I belonged to this community blog with a bunch of friends that began in 2001. We discussed everything, but very often, someone would link to a link they had found "via MeFi", and often to the MeFi thread. Eventually I found that I liked checking MeFi myself. It fascinated me and I was really jealous of the members, because by the time I figured the site out, membership was ostensibly closed. So I lurked and read and maintained an addiction for nigh on four years before the darn thing opened up.

Yeah, I'm about at the four year anniversary of my introduction to MeFi. I miss some of the oldtimers.

Intresting Miko that you lurked so long till membership opened up. My two years feels like a long time, but four is really long. But surely membership was open sometime in your four years?

I passed my 4-year anniversary in March. WHERE'S MY FRUIT/FLOWERS/APPLIANCES???? Actually, it's my 5th anniversary if you count lurking and being unable to sign up. WHERE'S MY WOOD/SILVERWARE???

I spend much less time in the blue/gray/green now than I used to by far. Many of the familiar names I know are either here or gone.

I don't remember when I started lurking, but I DO remember when Matt would open memberships every day, but only for something like 20 people.

He was such a tease back then.

I first saw MeFi when my friend mischief was living with us, because he used to hang out there a lot, and I remember thinking it was a little too "stuck up" a site for me. (An opinion that hasn't really changed.)

I'm not sure why I joined when the paid memberships came available... I think I hoped to be the thumbtack to their balloon full of hot air, but then I found I wasn't really troll material. I tried a sincere post, got thoroughly gobbed on, and jonmc dropped me a line inviting me to MetaChat. For that reason only, it wasn't a waste of five bucks, but I wish it had gone to dodgy and taz.

I can't remember the first time I came across it, but I do remember the first time I actually wanted to be a member. In 2002, a very close friend of mine died, and Metafilter talked about her. It annoyed me that I couldn't say anything about how awesome she was, but a few months later, I got an account during the first-twenty-people-at-noon registration opening.

My 4th anniversary of joining was this March 15, but I'd been reading it a long time before then. As I said in the thread dg linked to, I found it sometime early in 2001 through a Yahoo! life column, and read it obsessively. No, this was not good for work. In hindsight, I should have realized I was in trouble when I came home one day and told my wife "can't talk right now honey, have to check MetaFilter - mathowie went away without telling anyone in advance, and they're all going crazy!"

But surely membership was open sometime in your four years?


Yes, I've seen it said that there were various times and ways to get in. But I wasn't reading thoroughly or regularly enough to know these secrets. I would just occasionally click on "Join" or whatever the link was, and get the "sorry, we're closed" message.

So I went back to my friends' blog to see when MetaFilter was first mentioned. Turned out it was the Amazon camera bargain! Within those first few months, people linked to the MeFi threads on the famous optical illusions page, the article about TiVo thinking you're gay, Julia Solis' Dark Passage, and the Dvorak keyboard. How could I not get hooked?

I also noticed they mentioned the 5K backdoor reg, but I didn't join with that. Who knows what my problem was.

It's charming to go back and read a group of people's reactions to the net in 2001. We were 'discovering' sites like slate and slashdot. Someone mentioned getting a copy of the Onion...and reading it on the subway. Another time, already.

I was one of the 14Kers that got in when Matt opened up memberships in the summer of 2002. I had to go look it up since I forgot when I joined. I lurked before then for years. Don't remember when I first started reading it. It has been bookmarked for at least 3 computers now.

I read the blue and don't find links/posts I like much like I used to. Now I'll read some posts just to watch the train wreck unfold but that gets old quick. Same with the gray. And some of the questions on the green make me wonder how some people can leave their house in the morning without posting a silly question. [that post here the other day had me laughing hysterically in the office the other day].

But I keep going back to mefi. Maybe I go back thinking I'll see a good link. Or a good flameout. Or Matt says fuck it and shuts the site down.

August 24, 2001. I remember when there was a certain amount of site cred for those who arrived before 9/11.

MetaChat pretty much replaced MetaFilter in my daily web viewing. I was already backing out of my involvement over there -- the drama and the infighting was getting to be too much, and it was obvious that it was only going to get worse -- so I jumped at the chance to hang out with some of my favorite MeFites in a space that was specifically not about the drama and infighting.

I've headed back over there only occasionally since then, usually when somebody links to it over here. Do I miss the old days? Sure. But it's no longer the place I loved and contributed so much to (I was, until I left, among the top 100 most prolific posters {57th at my peak, IIRC}), and it's never going to be again. I'm happy over here with the bunnies.

Speaking of which: OMG! Bunny!

nice thread. brings back a few memories. i have lurked there from almost the first few months but i guess i wasn't sociable enough to join the discussion until later. at first it was just about efficiently finding great stuff on the web. after migs joined the whole conversational tone changed and a lot of lurkers wanted in but memberships were closed. i think a lot of the 14kers were long time lurkers.

Yep... I lurked for a couple years before I joined, and I'm about a month shy of five years now.

I don't actually remember my first time (though I'm pretty sure I got there via Rebecca Blood), but I liked it because the people seemed really smart and funny, and the links were great. It's still a good place, but I'm a little burned out on the aggression and first-to-snark race.

Another 14K who joined in 2002 after lurking for over a year. I don't remember much about those early times except I liked the snark. By the time I'd been there 3 years I was getting tired of it. Thank God for MetaChat.

I DO remember when Matt would open memberships every day, but only for something like 20 people.

That's how I got a membership. I think due to the time difference I had to be online at some stupid time to be one of the 20. That was in 2001. Wow, five years, amazing. Where does the time go?

So as soon as I discovered Metafilter (via /.) I lurked for a couple of months, getting a feel of the place, and finally decided to sign up for a membership, and lo...gates closed! I didnt know then that I would wait atleast 2 years before I would be able to get a membership. I missed the few times inbetween when Matt opened the gates for a bit, joined monkeyfilter, hung out there for quite a bit. When new users were finally allowed in, I had to go beg for a credit card from a colleague just to be able to pay the 5 $. Now i feel that not everybody follows the 'best of the web' thing, which is a shame really. All the snarking would decrease dramatically, if people just posted cool stuff they found on the web rather than some point-to-prove type post. When anastasiav organized the "take back Mefi" day, it was fantastic, and thats how it should be.

I feel like I'm alone among MeChaZens in that I like the arguing and the rough-and-tumble. I wouldn't like MeFi if it were only that, but a site that's just full of cool links wouldn't do it for me, either. I like the dialogue. Sure it gets snarky at times, but it's so darn refreshing to have straight-up debate and argument sometimes.

It was only recently I learned that "best of the web" was never actually a stipulation of what to post to MeFi. I do love cool links, though. My very favorite kinds of posts are those that are put together on a topic, by someone who knows the topic, and contain say 3-10 of the best links on that topic. Not only are those interesting, but they make for very useful references in future when they come up in Google.

Damn. I was there in January of '01. Sure was different then.

I'm much happier here.

I lurked for ages. I remember thinking "damn NYC web designer so frickin' hip" when reading lots of injokey nudge nudge. It kinda grated me, but I kept coming back though, and at some point Matt dropped a hint about signups not going to be open forever, so I signed up in August 2000 just in case I might dare to comment one day.

Meh.

Me, I'm just a $5 n00b. By the time I got there, it was all about the snarks and meltdowns.

It was probably all about that before I got there, but I mostly stuck with the blue and green and rarely visited the gray. I was there for the links and information and paid very little attention to the personalities and politics underlying it all.

Then I made my first post and got called out to the gray in about three nanoseconds. I wish I could find it and the following MetaTalk thread, which was also deleted.

I lurked (was shut out) for a couple years after a pointer to MF from K5. I was often wanting to post (especially on 9/11). Despite that I was signed up for over a month before posting my first comment. The requirement to not come off as an idiot after waiting so long was overwhelming.

Had I been as wise....!

It was y6y6y6's blog that reeled me in. I had to lurk for about a year and a half before being able to join October 2002 (one of the lucky 20 @ noon group).

I feel like I'm alone among MeChaZens in that I like the arguing and the rough-and-tumble.
No, I like that too, but have pretty much given up commenting on MeFi because the time differences between me and the majority of users mean that I am either speaking in a vacuum or absent and unable to respond to others. It just got too frustrating trying to follow a conversation like that. MeCha seems to have a more evenly dispersed (globally) membership, which minimises that problem. It also seems to be more evenly spread gender-wise, which I attribute much of the friendly vibe to.

Wow, I looked it up, and I lasted EXACTLY a year on MeFi (plus or minus 14 hours).

It was premillenia when I found metafilter. Friends of mine who were more web techy were into this new thing called "blogging" when it started and kept telling me to do it because they thought my emails were very "bloggy" and I should "blog."
I'm pretty sure I found metafilter because blogs I looked at linked to it, but I only looked at it for the links. I'd send links from there to other people, and whenever I said I got the links from metafilter, there was this resounding "ewww, I hate them," so I use to do quite a bit of defending of it.
Comp to comp, place to place, and crash to crash, the url stayed the same so I could just type it in and find it again. Also, it seem to have much better syntax, spelling and logic than the norm at the time.
Thinking back, I think I only signed up because memberships were closing, and once I signed up, I thought that it was only right I tried to contribute. Back then, I got solved of that idea pretty quickly, but I only started looking at comments because people would put so many links in a post or there would be additional links in a post.
I use to read through the comments and only say something when a point of view was unrepresented or underdefended, which wasn't often if the thread was old or long enough.
I'd only spend time there in brief spurts over the years, and it was a long time in before I used the features which made it a lot easier to use.
Not being a member makes it much more annoying to navigate and use, but way more amusing when I bother to look at it as I'm catching up on a lot posts and find those one or two I like.
Still, a lot of the posts I liked were usually compiled on some other site like memepool then, but they use to get things first, and if some large national or world event was up, I'd go check metafilter, as they use to have all the pertinent links clustered together.
I wasn't around for the 9/11 stuff but the site didn't really seem that different at all.
I still skim it, a lot because of people here.
I think the biggest changes came pre election and post sign ups, but more for people that left than people that came.