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).

[Positively] Is the link to "collecting information about member run activities and events" supposed to go here?

Yep, fixed now, thanks for pointing out!

Curious why Seattle was selected for the P.O. Box location and how that will work with a board-run site.

One of the board members lives there, so it's easy for them to pick it up.

Also added a link to the MefiQuote announcement page.

One comment deleted. Please don't call anyone Lizard Person, this is a dog whistle rooted in antisemitic conspiracy theories that have long sought to dehumanize Jewish people and as such goes against our Content Policy and Community Guidelines.

One comment above deleted. While we avoid deleting comments in MetaTalk, Name calling and personal attacks go against our content policy, please abide by it regardless of the subsite you are in.

What steps are you taking towards that?
– We've moved from this being a one person effort to a team effort and set timelines/owners for each section of the site update.
– I'm working with the board to set better communication channels for volunteers, the board and the staff.
– Brandon and I discussed just yesterday the possibility of breaking the site update into different posts (tech updates, admin updates, moderation updates, etc..) that way once section won't hold the other.

The site update should be out by Friday evening, have been waiting on some information.

Yep, I dropped the ball there (original comment), so my apologies.

I usually set a reminder or have note for that stuff, just forgot to do it this time around.

Antisemitism is not tolerated on MetaFilter and the moderators want to know if members do see it occurring. Please flag it (a note is helpful) or email us with a llink to the comment/incident.

And while this thread is about antisemitism specifically, please remember this from our Content Policy:

MetaFilter is an inclusive space. Avoid posting racial slurs or stereotypes; deliberately misgendering/misnaming others; questioning the existence and/or validity of trans identities as well as other racist, misogynist, homophobic, transphobic, ageist, ableist or otherwise hateful speech. This includes making hateful or insensitive statements ironically or sarcastically as well as linking hateful sources (authors or websites).

Thank you for all your hard work kirkaracha, we've noted the new site developments in the sidebar and Best Of blog!

This is good news and a great addition, with all the other recent code changes, so we've added this post to the sidebar and Best Of blog!

If Violet Blue, or anyone else, wants to create a MeTa about anti semitism on MetaFilter and how to reduce it, that's totally fine, go for it. I recommend avoiding making it personal and please avoid trying to police the thread and arguing with everyone who disagrees with your (general your, not a specific person) point of view.

This thread should stick to discussion about moderation and the MeTa queue.

Sparky Buttons: "I think it would be helpful if the posts that dont make it through the queue are noted on the mod log."

Agreed and it was requested back on March 22 that the moderation log on the new site record that information. Mentioning that to make it clear there's no objection to making that information visible, just no clear technical way at them moment, but restless_nomad has suggested a work around.

pdb: " is that decision and the reason why communicated to the person who created the post (via MeMail or other communication method)? Because if not, it absolutely should be. #pleaseanswer
"

Yes, the member is emailed the reason why it wasn't published. Both of the mentioned MeTas were emailed.

It's possible that the process should be changed to "posted but closed with deletion reason" rather than just not posted,

Decent idea, will talk it over with the other mods, thanks for suggesting it!

Out of interest, why do messages or notes in flags have more weight in the decision than (hypothetically) a MeTa that might be 90% decent discussion amid the fighty-ness?

They don't necessarily have more weight, it's very conditional. In this particular instance, I'm mentioning them as way that members have communicated, along with emails, what they think of particular situations.

Brandon: what happened to Violet Blue's MeTa thread?

Please create a MeTa for that and cease derailing this one. I'm up for a little bit, so it should go through. Yes, people may think it's ridiculous, to create a MeTa about why another MeTa wasn't published, but folks need to stop derailing this post.

I'm up for a while longer, so will send it through.

I did consider making a MeTa post that was literally just "who is in charge here"

Slight update to the General Info FAQ which clarifies the position of the Interim Board (IB) members, and clarifies that loup is in a position over all the moderators.

But for quick reference, here's the Board info:
Rhaomi: President
1Adam12: Treasurer
Gorgik: Secretary

Violet Blue, you're derailing this thread, please stop doing that.

There's a consistent pattern of behavior here where you post a thread on the front page, people have disagreements with you about the subject and then you try to police the thread. When told to stop you begin accusing people of organizing against you and/or contacting the mods to get their comments taken down.

The I/P subject is a complex one with lots of sides and emotions. It is recommended that you stop trying to argue with every single person who disagrees you. It is recommended that you stop accusing others of working in some organized fashion against you. People simply disagree with your take on things and that's perfectly fine.

Please stop posting comments in this thread. If you don't, we'll have to start removing your comments and/or issue temporary bans of increasing length, so please stop.

Oops, in trying to favorite warriorqueen's comment, I accidently removed it, for about 5-10 seconds. My apologies!

Hey, it's Brandon again, going to respond to questions about the simple mod log by first explaining how it came to be:

Me: hey, we should do the mod log that members have been asking for
Management (MM): we don't really have the resources to do that
Me: well, members are distrustful, so it would be good to show them that there isn't anything weird going on.
MM: yeah, but we don't have the resources

This occurs a few times until I the internal tracker we used is kinda like a log.

Me: Hey this tracker we use kinda works like a mod log, can we repurpose that to be a mod log? That way we're not starting from scratch and just adjusting a few things.
MM: ok, we can do that.

Some time passes due to frimble getting in an accident and being unable to work for a bit, then the transition happens and other things are made priority, coding wise.

Me: soooo, about the mod log?
MM: yep, we're finishing it up, here's an admin only look at it for now. we're not going to flesh it out, as resources are focused on developing the new site.

Me: hey members, here's a simple moderation log (SML)!
Members: Ok, cool, but why isn't this more full featured?!
Me: Focusing resources on new site.

Me thinking to myself: This could be more full featured and a lot of members will be disappointed and want more, which makes total sense, but this is at least at start and we can go from there.

For the record, I'm 100% behind doing a full featured moderation log. The one at lobster.rs has been mentioned a few times and I think that's a great goal to shoot for, with a few MeFi tweaks.



...but I do wonder why the log isn’t an archive...

Why only 50 comments and why only the last 7 days?

Unknown, my guess is that it was the simplest or easiest thing to do or queries the database the least, but I honestly don't know. Have posted that question on the Slack.

The info page needs to clarify what the years mean by someone's name.

Done and have added the link to the functional spec to that page.

I'm taking stakeholder in this instance to apply specifically to just that document, i.e. people who can go in to edit and manage it and be responsible for coordinating with kirkaracha about what feature list is and what order said features are implemented.

This page says loup does management and Brandon does communications.

Yep and loup reports to the board, which is currently the Interim Board. All the mods and developers have access to their Slack channel and can bring things up to them.

Creatrixtiara, if there's something in particular you think the staff should do or being in terms of the BiPOC, I'd recommend asking for that thing to be done publicly, like here in this thread. If there's specific tasks you think the Board needs done and you think a mod can assist with, just shoot us an email or make a MeTa with the ask

General purpose goals or discussion might better formal meetings, but that's y'all's call. The bottom line is that staff can and is willing to help, it's just a matter of defining that sort of help the BIPOC board wants

A bare bones moderation log has been released, here's the thread announcing and discussing it.

There is a list of staff and committees...

That's the page I mentioned a few comments ago and since it's publicly visible now, just gonna leave it so. Was waiting for confirmation on who is currently on the BiPOC committee, which I got about 30 minutes ago.

I'm thinking the idea of having one page with all the committees, the elections, the boards.

I am working today on a General Information page that does things like this, it'll be mentioned in the Site Update, which is running a little late (should have been posted this week but waiting on some information)

The site update should happen by Wednesday of next week at the very latest. If it doesn't, mods will make a post a MeTa explaining the delay.]

If it's not easy to add new ones right now, so be it. Mods?

You're correct, it's not easy to add new ones right now and we're more or less just leaving that sidebar as is as we work on the new site. While it hasn't been decided on whether we'll have sharing links sidebar on the new site. If we do, it's safe to say that FB won't be on it.