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MetaFilter

Occasionally, people ask me why I don't post to MetaFilter anymore. I could tell you, but I'd much rather show you these two cartoons which explain it much more succinctly.

Comments

Of course, i followed the URL of the Red Meat strip's author. MY EYES... THE GOGGLES DO NOTHING.

Thanks. Had a fun coupla reading about the demise of Ars Digita. Sometimes it's nice to remember the bubble.

"THE GOGGLES DO NOTHING"

Yes, it's seldom that one sees that much concentrated windbaggery and circular jerking in one place. I needed soothing eyedrops after wading through all that heated verbiage.

Jim, I have to confess near-total ignorance of Ars Digita. I searched on it, and it appears to be some sort of early journaling system...a pre-Moveable Type weblogging interface?

And whenever I get nostalgic for the bubble, I just pull out my 401K summaries and do a constrast and compare; seeing how it diminished by 35% in the span of 3 months usually snaps me back to reality pretty quickly. No more tulip speculation for me, thanks.

I only got a MetaFilter login recently, and I have to say, I never feel tempted even to read much of the political threads, much less comment. Why bother? They are so easy to identify, for one thing; political content + 78 comments? Next link, please. And with AskMe, there are bazillions of threads to participate in that don't require any partisan bickering at all. MetaFilter is almost not even about "neat stuff on the Web" at all anymore - especially at a time when that's just not emerging the way it was when MetaFilter was founded - but approaching being about neat ways the Web solves problems, whether directly or as a conduit for communicating the solution. I guess that MetaFilter amused me briefly with its Godwin-invoking flamewars and then hooked me with its good old-fashioned ethic of mutual aid.

You're right, Caitlin, AxMe *is* the best part of MeFi these days, but even that's not free of political flamebaiting and pissy whingeing over content. I also can't help but apply the lessons learned in talk.bizarre about how IntarWeb communities evolve, devolve, and eventually lose their relevance to my daily life.

And, oh, ArsDigita. Here is an interview with Philip Greenspun that goes into the context to some extent (both the conception and the transition during the Bad Time). http://www.itconversations.com/transcripts/94/transcript-print94-1.html (Relevant part of the interview starts with "In 1997, you and a few others founded ArsDigita".

Thanks, Caitlin, that cleared it up for me nicely.