000+ comments to moderate.

More likely, it would mean a similar number of comments spread across five posts. Something like 200+ comments each.

Honestly, if MeTas didn't have to function as catchalls, you could skip the why does everything have to pivot to be about X? comments (which yeah: I am in sometimes) and the shots fired back at those and you might very well reduce the overall number of comments by 5-10%.

So it could very well be less work, not more.
posted by DirtyOldTown at 9:16 AM on December 19 [20 favorites]

Why would bad shit get through to MetaTalk but not AskMe or the front page? Like, what makes MetaTalk special?

No one posts to the blue or green specifically to single out and shit on other users.
posted by NotMyselfRightNow at 9:16 AM on December 19 [3 favorites]

No one posts to the blue or green specifically to single out and shit on other users.

They certainly COULD! Just make a rule that you can't do that in MetaTalk.
posted by bowbeacon at 9:18 AM on December 19 [5 favorites]

No one posts to the blue or green specifically to single out and shit on other users.

This isn't an argument for a post queue, this is an argument for active, responsive moderation.

Which we already have (supposedly).
posted by fight or flight at 9:19 AM on December 19 [18 favorites]

Were none of you around when we didn't have a queue?

Yeah here's a random example from my own posts from the pre queue days. Incredible to see normal mod interactions, pre-staff Brandon interactions, a mod using words and guidance to shut down someone being a bit of a shit, comments from ghosts gone undeleted... truly gomorrah.
posted by phunniemee at 9:19 AM on December 19 [22 favorites]

Were none of you around when we didn't have a queue? Lots of very bad shit got through, especially at times when there was no mod coverage at all, which people knew about.

I was around. I do not see that it was worse.

And the internet has gotten much, much worse in 20 years. We need some kind of queue.

Well, that sounds like a hypothesis. Which is testable! With an experiment! (Experiment: Get rid of queue for 2 months.)
posted by trig at 9:19 AM on December 19 [17 favorites]

No one posts to the blue or green specifically to single out and shit on other users.

Oh yes they absolutely have. They most certainly have. Except since this is a moderated community, those posts get deleted.

Recall that we've had a queue for I think 10 years now. Any callout Metatalk you've seen in the last decade has been posted with mod approval.
posted by phunniemee at 9:22 AM on December 19 [13 favorites]

I've never been a fan of the permanent queue, particularly one where clearly mods are trying to schedule when they're posted beyond minor details. I honestly don't know why one of our least publicly facing parts of the site is effectively the most heavily moderated. If we're worried about MeTa posts that should be deleted, then mods immediately posting out of the queue when a mod sees they're acceptable. Queuing for evening out workload/control when things are discussed have been, I think on average, a net negative. (My opinions should probably be only vaguely looked at since, although I have a fairly old account and I read MeFi a lot, I've never posted a ton and have been less involved the past few years.)

An actual other option would be an accessible queue where normal users (maybe only users whose accounts are more than X days old) could see all queued MeTa posts and mark "ok to post" and if a few users do that, post it. That is, of course, dev time and a process we've never used here.

> my initial heistance is the expectation that mods aka me (for now) will be the one responsible for replying to every single one, possibly multiple times

Two things: I'd think that every queued MeTa post that is delayed or won't be posted deserves at least a single reply from a mod (that maybe done already! but if so, posting them won't decrease this workload). Also, I did a quick glance at the first three pages of MeTa (which goes back to July 7) and my rough count is: 10 posts should have a mod response, 30 don't need one, and 20 are tagged with "staff" or made as an "official" update. So unless there's a large number of rejected posts or the fear is without the queue there'd be way more posts, not that big of a number really.
posted by skynxnex at 9:22 AM on December 19 [6 favorites]

Were none of you around when we didn't have a queue? Lots of very bad shit got through, especially at times when there was no mod coverage at all, which people knew about. And the internet has gotten much, much worse in 20 years.

Oh my god, we have like what, 2800 monthly active users and basically NO new users.

There ARE NO HOARDS of internet users waiting to descend on MetaFilter. Would that there were!
posted by warriorqueen at 9:27 AM on December 19 [42 favorites]

Were none of you around when we didn't have a queue?

(Laughs in four-digit user number)
posted by donnagirl at 9:30 AM on December 19 [14 favorites]

Correctly formatted link for warriorqueen's comment above.
that data dump is sobering.
posted by lalochezia at 9:59 AM on December 19 [15 favorites]

Oops, sorry
posted by warriorqueen at 10:11 AM on December 19

Just a note to say this was pushed through for members to talk about, but there are no concrete plans to get rid of the queue at the moment, but am open to other ideas.

Then just close the thread.
Sheesh.
posted by 922257033c4a0f3cecdbd819a46d626999d1af4a at 10:12 AM on December 19 [9 favorites]

Just a note to say this was pushed through for members to talk about, but there are no concrete plans to get rid of the queue at the moment, but am open to other ideas.

No concrete plans (i.e., there's no particular leaning one way or another), or opposition to getting rid of the queue? Those are very different.

As I think about it more this morning while enjoying frozen waffles, my initial heistance is the expectation that mods aka me (for now) will be the one responsible for replying to every single one, possibly multiple times. Admittedly there's a lot of history behind that reasoning and things don't always have to be that way, but that is informing my thoughts at the moment.

I guess I didn't clarify/emphasize this enough, but I specifically think one of the advantages of getting rid of the queue is to begin breaking this expectation. As long as there is a queue, there is implicit mod approval of/attention to what makes it through the queue. There is no way around that. cortex addressed this directly by often posting his comments basically concurrently with queued posts. I don't think this was good for him or the site in the long run, but it showed an understanding that if there's a queue, people are going to be scrutinizing how it's used.
posted by Why Is The World In Love Again? at 10:52 AM on December 19 [10 favorites]

there are no concrete plans to get rid of the queue at the moment, but am open to other ideas.

There's an argument to a majority of mod's time should not be spent in MeTa.

god forbid you phrase something in a way that would hold you or anyone else accountable to it

anyway I agree with 9222... -- if you let this idea through the apparently massive and unmanageable queue, only to immediately say it's impossible, you should have just closed it right there. keeping it open is guaranteed to increase the irritation and tension amongst the already brittle users who lurk amid the grey. the one-two punch reads as an open admission that MeTa is not about community governance or even community participation, but instead about mods creating a space to contain the whining of prattling masses, so that the mods can get on with their jobs of whatever it is they do these days

but hey at least you're open to "other ideas" regarding a yes/no decision!
posted by Kybard at 10:53 AM on December 19 [11 favorites]

(I really do not like feeling as direct and nasty as I've been lately here. it is a symptom of the fact that I have never felt this insulted or condescended to in my long history of being in communities on the Internet, and that includes many places I'd categorize as otherwise much, much shittier than even this version of metafilter.)
posted by Kybard at 10:57 AM on December 19 [19 favorites]

I hear you, Kybard. I can see that some people I really like and think well of are struggling with how MeFi is running of late.

I will say though that not having initially been in agreement about how bad things have gotten here (or not having an experience that would have shown me that), clicking into various MeTas and being faced right off the bat with people who had already slid into being direct and nasty has been a miserable experience for me. It's been like sidling up to the Thanksgiving table for a pleasant meal and walking into an ugly fight I don't know anything about. As a result, it probably took me far, far longer to begin to agree with some of the points folks have been bringing up than it might have otherwise.

People are behaving in a very un-MetaFilter way to express their grievances with the site, but they are doing so because the site is, in many key ways, operating in a decidedly un-MetaFilter manner. I do not really know how to square that particular circle.
posted by DirtyOldTown at 11:09 AM on December 19 [26 favorites]

As a result, it probably took me far, far longer to begin to agree with some of the points folks have been bringing up than it might have otherwise.

Yeah. I went through the same evolution too. I think most of us have.
It's like a sad rite of passage.
posted by trig at 11:18 AM on December 19 [9 favorites]

It took me until May of 2024, and it was this thread that finally got me to turn off my site donation. Unless I'm misunderstanding something, the popular, apparently easy-to-implement, approved update to FanFare has still not been made.

In retrospect I'm only embarrassed it took until 6 months ago before I realized no one (is) in charge here (or) gives a heck anymore.
posted by phunniemee at 11:29 AM on December 19 [16 favorites]

I'm going to start a mystery cult around the idea that jessamyn will soon return and save us from our folly and disgrace, anyone in
posted by theodolite at 11:35 AM on December 19 [16 favorites]

I thought i saw jessamyn’s face burned into my toaster waffle, but it turned out to be one of those dang ghosts pranking me
posted by Why Is The World In Love Again? at 11:39 AM on December 19 [7 favorites]

Nah, like the other godly candidates, jessamyn seems all in on this.
posted by trig at 11:39 AM on December 19 [3 favorites]

It took me until May of 2024, and it was this thread that finally got me to turn off my site donation.

That was the one that got me a 24 hour ban and a callout by DirtyOldTown. For the record, I exploded in that one due to 3 previous, similar threads, and I stand by what I said. I was angry, and remain angry, because something I love is being ignored to death.
posted by bowbeacon at 11:52 AM on December 19 [9 favorites]

For the record, I exploded in that one

Oh yeah fell very cleanly into the "just because he's a shithead doesn't make him wrong" category for me, a place where a lot of folks I enjoy and even I myself often reside. When someone blows up it gives me a minute to go aw damn what'd I miss, then catch up. Sometimes it's Barbra Streisand, sometimes it's legit. When you're right you're right.
posted by phunniemee at 11:57 AM on December 19 [6 favorites]

For the record, I am not a shithead. I am amazing. You are all lucky to have me.
posted by bowbeacon at 12:00 PM on December 19 [11 favorites]

shithead (complimentary)
posted by Why Is The World In Love Again? at 12:01 PM on December 19 [6 favorites]

I am sorry that I did not listen to people's concerns earlier ****AND YET**** I cannot overemphasize how much people behaving like assholes about said concerns was a primary obstacle in getting me to listen. I did not come around because the assholery wore me down, I came around because in the breaks where y'all get fatigued and just talk like people, it became possible to see the sense in your arguments.
posted by DirtyOldTown at 12:02 PM on December 19 [6 favorites]

This is why I will never volunteer for any committee or position or apply for any mod job: I am fundamentally not that nice a person. My default response to things that make me agitated or uncomfortable is "Would you shut the fuck up?" So I'm kind of an asshole, too, really. Guess I found my people, at least.
posted by DirtyOldTown at 12:07 PM on December 19 [7 favorites]

I always thought the queue was implemented to help cortex evade criticism.
posted by yonega at 12:12 PM on December 19 [9 favorites]

before I realized no one (is) in charge here (or) gives a heck anymore.

That's because the users abused and drove cortex away, and people wisely don't want to have that happen to them.
posted by Melismata at 12:14 PM on December 19

I dunno, trig and warriorqueen and brook horse (among others) are very patient and reasoned and have given novel equivalents full of very wise and politely delivered counsel over the last few months, and they have all been very present in every one of these "nasty" threads. But being correct and nice about it is very boring, so I can see why folks are more drawn to the shittheady comments. But the good, not-assy stuff is very much present and has been this whole time.

Nth time this month I'm reminded that the WSPU sent a letter bomb to David Lloyd George and now I can vote. Got to be rude to be heard sometimes man idk
posted by phunniemee at 12:14 PM on December 19 [18 favorites]

Mod note: One comment deleted, user requested.
posted by travelingthyme (staff) at 12:14 PM on December 19

It took me until May of 2024, and it was this thread that finally got me to turn off my site donation. Unless I'm misunderstanding something, the popular, apparently easy-to-implement, approved update to FanFare has still not been made.

that's probably the best and most compact thread to explain what the deal with mefi is now
posted by Sebmojo at 12:17 PM on December 19 [5 favorites]

the good, not-assy stuff is very much present and has been this whole time.

That's true. And I'm sure not trying to tone police anyone. As I said, I'm no monument to clearheadedness and good temperament. I'm a sour crank IRL, honestly. I probably owe bowbeacon an apology, or something like one.

It may just be a matter of not being ready to hear things until I was ready. I really don't know.
posted by DirtyOldTown at 12:22 PM on December 19 [6 favorites]

You don't owe me an apology. Like, I think you were WRONG, but you were reasonable and polite and clear about it. This is a message board, where we say things. Sometimes we say them loud, sometimes we say them quiet. Conflict is healthy and useful.
posted by bowbeacon at 12:24 PM on December 19 [12 favorites]

Replace the queue with a five buck gacha. One in five chance of your post going through, one in a hundred chance of it going through and you getting temporary mod and image power over it.
posted by lucidium at 12:24 PM on December 19

That's because the users abused and drove cortex away, and people wisely don't want to have that happen to them.

Melismata, I understand that's your point of view and I'm dedicated to giving people space for their views.

But I hope you do understand that cortex actually held the higher balance of power in that equation. I say this because I came in to the #2 position in a small business where the owner was starting to burn out - to dislike clients/members/customers and his staff and dread work.

And his response was not to blame the members for not "getting" martial arts or not having new issues due to expecting immediate responses via text or the myriad things that have changed between parents/kids and martial arts studios since the mid-90s. Because if there's one thing you have to do to grow and keep any community -- paid or unpaid -- healthy is understand and appreciate your customer.

His response was "I'm not in a position to do this right" and so he hired - me. And I lasted 6 years and then I went back to my old career although I still do some things for him and teach. He did not sit in his office wondering why people don't love him or think he's a good person (in fact, many people think both, some think the opposite, most don't think about him much at all.)

When you own a business that is customer-facing, sure, you can fire customers - I fully support the occasional ban - and you can put up rules and stuff. But you can't blame your customers for being customers.

And at the point that ads no longer supported this site, we did become the customers/members/supporters.

I hope you can see the point of view that cortex's burn out was much more about cortex than the community.
posted by warriorqueen at 12:27 PM on December 19 [20 favorites]

Mostly, I'm just embarrassed it was the Porky's deletion that finally pushed me over the edge. Well, that, and the Uber AskMe fiasco.
posted by DirtyOldTown at 12:34 PM on December 19 [6 favorites]

Shitpost in open and unrelated FPPs, got it.

You can also get deleted for wondering who was in a movie, don't forget.
posted by Chrysostom at 12:38 PM on December 19 [4 favorites]

And I think reading the post where the queue came into being is actually very instructive in good community management.

Here's what I see.

1. The decision was made when the post went up, and it was presented that way clearly.

2. It was explained as follows: As we transition this week to operating with fewer mods, limited availability is closer to the default state than the exception to it, and so we're switching to an always-queued state for Metatalk posts to lighten the load a bit. - it's about workload, and we manage workload, so we made this decision.

HOWEVER

3. It explained that the mod team had thought through what the value of MetaTalk was and worked to preserve that, both in cortex's original post but also in mathowie's follow-up and jessamyn's comment about fairness. Cortex addresses transparency here.

In other words, all the mods were on it and they showed they had thought through -- and were willing to discuss -- how the decision still supported the values of the community. (ETA; And reiterated that multiple times.)

4. They make it clear the many will not be punished for the meltdowns of the few. They reiterate that memory-holing is not a thing. And there's a lot of statements of trust -- in both directions -- that outweigh the statements of distrust.

Now I'm getting nostalgic. Anyways, that post shows lots of fighty bits and off-topic bits but it very much has a community feel.
posted by warriorqueen at 12:40 PM on December 19 [11 favorites]

Melismata: "Were none of you around when we didn't have a queue?"

16 people commented previous to your comment.
The queue was introduced on May 31, 2014 (this may be May 20, 2014, for you, depending on your time zone).
Some users appear to be new accounts by old users. When that's clearly the case, I've written "Maybe". When they might be an old user with a new account, but they might just be a newer user, I've given the benefit of the doubt by assuming "No".

Maybe - Lemkin
Yes - phunniemee
Yes - TheophileEscargot
Yes - warriorqueen
Yes - lookoutbelow
Yes - echo target
Yes - fight or flight
Yes - Sparky Buttons
Yes - DirtyOldTown
Yes - snofoam
Yes - donnagirl
No - rhymedirective
Yes - trig
Yes - jacquilynne
No - sagc
Yes - bowbeacon

So, to answer your question, between 81% to 88% of the people who commented before your comment were around when we didn't have a queue.
posted by Bugbread at 1:11 PM on December 19 [17 favorites]

And, for the record, 2012 is just when I paid. I have been a lurker since 2004 or so.
posted by bowbeacon at 1:16 PM on December 19 [1 favorite]

introduced on May 31, 2014 (this may be May 20, 2014, for you, depending on your time zone).

this is my favorite deep cut mod joke yet
posted by phunniemee at 1:18 PM on December 19 [8 favorites]

phunniemee: "this is my favorite deep cut mod joke yet"

Uh...yeah! That really was a clever joke that I totally made on purpose and not just a typo!
posted by Bugbread at 1:21 PM on December 19 [7 favorites]

Can we also note that in the May 2024 thread being referenced, loup themselves said that a normal lag in posting from the queue is at most 24 hours. In the 7 months since, we have rapidly descended to "maybe sometime, maybe never, who knows"
posted by donnagirl at 1:23 PM on December 19 [19 favorites]

Actually just a couple weeks after that statement the alleged "one meta a day" info dropped so
posted by phunniemee at 1:27 PM on December 19 [9 favorites]

... there are no concrete plans to get rid of the queue at the moment, but am open to other ideas.
Well, let's make some concrete plans to get rid of the queue, shall we? Personally, I'm sick and tired of the back-and-forth about the queue (not to mention a gazillion other things), so let's just for once actually solve a problem by making an actual fucking decision that the clear majority of the people who care enough about the community to haunt MeTa ask for. Axe the queue and let the cards fall where they fall. No futzing about with 'what about just holding back 10%' either. Just get rid of it. If it turns into a disaster, you can turn it back on.

That's my formal request as yet another who is getting to the end of their patience after 20+ years of participation and support.
posted by dg at 1:51 PM on December 19 [42 favorites]

Oh and also, queue is absolutely the BEST word when playing hangman.

Queues a terrible word for hangman. And the internet has gotten way better in the last 20 years.
posted by snofoam at 2:12 PM on December 19 [2 favorites]

my initial heistance is the expectation that mods aka me (for now) will be the one responsible for replying to every single one, possibly multiple times.

This is a symptom of the broader problem though. Back in the day, people had beef, sometimes with each other, sometimes with the mods and they took it to MetaTalk to hash it out. Not everything required a lot of mod replies, because most MeTas were more about the community working out issues or social expectations. When they were about the mods, it was often a specific issue that could be addressed (or not addressed) in a way that maybe didn't satisfy people, but at least seemed to arrive at some kind of conclusion.

Now, people are largely mad at the mods rather than other users, with the result that MeTas are mostly about the mods and require mod replies. Issues are clearly not being addressed in a way that is satisfying most folks here and nothing seems to come to any kind of conclusion. So now the queue is being used to avoid those threads, leading to more user frustration and the rare threads that do get through end up going in twelve different directions.

But the queue does nothing to diffuse the clearly building anger that users are feeling. It just hides it until it comes out somewhere else. I totally understand that the mods don't want to read any of these MeTas where people are being often very critical of them. But fundamentally, isn't that part of the job here? It's unpleasant that things have gotten to this point, but continuing to avoid issues by using the queue isn't going to make these problems go away. Better to get rid of the queue or use it in a minimal way and deal with these problems head on.

Six months ago, I would have said maybe we don't need to change anything until the non-profit takes over, but since that process seems to be taking a very long time and in the meantime things are going from bad to worse, it's clear we can't go on like this.
posted by ssg at 2:17 PM on December 19 [23 favorites]

Eliminating the MeTa queue will require recoding the site. Do we really want to do that when we’re so close to the current recoding being finished?
posted by Lemkin at 2:19 PM on December 19 [1 favorite]

I'd be pretty surprised, and sad, if the MeTa queue when implemented was done in a way that wasn't just a configuration setting... But even if it does requiring code changes and so a no-go, the mods could just commit to approving any post, once they see them, that they wouldn't delete if we didn't have a queue.
posted by skynxnex at 2:21 PM on December 19 [7 favorites]

Eliminating the MeTa queue will require recoding the site.

We could get 99% of the way there if mods would just approve anything when it is submitted. If there’s no mod on, it could wait until the next shift. That would be most of what people are looking for, I think.
posted by snofoam at 2:26 PM on December 19 [4 favorites]

It used to be toggled on and off as needed, so I am certain the function still exists to do so, but I think Lemkin was being sarcastic
posted by jacquilynne at 2:28 PM on December 19 [8 favorites]

I also read Lemkin's comment as sarcasm (although it may be truth as sarcasm), but the function was created a long time ago to be able to toggle it on and off at certain times, so I'm like 90% sure it can just be toggled off, although the switch might be a bit rusty from disuse, in which case some WD-40 will probably free it up. Otherwise, as snofoam suggests, just approve them as they land in the queue. If a thread goes pear-shaped, it can be closed just like the old days.

Responding to MeTa threads where input is absolutely required from mods couldn't be any worse than the current mod workload of trying and failing to be responsive as well as the process of managing the queue.
posted by dg at 2:36 PM on December 19 [4 favorites]

Ah, yes. Probably should have paused in my reaction and tried to re-assess for sarcasm but I also wouldn't have liked it to actually have made people think it's technically infeasible if it wasn't so. Hopefully there isn't a conservation of queues and turning this off would inadvertently turn on the doomsday AskMe queue...
posted by skynxnex at 2:42 PM on December 19 [1 favorite]

I think the queue stifles some of the community stuff that made me love metatalk when I stumbled across it.

I first found the site through Ask, and there was a contentious thread and someone linked to "meta" and I found my way to the grey and absolutely loved it.
I've been thinking about Secret Quonsar and the in jokes- figuring it out and then feeling like I belong. We've lost something- we can explain things to make them inclusive but don't have to strip out the jokes.
posted by freethefeet at 3:17 PM on December 19 [5 favorites]

>>Back in the day, people had beef, sometimes with each other, sometimes with the mods and they took it to MetaTalk to hash it out. Not everything required a lot of mod replies, because most MeTas were more about the community working out issues or social expectations.

it did go wrong. often generating more heat than light.

but we're heading towards community ownership. the wider context is shifting.

it's evident that getting rid of the queue and returning to a metatalk where the community works out its own issues is where our future lies.

fear not mods! trust!
posted by einekleine at 3:29 PM on December 19 [5 favorites]

TLDR: I’m for removal of queue/insta-approval of posts

Generally I like the thoughtful “move slow, don’t break things” ethos, but there’s a point at which careful consideration and requirement gathering and impact planning etc etc can be a burden, especially when you’re in a crisis situation, where “let’s try literally anything that’s quickly doable” is a better plan. I don’t know that MF is exactly in that crisis situation, but I do think it needs to grow, change, or die. Maybe a better analogy is a jellyfish continuing to live by reverting to a polyp. Membership and traffic wise, we’re sort of there already, and we should embrace the advantages of being small and ready to change and grow again rather than mourning the jellyfish-that-was.
posted by Jon Mitchell at 3:52 PM on December 19 [4 favorites]

they moved slow and things broke
posted by phunniemee at 4:10 PM on December 19 [12 favorites]

#pleaseAnswer

does jessamyn actually still own metafilter?

#pleaseAnswer
posted by glonous keming at 5:04 PM on December 19 [6 favorites]

(Background on glonous's question: I don't have a BlueSky account so I can't see it myself, but apparently Jessamyn's BlueSky account profile has changed from "I own Metafilter" to "I used to own Metafilter")
posted by Bugbread at 5:23 PM on December 19 [7 favorites]

Okay, spun up an account real quick, and while I can't confirm what it used to say, right now it definitely says "I used to own Metafilter."
posted by Bugbread at 5:30 PM on December 19 [6 favorites]

Obligatory Hedberg: "I used to own MetaFilter. I still do, but I used to, too."
posted by Bugbread at 5:49 PM on December 19 [7 favorites]

Can we have the nonprofit transfer complete for Christmas, please? As a treat?

(I am so so sad, y’all.)
posted by nat at 6:22 PM on December 19 [5 favorites]

You know what would be a really great and potentially helpful thread?

We should have a MeTa where we link to classic examples of what we think of as the good/ideal MeFi moderation style: nudging people, tolerating no shit, letting edge cases stand but hanging some context on them, etc.
posted by DirtyOldTown at 7:08 PM on December 19 [8 favorites]

I’m a member from way before the queue and I hated it then and hate it now. It makes it harder to moderate askmefi / mefi because metacommentary has literally nowhere else to go.

N-p should have been able to just post a metatalk thread and I’m very pissed off that a Black woman was tone policed for being “fighty” instead of us being able to hash the issue out as a community
posted by knobknosher at 7:43 PM on December 19 [18 favorites]

Bugbread, since you made an account there, did you ask her?
posted by glonous keming at 7:55 PM on December 19 [1 favorite]

Nah, I don't really want to get involved as a go-between, I just wanted to see with my own eyes instead of maybe misinterpreting what others were reporting.
posted by Bugbread at 8:03 PM on December 19 [4 favorites]

I wasn't a fan when the queue was added and I'd love for it to go away.
posted by michaelh at 8:39 PM on December 19

"I used to own Metafilter"

This is such an odd flex. It’s like saying “I used to own a malnourished horse” or something.
posted by snofoam at 8:52 PM on December 19 [4 favorites]

More to the point: she was so much more valuable to the site before she owned it.
posted by Lemkin at 9:05 PM on December 19

Yep, as said, we've spent the last several weeks making progress on the handover. This stuff is always more complicated than you'd expect, and there have been various dumb hold-ups*, but it was never not happening. There will be an update + next steps post to come, and I think Jessamyn wanted to post her thoughts as well.

* my favorite so far: Our treasurer set up the bank account for the new entity and added the rest of us for approved access in case he got hit by a bus or something. I set up my account ASAP, using a password manager to generate a secure password because duh, it's a bank account. Turns out there's some bizarre display glitch on the bank site where the password manager saves the literal password dots rather than the generated password. Hunter2 my hunter2-ing hunter2. Didn't realize what the problem was at first and got rejected logging in enough times that it locked me out of the account entirely; 20 minutes on hold and 45 minutes with their support and all they could tell me was to wait 24 hours for the account to unlock. Reader, the account did not unlock. So then the accountholder had to call himself only to find that the sole way to fix it was for all of us to be on a conference call together to confirm our existence to their satisfaction, presumably using the exact same info provided to set up our accounts in the first place. This is a multi-billion dollar national bank, y'all.
posted by Rhaomi at 10:12 PM on December 19 [23 favorites]

What If 90% of things published to the queue were just approved, with the remaining 10% being asked to rewritten because they're calling someone out or getting really nasty? Those are my thoughts, will check back in the thread tomorrow morning.

Respectfully, if I had wheels I'd be a wagon. We're where we are now because, despite that being the intended use for the queue, it isn't what has happened.
posted by Dysk at 10:36 PM on December 19 [3 favorites]

Dunno how Thursday has been treating you guys but I just got a real sweet deal for a used website off some lady from Vermont. Looks kinda busted, honestly, but it is 25 years old. If nothing else, it comes with a domain name I know Zuckerberg would kill to have. They’re going to have to up their game on filters over there, if they don’t want TikTok and Snapchat to eat their lunch. Anybody here ever flipped a web forum before? Would appreciate some tips.
posted by atoxyl at 12:06 AM on December 20 [2 favorites]

Rhaomi, thanks for the update.
posted by Bugbread at 12:10 AM on December 20 [2 favorites]

Yes, thank you, Rhaomi.
posted by mochapickle at 1:59 AM on December 20 [1 favorite]

It was only on reading this thread that I realised that I'd semi-consciously adapted my own behaviour to the new Mefi reality in ways that bear little relation to how it would have been pre-2014: I posted a MeTa-like comment to a thread in the blue yesterday because I knew that there was no point in or reliable way of bringing it to MeTa. (I did wait 24 hours before posting it, so as not to scupper the thread, but the thread had already died an early death.)

I can't see why freely posting on the blue on the understanding that threads might get deleted is fine, but the same is regarded as impractical here. MeTa nowadays is a sporadic series of angry megathreads intermingled with Community Noticeboard posts, but the angry megathreads are only as mega and as angry as they are because they aren't allowed to be a larger number of shorter, more focused threads.

Axe the queue.

Also (now that I'm commenting on the grey, which I haven't much for years...), those activity stats sure are bleak. Half the monthly active numbers we had in 2016. Over half of posts and comments being made by people who've been here 15+ years. We're the online equivalent of those rural Italian towns trying to sell empty houses to foreigners for a euro—or getting there.

That isn't all Mefi's fault (or the mods', or the owner's); the kids have shifted to video sites, and all-text haunts like this are as Old Skool as they come, so of course we're full of old-skoolers.

But if I were an owner, or a mod, of an online forum on which my paycheck depended that had seen the monthly number of comments decline by 20% in the past two years... I'd be trying whatever quick and easy change to processes and site functionality I could.

And whatever repairs and modifications are taking place to the underwater part of the iceberg don't count, even if they're taking up 90% of the staff's attention (entirely made-up statistic, I have no idea what time is being spent on what). All we users can see is the melting bit up top with a lonely stranded penguin walking about on it.
posted by rory at 2:03 AM on December 20 [13 favorites]

there's some bizarre display glitch on the bank site where the password manager saves the literal password dots rather than the generated password.

I had the exact same thing happen this week using 1Password on some site. My password was saved as ******.
posted by Mid at 6:42 AM on December 20 [1 favorite]

there's some bizarre display glitch on the bank site where the password manager saves the literal password dots rather than the generated password.

Oh, my... whaaa...t?

Christ on a crutch!

Guh...

Okay, well, so, then I guess can you fund MetaFilter for the rest of eternity by getting the multi-billion dollar national bank to pay you for the valuable information they learned from you that that supremely idiotic shit is going on and that therefore scammers can set their bot armies on the multi-billion dollar national bank's new signups and siphon out the funds of all accounts that used a password generator?
posted by Don Pepino at 7:07 AM on December 20 [1 favorite]

supremely idiotic shit is going on and that therefore scammers can set their bot armies on the multi-billion dollar national bank's new signups and siphon out the funds of all accounts that used a password generator?

I read it as the password generator creating a legit password but saving (internally to the password manager) the dots (somehow). I assume that's what happened because I can't believe a bank would allow a password of one repeated character.
posted by EndsOfInvention at 8:01 AM on December 20 [3 favorites]

Regarding the queue, we can now get rid of it immediately because the site has transitioned to new management, right? Let's do it today.
posted by snofoam at 8:13 AM on December 20 [2 favorites]

A scammer couldn't reverse engineer it and log in to all the somehow dots accounts using their own somehow dots, then? (I have no idea what the password manager does--it's not involved with log-in? I guess if it were, it would be like, "dot-dot-dot-dot-dot-dot-dot-dot-dot-dot is associated with 57 usernames and therefore is an unauthorized password." But then... why didn't it communicate that? Like "hey, e'erbody is tryna log in with a bunch of dots what up?" How is a big old multinational bank unaware this is going on in 2024, it's wack)

Anyway, this inane derail I've created wouldn't be necessary were there no queue; if I were consumed with passion about the topic, I could create my own metatalk post about how metafilter really needs to start communicating more effectively with people who don't understand password managers.

I was around pre-queue but I never tried to make a metatalk post back then. I did try once at some point after the queue was established but cortex said I did it wrong and that they were already in discussions with somebody else who was going to post about the same thing but planning to do it correctly. I forget what it was about. I think the queue is silly and makes it harder to fix problems.
posted by Don Pepino at 8:30 AM on December 20 [2 favorites]

I'm happy to see a number of new MetaTalk posts in the last 24 hours. It's easier for everyone, users and mods alike, to keep up to date on what's important to them when different topics are in different posts rather than all jumbled together in one rambling rantfest.

Is this a temporary experiment or a new mod policy? (Not sure if we're still doing #pleaseanswer, but there 'tis)
posted by echo target at 9:40 AM on December 20 [11 favorites]

I'm for a limited queue, rather, I think a meta should be looked over by a mod first. For silly, Festivus, etc. metas, dealers choice.
posted by clavdivs at 3:42 PM on December 20

It goes like this, the fourth, the fifth
The minor falls, the major lifts
The baffled reader composing Hallelujah

Grar, et ceteraa et cetera.
posted by mule98J at 3:17 PM on December 22 [1 favorite]

I don’t know if there’s anything in the queue right now, but it has been two days since the last post and no one seems to be complaining about the queue and there are probably less comments than when there was just one big messy active post and a lot of posts stuck in queue or simply not published.
posted by snofoam at 5:25 PM on December 22 [3 favorites]

I know, my great grandfather was in the newspaper business and even then people would write into inquire why they're letter to the editor was not published via Rostra.
posted by clavdivs at 5:58 PM on December 22

Mod note: How the queue is currently functioning:

It's still in place, posts till need mod approval, but short of anything being outright nasty, things should be posted pretty quickly. The latest post spent all of 20 minutes in the queue and that's just because no one was on duty.
posted by Brandon Blatcher (staff) at 9:30 PM on December 23 [4 favorites]