What's the plan, Stan, for Trump 2025? December 20, 2024 7:42 AM Subscribe
Given how much this previous administration hived off a lot of users, what's the mods/owner's plan for this?
Will be there be clearly defined threads for anything Trump-related? Something ongoing that way we don't have multiple new posts each day?
The man farts and it's "news", says stupid shit and it's "news", and the media will breathlessly keep up the 24 hour news cycle around this turd. For four years.
This is not me saying US MeFites shouldn't have a safe space to deal with the incoming crisis; it's more like how will MeFi contain it from infecting everything else.
Will be there be clearly defined threads for anything Trump-related? Something ongoing that way we don't have multiple new posts each day?
The man farts and it's "news", says stupid shit and it's "news", and the media will breathlessly keep up the 24 hour news cycle around this turd. For four years.
This is not me saying US MeFites shouldn't have a safe space to deal with the incoming crisis; it's more like how will MeFi contain it from infecting everything else.
This is not me saying US MeFites shouldn't have a safe space to deal with the incoming crisis; it's more like how will MeFi contain it from infecting everything else.
I think the monthly I/P threads have worked "well," insofar as most of the discussion on the subject happens there. I could see monthly "The Orange Horror" posts, but presumably the hard part will be parsing what's actually worth a separate post, and him just ruminating about invading Mexico.
Posts about US politics should be flagged with the uspolitics flag, which allows people to filter out said posts via MyMefi. If a post isn't tagged that way, then check to see if you can add the tag and if not, flag it with a note and ask the mods to add the tag
I eased away for a few weeks this fall when there were oodles of political posts, minus the tag. I occasionally would flag and ask for the tag to be added, but at a certain points I threw up my hands. I like MyMefi in theory, but in practice the user base is now so small, it's 50/50 that there's more than one or two posts that fit my interest filters on a given day.
posted by cupcakeninja at 9:01 AM on December 20 [5 favorites]
I think the monthly I/P threads have worked "well," insofar as most of the discussion on the subject happens there. I could see monthly "The Orange Horror" posts, but presumably the hard part will be parsing what's actually worth a separate post, and him just ruminating about invading Mexico.
Posts about US politics should be flagged with the uspolitics flag, which allows people to filter out said posts via MyMefi. If a post isn't tagged that way, then check to see if you can add the tag and if not, flag it with a note and ask the mods to add the tag
I eased away for a few weeks this fall when there were oodles of political posts, minus the tag. I occasionally would flag and ask for the tag to be added, but at a certain points I threw up my hands. I like MyMefi in theory, but in practice the user base is now so small, it's 50/50 that there's more than one or two posts that fit my interest filters on a given day.
posted by cupcakeninja at 9:01 AM on December 20 [5 favorites]
Data Point:
Wonkette, the Democratic Party blog I spent most of the last 8 years at, on The Day After, said that its standard operating procedure of making a thread for each new Republican outrage was going to be unsustainable.
My suggestion would be to treat Trump-adjacent posts as OutrageFilter until proven innocent by clear notability.
posted by Lemkin at 9:32 AM on December 20 [3 favorites]
Wonkette, the Democratic Party blog I spent most of the last 8 years at, on The Day After, said that its standard operating procedure of making a thread for each new Republican outrage was going to be unsustainable.
My suggestion would be to treat Trump-adjacent posts as OutrageFilter until proven innocent by clear notability.
posted by Lemkin at 9:32 AM on December 20 [3 favorites]
Maybe all US Politics posts can be hidden under the details tag with a ▶click here to hurt yourself warning.
posted by phunniemee at 10:45 AM on December 20 [5 favorites]
posted by phunniemee at 10:45 AM on December 20 [5 favorites]
As a feature request, it'd be nice if there were something in big letters--even a button--on the new post screen to make it clear what to do with US politics posts. I know about the tag, I've filtered and unfiltered the tag a million times depending on how crazy politics makes me feel any given week...and then on this morning's political post, I completely forgot the tag existed (fortunately someone else added it).
posted by mittens at 2:31 PM on December 20 [2 favorites]
posted by mittens at 2:31 PM on December 20 [2 favorites]
Surely adding tags to posts for which there's a policy of including certain tags is something that one would reasonably expect paid mods to do?
posted by dusty potato at 2:37 PM on December 20
posted by dusty potato at 2:37 PM on December 20
What incoming crisis? Too many beans in the can?
posted by Ideefixe at 3:54 PM on December 20 [2 favorites]
posted by Ideefixe at 3:54 PM on December 20 [2 favorites]
I say every Saturday, a weekly roundup post go up. Monday at 8am, it is closed.
posted by 922257033c4a0f3cecdbd819a46d626999d1af4a at 4:47 PM on December 20 [1 favorite]
posted by 922257033c4a0f3cecdbd819a46d626999d1af4a at 4:47 PM on December 20 [1 favorite]
"I worry about people who throw rocks."
-Chrisjen Avasarala.
posted by clavdivs at 6:03 PM on December 20
-Chrisjen Avasarala.
posted by clavdivs at 6:03 PM on December 20
If a post doesn't have the US politics tag, delete US politics comments. MetaFilter is curated StumbleUpon, not a US politics website.
posted by one for the books at 7:13 PM on December 20 [16 favorites]
posted by one for the books at 7:13 PM on December 20 [16 favorites]
Unfortunately, US politics has a hugely outsized effect on world affairs; I'm not sure what the point of being provincial about it is. This is everybody's problem. As an American: Yes, you're welcome!
That said, I'm strangely optimistic that "the man farts and it's news" may be less true this time around. Barring some plot twist out of the back matter of Watchmen, Trump will not be president five years from today. We've not in living memory elected a new lame duck president, but we've done it now, and I feel like the ticking clock on his presidency is going to blunt some of what he's trying to do; we've already seen that house republicans seem to have lost a significant amount of fear of him, probably because they know his ability to hurt them is dwindling. I feel like this might all have a different tone than we've been expecting.
posted by kittens for breakfast at 7:47 PM on December 21
That said, I'm strangely optimistic that "the man farts and it's news" may be less true this time around. Barring some plot twist out of the back matter of Watchmen, Trump will not be president five years from today. We've not in living memory elected a new lame duck president, but we've done it now, and I feel like the ticking clock on his presidency is going to blunt some of what he's trying to do; we've already seen that house republicans seem to have lost a significant amount of fear of him, probably because they know his ability to hurt them is dwindling. I feel like this might all have a different tone than we've been expecting.
posted by kittens for breakfast at 7:47 PM on December 21
I'm not sure what the point of being provincial about it is.
I'm tired, boss. I'm tired of coming to a place that used to be great for a range of discussions about a range of topics, and instead finding a bunch of threads that are ghost towns, comment-wise. With the unvarying exception of US politics threads, which stay busy. I simply don't want to spend much time (in life; not just here) talking with people about US politics. I'm grateful for vigorous discussions that don't center political concerns, and they're much rarer than they used to be here.
I'm not sure how many users remain here who aren't here for political content. Maybe I'm tilting at windmills, and MetaFilter without US politics everywhere is a Garfield-without-Garfield thing. If you subtract another political-but-not-politics brace of topics that I don't always want to chat about (housing policy; homelessness; leftism vs. liberalism; Israel/Palestine; misogyny; etc.), does it become Garfield-without-Garfield-and-Jon, and Odie just wandering through random frames?
Anyway, It did not used to be like this here. I'd like to imagine a future for MetaFilter that stretches beyond Gen X/Millennial types grousing about US politics.
posted by cupcakeninja at 8:24 AM on December 22 [16 favorites]
I'm tired, boss. I'm tired of coming to a place that used to be great for a range of discussions about a range of topics, and instead finding a bunch of threads that are ghost towns, comment-wise. With the unvarying exception of US politics threads, which stay busy. I simply don't want to spend much time (in life; not just here) talking with people about US politics. I'm grateful for vigorous discussions that don't center political concerns, and they're much rarer than they used to be here.
I'm not sure how many users remain here who aren't here for political content. Maybe I'm tilting at windmills, and MetaFilter without US politics everywhere is a Garfield-without-Garfield thing. If you subtract another political-but-not-politics brace of topics that I don't always want to chat about (housing policy; homelessness; leftism vs. liberalism; Israel/Palestine; misogyny; etc.), does it become Garfield-without-Garfield-and-Jon, and Odie just wandering through random frames?
Anyway, It did not used to be like this here. I'd like to imagine a future for MetaFilter that stretches beyond Gen X/Millennial types grousing about US politics.
posted by cupcakeninja at 8:24 AM on December 22 [16 favorites]
I simply don't want to spend much time (in life; not just here) talking with people about US politics. I'm grateful for vigorous discussions that don't center political concerns, and they're much rarer than they used to be here.
Do non-political discussions often turn into US politics discussions? I don't recall that happening much, but I may have just missed it.
I have seen posts about non-US politics turn to US politics. Example 1. Example 2.
posted by ftrtts at 12:27 PM on December 22 [3 favorites]
Do non-political discussions often turn into US politics discussions? I don't recall that happening much, but I may have just missed it.
I have seen posts about non-US politics turn to US politics. Example 1. Example 2.
posted by ftrtts at 12:27 PM on December 22 [3 favorites]
I'm not sure how many users remain here who aren't here for political content.
I'm here for that primarily! I do tend to chime in on Canadian politics threads more to keep the Can con high. I read much more than I comment on, so it's a good reminder to comment more on the content I love to read.
posted by warriorqueen at 12:35 PM on December 22 [4 favorites]
I'm here for that primarily! I do tend to chime in on Canadian politics threads more to keep the Can con high. I read much more than I comment on, so it's a good reminder to comment more on the content I love to read.
posted by warriorqueen at 12:35 PM on December 22 [4 favorites]
I tend to stay out of the politics threads and participate in the non-politics threads, so there’s that.
posted by GenjiandProust at 1:16 PM on December 22 [2 favorites]
posted by GenjiandProust at 1:16 PM on December 22 [2 favorites]
I'd be in favor of stuffing all the outrage-style posts off in their own little corners... yes, all of them, from politics through social issues on down to the ones focused on the site and its users/staff.
I fully believe that the outrage posts - and the prevalence (perhaps even encouragement) of certain flavors of them - has been incredibly damaging to the site over the years. It hasn't slowed in the slightest, just changed targets.
... even though a great many people have pointed at the trend as a reason they stop/reduce their time here.
posted by stormyteal at 8:55 PM on December 22 [6 favorites]
I fully believe that the outrage posts - and the prevalence (perhaps even encouragement) of certain flavors of them - has been incredibly damaging to the site over the years. It hasn't slowed in the slightest, just changed targets.
... even though a great many people have pointed at the trend as a reason they stop/reduce their time here.
posted by stormyteal at 8:55 PM on December 22 [6 favorites]
Is it really the outrage posts, or is it the incredibly nasty conversations that spring up around them; and if, as I am certain, it's the latter, what can be done differently?
Because, look, if these were simply topics that people didn't want to engage with, then people wouldn't engage with them. As far as I can tell, people engage with them a lot. And when the conversation goes sour, people engage with them even more, exponentially more, until they cease to engage with the conversation suddenly, and often cease to engage with the site ever again.
posted by kittens for breakfast at 5:48 AM on December 23 [2 favorites]
Because, look, if these were simply topics that people didn't want to engage with, then people wouldn't engage with them. As far as I can tell, people engage with them a lot. And when the conversation goes sour, people engage with them even more, exponentially more, until they cease to engage with the conversation suddenly, and often cease to engage with the site ever again.
posted by kittens for breakfast at 5:48 AM on December 23 [2 favorites]
I'm here for, variously: US politics, AI politics (read: consistently pushing an anti-big-corporate-AI / pro-open-source-AI viewpoint), and videogames.
I like that Metafilter exposes me to non-US-politics, and I mostly try to keep my USpol opinions out of those threads and think that should be the expectation. But from traffic alone it's clear a significant percentage of the most-active users want to talk about US politics with each other, and getting in the way of that is... getting in the way. If we're going to change anything it should be limiting the spread of US politics outside its designated threads (eg weekly roundups for lower-priority outragefilter).
posted by Ryvar at 1:01 PM on December 23 [2 favorites]
I like that Metafilter exposes me to non-US-politics, and I mostly try to keep my USpol opinions out of those threads and think that should be the expectation. But from traffic alone it's clear a significant percentage of the most-active users want to talk about US politics with each other, and getting in the way of that is... getting in the way. If we're going to change anything it should be limiting the spread of US politics outside its designated threads (eg weekly roundups for lower-priority outragefilter).
posted by Ryvar at 1:01 PM on December 23 [2 favorites]
the information I find in MeFi tends to be superior to network news reporting. There's a distinction between the content/links posted, and the discussion that ensues (not that I'm disparaging the discussion, and I've shed my share of heat vs. light)
I'm not sure what to tell you re: outrage. yes at times it seems performative and pointless, but man there is a lot to be unhappy about, there's a lot that requires our attention and action. there's a ton of content posted to MeFi that is fluffy and fun, I think it's up to the individual to decide how they're engaging. I don't see the point of casting aspersions on how others engage.
posted by ginger.beef at 8:18 AM on December 24 [2 favorites]
I'm not sure what to tell you re: outrage. yes at times it seems performative and pointless, but man there is a lot to be unhappy about, there's a lot that requires our attention and action. there's a ton of content posted to MeFi that is fluffy and fun, I think it's up to the individual to decide how they're engaging. I don't see the point of casting aspersions on how others engage.
posted by ginger.beef at 8:18 AM on December 24 [2 favorites]
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Posts about US politics should be flagged with the uspolitics flag, which allows people to filter out said posts via MyMefi. If a post isn't tagged that way, then check to see if you can add the tag and if not, flag it with a note and ask the mods to add the tag
posted by Brandon Blatcher (staff) at 7:51 AM on December 20 [4 favorites]