Speaking for no one but myself, I like these posts (and I really appreciate kliuless's work on them)! To me, they're sort of like a beautiful buffet table -- I may not eat every single dish that's been set out, but it's enjoyable to nibble a bit of this and that. I would probably not like it if every single post on the front page were like this, but having one every so often is fun (at least to me).
posted by ourobouros at 12:50 PM on March 21, 2023 [47 favorites]

I agree that posts with a lot of links are borderline impenetrable but I treat them the same way I treat anything on this site that isn’t for me – I don’t read them.
posted by Diskeater at 12:58 PM on March 21, 2023 [74 favorites]

I like these linkdumps, because almost no one reads everything, but most people read something -- and they each bring in pullquotes and data from the various articles.

I think that it makes for a very interesting and varied conversation afterwards. Yes, it's more of a survey than an in-depth analysis, but often it takes many viewpoints to get the feel for a big topic.

So that's a no for me (dawg) on limiting links.
posted by wenestvedt at 12:59 PM on March 21, 2023 [22 favorites]

I feel like very few mefites do what kliuless does. its an immense undertaking to put together a post like that. do I read all the links? no, but they are there, for me or whoever. I don't have a problem with it.

I do think that if you are so inspired, a post like this could be a launchpad for creating your own FPP that takes a deepdive off one of the links in a linkdump post like this. and that too will have its fans and detractors.
posted by supermedusa at 1:30 PM on March 21, 2023 [18 favorites]

I'm sympathetic to the idea that a many-linked FPP can be a nice way to get a kaleidoscopic view on a topic in question, but also do personally feel like something off-kilter about "linkdump" posts of this nature especially in a context where conversations frequently get derailed or frustrated by the fact that some significant percent of participants clearly have not read the one (1) link provided in the FPP

for me personally I tend to avoid threads like the one referenced here because the sheer volume of links, in my experience/reading, tends to create sort of a loophole toward pure chatfilter? it creates an opportunity to free-associate riff on the broader topic rather than engage with the content of any one link. I'm not sure that's actually a bad thing per se, it's just not how I want to interact with posts on the blue

anyway I'm just riffing here and don't generally think this is a frequent or real enough problem to warrant any sort of formal policy? like Diskeater says, easy enough to not read or engage in a thread where the framing might frustrate you for whatever reason.
posted by Kybard at 1:32 PM on March 21, 2023 [11 favorites]

Hard disagree. It's a nice resource to be able to come back to if one is ever in search of reading material. And this format is actually one of the few unique things that Metafilter brings to the table that can't be found elsewhere online. I don't get why it would bother anyone, even if it didn't appeal to them.
posted by dusty potato at 1:57 PM on March 21, 2023 [21 favorites]

I personally wish these posts were either a) on some separate blog or b) divided into 5 or 6 10-link posts that have a clear thesis. The discussions always end up centering around some specific subset of articles, anyway.
posted by sagc at 1:57 PM on March 21, 2023 [13 favorites]

And/or I wish there was much more work to bind all the links into a coherent post, rather than just a bunch of links in a row. Like, does an article about freon really tie closely to a Rebecca Solnit article? Are either enhanced by a link to an article about Florida pensions? If so, I'd like that work to be done in the post, rather than being a fun mystery for me to figure out via random words being hyperlinks.
posted by sagc at 2:00 PM on March 21, 2023 [8 favorites]

Also also, there is a full-on sub-heading in the linked post. Why not make a post on "Red States' Green Pivot", rather than spending half the space below the fold on a separate topic?
posted by sagc at 2:02 PM on March 21, 2023 [5 favorites]

I don't think there are enough posts like this to make it worth forming a policy against them, even if one grants that they're a problem. And I don't. I like 'em!
posted by Ipsifendus at 2:10 PM on March 21, 2023 [23 favorites]

> I tend to avoid threads like the one referenced here because the sheer volume of links, in my experience/reading, tends to create sort of a loophole toward pure chatfilter

Same. There's no way everyone is reading all the links -- is there? -- so it becomes a post for "let's talk about this subject," not "let's talk about this cool website I found."
posted by The corpse in the library at 2:11 PM on March 21, 2023 [4 favorites]

I think they're fine. MetaFilter contains multitudes etc and there's enough space here for people with different wants to allow plenty of variety in posting styles.
posted by dg at 2:15 PM on March 21, 2023 [30 favorites]

I like them, and I hope they continue.
posted by kristi at 2:17 PM on March 21, 2023 [6 favorites]

It's fine. There aren't enough people posting and commenting, let's not squelch what there is.
posted by Mid at 2:19 PM on March 21, 2023 [23 favorites]

I think they're fine. MetaFilter contains multitudes etc and there's enough space here for people with different wants to allow plenty of variety in posting styles.

I don't know, it seems like MeFi is quite tightly controlled in many ways -- the mods seem to kill comments and threads for sometimes trivial and not always clearly explained or consistent reasons.

I'm just surprised this kind of massive linkdump post is OK, given all the stuff that isn't OK.

But maybe I'm in the minority.
posted by Artifice_Eternity at 2:55 PM on March 21, 2023 [5 favorites]

I'm just going to copy over what I wrote in the thread: I can see how this might not work for some, but I enjoy this style of post, and it breaks up the monotony of single links or tightly narrated fpps. I see this post like a Warburgian constellation, a broad grouping of many items, yet somehow connected, with any and all offering an entry point of exploration. Best of the web in my opinion.
posted by Ahmad Khani at 3:01 PM on March 21, 2023 [16 favorites]

Disagree strongly with the suggestion to limit post links and honestly feel kind of awful for kliuless, who really does bring great multi-link posts.

My sense has long been and continues to be that if you want to see better or different posts on the blue, you should make them. And if there's something in a kliuless or other long-link post that doesn't get the treatment or comment you think it deserves, use the OP link as a starting point and a previously.
posted by gentlyepigrams at 3:21 PM on March 21, 2023 [25 favorites]

here's the thing. threads are open for 30 days. let's say a post is 70 links, if you did like 2.2 links a day you'd have it pretty much covered within 30-day time frame window. I applaud the long links and it is like a smorgasbord, you can pick and choose if you want. as to a limit I'm not sure/sure about that other then a real long crap/ fuck all thread would not be welcome as such post turn fertile ground for hijinxs, tomfoolery masked japery with gnome photos and tulip wars, not wise. I can think of about four posters that matches kliuless' depth and breadth of a subject matter. It's like a curated news feed style with a blurb.
posted by clavdivs at 3:28 PM on March 21, 2023 [8 favorites]

So just a counterpoint -

First I agree that in general, posts are good. I appreciate the work.

That said, for me, that post is just too much for me to even read all the titles, never mind to participate in the discussion. And like, that’s fine. No one needs my voice on climate change.

But to share how I feel as a reader - I had a moment of yay! about the Solnit because my family’s been working on downsizing footprint and maximizing joy for a while and it’s really rich territory for us, and I liked the piece enough that I was thinking of posting it.

But then I opened the post. And there is no way I’m going to read all those links. I read while waiting for laundry to finish, think on posts while driving, and type or voice-to-text while waiting in the parking lot for my kids. I don’t honestly have time to sit with all those tabs. For me, it is alienating…it feels like I went to read a good magazine article and got an academic thesis instead. i was expecting a 3,000 word commitment and got like - 35,000.

And although it’s silly, I was a bit disappointed because I wanted to talk about the Solnit piece and see how it came across to other people. And now it would be a double.

I don’t think that’s an argument against posts like these; I also rarely watch long videos. It’s fine.

But for me, it stops me from participating where if it had been broken up, I would have. I’m just sharing that, not advocating for a position. If all the posts have the idea that I had to read for 3 hours to participate in the discourse, I’d engage a lot less. I skim the page and then pick bits in the grout lines of my time, generally.
posted by warriorqueen at 3:33 PM on March 21, 2023 [35 favorites]

I'm just surprised this kind of massive linkdump post is OK, given all the stuff that isn't OK.


Fresh off the press. over 60 links and, and there all about one subject. So perhaps a matter of style. kliuless doesn't put much narrative in posts I believe it's as if letting the information speak for itself hence a short article summation. The summations themselves take most of the space.
posted by clavdivs at 3:47 PM on March 21, 2023 [1 favorite]

It takes a lot to make a post
An article or two topmost
A more inside to add some spice
A YouTube video is nice
And you've got
Too many links...

It takes a lot to FPP,
Build on a theme with quality,
Ungated links, and previouslies,
Too many links, you see!
The saying goes, it'll spoil the broth,
Mefites, I think that's not true
Maybe too many links will spoil the broth,
But they'll fill our hearts with so much, so much love!

Too many links!
posted by snofoam at 4:33 PM on March 21, 2023 [6 favorites]

I like kliuless' posts.
posted by seanmpuckett at 4:43 PM on March 21, 2023 [9 favorites]

I wouldn't want every post to be that way, but I think it's great to have a diversity of styles and approaches. I like kliuless's posts and hope they continue.

I don't think this post was meant as a personal call out or criticism, but I could see it being read that way and that would feel crappy to be on the receiving end.
posted by Dip Flash at 4:49 PM on March 21, 2023 [13 favorites]

I find it a little odd to see a critique of someone's posting style as a topic of discussion. There's no bad behavior, like a mean post, or unintended consequences, like posting in a way that is difficult for some to read. As far as I can tell. I am in the camp of let different posters have their style and just enjoy what you want to enjoy and let others do the same.

On a practical note, maybe it is worth saying that links featured in a very multilink post are also fair game for posting individually or in smaller posts without being deleted as a duplicate? It's not like we're buried under an avalanche of new posts. Would that make people feel better about just ignoring long posts that they don't like? "Using up" all the links due to policy about duplicates seems like the one thing that could be an issue from my perspective.
posted by snofoam at 4:59 PM on March 21, 2023 [18 favorites]

I don’t care for linkdumps, but I don’t think Metafilter needs to make up more rules for something that is basically harmless.
posted by betweenthebars at 5:06 PM on March 21, 2023 [19 favorites]

30-something comments and 79 favorites. I’d say that the post is appreciated by enough people to warrant not putting limits on how many links go in a post. And as mentioned upthread, there’s no need for you to read it if you find it overwhelming (which it is! But that’s cool because there’s a wealth of information in there for those that want to read it).

As for expanding on a certain part of it, I think you’d be within the rules if you made a new post about Solnit as long as you referenced the original thread. Right? One link is a double in a post that has 60? Fill yer boots!
posted by ashbury at 5:30 PM on March 21, 2023 [8 favorites]

This type of posts falls pretty easily into a "not my personal cup of tea to engage with but I'm glad other people are having a discussion about it, shrug and move on" category for me. It doesn't seem like such a frequent occurrence that we need rules to deal with it.

I *would* hope that perhaps if someone wanted to build a more in depth post around one or two of the links that didn't get much in-thread discussion, the mods could see their way clear to not considering it a double.
posted by Stacey at 5:31 PM on March 21, 2023 [11 favorites]

Of the 341 posts I've made to the front page, about ten of them have dozens of links each.

Some of them are basically indexes: "Here's a table of contents of scores of interesting bits of writing or other media that a person/organization/movement has published along these themes, because there is no pre-existing finding aid that would help someone who's searching for that collection as a whole." They were meant not just for current MeFites to read and comment on, but for the larger Internet to find and use in the years to come. Special case: one of them was specifically aimed at helping MeFites find more sources for interesting short stories to post to the front page.

The others use the links to annotate a narrative -- a person's life, a current news event that needs a lot of context, a problem and the research and policies around it.

I'm working on another one of those index-type posts right now. It's slow and I peck at it in bits and pieces in between other stuff.
posted by brainwane at 5:32 PM on March 21, 2023 [12 favorites]

Speaking for myself, I don’t really like mega-link types of posts (although I kind of specialize in them, in a way). I open a thread look at all the links, go “nope” and back out. It’s too much.

However, while my taste is perfect, it is not universal, and some people really like this style of post, and it’s clear a couple of posters, notably kliuless, like posting this way, so why should my preferences stop them? I’m sure there are plenty of people who don’t like horror or podcasts, so should I stop posting? I think there’s room for different styles, and ignoring the posts that don’t speak to you is fine. Now, if kliuless was complaining that people didn’t comment in their posts or only read the first link or something, I might have some advice, but that’s not the case.

I don’t like the idea of mining other posts for FPPs, which seems really counterproductive, although I’m not sure exactly why. I suppose, if someone took one of my podcast round ups and made separate FPPs for a bunch of those podcasts, I’d feel very odd about it. Not sure what kliuless thinks.
posted by GenjiandProust at 5:33 PM on March 21, 2023 [7 favorites]

Let a hundred flowers bloom. Let a hundred schools of thought contend.
posted by grobstein at 5:58 PM on March 21, 2023 [7 favorites]

I like kliuless's posts and others of this style. And in general I don't like the idea of restrictions on the form of posts. Nobody's forcing anyone to read things.
posted by equalpants at 6:01 PM on March 21, 2023 [8 favorites]

Sometimes I feel like the end state of Metafilter is just a place to discuss Metafilter itself. Not because this place is somehow flawed, but just because how the internet has changed and such. If it came to pass, it would not be entirely inappropriate.
posted by snofoam at 6:34 PM on March 21, 2023 [2 favorites]

It would be nice if these were divided into "main article or three that people will discuss" and "other material that might or might not be involved in the discussion." If the purpose of the site is to connect with each other over shared information, then that's only possible if people _can_ read what the post is about. I'm not saying that _is_ the main purpose of the site, but it's one possible approach.
posted by amtho at 6:54 PM on March 21, 2023 [4 favorites]

But then I opened the post. And there is no way I’m going to read all those links. ... But for me, it stops me from participating where if it had been broken up, I would have. I’m just sharing that, not advocating for a position. If all the posts have the idea that I had to read for 3 hours to participate in the discourse, I’d engage a lot less.

Warriorqueen, that's my reaction. It feels impossible to engage with a post like that. And I agree, sometimes the topics (well, some of the myriad topics) in these kinds of posts are interesting, and would make for a good discussion, but it feels impossible to have a coherent conversation with that kind of information overload at the top of the thread.
posted by Artifice_Eternity at 7:23 PM on March 21, 2023 [8 favorites]

Let a hundred flowers bloom. Let a hundred schools of thought contend.

this phrase has come to mean "come out come out wherever you are, it's all good, man, then BLAM, OFF with your HEAD"
posted by lalochezia at 8:02 PM on March 21, 2023 [4 favorites]

Brb using GPT-4 to make a political dossier on everyone who's ever posted anything online
posted by grobstein at 8:14 PM on March 21, 2023 [2 favorites]

I've ummed and ahhed about commenting because I don't love what feels like a personal call out- kliuless you are a valued member here and I like your posts!

However, I'd just like a heads up that what's coming below the fold is a multi-link post, I guess I feel similarly to warriorqueen. I wish I had a little heads up that the link above the fold would be the first of many, not all on strictly the same topic, but rather on a theme.

My way of browsing metafilter at the moment is to open fpps, see the comments, and then make a decision as to whether to open the links- so like warriorqueen I was looking for more on that particular article, and bounced off after scrolling a long way (on mobile) to even get to to comments.

But I wouldn't want to see a "this sort of thing gets deleted" - definitely not.
posted by freethefeet at 8:34 PM on March 21, 2023 [8 favorites]

Annnnnd, once again, the reason I don’t post on the Blue. If a well-researched, perfectly cited deep dive post not only can’t pass muster, but also receives a written complaint, what reason is there for folks to even participate? It’s so utterly demoralizing and draining.

Since this isn’t school or a job, why are there rubrics and performance appraisals? Why can’t people just make the posts they want to make?
posted by WaspEnterprises at 8:40 PM on March 21, 2023 [73 favorites]

I think most posts don’t have enough links. Honestly wish we could return to the good old days when participants on this site saw it more as a weblog than a discussion board.
posted by spudsilo at 9:06 PM on March 21, 2023 [4 favorites]

If a well-researched, perfectly cited deep dive post not only can’t pass muster, but also receives a written complaint, what reason is there for folks to even participate? It’s so utterly demoralizing and draining.

This is it, right here. The sort of issue taken in the original post here echoes a lot of what people have identified as corrosive & contributing to fewer voices being willing to endure the gauntlet of post-making.

What would you rather have, OP? Megaposts from people who do megaposts, or no posts from those same people? Sure, you don't want to go *that* far, you'd just prefer if they wrote their posts differently. But it's not like we're drowning in motivated posters bringing a bounty of riches to our front page such that we can winnow down submissions to the Procrustean ideal post.

How is this post helping Metafilter?
posted by CrystalDave at 9:20 PM on March 21, 2023 [18 favorites]

dunno, a celebration of the long post.
Been reading for 36 minutes and I haven't even reached Mars.
posted by clavdivs at 9:42 PM on March 21, 2023 [5 favorites]

There's no bad behavior, like a mean post, or unintended consequences, like posting in a way that is difficult for some to read. As far as I can tell.

"Difficult to read" is kinda exactly how I'd describe the megaposts. There is no coherent way to engage whey the roof, because the topic is super diffuse. Discussion ends up being about the first link anyway, or hugely disconnected. It doesn't feel very accessible.

Like many others, I just roll my eyes and move on. Do always wish I'd been warned before the fold though.
posted by Dysk at 11:34 PM on March 21, 2023 [5 favorites]

Whey the roof? With the topic. Just missed the edit window while making a cuppa that I clearly needed!
posted by Dysk at 11:42 PM on March 21, 2023 [6 favorites]

To be perfectly honest, I don’t really have a strong opinion on this posting style. I tend not to comment or favorite until I’ve looked at most of the links, and so a megapost feels uninviting to me, but they work for others, so I’m glad they exist.

My one reservation is that it’s happened a few times for me over the years that I’ve wanted to post a link and it’s been embedded within a megapost. Most of the times I’ve just worked around it, but a couple of times that link was the main impetus for the post, so I’ve just scotched it. So I’d support a policy change that encourages doubles for links that are one of twenty or thirty in a megapost.

That said, I believe it’s good that the community supports different ways of engaging with the site. I think this is a topic worth discussing, we don’t talk about posting practices enough, in my opinion, but essentially I think they’re all good posts, Brent.
posted by Kattullus at 11:56 PM on March 21, 2023 [15 favorites]

MetaFilter: just a place to discuss MetaFilter itself
posted by chavenet at 2:25 AM on March 22, 2023 [2 favorites]

"Difficult to read" is kinda exactly how I'd describe the megaposts.

To clarify, I was saying difficult to read for some people, like using formatting that didn’t work well with screen readers and was unintentionally excluding people who need to use them. I wasn’t referring to posts that aren’t narrow enough for some peoples personal taste.
posted by snofoam at 3:03 AM on March 22, 2023 [1 favorite]

To me, the problem with posts like these seems to be the discussion they create (or lack thereof). Six of the first ten comments aren’t engaging with the post at all. They’re either “thank you for posting this” or “I don’t like this style of post”. As someone who has posted the former more than once on a kliuless post, I think that says more about the rest of us than it does about kliuless. In this case, the discussion did eventually return to the topic of the post, which is nice.
posted by kevinbelt at 5:31 AM on March 22, 2023 [2 favorites]

I like posting single links and I also like posting mega-links. Variety is the spice of life.
posted by Fizz at 5:35 AM on March 22, 2023 [10 favorites]

There have been many times when I've thought that the first link on a post was something interesting that I'd like to read, but then I noticed screen after screen with 50 more links and I just closed the window in disgust.

The few times I've bothered to read through to the bottom of one of these stunt posts, I've noted many links covering either unrelated (or only very tangentially related) topics.

I don't understand why the poster, who seems to make these mind-numbing stunt posts every day, can't simply make several shorter posts a day that are actually readable and discussable.

I don't think that these stunt posts make Metafilter a better, more enjoyable place to spend time.
posted by Umami Dearest at 5:53 AM on March 22, 2023 [4 favorites]

I like mega-link posts. It is up to me the extent of which I choose to engage with all the links. I feel a special level of admiration for the work that goes into compiling posts like these. I think it's an indication of the affinity that Mefites have for their community that they would put the time and effort into creating a thoughtful link-essay like this - the post cited is not just a link-dump, but curated with intent. I don't see the problem. I don't think we should be too prescriptive about the format of posts on Metafilter - if one doesn't like a type of post, one can choose not to engage. (I post very rarely on Metafilter, for fear of criticism.)
posted by unicorn chaser at 5:55 AM on March 22, 2023 [12 favorites]

It is up to me the extent of which I choose to engage with all the links

This.

No one is forcing anyone to click a link they don't want to click. You control your finger or your mouse cursor. If there's too much information on a particular page and you dislike how that information is presented, then its quite easy to just disengage from that particular thread or to only engage with parts of the post.
posted by Fizz at 6:03 AM on March 22, 2023 [14 favorites]

There have been many times when I've thought that the first link on a post was something interesting that I'd like to read, but then I noticed screen after screen with 50 more links and I just closed the window in disgust.

LOL, disgust? Whew. It doesn't warrant this much energy.

I value all posts to the front page. I do not value random MeTas about preferences in posting style.
posted by tiny frying pan at 6:04 AM on March 22, 2023 [24 favorites]

Just as a data point, the ostensibly overly dense and offputting post has 80+ favorites and 40+ comments.
posted by DirtyOldTown at 6:13 AM on March 22, 2023 [8 favorites]

The last thing that anybody should be doing on Metafilter right now is discouraging people from posting.
posted by bondcliff at 6:14 AM on March 22, 2023 [52 favorites]

Sometimes you'll pick up a magazine and rather than reading it cover to cover, you flip through, you read an interesting article or a bit of an interview, and you flip through some more, and while maybe you sometimes feel a little guilty that you didn't read the whole thing, it's not a crisis, and you never think to yourself, "this magazine should not exist because I cannot read it all!"
posted by mittens at 6:40 AM on March 22, 2023 [11 favorites]

these mind-numbing stunt posts

Love 'em or hate 'em, I really don't think it's fair or accurate to call kliuless's posts "mind-numbing". I once made a FPP with 49 links about American football as part of a best post contest. Call that mind-numbing. Kliuless posts serious, intellectual stuff. It's mind-expanding, if anything.
posted by kevinbelt at 6:41 AM on March 22, 2023 [35 favorites]

"Disgust"? "Stunts"? "Mind-numbing"? That is an amazingly uncharitable reading. As I said before, I like these kinds of posts, and liked this one in particular. Nobody has to like everything, or anything in particular, but if one's response to a post, about space exploration, on a website that you can read for free, is to unleash this kind of invective, your expectations about whether and how much the world needs to cater to your preferences specifically are waaaaaaay the hell out of whack. Recalibrate.
posted by Ipsifendus at 6:50 AM on March 22, 2023 [53 favorites]

In a way, I come to MetaFilter to be overwhelmed. Y'all are super smart and good at researching links and articles and stuff I wouldn't be able to find on my own.

I'd rather have too much and pick through at my own pace/interest level than feel like a post is too thin on content.
posted by Twicketface at 6:54 AM on March 22, 2023 [6 favorites]

I like kliuless' Big Posts, I appreciate the effort they put into creating them, and I especially like that they are able to draw out connections between seemingly disparate topics or links - as in, on first glance you might wonder, "what does linked article #6 actually have to do with the title or main post??" but once you read linked article #6 (and then add #3 and #7), you can see how they're related and view correlations. kliuless' posts are virtual research papers, where reading multiple links (even if not all of them) provides meta-analysis or overview of topics and positions that are often quite complex.

I'm totally OK with large posts not generating much discussion - finding out about stuff I might have not been aware of is part of the reason I'm here, in addition to the discussion part.

I'm totally OK with not being able to ingest Big Posts in one sitting. Posts like kliuless' is one of the things I use the oft-doubted "favorites as bookmarks" function for. That way I can dip in and out as I have time and inclination.

So, yeah, strong disagree with the premise of this MeTa.
posted by soundguy99 at 6:55 AM on March 22, 2023 [16 favorites]

In the old days like twenty people would have come in here and said "Flag it and move on"
posted by grobstein at 7:00 AM on March 22, 2023 [3 favorites]

In the old days like twenty people would have come in here and said "Flag it and move on"

No "flag it" but I do like "Don't like 'em? Don't click 'em.".
posted by EndsOfInvention at 7:03 AM on March 22, 2023 [4 favorites]

Most of the times I’ve just worked around it, but a couple of times that link was the main impetus for the post, so I’ve just scotched it. So I’d support a policy change that encourages allows doubles for links that are one of twenty or thirty in a megapost.

This is the only possible downside I can see to the sort of megapost that is under discussion here, and I would likewise support such a policy change, with the above suggested edit.

I tend to not engage with such posts because I tend to have two reactions on opening them. First, "wow, this is a lot of cool information and connections and I'm a little awed by it" followed shortly by "I absolutely do not have time to give this the consideration it deserves, maybe I'll get to it later," and then I inevitably do not get to it later.

This is also how I feel about art museums.
posted by gauche at 7:05 AM on March 22, 2023 [6 favorites]

I like long posts, and I think the characterization of them as “linkdumps” is itself uncharitable (even if merely intended as descriptive), before one even gets to the less charitable comments. If anything, I lean toward thinking the short, short posts that are often the norm these days aren’t my cup of tea… but I’d rather have single-link posts than no posts at all. ;-)

I do not support the idea of adding tags or notes to posts to characterize them as short or long. There are already enough reasons to slow or stop MeFites’ urge to post.

Let’s not make posting harder.
posted by cupcakeninja at 7:09 AM on March 22, 2023 [4 favorites]

I liked the post, I may have even been the first comment to say so, ha!
I don't care what form the posts are: I just want more to read. Give me more. Help me find more things. More interesting things and important things, through the flood of bullshit that is the modern internet. I think not every post needs to foster a certain kind of discussion. I'm sure even, because plenty of posts with only a few perfectly good if not amazing links can end up with nearly no comments at all but we wouldn't want them gone. Just as lord knows we've seen circular chatfilter topic-riffing in posts with single links too. All of those are fine though, really. Clearly sometimes people on metaflilter just wanna let it out. Sometimes we have amazing insightful discussions. Sometimes we say wow thanks! 25 times and good! Better that then some of the other possibilities.
They all can coexist. In fact, they have to be if we want a diverse and sustainable community. You need all of them, and all of the different posts that elicit those different responses.
posted by wellifyouinsist at 7:29 AM on March 22, 2023 [13 favorites]

I echo ourobouros' comment at the top of the thread: kliuless' posts are the All You Can Eat Buffet of Metafilter. They're generally clear as to what's on offer, and if you're interested in it, there's a lot more where that came from.

All I want to know from the above the fold of a MeFi post is:

• what is this link about?
• why would I want to click on it?

If I can't discern that from what's above the fold, I'll generally skip it. There's probably been some interesting stuff that I've missed out on because the poster has decided to lead in with a pull quote that they think sums up the article, but only makes sense if you've already read the piece in question, or a bare mystery meat link that gives you no information at all, but hey, them's the breaks.
posted by zamboni at 7:49 AM on March 22, 2023 [1 favorite]

To clarify, I was saying difficult to read for some people, like using formatting that didn’t work well with screen readers and was unintentionally excluding people who need to use them. I wasn’t referring to posts that aren’t narrow enough for some peoples personal taste.


Not for nothing but the accessibility of something has a whole lot of different axes, and I find those posts physically exhausting in a way that I wouldn't find the same material split into several different posts. Plain language, link, is a thing for a reason you know?

I mean, the stakes here are pretty low, and personally I'm not asking more than consideration that different people have different struggles. But, yeah, different people have different struggles and complaints might be coming from somewhere other than "personal taste".
posted by Gygesringtone at 8:00 AM on March 22, 2023 [7 favorites]

I'm just surprised this kind of massive linkdump post is OK, given all the stuff that isn't OK.

I think most of the "Not OK" stuff stems from whether it is bad for the community. I know there is a lot (a lot!) of debate about what is good and bad for the community but a huge linkdump type of post on a topic that is not inherently fight-inducing seems to be one of those "Eh, not everything is for everyone" types of situations. Not my jam (I'm more one of those "read one giant essay" people) but they seem okay most of the time.
posted by jessamyn (staff) at 8:02 AM on March 22, 2023 [9 favorites]

I agree that this style of post makes it hard to have a coherent discussion. BUT, it used to be that good discussion wasn't the only factor in what makes a good post. I feel like good content stands on its own whether it leads to good discussion or not.
posted by rikschell at 8:07 AM on March 22, 2023 [20 favorites]

Some people seem to be really working hard to put the “it’s all about me” into metafilter. If someone came up to me in a party and said, “Hey, I really hate your posting style!” I would try to avoid them in the future. How does this stuff help the community in any way?
posted by snofoam at 8:15 AM on March 22, 2023 [13 favorites]

well when you spend a large portion of your time online crafting quality advice for a wide variety of interesting subjects you inevitably become invested and you can start to see yourself as kind of an integral part of the fabric of the site itself, and that could lead to the kind of thing you're talking about i guess.
posted by some loser at 8:22 AM on March 22, 2023

I like kliuless's posts, especially the way they add "also btw" asides, which is like being asked by a waiter with a sly lisp if you'd like some additional cream in your gravy.
posted by dmh at 8:32 AM on March 22, 2023 [2 favorites]

I don't understand why the poster, who seems to make these mind-numbing stunt posts every day, can't simply make several shorter posts a day that are actually readable and discussable.

One person's "mind-numbing stunt post" is another person's "deep dive into something really cool".

Metafilter never was, cannot be, and never will be 100% perfectly catered to everyone here. There are always going to be things that you don't like but which other people love, and there are going to be things that other people don't like but that you love.

But part of being in a community means that if you don't like something but someone else does, you let them go ahead and like it and just don't engage yourself. You also don't start accusing them of being "stunt posts" or "attention-grabbing" or whatever the hell. That's a basic-civility thing - they talk about this kind of thing on Sesame Street, for God's sake.

In conclusion: cope.
posted by EmpressCallipygos at 8:41 AM on March 22, 2023 [29 favorites]

I like these posts and appreciate the contribution of the poster.
posted by roolya_boolya at 8:46 AM on March 22, 2023 [6 favorites]

FPPs with lots of well-chosen and -curated links that are clearly the product of time and energy and care are one of my favorite kinds of FPP.

I'd like to see more of them.
posted by box at 8:50 AM on March 22, 2023 [11 favorites]

Plain language, link, is a thing for a reason you know?

The post in question does not even contain any original language, only excerpted quotes from the linked content. If you're saying that all posts should include a plain-language translation of linked articles, that's fair I guess, but it would be an issue endemic to the site, not specific to this type of post.
posted by dusty potato at 9:08 AM on March 22, 2023 [1 favorite]

This criticism is really dispiriting, and even though the FPP claims not to be calling out a particular user, it 100% calls out a particular user. There's room on the front page for all sorts of posts. If you think there should be more tightly focused FPPs, make them. Posts that rely solely (or even mostly) on paywalled content actually cause problems for people because they can't see the content to engage with it. Guidelines against relying on paywalled content make sense for that reason. I don't think a link buffet style of post breaks any community standards or requires policing, and I don't like the chilling effect of this complaint.
posted by fedward at 9:38 AM on March 22, 2023 [28 favorites]

I'm making more posts with more links.

:-)
posted by Fizz at 9:46 AM on March 22, 2023 [16 favorites]

This post seems really unnecessary. Presumably the mods have some discretion not to nuke a "duplicate" post if the link appears only once in a large collection. That's the only potential harm I can think of that results from this style of FPP.

If the site is going to crack down so hard on offensive content--which I think most people here would agree is necessary to some degree or another--it should probably be very mellow on what constitutes a "good" post. The goal of making a post to Mefi is not to have successfully navigated the rules on making a post to Mefi.
posted by praemunire at 9:48 AM on March 22, 2023 [9 favorites]

I'm making more posts with more links.

....You know, I HAVE been toying with a post that's an appreciation for the Kennedy Center Honors ceremonies....
posted by EmpressCallipygos at 9:52 AM on March 22, 2023 [3 favorites]

A. I'm glad this has become a Meta. That was my immediate thought when I saw Artifice_Eternity's comment. That this is precisely the kind of thing we should be discussing here. It's our site. What do we/don't we want from it? And why? And what about ...?

B. I don't for a moment think we need official policy for/against such mega posts.

C. I'm with warriorqueen ...

for me, that post is just too much for me to even read all the titles, never mind to participate in the discussion.

So yeah, in my idealized Metafilter, all of kliuless's hard work would get spread across a series of posts.

The last thing that anybody should be doing on Metafilter right now is discouraging people from posting.

Agreed. So why not get more distinct FPP's out of an equal amount of research etc?
posted by philip-random at 10:24 AM on March 22, 2023 [6 favorites]

I am in the camp of people who are overwhelmed by all the links and info kliuless puts into his posts but totally appreciative of his efforts anyway.

The "flipping through a magazine" analogy mittens used is perfect for this entire site. You can't possibly read every last thing that gets posted here. Choose the things that draw your interest and suit your level of engagement. Not every single post will be well-suited to you.
posted by briank at 10:28 AM on March 22, 2023 [12 favorites]

Leaving aside any opinion I have about those FPP posts, a MetaTalk post essentially calling out a single user for their posting style feels unnecessarily mean.

...but I'm not singling them out...

But you did!

If the user was offensive in some way, then sure (although I assume the mods would have dealt with it) but the length of their posts?!

If a MetaTalk discussion about the pros and cons of multi-link FPPs was necessary it would have been kinder to wait at least a couple more days and then, if necessary, use examples from several users. Big hugs to kliuless.

This kind of thing does not encourage me to ever make a FPP.
posted by fabius at 10:53 AM on March 22, 2023 [33 favorites]

So why not get more distinct FPP's out of an equal amount of research etc?

Because (I assume!) kliuless likes doing it this way. If they enjoyed doing it the other way, they must know how.
posted by praemunire at 11:07 AM on March 22, 2023 [8 favorites]

Agreed. So why not get more distinct FPP's out of an equal amount of research etc?

Personally, I sometimes find it easier to think of things in big interconnected chunks (like the constellations mentioned above). As a reader, if the big FPP went away and became the multiple FPPs, it wouldn't phase me too much in the sense that I wouldn't know what I wasn't missing. But I could see how it may add more work to break it apart as a poster: Does link A go best with post 1? Maybe it'd be better in post 3 to add context. Etc.

I guess the FPPs could be tied together and reference each other, but I'd find having them on different pages would remove that element of connectedness for me. I personally do better when things are on the same page.

I do think if a link from a giant post gets re-used then it would make sense to not count it as a double, especially if there was a different context and links added. But even without additional links I personally wouldn't mind a double, it'd let everyone interact with content in the manner of their choosing.
posted by ghost phoneme at 11:23 AM on March 22, 2023 [1 favorite]

I speak for myself alone: one reason why I rarely post on Metafilter these days is because of what I came to perceive as a constant, negative feedback loop about how, why, and what people post or don't post.

I realized that I had come to not only consume, but also feed into that negativity. It didn't feel good. So I quit posting. I also started to visit Metafilter with less frequency. Since then, I've tried to do some soul-searching and to interrogate my own biases.

The Metafilter community, like any community, collectively fosters its culture. And culture is as much an expression of a community's individual members as it is a reflection of its members.

Having said that, I know Metafilter has always prided itself as a place where intelligent, analytical, and creative people could come together to discuss ideas and current events. Over the years, I have even seen some folks either imply, or outright state, that this community has a longstanding obligation to maintain a dignified or otherwise high-quality intellectual presence when compared to Reddit and other social [media] forums.

Which is fine. I appreciate that Metafilter aspires to be more cerebral than the average internet gathering place. It's why I'm here.

The issue is that we're cerebral in an exclusionary manner, rather than an inclusive manner. We police each other's FPPs for being too short, too long, too wordy, too broad, too specific, improperly framed, and so forth. Classic Metafilter beanplating. I have a beanplating tendency, too, so I get it.

While beanplating can be charming, it really risks the loss of better, broader community engagement.

If I see a post I don't want to read, I move on. This is very easy for me but, based on this Metatalk post, might not be so easy for others. Why is that? Please know that I ask this with utter sincerity. Why is that I and like-minded members can skip a not-really-meant-for-me post on Metafilter, just like I do on Reddit and every other posting forum I inhabit, but this is not always the case for other community members?

Because (again—I speak only for myself) many of us understandably want more for Metafilter. We want our beloved community to be better, but I think there's a tendency for individual community members to define 'better' based on highly personal and perhaps even idiosyncratic criteria. I'm not pointing fingers, because I have done this too.

I have recently seen community members lambast an FPP for covering television pop culture. This disappointed me, given that pop culture can be a fascinating reflection of the zeitgeist, ripe for analysis and discussion, not to mention it's just fun for fun's sake.

And now, I'm seeing us criticize an FPP for containing ... too many links.

The perfect FPP for "me," and the perfect FPP for "you," does not exist. Metafilter is not a perfect place. It's made up of human beings.

Perhaps if we want to encourage posting and community engagement, we should take ourselves a little less seriously—and embrace the more superficial imperfections.
posted by nightrecordings at 11:26 AM on March 22, 2023 [65 favorites]

So why not get more distinct FPP's out of an equal amount of research etc?

There's still a one post every 24 hours limit on the blue, right? There is one reason right there.

Also, if they (or anyone who does large posts with lots of links) did that, the inevitable MeTa would be, "this person has been harping on this issue for weeks. If they are going to post, can they please choose a different topic for a while?"

Clearly, I think this style of posting is fine (and I can't say that I read them that often).
posted by a non mouse, a cow herd at 11:27 AM on March 22, 2023 [6 favorites]

So why not get more distinct FPP's out of an equal amount of research etc?

How about adhering to your stylistic preferences when you do a post and let other people follow theirs, when they're doing the work?
posted by Ipsifendus at 11:28 AM on March 22, 2023 [10 favorites]

The "flipping through a magazine" analogy mittens used is perfect for this entire site.

I just want to gently point out that magazines are actually highly designed so that readers know what to expect. You can be on the subway, gauge how many stops you have left, and put your thumb in a magazine of a kind you've read a few times and know with a few pages' accuracy whether you're in the front short-stuff section (2 stops) or the middle-to-back feature well with longer stuff (10 stops to Kennedy:)) (and depending on the magazine, you'll have a sense of how long the features in the feature well will be.) And you can flip around.

I'm not saying FPPs have to do that.

However from a vaguely editorial perspective...helping the reader know why information is where it is, and what the commitment is, has value. A lot of websites have tried to recreate that tactile information by giving the approximate reading length of an article at the top, so that readers can determine whether or not to start.

For me, there are benefits to thinking about what readers/users want and expect. And then sometimes when you break those expectations, it's also delightful. It's not a blanket bad thing for people to share their preferences, whether we agree on this post's particular framing or not.

If I see a post I don't want to read, I move on. This is very easy for me but, based on this Metatalk post, might not be so easy for others. Why is that?

I don't really want to harp on it because it's not a big deal to me and I definitely think most posts are great and that ideally there's no real limit to links. (I do like media/short story/etc. round up links.)

But I will reiterate that for me, for this what seemed like a topic-based post, I was looking for the possibility to discuss the Solnit article in the MetaFilterVerse, and the multi-link mega post format stopped me. That's all.

I just want more to read. Give me more. Help me find more things.

This cracked me up a bit. I think I have a particular media landscape because I come here to NOT read more things; I get a firehose of information from newsletters and subscriptions -- good information -- and often I kind of sort through what I might read closely or think about more by what's appeared on the FPP.

One of the things I value in discussion of articles on topics is the kind of real-life context provided by discussion, as opposed to just links, so that's my bias.

It goes to show we are a diversity of people and a diversity of posts is great. But I also think we can listen to each other; it doesn't have to be an either/or.
posted by warriorqueen at 11:56 AM on March 22, 2023 [7 favorites]

A. I'm glad this has become a Meta. That was my immediate thought when I saw Artifice_Eternity's comment. That this is precisely the kind of thing we should be discussing here. It's our site. What do we/don't we want from it? And why? And what about ...?

That's what I thought.

Leaving aside any opinion I have about those FPP posts, a MetaTalk post essentially calling out a single user for their posting style feels unnecessarily mean.

There was a particular post (and user) that inspired this post on the day I made it, but I've contemplated posting about this for a long time, and as I said, in reference to the general idea that maybe there should be an upper bound on how many links can be in a post.

I don't see how it's hard to understand that a particular post by a particular user can be the immediate impetus for a post about a general issue. If I hadn't included a link to a particular example of the phenomenon in question, my post wouldn't be as useful or substantive.
posted by Artifice_Eternity at 12:09 PM on March 22, 2023 [2 favorites]

And that leads me to ask: Is there really no upper bound on how long a MeFi post should be, or how many links it should include? If, say, 75 links is OK, what about 150? What about 300?
posted by Artifice_Eternity at 12:11 PM on March 22, 2023 [1 favorite]

If a 300 link post goes up, flag it and move on. Probably won't have to worry about it. But if anyone wants to try I would still be impressed while I...you guessed it...flagged it and moved on.
posted by tiny frying pan at 12:19 PM on March 22, 2023 [4 favorites]

Artifice, respectfully, I think we can cross that bridge when we get there. Metatalks that enter the Land of Hypotheticals rarely go well, or improve the current discourse.
posted by nightrecordings at 12:23 PM on March 22, 2023 [10 favorites]

We police each other's FPPs for being

I'm against policing absolutely. But I'm not against stating a preference for something. Which I feel is what this thread is about. I'm not noticing much of what I'd call policing.

Though I guess this could be an ask/guess thing.

How about adhering to your stylistic preferences when you do a post and let other people follow theirs,

fair enough. But the flip of it is that I personally would like to hear feedback from people if my posts are somehow annoying them. I don't want them to scream at me, shut me down, etc ... but a little honest feedback -- I welcome that.

Again -- ask/guess?
posted by philip-random at 12:28 PM on March 22, 2023 [2 favorites]

As mentioned above, what some think of as style others see as an accessibility issue that prevents them from participating in the discussion. It is frustrating that the default response from a lot of users seems to boil down to "it doesn't bother me so just get over yourself".

I don't think we need a rule against this sort of post but it would be nice if posters could strive towards accesibility and inclusivity.
posted by Television Name at 12:57 PM on March 22, 2023 [6 favorites]

I do not agree that the sort of post in question should be against the rules.

Such megaposts are generally not my cup of tea, nor are they the way I choose to engage with this website. But my assumption would be that some other users do in fact enjoy them, perhaps in the same way the creators of such posts enjoy putting them together. To me it reads like, “Here is a rabbit hole you may or may not wish to go down.”

If someone really wants to have a specific discussion about a specific item linked in a megapost, it seems fine to make your own post about that thing.

Metafilter rarely has too many posts, except for that time when everyone was making new posts about potatoes or whatever.
posted by wondermouse at 1:11 PM on March 22, 2023 [2 favorites]

As mentioned above, what some think of as style others see as an accessibility issue that prevents them from participating in the discussion. It is frustrating that the default response from a lot of users seems to boil down to "it doesn't bother me so just get over yourself".

Vague claims of inaccessibility can sometimes come across as finding a stalking horse for your personal preferences, as if one couldn't say "I don't like these kinds of posts" without finding some hypothetical marginalized group to line up behind one's preferences. We saw this some time ago in a similar metatalk complaining about Youtube links. If I have missed something, I apologize, but in this discussion I don't see a single person actually saying "these kinds of posts are actually inaccessible to me/someone I know because of my disability." (I do see someone using the word "inaccessible" in another sense, which is fine, but not the same thing.)

If there is an accessibility issue--and I don't know whether there is one here or not--then one should explain why there is an issue, who is affected, in what ways. Then one can consider whether there are ways to make accommodations and, importantly, whether there are competing access needs or other considerations. Obviously there is no guarantee that one will be happy with whatever resolution emerges, but "we should be more welcoming to the concerns of hypothetical people who might have a problem but we aren't sure what it is or how it might be fruitfully addressed because we don't know who they are or what the exact contours of the problem might be...but they do agree with me that this is bad" is not a helpful approach.
posted by praemunire at 1:53 PM on March 22, 2023 [17 favorites]

And that leads me to ask: Is there really no upper bound on how long a MeFi post should be, or how many links it should include? If, say, 75 links is OK, what about 150? What about 300?

This has already happened and of course there was a meta. I think a long and link heavy post every once in a while is totally fine as part of the overall metafilter mix.
posted by the_dreamwriter at 2:00 PM on March 22, 2023

> I don't see a single person actually saying "these kinds of posts are actually inaccessible to me/someone I know because of my disability."

They're difficult for me to read because of what I presume is my ADHD and my (temporary) odd vision. But eh, I don't expect anyone to work around that. I don't want anyone to work around that. Some people with ADHD might really like a deep dive hyperfocus!

I don't like reading that kind of post, so I don't read it.
posted by The corpse in the library at 2:03 PM on March 22, 2023 [15 favorites]

We need more variety, not more conformity to a specific way of how one can engage. This purity culture (started by right wingers, to be very very clear) that is sinking into every part of the internet is killing what makes the internet fun. Metafilter is one of the last places in the internet where folks have huge amounts of freedom to format their posts, so don't get duped by social media, and this is coming from a young Millenial like me who witnessed the switchover from early Web 2.0 to late Web 2.0.

Also, I feel you should have talked to the OP directly about this, rather than trying to make this a Metafilter thing, aren't we supposed to be encouraging of people having their own styles in posting?
posted by yueliang at 2:40 PM on March 22, 2023 [7 favorites]

Also as a disabled designer who does accessibility consulting, people need to stop using the word accessibility when they mean "this is not my personal preference." It makes it harder to accommodate actual differences in disability and neurodivergence, and there is no universally accessible post, but that means inviting and creating more approaches, not less.
posted by yueliang at 2:44 PM on March 22, 2023 [49 favorites]

Anodyne anecdote ahoy! I do love me a music megapost from a fan, just as much as a good SLYT. Was introduced to Mala Rodríguez's music by this 2013 post from filthy light thief. Probably clicked no more than five random links out of the ... 41-ish there, but found a new-to-me artist whose singles I enjoyed. Woo!

Insofar as link-heavy posts present accessibility issues I think that's a discussion for people with more context worth advancing and being heard, the loss to me from fewer links in a WALL OF LINKS is negligible but if it's beneficial to others then I'm all for it. If I'm being glib though then sure, set a limit. Seventy-seven seems a lot, so hardcap it at 100. No-one clicks them all, nor is expected to
posted by I'm always feeling, Blue at 2:49 PM on March 22, 2023

Actually I take back the last part of my first, previous comment about talking to the OP individually -- in an ideal world, one could have a friendly discussion asking about why another person on the website is making these posts and having a good convo. In this case, DMing another user about why their posts are "so long" may not have the same impact -- these types of posts are incredibly useful in an internet world where archives and history and context get lost all the time.

I just don't understand what the problem is -- isn't it good that people are invested in making awesome Blue posts?

I still think it's rather mean to make this into a MetaTalk post and I really don't want to post anything on the Blue now, if a thoughtfully and carefully created post like this can be the topic of something like this.
posted by yueliang at 3:00 PM on March 22, 2023 [7 favorites]

Gotta say I'm not loving the slow slide into "actually, you're the problem for making this type of Metatalk post" that seems to be happening. This is the sort of Metatalk thread that I thought we wanted, wasn't it? Clearly-framed things that people want to discuss with the community?

The pushback here, vs. the recent pushback against moderating anything but hate speech in Metatalk, vs. the ongoing complaints about the queue... I can't imagine trying to reconcile them into a single Metatalk policy.
posted by sagc at 3:22 PM on March 22, 2023 [5 favorites]

kliuless's posts are like the snow-capped peaks of the mountain range I grew up in the shadows of.

You're not going to be up for summiting those babies every day, but there's plenty of excellent hiking to be had on their lower slopes, and they confer a worthiness and a grandeur on the lesser peaks and the foothills which would not exist without them.

Not having them would be a big loss to Metafilter.
posted by jamjam at 3:26 PM on March 22, 2023 [25 favorites]

I didn't read through the entire post myself, because I don't have the spoons today and I already read the Solnit piece (linked from her Facebook, where I follow her). But I like that the post exists, and I might come back to it at some point and read some of the other links. I've done that with other massive posts. I think these posts are interesting and I like them. I think Metafilter would be poorer without a variety of posting styles and post types.
posted by joannemerriam at 3:30 PM on March 22, 2023 [5 favorites]

This is the sort of Metatalk thread that I thought we wanted, wasn't it? Clearly-framed things that people want to discuss with the community?

Posting to nitpick and complain about another member’s posting style is something that doesn’t seem useful to me. I also find it embarrassing and unpleasant. But the OP and others were able to make their petty complaints and I get to say that I am not sympathetic to them. So, I guess MetaTalk is working in that respect. Haters gonna hate, but even more people seem to be grateful to posters posting good stuff in whatever style works for them, so thank goodness for that.

I think criticizing someone’s posting style is uncouth and unnecessary, and it genuinely is not what I think MetaTalk is for. There are problems that need to be called out sometimes, like discrimination or whatever. These are complaints that are probably necessary to lead the site to a better place. But there’s nothing that says any reasonably articulated complaint is something that is worthy of discussing. Sometimes those complaints suck and raising them just makes the site worse. Sometimes they’re highly self-centered and impossible to address. There’s nothing that says MetaTalk has to always be negative. Someone could have made a post encouraging short posts. Someone thought it through for one second and realize, of course, different people like different posts and criticizing one of the actual human beings making an effort to share something is, in fact, rude and pointless.
posted by snofoam at 3:50 PM on March 22, 2023 [8 favorites]

Wow, I'm getting the feeling that in order for my comment about accessibility to count here I would have had to stood up and say "Hi, I'm Gygesringtone, I have _____ and _____ which means that I find reading long posts exhausting, it's not just a preference, it's a really real thing!" and maybe get a notary public to stamp my forehead with "Authentic!". Which, I could do, but honestly, forget that noise. If you're super curious or can't think of any sort of condition that might make processing long dense blocks of information an issue, go ahead and check my commenting history, I'm actually really forthcoming, just not when folks are implying I need to show my Doctor's note. I know what my preferences are, and I know what being exhausted is, and I'm in a much better position than someone sitting outside my body to tell me which my reaction to those posts is.

At the end of the day though, believe me or not. Think my situation counts as one of accessibility or is "just preferences" or not. No matter how that shakes out, I still stand by my initial point: folks are different and it's a kindness to consider how those differences play out in how we interact with the site.
posted by Gygesringtone at 4:39 PM on March 22, 2023 [10 favorites]

@Gygesringtone: I am not sure if your comment is directed towards me, but my comment discussing accessibility is in response to the general issue of people using 'accessibility' to defend bad faith interpretations of why someone is posting this and defending that as a preference. I personally skip over link-dense FPPs by default due to my own disability and sensory needs, so I apologize if I contributed to you feeling excluded and feeling like you needed to overshare personal information because that's the complete opposite of the point I was trying to make (it's really super hard to keep track of all the comments in a MetaTalk thread.)

What I do think that Metafilter could probably approve from as a whole is understanding that there is access friction even in how we create our posts and comments for this website. What would be a satisfying FPP for one is and can be inaccessible to others, and there are competing access needs. Overall we could probably benefit from thinking and brainstorming more about fun FPP posts and ways of doing so and again, embracing a variety of approaches and methods. If this results in more FPPs overall, that would be great.
posted by yueliang at 4:59 PM on March 22, 2023 [8 favorites]

We're good. I didn't quote anyone because it was sort of a repeatedly stubbing my toe thing, it's not that any particular comment was the issue, but the sum total can be too much.

The most frustrating part is I don't actually care that much about the long threads, I just skip them. Like you, I'm a big advocate in different conversations being for different people. It's just hard to make spaces for folks with needs you don't think about, and there seemed to be a blind spot around issues with those particular posts.
posted by Gygesringtone at 5:16 PM on March 22, 2023 [4 favorites]

I am glad we are good and I emphathize heavily with the toe stubbing and overload so I'm glad you spoke -- and yes I totally agree with you -- I do think Metafilter (and the world at large) would benefit from that discussion about how we can make the space truly accessible and make it for needs people don't think about, which definitely opens up to a lot of very fun and very different creation possibilities.
posted by yueliang at 5:19 PM on March 22, 2023 [2 favorites]

And that leads me to ask: Is there really no upper bound on how long a MeFi post should be, or how many links it should include? If, say, 75 links is OK, what about 150? What about 300?

This has already happened and of course there was a meta. I think a long and link heavy post every once in a while is totally fine as part of the overall metafilter mix.

Artifice_Eternity, in that MeTa thread 9 years ago I said I thought the kliuless posts were too much. I've since changed my mind on them and really enjoy seeing them for a couple of reasons:

1. The writeups are interesting. I will usually only click on 1 or 2 of the links at most but I will read the writeups to at least get a super high level executive summary of them.
2. The couple of links I click on are pretty good. I enjoyed the Rebecca Solnit article on abundance.
3. A large portion of the commenters on any given FPP haven't actually read/watched/heard the link that was the subject of the FPP. Even if it's a short single link one. So fine no one will have read all of the links in the post but people may have read some of the links or because the topics are always interesting just give their opinion or experiences on them and to the extent that there's a conversation it's usually pretty good. I also like that the FPPs aren't hyper focused on one area so the discussion can be about different things.
4. I appreciate kliuless as a community member and if this is how they prefer to make their posts I am not going to ask them to substitute my preferences for their own. I've made a grand total of 8 FPPs and they were almost all single link ones. kliuless is putting out a couple of these large posts every week. Respect the work.
5. At this point I feel like the posts are like going inside the Tardis for the first time or Alice emerging from the rabbit hole where when I click on that [more inside] I don't know what I'm going to get but I know it'll be interesting.

Who knows, maybe in another 9 years I'll go back to thinking the posts are too much. Hopefully that won't have any effect on whether kliuless decides to keep on making them or not.
posted by any portmanteau in a storm at 5:59 PM on March 22, 2023 [7 favorites]

Then… don't read long posts? Click out of it? You don't have to read it.
posted by Ahmad Khani at 6:05 PM on March 22, 2023 [1 favorite]

I'm often very interested in the topics that kliuless posts about but find the actual posts impossible to interact with given the huge number of links. They are usually all related to the overall topic but without any narrative structure from the poster I don't find a good way to engage with it and just end up disappointed because I was interested in the topic.
posted by Nec_variat_lux_fracta_colorem at 6:29 PM on March 22, 2023 [4 favorites]

This thread has 115 comments and 5 favorites. I'm surprised at both of those numbers, frankly.
posted by ashbury at 7:02 PM on March 22, 2023

Posting to nitpick and complain about another member’s posting style is something that doesn’t seem useful to me.

Seems like a self-refuting comment.
posted by Artifice_Eternity at 7:09 PM on March 22, 2023 [1 favorite]

Gygesringtone, I hadn't thought, until reading some folks' comments, to conceptualize my feelings of overwhelm from the kinds of posts I'm complaining about in terms of ADHD, or some other issue of neurodiversity, but there's an argument to be made there. And I don't know, perhaps that carries some kind of weight on MeFi that the arguments I made don't.

I do think that an expectation that a post has some degree of unity, coherence, and brevity can be understood at least partly as an accessibility issue. There are many reasons that those qualities are traditionally considered to be desirable in writing.
posted by Artifice_Eternity at 7:12 PM on March 22, 2023

If a well-researched, perfectly cited deep dive post not only can’t pass muster, but also receives a written complaint, what reason is there for folks to even participate? It’s so utterly demoralizing and draining.

I don't think I've posted here since we were doing Election threads, but this, this, this.

If a thread like this popped up about a post I made (even with all of the positive comments) and got called a "mind-numbing stunt post" I'd button out of the site before I even got to the bottom of the Meta.

And it is NOT inspiring me to make a post here anytime soon. There are places I feel confident I won't run into this, and some of them are on Reddit, which should really tell us something.



Note: Everyone needs a hug.
posted by mmoncur at 7:47 PM on March 22, 2023 [12 favorites]

I spent a long time debating whether or not to post this, because it could come off sounding dismissive and I don't intend that. I just really don't see how any of the alternatives to long, link-filled posts would be more accessible than a single post like the one in question. If multiple-link posters took the advice of some people here and broke up their posts into individual links*, there would still be the same number of links, just spread across multiple posts. If anything, that would seem less accessible to me, since you'd have more of the now-single-link posts bumping other posts off the front page. Unless the suggestion is to just have people post less, which is both not helpful and also, thankfully, not seriously being suggested so far. I'm just not seeing how having a bunch of links in one post is substantively different than having a bunch of posts on the front page; they're both just hyperlinks on a page. Or how it's different than non-Metafilter sites, e.g. the front page of CNN, which by my count has links to 31 individual stories just above the fold, or the front page of Wikipedia, which has 23 links just within the "today's featured article" box. No one expects to engage with all the links on those pages, and the fact that there's a link to a story about a soccer goal does not preclude anyone from clicking through the link to the story about interest rates.

I'm also not particularly comfortable with the notion of density and complexity as an accessibility issue. Or rather, I'm OK with it being an issue, but not with the solution of getting rid of dense, complex multi-link posts. We don't tear down staircases because some people have problems climbing stairs. Instead, we build elevators and ramps to go along with the staircases. Immanuel Kant is dense and complex, and I understand why not many people would choose to read Kant, but I'm glad I had the opportunity to.

Finally, I'm also not sure why people who want to discuss a single link in one of the multi-link posts don't just do that. There are innumerable FPPs where the comments veer off into directions only tenuously related to the original post. For example, this FPP about browser usage, where a couple of comments were evangelizing on behalf of particular browsers. Some commenters engaged with that tangent, some engaged more directly with the post, and others just engaged with other comments in amusing ways without really engaging with the OP at all. Indeed, quite a few of the commenters on the post in question did discuss the Solnit article without much reference to the other links in the post.

*This is, of course, not possible for the poster in question, because there's a one-post-per-day limit. Kliuless has made three other posts in the past week, meaning that even if he split each post in half, he still wouldn't be able to post the same number of links in the same time span.
posted by kevinbelt at 7:49 PM on March 22, 2023 [5 favorites]

If a well-researched, perfectly cited deep dive post not only can’t pass muster, but also receives a written complaint, what reason is there for folks to even participate? It’s so utterly demoralizing and draining.

people have identified as corrosive & contributing to fewer voices being willing to endure the gauntlet of post-making.

This is the reasoning I don't understand. There's no "muster to pass" on MetaFilter.

This is a MetaFilter thread, created to ask a question about a type of post. The point of the MetaFilter thread is to open the discussion to MeFites. MeFites express varying opinions but community rules and community members call out and criticize personal attacks.

Posters are encouraged to join the thread, to talk about their post and to clear up whatever misconceptions they are hearing from other MeFites.

It's like the difference between your HOA cutting the power to Christmas lights they don't like and your MeFi HOA opening a discussion with themselves and you and your neighbors so that you could share with them why your particular Christmas lights are important to you.
posted by bendy at 7:53 PM on March 22, 2023 [1 favorite]

The “weblog” part of Metafilter being a “community weblog” means I expect single-link and hundred-link posts and everything in between.

I don’t choose to read a post based solely on its length or number of links alone, I don’t use a standard of whether a post is “coherent” or not when deciding how to respond to what I’m reading, and I don’t think it’s worth the community’s time to attempt to delimit just how logically-punctuated, well-formatted and topically-organized a longer post needs to be once it passes a certain number of links in order to maximize the likelihood that people engage with it.
posted by mdonley at 8:14 PM on March 22, 2023 [4 favorites]

To all the people reading this who are now feeling much less eager to create posts of any kind, please reconsider.

Remember that conversations like these draw out a few strong voices, that then creates the illusion of an enormous unfriendly crowd.

Post the kind of thing that YOU love to see because there are so many others like you who will read it with appreciation and quiet, absorbed interest.
posted by Zumbador at 8:58 PM on March 22, 2023 [19 favorites]

... is there really no upper bound on how long a MeFi post should be, or how many links it should include? If, say, 75 links is OK, what about 150? What about 300?
This has already happened ...

Each of those numbers has been exceeded by a long shot many times. From memory, rhaomi and zarq are two users that used to post lots of monster posts and there was someone (user name escapes me just now - tamim maybe?) that used to do similar posts, but with a link for each word or sometimes each letter of each word. These posts aren't really my thing and I'd look through a few links at most, but I'm always impressed by the amount of work put in. There's always something there to learn.

Accessibility is something definitely worth paying attention to, particularly considering how screen readers navigate the post, but it shouldn't be a barrier to creating posts with lots of threads, just more thought is needed to make it as accessible as possible. Nobody is required to read all the posts though and the majority of them probably aren't interesting to most that visit here. There are enough users to go around.
posted by dg at 9:06 PM on March 22, 2023 [2 favorites]

I loved the "Space Post!" I thought we didn't call people out like this, I thought we talk about the ideas presented and not mefites. We want more, not less. The only thing I'd like less of is, criticism of Mefites, and grousing, in general. Lotsa links makes a great sausage.
posted by Oyéah at 9:14 PM on March 22, 2023 [4 favorites]

From 2019: a summary of stuff disabled and neuroatypical MeFites find difficult on MetaFilter, behaviors that make things harder or easier, etc. Includes a few points relevant to this discussion, such as the one about concern that one's FPP format is not what others want. Relevant to the comments and questions about accessibility and inclusion.
posted by brainwane at 10:36 PM on March 22, 2023 [7 favorites]

If anything, that would seem less accessible to me, since you'd have more of the now-single-link posts bumping other posts off the front page.

I think you're misunderstanding how the giant posts can be hard to approach. It's like trying to swallow a steak in a oner, vs being given time to cut it up and chew.

(And the site doesn't nice so quickly that stuff falling off the front page is much of a concern. It's the 23rd today, and there are posts on the front page of the blue from the 18th.)
posted by Dysk at 11:27 PM on March 22, 2023 [3 favorites]

(Not that it matters, but I find the free threads similarly unapproachable, again because of the lack of common context to frame discussion. Just to make it clear, I am explicitly not calling for any kind of change in this comment or prior ones in thread.)
posted by Dysk at 12:01 AM on March 23, 2023 [4 favorites]

Artifice_Eternity: I don't see how it's hard to understand that a particular post by a particular user can be the immediate impetus for a post about a general issue. If I hadn't included a link to a particular example of the phenomenon in question, my post wouldn't be as useful or substantive.

It's entirely understandable and I never claimed I didn't understand it.

What I didn't understand is the need to link to only that post, rather than include additional examples, and the need to mention only one user rather than several (or omitting the usernames entirely).

I'm sure it wasn't your intention, but the result is dozens of people debating the pros and cons of the style of a single user's posts (plus some comments bringing in other users'). Maybe kliuless has incredibly thick skin and doesn't care but if it was me I'd be mortified - despite some people approving of the style - and I'd feel like this wasn't a friendly space in which to spend my time.
posted by fabius at 4:05 AM on March 23, 2023 [12 favorites]

Yeah, were I the author of the post in question, and saw this meta, I'd walk away from this site without a second thought and never come back.
posted by Ipsifendus at 5:36 AM on March 23, 2023 [7 favorites]

I think you're misunderstanding how the giant posts can be hard to approach

Maybe. Maybe I approach them differently than other people? Personally, I'll read the post, and if some of the links appeal to me, I'll open them in a new tab. But even on posts that are right up my proverbial alley, the hit rate is pretty low. And even when the hit rate is high, there are tools (e.g. Pocket) to help. I don't think there's ever been a multi-link post where I've clicked through every link. Is that something people do? Open every post and read every link?
posted by kevinbelt at 6:50 AM on March 23, 2023 [1 favorite]

I don't think there's ever been a multi-link post where I've clicked through every link. Is that something people do? Open every post and read every link?

Finally, I'm also not sure why people who want to discuss a single link in one of the multi-link posts don't just do that.

With the caveat that I have my off days like anyone else, in general I DO feel an obligation to visit the links in a multi-link post, unless it's a previously.

For me really what distinguishes the experience of reading things here as opposed to anywhere else is context. (And discoverability to some degree.)

Sometimes the context comes from the comments and sometimes it comes from the post itself. But that's what I like about here - sometimes the comments are just people like me sharing ideas, which is fun, and sometimes someone posts a comment or is an actual expert or has an expert link that really shifts my perspective on A Thing.

For me, that's kind of the magic sauce of this site.

So for me, if someone's provided links in a post I take them as being there for a reason. I definitely try to read them all, or at least understand why they are included. That's part of respecting the work of posting.

And if I can't discern the reason, then I don't engage because it feels like I'm not actually engaging with whatever the point is. I realize that participating in this thread could also be not respectful but I hope I'm managing to convey that I do appreciate the work kiluless puts in.

I totally see that other people engage with those things differently and that's neat - I think I would have assumed before this discussion that other people were basically deliberately staying out of the megaposts, and that's clearly not the case so...yay, information.
posted by warriorqueen at 7:07 AM on March 23, 2023 [3 favorites]

I will add I definitely don't read every post though.
posted by warriorqueen at 7:09 AM on March 23, 2023 [1 favorite]

I am not interested in huge posts, and I don't read them, but I don't think they should be banned, or even officially discouraged.

I do hope that the mods do not consider that a link having been used within one of those huge posts makes it ineligible for being posted on its own, though. That's the biggest drawback I see -- if there's something really interesting in there and it's one of 70 things, how do you have that specific conversation when most of the people in the thread probably haven't read that specific link or are trying to talk about another 70 things around you?

I think it should be fine to make multi-link posts and I also think it should be fine to use some of those links in a stand-alone post. Posters could flat out say 'hey, I think this part of this post is really interesting, I would like to have a stand-alone discussion about so I posted it over here'. That shouldn't be considered a double nor stepping on the toes of the original poster.
posted by jacquilynne at 8:11 AM on March 23, 2023 [15 favorites]

When I construct a post, sometimes one of the links I'm using causes the website to show me an alert when I hit Preview. The alert says, basically, "heads-up - this link showed up in a previous front page post" and gives me that post's URL, headline, and summary. I go check it out. If it was one of dozens of links in a big buffet/index/magazine/choose-your-metaphor of a post, then I edit my own post to add "(previously)" with a link to that older post. I don't let it stop me from going ahead and publishing my new front page post, and the moderators have never dinged me for it. So I am pretty sure it's fine.
posted by brainwane at 10:03 AM on March 23, 2023 [17 favorites]

What I didn't understand is the need to link to only that post, rather than include additional examples, and the need to mention only one user rather than several (or omitting the usernames entirely).

I didn't have any other examples to hand. Also, I guess part of my point is that I don't think a profusion of links is usually necessary to establish a thesis. It really is a general phenomenon that concerns me, not an individual.

Yeah, were I the author of the post in question, and saw this meta, I'd walk away from this site without a second thought and never come back.

Well, that user has already posted other stuff since the post in question, so I don't think that's a worry in this case.
posted by Artifice_Eternity at 10:10 AM on March 23, 2023 [1 favorite]

Well, that user has already posted other stuff since the post in question

For which I, for one, am grateful, because they're a much more active contributor to the site than I am, and they'd be a huge loss. But maybe take it on board that more than one person read your meta here as inappropriately mean-spirited. I'll take your word for it that you didn't intend it that way, but sounded mean anyway, regardless of your reasoning.
posted by Ipsifendus at 10:19 AM on March 23, 2023 [10 favorites]

The starting Metatalk post is honestly much more gentle than some of the comments in this thread have been.
posted by sagc at 10:35 AM on March 23, 2023 [6 favorites]

I learned from this thread that anodyne critiques are now 'inappropriately mean-spirited' and will result in a pile-on in order to defend someone who might be offended. Learning is fun!
posted by Jarcat at 3:30 PM on March 23, 2023 [4 favorites]

Calling someone else's work a stunt is pejorative right from the git go.

Oh, we could critique these posts: Certainly short on links for sure but who would really enjoy an enmassed examination of samples of their deathless prose over the years? Not me. Oh, god no.

Well thought out this post was not.
posted by y2karl at 4:46 PM on March 23, 2023 [1 favorite]

The OP did not use the word “stunt.”

As someone with a disability which limits how much energy I can expend on reading, I will add that I never read this type of post. So having this flagged in MeTa might point out to the authors of such posts that they won’t be reaching a number of potential readers for that reason. That doesn’t usually bother me, but what does bother me is the “well tough shit” responses here and the need for people to prove that they’re medically unable to access this kind of post before they’re believed.
posted by hgws at 5:05 PM on March 23, 2023 [8 favorites]

Oh, we could critique these posts:

How about let's try to rise above the behavior we're decrying.
posted by Etrigan at 5:14 PM on March 23, 2023 [1 favorite]

I am neurodivergent and in both this account & my previous one I have done many posts with multiple links. Occasionally there's a stunt one (like the Burger King one based on the lyrics of a meme remix I made recently, where each word/set of words was a different Burger King related links but with a theme), but mostly it's because I'm interested in sharing a subculture or topic with a lot of contextual examples. That's the kind of work that makes my brain happy. So uh I kinda resent the idea that neurodivergence means you can never engage with multi link posts. I respect that it's difficult for some but let's not universalise that experience.
posted by creatrixtiara at 7:49 PM on March 23, 2023 [20 favorites]

This is an obnoxious complaint. Scroll past it if it's not your thing.
posted by Pantengliopoli at 10:04 PM on March 23, 2023 [1 favorite]

coming late to my own thread, i feel a bit like mork before a chorus of orsons :P

first, i don't take any of this personally, everyone is welcome to their opinions! i also welcome the feedback from a discerning meta crowd. it's great that everyone cares. or cares not to care, and explains why.

so to help explain myself -- and my posts, at least the more involved ones (that apparently need some explanation ;) -- i kinda think of them as joseph cornell boxes, assemblages of found objects, but in FPP cases,* ideas embodied in links and articles i've come across that i try to artfully (hopefully!) arrange in a way that resonates or gives some greater sense of the whole than they would individually.

but i realize some might just see a giant hairball and give it wide berth. i also recognize the connections i find interesting may be tenuous -- or nonexistent -- to others. like is the gnostic abundance that solnit can see all around us (if we only choose to embrace it) compatible with texas and florida (apparently) taking the lead in an energy transition we haven't seen since the industrial revolution? i dunno, but tugging on that thread might be worth considering when i don't think many have yet. then, for example, johnson connecting the dots in his essay (on his essay) about how air conditioning begat the sunbelt begat ronald reagan felt _to me_ like a fractal microcosm of that concept...

anyway, to maybe wrap it all up? analogies are inadequate, but i (like to) think you can just read my 'megaposts' through without clicking on any of the links and get the gist, like a mad magazine accordion back page folded together :P and if you'd like to know more, you can explore. that is all!

---
*like in a cabinet of curiosities/wunderkammer collection -- or a warburgian constellation :D
posted by kliuless at 11:11 PM on March 23, 2023 [82 favorites]

This is an obnoxious complaint. Scroll past it if it's not your thing.

Woah, that is meta as fuck.

(This is a bad joke. Scroll past it if it isn't your thing.)
posted by Dysk at 11:47 PM on March 23, 2023 [4 favorites]

The OP did not use the word “stunt.”

Another commenter did, though. Three times in one comment.
posted by EmpressCallipygos at 3:54 AM on March 24, 2023 [4 favorites]

Oh man. Love the comparison to Joseph Cornell. FWIW I thought I got what you were going for in the post under discussion. It felt to me like a buffet of snacks at a party I’m not quite classy enough for. Thanks kliuless.
posted by eirias at 5:47 AM on March 24, 2023 [6 favorites]

How about let's try to rise above the behavior we're decrying.

You are still doing the Horatio at the bridge thing in continuing to respond to every self-perceived personal criticism in this thread? Oh, wad power the Giftie give us... & all that. You were first to open this can of worms.

Seriously, what did you expect? Whatever it was, continuing to police the thread was not a good idea imho.
posted by y2karl at 6:21 AM on March 24, 2023

Etrigan has only commented once in this post that I can see. And it's not his post.
posted by Ipsifendus at 6:37 AM on March 24, 2023 [6 favorites]

The post in question was about 2400 words long. That's long, but only by the standards of Metafilter FPPs. I looked at the front page, and immediately found a link to an article that's 4300 words long, and another not much further down the page that's 3300. I went to Ask and pretty quickly found a question that's 1000 words. Here on the gray, Rhaomi's last call for SC nominations is 1200 words.

Oh, and for reference, this thread, with 150 comments (not including this one I'm writing) is now over 16,000 words.

Kliuless's post is significantly easier to engage with than this thread, in terms of reading time. It's easier to engage with than reading many of the articles linked in FPPs. It's not much more difficult to engage in than a detailed Ask, especially if there are comments. Even if you click through a few of the links in kliuless's post (the Solnit piece is 900 words, and the first DeSantis link is about 800 - I didn't actually count the words for all of them because see below), that's still less than the 4300-word Nepali Times article.

I might be missing something, but to me it seems that the only way kliuless's post is difficult to engage with is if you insist on clicking through every link and reading every last word. Which seems like just a mind-blowing and misery-inducing way to exist. Do you do that with every site? If you go to CNN, where as I mentioned there are 31 links just above the fold (not including videos), do you read all 31 of those stories? Maybe you do, maybe you've got a compulsion to click every hyperlink you come across. In that case, allow me to suggest that a link-aggregation community may not be the healthiest place for you to spend time. Also, your corporate IT department would probably like to speak with you.

For everyone else, I'll refer back to Diskeater's comment at the beginning of this thread: treat them the same way [you] treat anything on this site that isn’t for [you]– don’t read them. And if it is for you, but you don't have time to read it all at once, there are solutions to that. I've saved posts from kliuless to Pocket, before, for example. I just can't see how banning long posts, or forcing posters to break them up into multiple posts, is helpful for the community when so many other, lower-impact solutions exist.
posted by kevinbelt at 7:51 AM on March 24, 2023 [8 favorites]

I couldn't agree more.
posted by Ahmad Khani at 7:57 AM on March 24, 2023

I might be missing something, but to me it seems that the only way kliuless's post is difficult to engage with is if you insist on clicking through every link and reading every last word. Which seems like just a mind-blowing and misery-inducing way to exist.

I don't think this is terribly charitable to people on the other side of the argument to you.

There has long been a culture here of actually reading all/most/some of the content in the links before diving into the discussion. People who feel they should be informed, at least as far as reading the links in the post, are neither outliers to the Metafilter culture nor masochists.

There's also a history of avoiding editorializing in the FPP, placing the focus on the content in the link, not the content around the link. For people who approach MetaFilter that way, counting the words in the post itself is meaningless, because the links are the thing they are focused on.

I have no real issue with the culture shifting here and having people be more creative in how they make posts, but I don't think we need to insult people who do as if their expectations of the how the site operates have come from nowhere.
posted by jacquilynne at 8:19 AM on March 24, 2023 [10 favorites]

Is there, though? I did a search for "RTFA"; it found thousands of results (including, amusingly, a post titled "No One Will RTFA").

Even if you do make it a point to usually RTFA, it's obvious from the way kliuless structures his posts that you don't need to REFA. He groups similar links together, and provides pull quotes from each. As he posted earlier, the posts are more about the ideas in each link, not about reading the links themselves in their entirety. The benefit to reading the entire article instead of just reading the provided pull quotes is marginal. That is, of course, why kliuless does it that way. He could just list 70 links and let you click through to see what they're about and whether they're important, but he doesn't. He provides context.

If there's a criticism to be made around site norms, it's that some of the links are "newsfilter-y". But I think that's necessary, because a lot of the topics are pretty esoteric and it's necessary to have them to understand some of the other links and structure of the post. I think that could be solved if there were a single article that sufficiently summarized the topic, but rather than waiting for someone else to write that article, kliuless essentially did it himself. The site has never just been about links presented without comment. Every post has framing, which is why the person who posted the list of Adam Sandler movies in my first paragraph titled the post "No One Will RTFA".
posted by kevinbelt at 8:51 AM on March 24, 2023 [3 favorites]

To me, it's the *lack* of contextualization that actually gets me; the contexts get lost in every other word being a significant-yet-not-explained hyperlink.

Also, I think there's a bit of wilful forgetting of what site norms have been in the past? "GYOB" has an entry in the Mefi acronyms wiki, for example.
posted by sagc at 8:59 AM on March 24, 2023 [4 favorites]

In that case, allow me to suggest that a link-aggregation community may not be the healthiest place for you to spend time.

Wow, that was unnecessarily insulting on a site where people regularly comment "did you READ the article in question?" or "I wish people had read the article in question more closely."
posted by warriorqueen at 9:05 AM on March 24, 2023 [7 favorites]

MetaTalk is probably the most unnecessarily insulting place I regularly spend time.
posted by box at 9:58 AM on March 24, 2023 [13 favorites]

I don't think it's insulting to advise that someone stop doing something that causes them distress. Certainly Ask Metafilter doesn't; that's probably the single most common piece of advice given. If you get anxious about going to Thanksgiving at your racist uncle's house, don't go. If you're mad about how your boss treats you at work, get a new job. Same principle.

I would actually think it's more insulting to be condescendingly asked if you read an article, especially to someone who's neurodivergent (the seed of this whole point). Perhaps they did read the article, but forgot a detail. Maybe they read it yesterday and confused it with something else they read around the same time.
posted by kevinbelt at 10:25 AM on March 24, 2023 [1 favorite]

there's a bit of wilful forgetting of what site norms have been in the past

If by "site norms", we mean prioritizing saying "GYOB"* over thoughtful, intellectually-stimulating posts, or saying "RTFA" over good-faith attempts at discussion, or any other low-effort threadshitting over community, we might consider that the site norms are the problem.

*"GYOB" has only shown up in a search 19 times since June 2013, and it's essentially meaningless now that individual blogs are pretty much extinct. It was probably useful at one time, but that time isn't 2023.
posted by kevinbelt at 10:41 AM on March 24, 2023 [4 favorites]

I don't think anyone said megaposts were causing them distress; which is why it's kind of insulting. We're talking about whether people engage with them and why or why not, that's all. I could be wrong but I don't think there's anyone in this discussion that is like "oh no, a megapost, I must take to my fainting couch."
posted by warriorqueen at 10:44 AM on March 24, 2023 [8 favorites]

METAFILTER: like a mad magazine accordion back page folded together
posted by philip-random at 11:06 AM on March 24, 2023 [5 favorites]

Someone used the word "disgust" to describe their discovery of one of these types of posts. That's extreme, to my ears.

I really hope site management thinks about not approving this kind of MeTa post in the future.
posted by tiny frying pan at 11:23 AM on March 24, 2023 [9 favorites]

It did not bring out the best in us.
posted by y2karl at 11:33 AM on March 24, 2023 [2 favorites]

I don't much care for videos. On my phone, I follow a link without being able to see it's actually a video, and I go back. Minor inconvenience, though I do like it when links are described in some way. But, whatevs. On a computer, I can preview the link, that's nice.

Recap:
Post more stuff, especially good stuff.
Enjoy and comment on posts you like.
Don't love a post, close the tab.
Repeat.
When someone MeTas about a preference, don't get too riled. Somebody has an opinion, happens all the time.
posted by theora55 at 2:29 PM on March 24, 2023 [5 favorites]

I don't think it's insulting to advise that someone stop doing something that causes them distress. Certainly Ask Metafilter doesn't; that's probably the single most common piece of advice given. If you get anxious about going to Thanksgiving at your racist uncle's house, don't go. If you're mad about how your boss treats you at work, get a new job. Same principle.


I'm trying to think of a nice way of saying this, but nobody is asking you for advice on how to deal with long posts.

You came in, told a bunch of people that you don't believe them about what sort of posts are most approachable to them, then proceeded to tell them a solution that nobody asked for, and THEN told them that since your solution doesn't work for them, they should leave. OH and then told people what you think they should actually be insulted by!

I mean... you can see how that looks right? Especially since most of us are just fine skipping the long posts. The person who started this discussion didn't even bring up accessibility, and near as I can see most of us that did also mentioned that they just scroll on past the posts we have problems with.

It DOESN'T matter that what works best for people makes sense to you, it just matters that it helps them. When I say that considering that other people are different than you is a kindness, part of that consideration involves believing them when they describe their lives.
posted by Gygesringtone at 3:19 PM on March 24, 2023 [5 favorites]

Also just as a small thing, there are plenty of reasons that don't involve neurodivergence that someone might have issues with long link-dense posts. Not all neurodivergent people have a problem with long posts, and not everyone who has a problem with them is neurodivergent.
posted by Gygesringtone at 3:22 PM on March 24, 2023 [4 favorites]

It's a bit weird to bring up site norms given that back in the day in Metafilter, posts with individual letters leading to different links were seen as innovative and fun.
posted by creatrixtiara at 3:36 PM on March 24, 2023 [4 favorites]

For the record, I remember the "posts with individual letters leading to different links" thing coming up in one of the first Metas I ever perused. It was long ago and far away but I'm pretty sure the poster wasn't a fan of them but most of the comments either were or just didn't care enough to make a thing of it. Rather like how much of this thread has gone.
posted by philip-random at 6:01 PM on March 24, 2023 [2 favorites]

Someone used the word "disgust" to describe their discovery of one of these types of posts. That's extreme, to my ears.

Once, out of 168 comments so far, so that’s not particularly extreme as part of the whole. I don’t endorse the comment; I think it was pretty over the top in its reaction as well as insulting, but it’s not characteristic of the thread as a whole. I’m not happy with the tone of this thread at all, where people who have tried to explain why they find the style of post difficult have been pretty rudely dismissed, which seems like a bigger problem.
posted by GenjiandProust at 6:02 PM on March 24, 2023 [5 favorites]

I was responding to a poster who said essentially that no one was being dramatic about this, so.
posted by tiny frying pan at 6:34 PM on March 24, 2023 [2 favorites]

(I agree that the feelings this thread could cause are worse than the original type of post under discussion. It's tiring.)
posted by tiny frying pan at 6:36 PM on March 24, 2023 [1 favorite]

Ah, Horatius.
"Haul down the bridge, Sir Consul,
With all the speed ye may;
I, with two more to help me,
Will hold the foe in play.
In yon strait path a thousand
May well be stopped by three.
Now who will stand on either hand,
And keep the bridge with me?"
posted by clavdivs at 7:58 PM on March 24, 2023 [2 favorites]

I would say that I am uncomfortable commenting in a kliuless post. I am nervous that a comment about some small part of it that does not address the same aspects of it that others are thinking and caring about in that discussion will seem like a gauche non sequitur. It's possible that this sort of anxiety is connected to the sorts of social experiences one encounters as a neurodivergent person learning to "read rooms" and enter conversations, though I don't mean to assume that my feelings reflect anything more universal.

Regardless, I am happy that he makes the posts that he does. There is always something worthwhile to read in them.
posted by a snickering nuthatch at 9:07 PM on March 24, 2023 [2 favorites]

For the record, I remember the "posts with individual letters leading to different links" thing coming up in one of the first Metas I ever perused. It was long ago and far away but I'm pretty sure the poster wasn't a fan of them but most of the comments either were or just didn't care enough to make a thing of it. Rather like how much of this thread has gone.

That MetaTalk post was this one about this post of mine. That *finger snap* was to a clip of Maynard G. Krebs doing same. And I still miss Iconomy. *Sigh*

I did another link-a-letter post about George Herriman and his classic comic Krazy Kat.

What amazes me about the Bohemian Rhapsody post from 2003 is that it still has 3 living links after twenty odd years.

I have done multi-link posts for most of my twenty odd years here. And gotten so much crap for it. This post raised my hackles for obvious reasons. A lot of my posts could be called stunts but the links in Bohemian Rhapsody and Krazy Kat led to real information.

Also, I owe you an apology, Etrigan. I am waiting on cataract surgery plus recently sat on my most recent pair of glasses to no good end. I am flying blind these days because no point in getting a new pair until after the surgery. You didn't make this post but I jumped to conclusions after not reading closely enough. I am sorry I was rude to you.

On topic: Artifice_Eternity, I think you said it best previously. For me, I am somewhere between Johan Huizinga and Mihaly Czentimihaly. When we make posts here, we are at play. So, stop curating already.

These lines from Bob Dylan's Talking World War III Blues come to mind:

Half of the people can be part right all of the time
Some of the people can be all right part of the time
But all of the people can't be all right all of the time
I think Abraham Lincoln said that
I'll let you be in my dreams if I can be in yours
I said that
posted by y2karl at 9:09 AM on March 25, 2023 [4 favorites]

The front page at the top literally says
MetaFilter
community weblog

Nobody's going to like every thing on every, or even any, weblog. That's ok. Presumably they read it because they like the majority of things on it, or some small fraction enough to make it worth it. Probably those are going to be different things for each reader.

I like them. When it's a subject I'm interested in, they're a gold mine. When I'm not, I don't click any of the links, but I still kind of like reading the titles and doing the blurred-eyes overview of the pattern and guessing what kliuless is going for there. Even if I then say "huh," shrug and move on... I mean I guess I'm not mad that the post existed? I don't understand.
posted by ctmf at 6:31 PM on March 25, 2023 [4 favorites]

Posts like this make me wonder if we should even have Metatalk anymore. They always seem to deteriorate into something that ranges from not great to downright toxic. I can't bring to mind even one metatalk post that has been affirming and healing to this community.
posted by triggerfinger at 6:33 PM on March 25, 2023 [4 favorites]

Personally, I’d like to reinforce the “parish notices” aspect of MetaTalk, with meetup announcements, births, cool news and just kinda random community events and happenings. And alphabet threads.

A lot of that got shunted away for serious community business, which seemed necessary at the time, but it made this subsite very serious, and it could do with a bit of levity.
posted by Kattullus at 1:55 AM on March 26, 2023 [12 favorites]

For all the occasional talk around here of the supposed toxicity of Reddit or other parts of the internet, MetaTalk is routinely much more unpleasant, angry and insulting than any of the subreddits, Discords, or old-school forums I regularly read (all with volunteer moderators, fwiw).

I used to avoid reading MetaTalk entirely but, since getting sucked in due to the importance of last year's TT, SC, fundraising, etc, etc, my opinion of MeFi as a whole has, unfortunately, plummeted. This section does not feel like it's helping MetaFilter be "the best of the web".

If there's - apparently - no way of keeping MetaTalk's posts and comments civil, then I'm all for keeping it for announcements only.
posted by fabius at 5:59 AM on March 26, 2023 [11 favorites]

kliuless: "Hey everybody, I did a ton of work compiling a bunch of different sources on a complex topic. Here is the result of my research, all in one place, free of cost."

clueless: "It's too much work to read it all but when I skip over things I really should be caring about I get FOMO or feel guilty. MetaFilter, please censor this thing that makes me vaguely uncomfortable."
posted by hypnogogue at 7:36 AM on March 26, 2023 [5 favorites]

If there's - apparently - no way of keeping MetaTalk's posts and comments civil, then I'm all for keeping it for announcements only.

Jeepers, member 9078, you of all people should remember the demon ghost of MetaTalk Past. We are all too human all too often still -- but what was sulfuric acid then is such weak green tea now in comparison.

A few past examples.
posted by y2karl at 10:35 AM on March 26, 2023 [1 favorite]

Post: There's a lot of great information in megaposts but I find them hard to deal with, maybe it would be better to have a culture of breaking them up?

People: Actually now that you mention it, I do skip them for this reason.

Other People: Well if you don't like them just skip them! [Ignoring that everyone just said they just skip them]

kliuless: first, i don't take any of this personally, everyone is welcome to their opinions! i also welcome the feedback from a discerning meta crowd. it's great that everyone cares. or cares not to care, and explains why.

Other people: Oh and by the way if you don't like the megaposts you are clueless and need to get off the site.
posted by warriorqueen at 11:07 AM on March 26, 2023 [11 favorites]

“Passive-aggressive vomitmasters” from Karl’s first link is pretty great. Need to bring that back.
posted by Mid at 11:43 AM on March 26, 2023

I miss Matteo and Languagehat.
posted by clavdivs at 2:00 PM on March 26, 2023 [3 favorites]

Post: There's a lot of great information in megaposts but I find them hard to deal with, maybe it would be better to have a culture of breaking them up?

People: Actually now that you mention it, I do skip them for this reason.

Other People: Well if you don't like them just skip them! [Ignoring that everyone just said they just skip them]

kliuless: first, i don't take any of this personally, everyone is welcome to their opinions! i also welcome the feedback from a discerning meta crowd. it's great that everyone cares. or cares not to care, and explains why.

Other people: Oh and by the way if you don't like the megaposts you are clueless and need to get off the site.


Your summary elides the fact that the Metatalk doesn't just suggest that longer posts could be broken up, but rather advocates for the imposition of a limit on the number of links so that they are forcibly shorter.
posted by BlueDuke at 2:14 PM on March 26, 2023 [3 favorites]

I miss Matteo and Languagehat.

As do I.

Also, a closer look at languagehat's profile page is instructive.
posted by y2karl at 2:45 PM on March 26, 2023 [2 favorites]

MetaTalk: Your summary elides the fact

It's phrased like a joke, but look at how many times a quote-helpful summary-unquote has ignited and reignited flames just in this one thread. Maybe we need to think about the utility of that technique as a community and as individuals.
posted by Etrigan at 3:00 PM on March 26, 2023 [1 favorite]

Man, it's not the format, it's the content.

I don't care if you call me clueless in a long multi paragraph essay that shows you're not really engaging with what I said, or if you call me clueless in a short 4 sentence summary that shows you're not really engaging with what I said.

Either way, you're calling me clueless.
posted by Gygesringtone at 3:09 PM on March 26, 2023 [4 favorites]

A few past examples.
Ah, memories. So many very cool people acting so badly and I miss so many of them :-(

... a closer look at languagehat's profile page is instructive
Very much so. Such a loss to this place.
posted by dg at 3:40 PM on March 26, 2023

Sorry if I’m blowing his cover, but languagehat has actually favorited several comments in this thread.
posted by kevinbelt at 4:00 PM on March 26, 2023 [1 favorite]

Also, I remember making one early megapost -- which was a labor of love that engendered this response. Only recently did I notice a couple of people in the latter were not so enthused. One was a perpetual jerk with whom I never got along as far as I was concerned. The other found me to be a perpetual pain in the ass for all the trouble and work I caused them back that day. Which I can perfectly understand. But still, finding someone expressing a preference for my Iraq posts in 2005 is all in all, oh, a wee bit surprising.
posted by y2karl at 4:05 PM on March 26, 2023

Another recent discovery was this. I had always wondered why Wikipedia refused to let me edit their Dark Was The Night, Cold Was the Ground entry -- or anything else there, for that matter. That is a bright idea by some folks here with a permanent impact on my online life. Too bad Spock is no longer with us -- because finding that Wikipedia page via the Wayback Machine is impossible. For me, at least.
posted by y2karl at 4:40 PM on March 26, 2023

That was a post of craft. I remember one 'sorta call out thread' were I just finished all thirty days with like a radio show/excerpts from the journal of sub-text. kinda fun really.
drink recipes, obscure referents, dancing, poetry.


After the Grar

And after the grar
I type and type as the comments come
And I look up, I look up
Wikipedia and out of luck
I look up

Why has always pushed up hey
You must know life to see the Bey
But I won't bot I won't bot
Not this mind and not this heart
I won't bot

And I took you to the Talk
And it was like the Mall
And remembered our own sand
What we pound for

But there will come a time
You'll see, with no more tears
And love will not break your heart
But dismiss your fears
Get over your self and see
What you find there
With grace in your heart
And postings in your hair

And now I cling to what I knew
Single links I think true
But oh no more
That's why I bold
That's why I bold with all I have
That's why I bold


And I won't CAPLOCK alone
And be left where
Well I guess I'll just go home
To my own blog
Because CAPLOCKS is just so full
And <> so small
Well I'm scared of what's behind
And what's before

there will a time when posts
won't be a crime
an CAPLOCKS in your hair
get over that hill and type
and you be there.

(Nam hat)
posted by clavdivs at 5:08 PM on March 26, 2023 [2 favorites]

For all the occasional talk around here of the supposed toxicity of Reddit or other parts of the internet, MetaTalk is routinely much more unpleasant, angry and insulting than any of the subreddits, Discords, or old-school forums I regularly read (all with volunteer moderators, fwiw).

Two friends of an acquaintance once drove a woman whose car was being repaired to their church. Mid-journey, they realised she was crying in the back seat and asked what was wrong. "I'm just so sad, I thought you were such a lovely couple," she explained. They were having a minor disagreement but their everyday arguing style read to her as a relationship-ending fight.

I wonder if much of what I and others find cruel and mean in MetaTalk feels unremarkable to the people writing it. That's the only charitable explanation I can find. Regardless, if I, a 17 year member of the site (and Fabius whom I'm quoting has been here five years longer than that), still find that many discussions here drive me away from MetaFilter, it's likely that the effect on newcomers is even more profound.
posted by Busy Old Fool at 2:03 AM on March 27, 2023 [10 favorites]

Some of my posts, the updates on space exploration, are link frenzies.

I try to structure each one to make the items more accessible. Top level, that's by location in space (on the moon, around Jupiter, etc.). Within each header I sometimes divide stuff by other logics, like private vs public efforts.

I don't have a good sense of how these posts go over. They don't elicit much commentary, although what appears is positive and contains good additions. There aren't too many likes. I don't know if this reflects reactions against giant link piles, or if the post structure isn't appealing, or if folks here just aren't too interested in space.
posted by doctornemo at 8:13 AM on March 28, 2023 [5 favorites]

I personally think it's a much more approachable structure!
posted by sagc at 8:16 AM on March 28, 2023 [1 favorite]

(and I just read, since most of my thoughts amount to "Space: Cool!")
posted by sagc at 8:17 AM on March 28, 2023 [1 favorite]

I don't know if this reflects reactions against giant link piles, or if the post structure isn't appealing, or if folks here just aren't too interested in space.

Speaking just for myself, I'm very interested in space, but will skip most posts that aren't really about one thing. Space to me is a theme, and it just doesn't seem to me to make a good basis for a text conversation with strangers like an actual topic does. I'll click on a thread about solar flares or a recent solar flare, I'm click on a thread about Venusian volcanism, but I will skip a thread that tries to be about both at the same time (nevermind being dozens of different topics).

I'd rather actually read a post before talking about it. And yes, I could read two or three of the fifty links, but they won't be the same two or three as anyone else, and the whole thread will either be people talking past each other, or a bunch of people not really conversing so much as throwing unrelated comments on everything disparate things vaguely into the room. Neither is a thread I enjoy.
posted by Dysk at 10:10 PM on March 28, 2023 [4 favorites]

Thank you, sagc.
posted by doctornemo at 6:40 AM on March 29, 2023 [1 favorite]

Dysk, I make those posts about once every month and a half.
Would a better plan for you be a series of smaller posts, then? One on a Russian orbital thing, then another on a Japanese asteroid mission, then later on one about a rocket startup, etc?
posted by doctornemo at 6:41 AM on March 29, 2023 [4 favorites]

Well I'm not sure you really need to be tailoring your posting habits to my preferences specifically! But that is the format I find easiest to approach, and tends to lead to the best conversation (if and when one actually develops!)
posted by Dysk at 7:04 AM on March 29, 2023 [5 favorites]

Dysk, that's useful. Thank you.
posted by doctornemo at 8:24 AM on March 29, 2023 [2 favorites]

no one sees the port cloud down here but I'm at Voyager 1.

pellet beam propulsion.
posted by clavdivs at 2:57 PM on March 30, 2023 [2 favorites]

My datum:

I don’t object to many links per se. I do find it quite frustrating when many links are not clearly connected by a central theme or thesis that is clearly articulated. I find this frustrating for the same reason as I find single-mystery-link posts frustrating: it’s disrespectful of my time and effort as a reader.

With a single-mystery-link post, it is evident from the front page what type of post it is, and I can just ignore it and move on, leaving it to other people who like that style of post. It’s negative impact on my experience of the site is negligible to nonexistent.

Many of the giant posts are not clearly marked as such above the fold, however. Also, kluiless in particular seems to have common interests with me. So there have been many cases where I’ve clicked in such a post excitedly… and then quickly gotten quite discouraged by a wall of links that I can’t discern an organizing principle for and don’t have time (or necessarily inclination in the case of all of them) to click on. Some of the lower down links that I have clicked on are also definitely not “the best of the Web” (a risk one takes in including many many links). Every so often there has been an approachable post, but by now I’ve basically given up on even clicking on posts from this fellow contributor. And I had tended to use Metafilter less for a short period after one of these experiences, before I started ignoring all content from this particular fellow contributor. While yes, that is a me thing and my personal preference, if it turns out that it’s not just me, and a significant number of us are feeling this way, then that does affect site engagement. So doing a bit of a poll here on MetaTalk seems productive - either this will be a larger problem, or we’ll find out that it only affects a minority of us, who can go back to essentially ignoring the contributions of select fellow Mefites despite having many common interests with them.
posted by eviemath at 4:39 AM on April 5, 2023 [3 favorites]

One of the things I find most frustrating or alienating about such posts is also not in the post format itself, but in the comments that tend to populate the top of the comment threads on such posts. Unexpected juxtapositions can be art. I’ve made such a post (albeit with far fewer links) myself. But they are not “academic” when they lack a clear thesis or explanations of how the poster sees the links as fitting together and contributing to a cohesive whole. Yet many of the initial comments describe and laud such posts as academic rather than as art. Or express amazement at the effort, when it does not in fact require significant effort to copy all of the links from all the browser tabs I end up with after going down an internet wormhole, without adding connection or context. It’s the addition of connection and context that is work. Given that my profession is academia, I’m sure I find this mischaracterization more annoying or alienating than most, of course. But this also seems to me to be connected to cultural biases in what we consider “leadership” or what shorthand clues we tend to use to assess “intelligence”, that are often biased in many ways that both disadvantage folks who are not upper middle class/well-educated white makes with assertive personalities, and cause us to repeatedly make poor collective decisions about who we listen to as experts or the leaders we follow.
posted by eviemath at 5:06 AM on April 5, 2023 [1 favorite]

(A specific example from when we had this discussion/arguments a couple years ago described a post with many links but without the clarifying connections as a “syllabus”. But a syllabus is a map or guide that provides context, not just a bibliography/list of references. That is, a syllabus is an indexed map, while a bibliography is just the index of place names without the map. Both have their roles, and both do take some effort to create! But adding the context takes considerably more effort, and it is a bit disrespectful to those who have taken that extra effort to describe the bibliography/index as a syllabus/map.)
posted by eviemath at 5:44 AM on April 5, 2023 [1 favorite]

I do find it quite frustrating when many links are not clearly connected by a central theme or thesis that is clearly articulated. I find this frustrating for the same reason as I find single-mystery-link posts frustrating: it’s disrespectful of my time and effort as a reader.

This is possibly the best articulation yet of what I find discouraging about this type of post.

I don't doubt that in many cases, there's been considerable time and effort expended in collecting the links. But simply dumping them on us, without the connective tissue of a clearly written thesis, feels like dumping all the ingredients for a recipe in a bowl, without actually doing the work of properly mixing, cooking, etc. This is why I refer to them as linkdumps.
posted by Artifice_Eternity at 1:35 PM on April 10, 2023

Although, I think if I had known ahead of time or it had been the first comment or something that a poster had crafted a post as art - as kliuless described upthread - rather than or more so than as academic index, that framing would have helped me contextualize such posts sufficiently to not get frustrated. It may be that giving a brief indication of the type or style of post above the fold would sufficiently satisfy all readers, and leave no one upset?
posted by eviemath at 4:13 PM on April 10, 2023

ok, i'll put a [cw: link-heavy post] or something. thanks for being accommodative!
posted by kliuless at 10:04 PM on April 10, 2023 [5 favorites]

I'd been utterly indifferent to linkdump posts, heretofore. They weren't for me, so I'd just move on to other posts.

However, The most recent such post has tipped me decidedly into the anti column, as it seems to be platforming a TERF as well as presenting another article that seems to be a racist dog whistle (crime in San Francisco).

So, instead of just being something that's not for me, now I see such posts as a likely vector for doing harm.
posted by ursus_comiter at 9:12 AM on April 14, 2023 [3 favorites]

Yep, flagged for the TERF issue. I was hoping to see either action or at least a statement by this point.
posted by sagc at 10:28 AM on April 14, 2023

The link was removed. Thankfully, the rest of the post remains.
posted by Ahmad Khani at 1:57 PM on April 14, 2023

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