Hi, Brandon the mod chiming in.

ChatGPT is a contentious subject and that's mostly wants going in here, IMO. Some people loathe the topic and don't want to see any more about, while others want to talk about it a lot because it is so impactful on society.

So everyone please be mindful if you're making a post about AI/ChatGPT. Making the posts is fine, it's not a taboo subject. Sometimes people want to talk or share about something that's interesting, but MeFilter isn't occurring in an abstract discussion in a class. Real people are being affected by this technology and there's a lot of negative thoughts and feelings about it.

That's no excuse for members to be posting derailing or abusive comments. If the comments are derailing/abusive/attacking please flag them as such, so mods can take a look. Not everyone has to like or agree with the subject or premise of a post and it's fine to chime in with criticism or disagree, but keep in constructive and focused on the subject of the post. Mods might leave notes and remove content if that's derailing the post.

Clearly us mods could have done a better job in this instance, mostly due to the it being the weekend and less coverage. I'll go through the threads to see if anything needs to be removed or notes left, that'll be an ongoing process through the night, so bear with me there.

Lemkin, the personal digs and insults aimed at users for their posting frequency needs to stop immediately. You've commented in this thread countless times doing the same thing, and it's not OK.

lookoutbelow: "FWIW I submitted a contact form request just now requesting input from site staff on the sidebar questions.

If I can summarize:
Who writes it?
What is its purpose in the staff's view?
Why are there so many repetitive messages relating to AI?"

Hi there lookoutbelow, I'm responding to you here publicly instead of the email.

The Best Of blog is solely written by me. Previously the purpose of it was share stuff the community generally seemed to like or to share specific stuff that had been flagged as fantastic. The current focus, as defined by me, is exploring how the blog (or the writings) could potentially be used entice or encourage non members to sign up for the site.

To that end, I've been focusing on what sort of value or interest the site would have non members. Being non AI, where all the comments are written by people seems like a good thing to highlight. But yeah, it may be a bit heavy handed as i'm not great at writing sales copy, so it's been a bit of learning experience. Will probably tone it down a bit and see what sort of measuring of stats can/should be done of those posts and the blog and whether the site should be doing more social media and if so, how to do it.

But first, I wanted to see how I cope with writing this style of copy amidst other duties before seeking suggestions/help.

trig: "Thanks Brandon. I meant, has the Metafilter staff - or whoever is making decisions at this point - approved it in principle, as a policy?"

My understanding is that pretty much everyone on staff working with the assumption that a block feature will be a feature of the new site at some point after its initial launch. Please feel free to ask this question in the latest Site Rebuild Update.

Ok, have signed MetaFilter.com with UptimeRobot to monitor the site. It's the free version, checks the site every five minutes and if it's down, will send an email to the mod email, which all the mods can see.

Told the rest of the staff about this on Slack and posted the account login info to the mod slack, so that any staff member will be able to login to UptimeRobot. Have pinned that and the BlueSky account info in a channel on the mod Slack for easy reference.

This isn't a perfect solution, just a halfway decent option as staff discusses ways to be alerted when the site is down, so that the community can be notified that we're aware and working on it.

mediareport: "The thingabob will automatically monitor the site and send Slack notifications to the mods and update Bluesky

Apparently that solution didn't work this time?"

Kirkaracha was referring to the new site with that comment, have confirmed that with him earlier this evening

trig: "I MeMailed all three members a message that was put together with input and support from this thread. I know Rhaomi and Adam have been logging in to the site. Gorgik has not commented or posted since April. I also MeMailed him two weeks ago, to which he never responded.

I'll MeMail you the message I sent him and would be grateful if you could pass it on to him. I prefer not to use email in communications with the board or mods."

Hi trig,
Thanks for your patience here, it's been a busy day at Mefi, so it's taken me a while to respond.

I did MeMail Gorgik a message that people have questions about things and those questions are things only the Board can answer and linked him to your above comment. I'll also leave a note on Slack in the channel for the Board letting them know that members have questions and plans they'd like to discuss with the Board and that they've left MeMail messages at all three of their individual MeFi accounts.

I would advise that concerns also be emailed to the Board at [email protected] as I believe that's the Board's preferred method of communication.

None of this should be interpreted as me avoiding helping the community with their concerns. But as this is a Board matter, it's best that these concerns be directed to them and addressed by them to avoid any sort of miscommunication by involving a person in the middle.

I'm happy to relay that members have questions and concerns that need to be answered and/or addressed by the Board and left a link to your above comment in the Board's Slack channel,

Let me know if I can be of other assistance!

lookoutbelow: "FWIW I submitted a contact form request just now requesting input from site staff on the sidebar questions"

Yes, it's been received, but will reply in thread by tomorrow (Saturday the 7) afternoon, thanks for you patience.

One comment removed, posted in wrong thread.

a non mouse, a cow herd: "922257033c4a0f3cecdbd819a46d626999d1af4a: "Are we just approving all MetaTalks now?"

Yes.
posted by Brandon Blatcher (staff) at 1:40 PM on June 6 [+] [⚑]

Does that mean we can post more often than once every 7 days?"

Soon, probably by the end of next week, if not sooner.

922257033c4a0f3cecdbd819a46d626999d1af4a: "Are we just approving all MetaTalks now?"

Yes.

Lemkin: "I’ve submitted a MeTa request in which we can discuss this post. Now this thread can be the good-faith discussion of the mission statement that the OP intended."

It has been posted

Here's the reviewed P&L for May apologies about the delay but this literally included going over hundreds of records that were automatically miscategorized. The volunteer outside of the board was helping us reviewing the discrepancies and reporting artifacts from the transition to the Foundation that Adam has mentioned already. Also, cash on hand as of May 31 was $127,746.

Turns out it was a problem when updating ssl certificates and no one was near an actual computer at the time, so it was matter of getting home to fix it.

downtohisturtles: "Do all the mods have access to it or is it one person doing everything BlueSky related?"

All the mods have access to the BlueSky account, but obviously we're going to review things to make sure staff and the community are notified more quickly.

Hey all, talked to loup a few minutes ago, they're still working on the issue, hoping to have it fixed by Friday afternoon, but no specific guarantee.

Will check back with them tomorrow.

Wordshore: "Recipe: proper cheese on toast"

Please don't do this, it can be considered dismissive of the post and your fellow member.

It's totally fine to comment that that you're confused by a MeTa post and ask for clarification. It's also fine to just skip the post and not leave any comments.

But don't try to shutdown or dismiss concerns that people might have by posting recipes. No one wants their thoughts or concerns to be dismissed or ignored, so please don't do it to others.

Wordshore: "Recipe: proper cheese on toast"

Please don't do this, it can be considered dismissive of the post and your fellow member.

It's totally fine to comment that that you're confused by a MeTa post and ask for clarification. It's also fine to just skip the post and not leave any comments.

But don't try to shutdown or dismiss concerns that people might have by posting recipes. No one wants their thoughts or concerns to be dismissed or ignored, so please don't do it to others.

Ok, here's what's going on with the delay on the May P&L report.

Turns out that despite being redirected to the new account, some payments and debits are going to an old account. The board is working to resolve the issue, no specific ETA on that.

The main post will be updated in a few minutes with this info.

NotLost: "I have submitted a post calling for an election in June."

Just FYI, I don't see a post in the queue. Maybe you didn't hit the final submission click? Either way, I'll be around most of the night, so will be able to approve whatever is submitted.

Let me know if something did go wrong and we'll get it fixed.

Two comments removed at the members request

mediareport: "Yeah posting the call for candidates on a Friday night wasn't ideal, which is why it is important that Brandon or one of the other mods follow up on this comment suggesting they'd be happy to add a link to a call for candidates to declare to the sidebar, banner and all of the subsites."

Links have been added to the banner and sidebar.

Here's some suggested verbiage for the posts:

Hi all,
Brief reminder that MetaFilter is a community run site, with a board of directors that are responsible for managing the site.

Currently we have a three member Board, and were looking at planning elections to vote in a new board. If you're interested in running for a seat on this new board, please declare your intentions in this MetaTalk thread.

We're still figuring exact details (like the new board will probably have more than 3 members) but for now we're looking to see how many people would be interested in running for a seat. So again, if you're interested, please declare in the above mentioned thread. This doesn't bind to do anything, just that you're interested.

Here's a few background links with recent discussions:
🗣 Discussion about the current and future bylaws

💬 Talk about how to run an election for new board members

How's that sound?

mediareport: "is there anyone on staff or the IUB who is prepared to answer specific questions about the new financial documents? If so, who is that person? If not, why not?"

The Board is aware that people have various questions and they're the best ones to answer these specific questions.

mediareport: "Well dang, looks like someone has just posted a thread for candidates to declare. Excellent. Brandon, I believe you'd recently written* you would put links to a candidate declaration thread in the sidebar and banner. Can you please do so now? Thanks.

*I'd find it but there's a tornado nearby I definitely remember it tho"

Can do, but we currently have a bunch of links in the nav bar, so adding more might break the site for a minute, so lets see how this goes! Mentioned only if case people see the site do...something odd for a few seconds.

lapis: "I would suggest updating the text of this post to say "Here are the current bylaws of the site" rather than saying they're a draft of proposed bylaws."

Text in post updated!

Have let the board know that people have questions about the P&L reports and financials!

Just a mod note responding to flags on this and other recent MeTa post that was asking about past MetaFilter or Ask MetaFilter posts: It's totally ok to ask about previous site posts on MetaTalk, it's part of the function of this subsite. People can use AskMe instead, but posts like these are totally fine for MetaTalk. But please just use one or the other, not both, thanks.

trig: "Looking at the footer, I see "Moderation Review" but I don't think that's very self-explanatory. Maybe a caption like "Got a concern about moderation?" would help - similar styling as the "Join 8,311 readers..." caption under "Fund Metafilter". And I'd also put a link to the form in the Contact Us page. (To be honest, a prominent link there might be enough to make the footer link redundant, but then again redundancy's fine.)"

Apologies for late reply, we're looking into this too.

It is regrettable that: "I'm sorry for not being up on the discussion surrounding this, but is it intended to be a permanent part of the header, or is that just to bring initial attention to it, and eventually it'll move somewhere else, say to a menu, or the footer?"

The link to request a Moderation Review is already in the footer! It's on the right side, under the Contact Us link, where it'll remain for the future, pending the site redesign or a request from the Moderation Oversight Committee to move it.

We'll leave the link in the nav bar for a few more days for higher visibility, then remove it from the there.

litera scripta manet: "It looks like several members in the other election related thread have said they'll post a MeTa asking who is interested in running. Now, I guess that would still need mod approval and all that."

That should not be a problem.

One duplicate comment deleted.

ssg: "Brandon or another mod, can you share some details on how the sussing out of sock puppets might work? Is there anything in the database that indicates known or potential sock puppets? Or are we just working off of email addresses used to sign up and other similar data?"

Short answer: yes, there’s backend stuff to detect sock puppet accounts, but as a non-technical person, I can’t and won’t get into details.

Things always go badly when a non-techie attempts to explain technical stuff to people who are familiar with the technology (ie coding).

Probably not a great idea to go into details. No need to leave doors open.

unearthed: "I really wonder if Lemkin and HearHere in this thread are truly human themselves as they don't seem able to read the room"

Feel free to disagree with any member on the site, but implying that they're not human is uncalled for, unnecessary, and frankly cruel. Please don't do this to other people, it's a low blow and does nothing to help any disagreements.

mediareport: "It would be great if whatever MeTa post is made next week asking for candidates to declare would be highlighted in various ways by the mods - sidebar, posts at all subsites, banner, etc, as has been suggested multiple times in these threads - but if we have to do it without that help I'm sure we'll manage."

It's happened pretty much any other time there's been elections or something major, see no reason for it to be different now.

I'd advise sending an email when folks want things added to the nav, sidebar, or posts on subsites so that we're aware of when to do it and any relevant verbiage to include. Yes to all these things.

Lemkin: "Mods, please delete the post. I also encourage you to update the policy."

The post has been deleted, leaving this thread for those who still want to discuss AI content in posts.

One comment calling another Mefite "bald-faced liar and totally full of shit" deleted. While MetaTalk is very lightly moderated, name calling, is still against our content policy. Please do not do that.

tivalasvegas: "So, here's the thing. This sounds like a great idea. I'm all for it. BUT. Is this a priority?"

I believe you were just making it point with this example, but just want to make it clear that no one is making this a priority (being able to link serial posts or doing it manually for tinyfryingpan). It was just a neat idea adn Kirkaracha is probably just throwing it on a list.

Otherwise, the site update will be out next week, we're aiming for May 29th and hoping (fingers and toes crossed) to include the financial info in it.

No absolute promises because I'm not involved in correcting, checking, or finalizing the info (and thus can't speak to specifics), but people are working and hoping to finish this project.

No comments removed; just noting that the comment above from donnagirl about anotherpanacea is picking some flags and while we will not remove it, let's please avoid drawing attention/calling out buttoned users.

kirkaracha: "Since serial posts are OK, would it be useful to have a new feature to navigate between the posts in a series? Like an index or table of contents."

This would be very cool and useful in these circumstances. Thanks for the suggestion, I'll relay it to the development team! :)

Rash: "I don't set policy, but if I did these types of posts would not merely be allowed, but encouraged. (That is, if they aren't already.)"

The unwritten rule is that anything that doesn't cause a problem is fine.

So if someone wanted to do a series of posts on how different types of paint dry on different types of materials that would be fine.

Thinking about it as a I write this comment, a series of posts about a subject could also be a great way of teaching about a subject. Say I wanted to do a post about X, but there was a lot of information, too much for a single person to learn and put in a post. Breaking that learning up into several posts would be a good way to digest and share that information.

donnagirl: "Also I just realized that this is the slowness thread not the most recent site update thread."

Here's the link to the most recent site update thread

EmpressCallipygos: "Hey, donnagirl, can you please keep site discussions out of Fanfare?"

That comment has been removed and this mod note has the explanation for the removal.

juliebug: "I'll be back in a couple weeks and see if we have any more info that's been shared."

Hey, just a note to say things are being worked on in terms of the financial reports, but I don't know when information will be finalized and shared. The board is handling all that and it's clear they'll respond when they're ready and able.

Otherwise, yeah it sucks to have wait on all this, but it is what it is at the moment.

Next general site update will be out the last week of May, by the 30th.

Comment containing allegations has been undeleted. Just noting that the comment containing the allegations is outside of anything we can do or have control over as mods. Thread will remain closed.

One comment that allegeing a lot of things has been removed while we look into that information.

One duplicate comment deleted.

snarfois: "Still slow. 30-60 seconds to load a page.

Got 2 different Cloudflare error pages when trying to load pages:
SSL Handshake Failed (Error code 525)
Web server is returning an unknown error (Error code 520)"

Anyone else getting errors or site slowness? Please comment if so!

pdb: "This is a really fun question, but doesn't it belong in Ask, not here?"

There's no specific problem to be solved, which AskMe is for, so am keeping it in MeTa.

I believe it's important to recognize that some people don't want to have or are not in a headspace to have "constructive conversations", whatever that means. And that's totally understandable with the state of the world these days. When that becomes clear, it's up to the individual to decide if they want continue conversating or move on.

Mostly, be curious instead of right. Instead of "how could you think that?!" instead write "oh, I hadn't considered that, what's your thought process?". Or something like.

Flag comments or posts if there's a derail or someone is being wildly out of pocket.

Aim to have fun or enjoy yourself on the site. It helps you to bring your own good energy to the site and discussions.

atoxyl: "Now there is also the “super button” of account wipes. That was originally by request only, I am not sure whether they have added a self-serve option?"

There is not a self serve option. Account wipes do have to be requested by emailing the mods.

Frimble notified of site slowness.

Was something before this comment deleted?

No comments have been deleted from this thread.

Hi samthemander, I’m not seeing any deleted/missing comments as of now. Not sure what’s going down on your end but shoot us an email if need be!

One duplicate comment removed.

Just to confirm, so there's no confusion, members of the moderation team are paid

SpiffyRob: "Would love to know what observations were made by staff in recent days and what steps, if any, were taken."

Frimble took the site offline for a few minutes around 6am ET time to do some maintenance. They also cleaned up some SQL queries that were running slow. Things have been running running a lot more smoothly all day as a result.

Hey y’all just pushing this through so people can talk about it, no updates at the moment. I’ve been off for several days, will look more into this issue tomorrow.

Apologies for the continued problems.

Is there nothing that can be put in place to prevent these bots from scraping the site?

Doesn’t look like there’s anything concrete, but if anyone knows a technique that works, please let us know.

It’s a known problem with no known solutions as far as my research shows.

Things should be back up to speed, frimble blocked a bunch of AI bots that were scraping the site.

Yes, things are molasses at the moment, frimble has been pinged.

Apologies for the slowness!

One comment removed. Seriously, please avoid using ChatGPT or other LLMs on the site.

Hey, just a heads up that we talked about this previously and have decided to largely ban ChatGPT and its cousins from the site. See this FAQ entry.

Seven Deadly Gins: "I've been lurking this site for what must be 10 or 11 years now, and never made an account, but this whole thing has pissed me off so bad that I'm going to spend 5 bucks to come in here and vent my spleen. So, hi. Bad circumstances but hi."

Thanks for taking the time to sign up and share your thoughts Seven Deadly Gins, we've added your comment to the sidebar and Best Of blog.

Sometimes, that link is behind text in the header and I accidentally select something else when I'm trying to select it and the entire header disappears and I don't know how to get it back. How do I get it back?

Hi, try switching your theme from what it currently is and then back to it and let us know if that works. You can do that in your settings.

Comment removed at user request

Yes, people who are transitioning can request a name change and that change will be automatically applied to all of their comments and posts.

That has been possible for years.

Yes front page Metafilter posts are saved when you click preview aka you can start a draft and finish it later.

This does not work on any other sub-site.

...now I'm thinking maybe I should leave, after setting this burst off.

I've got some thinking to do.

A lot of members have had positive reactions to what you're posting and the mod team has already spoken about "yeah, keep an eye out for her posts to make sure things don't go off rails 'cause of the bigots."

Ultimately it's up to you and do whatever feels right for you, but your presence and posts have had a positive affect. You're posting for good reasons with good intentions, just remember that you're not responsible for ugly reactions that bigots might have to your posts or comments.

Also, don't feel as though you have to post every week, that can feel like burden and/or lessen the joy.

Kutsuwamushi: " You would easily find these arguments unacceptable if they were applied to black people"

Nope, as a black man born and raised in America, you're dead wrong there. We may disagree in this instance and that's fine, but as black man born and raised in America, I do try to find the best in people and am willing to give some people a chance if I think there's potential for change.

But that's a personal thing, and it doesn't have to be so as moderator if trans members and allies think differently about the tiamat account. So we're making the ban permanent on that with notes and links to the previous 8 comments in this thread to make it clear to any future moderators how the community feels about reinstating that account.

Thank you to everyone for speaking up and expressing their opinion about this, it definitely pushed things to make the ban permanent.

maryellenreads: "My question now it, what's to stop Tiamat from unbuttoning their main or sockpuppet accounts?"

Whether an account is closed by the member or by mods, it can only be reopened by mods.

The HonestAlly-sock account has several notes on it reminding us not to unban it at all. It's permanently closed.

The Tiamat account is noted not to be unbanned unless we have a talk with the user and make it clear that their behavior on trans issues is unacceptable and if we do reopen it, anything vaguely resembling previous behavior will result in a permanent ban.

mrgoat: "An official mod comment explaining if Tiamat button'd themselves..."

They did indeed button the main and sock puppet account themselves.

june_dodecahedron: "Yes, mods, will the transphobes from this thread be banned?"


Yes, bluemat and Czjewels have been permanently banned for being transphobic and a note has been left in that thread stating so.

Frimble originally noticed the comments and reached out to the mod on duty, goodnewsfortheinsane, who removed the comments and put a note in the mod Slack requesting another opinion on whether the two accounts should be banned. I happened to be up and noticed what was going on, told gnfti that a perm ban made sense. Gnfti went ahead and did the actual banning, made a goof and temporarily banned fight or flight, Rhaomi pointed that out and the mistake was quickly corrected.

Apologies about that fight or flick, it was a mistake on our part and quickly made right.

Otherwise, yes we are serious about being more aggressive about transphobia on the site. Loup explicitly left a comment on the mod slack about it yesterday: "We should be more aggressive towards these types of comments", in reference to transphobic comments made by The Master and Margarita Mix and CyberSlug Labs, who were permanently banned yesterday.

juliebug: "To that end... any updates on the site downtime stuff? "

Looks like it's been database timeout issues. I believe they've been fixed, are you still having issues with site slowness?

sagc: "or do you think this might look, from the outside, like yet another example of immediate mod defensiveness and retrenchment in the face of valid criticism?"

Two users have been banned and it's been fairly clear it was because of transphobia.

That said, I am seeing users breaking the rules/guidelines with the justification that they are in the right for doing so. I don't think that's exactly wrong, but do believe it's important to note and pump the brakes on members breaking rules/guidelines because they believe it's morally justified, end of story. That's line of thought/feeling is completely understandable, but don't want to encourage members feeling that they're morally justifiable to do this whenever they want.

We're probably gonna disagree about that, which is fine, we'll handle these situations as they come up.

brook horse: "It would be helpful to understand if The Master and Margarita Mix did something else to trigger a ban, or if that was how long it took mods to discuss the ban, given they were made aware of at least two transphobic comments on April 6th."

Previously they had been mention in discussions about someone to keep an eye on. When june_dodecahedron brought up their comments this afternoon, I went through their comments again, thought "Yes, it's time for ban", talked it over with loup, who agreed a ban was fine, and so they were banned.

ftrtts: "Brandon Blatcher, do you still stand by your comment that told june_dodecahedron to chill?"

Yes, I stand by my comment, made in moderator role, that told june_dodechedron to stop telling other people to fuck off. That is a rule on the site, has been for a while.

The feeling and desire to say that is understandable, but we do want to members to avoid deciding who deserves to be told to fuck off. 'Cause that tends to slide down to personal interactions ("you don't like my comment? Well, F off or F you!") so we tend to discourage that anywhere on the site

Were the mods actually planning to ban this user before this metatalk post went up?

Yep.

We aim to avoid having one person ban a member with no conversation with other mods so that no person is dispensing bans as they see fit. So I gave CyberSlug Labs a week off to prevent them from saying anything else on the site, emailed them why there getting the temp ban, and that a permanent ban was being discussed.

I was pretty sure the other mods would agree with the ban, just wanted to touch bases with them to get that full agreement. It was a pretty short conversation.

Yes an argument could made that I should have just gone ahead and banned them, but again, it's important that we're not out here being total cowboys when banning people. Plus I was rocking a helluva head cold and felt a second opinion wouldn't hurt anything as long as CyberSlub Labs could no long post in the meantime.

june_dodecahedron: "@loup, the poster of the previous transphobic comment I flagged, were they banned? If not, why not?"

That user, The Master and Margarita Mix, has now been banned.

Were the mods actually planning to ban this user before this MetaTalk post went up?
Yes, totally. I met with Brandon this morning and we agreed to ban them for good.

Transphobia needs to be grounds for an immediate and irreversible ban. Nothing less will do.

Yes, a full ban is in order. Transphobia has no place here. Period. The temporary ban while the moderation team discussed the issue was a decision to stop the user right there and allow some time for us to discuss collectively, not because we need to decide our stance when it comet to transphobic content, but because we take full ban seriously and discuss them together as a team.

Klipspringer: In other news, did this post always have a content warning? Do posts about comedy on a website for adults generally need content warnings? If it was added later, where's the mod note?"

The post always had that content warning, no edits have been made to the post.

Reopening the thread now as agreed.

Kybard: "I've asked the mods to put this up in the original post for clearer visibility, but I know their availability is limited this weekend.
"

This has been done, took all of 10 minutes from original message :)

...will you please add a direct link to Klipspringer's archived moderation log...

This has now been done, thanks for your patient (for the reasons stated above).

Closing the thread temporarily since folks have asked us to close/freeze the thread while we have reduced moderation this weekend. Thanks for everyone's patience.

Heads Up: This post has received several flags asking us to close/freeze this thread for the weekend (when we have reduced moderation) to avoid it imploding throughout Saturday and Sunday. I've consulting with the mods covering the weekend shifts and they agree so I've reached out to lab.beetle confirm he's OK with this.

Added single spacing in between paragraphs for easier reading.

Should be a post in the blue or an update in the open thread instead.

Acknowledging the mistake above. As kirkaracha mentioned, he didn't know how to turn off the mod box and was acting as a regular member. We'll address it internally as well but if you want to discuss this further please create a new Meta about it.

Klipspringer: "Also the modlog isn't linked from anywhere on the site. It's only discoverable by URL and from MetaTalk posts which will drop away. As far as I can tell."

It’s in the Staff & Site info link in the nav bar.

Comment containing poem deleted upon user’s request

One double comment deleted.

Note that I'm off this coming week, starting two hours or so ago, so things may be slower this week (neither Taz or myself will be around), so just have patience, thanks!

I do see the "ex cathedra" box on the comment you link.

Yep, I fixed that, 'a non mouse, a cow herd' was not seeing things when they made that comment

which, to me, why??? why is it so hard to edit? View source seems to make it look like one line of CSS or HTML? Why can only one person edit it? What if they get hit by a bus?

And, to get back to the original thought of this post, why are we still having the same issues all the time? The "flag" thing took how many years? Publishing BIPOC minutes got to over a year. We're still waiting on a community created cookbook for how long now? The initial excuse was that the community member who was going to do it had things come up. Yet, at least one other volunteered to take over but was shut down to let the first person still attempt to finish.

The code of the current site is a mess and done using a lot techniques from an earlier era of coding, where a lot of current practices just did not exist. Roughly speaking as an a non-developer, I think that analogy is this: Previously everything was hand coded, and I do mean everything, even seemingly common elements (like a footer,) were reproduced a number of times (the footer is at the bottom of every page).

Now imagine having to go into every single one of those different pages that the footer appears on, just to change one or two links. That may be decided to not be worth the time for part time developer to do, especially when there's other stuff going on.

Nowadays templates are built into a content management system (CMS), so that a non-developer has access to a single page where the template is and can just go into that one page to edit that template and those changes are immediately applied wherever that template is being used on the site.

That MetaFilter is more like the former, than the latter is frustrating for everyone, but it is what it is. That's not me being flip, just recognizing that a lot of things with the current site are what they are and are not going to change, hence rebuilding the site.

I think a lot of that also influenced general practices with the staff over time. A "we can't move fast, so we don't move fast". That is my personal opinion and expect that'll change with the new site (note how quickly the missing line around an official mod note was changed and as the person who made the change, it was super easy), which will allow general staff to change things on the site without having to go through a part-time developer aka much quicker.


There are number of complaints mentioned in your comment and I can't reply to every single one because I don't know all the details. But I will express my opinion about late things with the BIPOC Board.

Yes, it took a while and that was frustrating, but I think it's ok, while also noting the Board has changed its practice of doing meeting minutes, they're much more concise.

But asking or demanding that a group that is dedicated to helping people who may feel silenced in life and on this site to 'be quicker' isn't all that helpful to those people. In fact those very public demands may encourage people to disengage and move slower. Not a great result, sure, but a very human one.

Finally, I do think things are getting better. The very comment and "broken promise" that prompted this MeTa post were actually part of a longer comment where I was talking about working on document to make information users were requesting more visible.

So yes, something was promised and didn't happen. But work and improvements are being done and happening and I would encourage everyone to think of things on a larger site level scale and opposed to always focusing on one particular thing. That doesn't mean mistakes shouldn't be publicly called out. Just try to look at the large picture and when improvements are being made, to note that publically also.

More timeouts. Brandon, is frimble aware of this?

Left a note in the mod Slack for them.

Added a General Information FAQ that contains basic information that members have requested be in one place. The link to this FAQ entry will be placed in the navigation bar for easy access and titled "General Site Info". If there's you think should be added to it, please let us know in the comments!

Changed the above paragraph in the post to this:

Added a General Staff and Site Information FAQ that contains basic information that members have requested be in one place. The link to this FAQ entry will be placed in the navigation bar for easy access and titled "Staff & Site Info". If there's something you think should be added to it, please let us know in the comments!

Done to make it clearer that the link contains information about the staff.

This isn't a great solution, true, but it's one that the staff can easily update, so that's a win, IMO.

The footer on the current site isn't easily editable, hence why it hasn't been updated in a long while.

And unless I've misunderstood something, this is the one triad of people at all of Metafilter right now who owns it and has any actual power to make decisions. Effectively invisible on the site unless you follow seventeen clicks to subsection 14(c) of the faq and then remember the whole time.

FYI, there is now a link in the site navigation bar titled "Staff & Site Info" that links to a FAQ entry that has the staff box and general site information. It's accessible from every page and if people have suggestions about other information that can go in there, please let us know in the comments or via the Contact Us page.

Awesome, thank you!

I believe it's been discussed in terms of handling account wipes differently, but if you're hoping for this specific feature, I recommend adding it to the feature request form. (list of requests).