No accusations of hypocrisy here; and I think I've developed a skin thick enough not to get my bonnet all bee-ey over such trifles - it's just something I noticed.

People have said that even though they may not have posted themselves, they still read enough to qualify as judge. I suppose it's a valid point. I dunno why anybody feels they hafta judge anyways, though. Well, unless it's particularly bad, which is where the YMMV bit comes in. I'm not making sense am I?

So, yeah, I did notice a particular case of that today too.

I was compiling a little case study of that particular affliction but, true to form, I trailed off. Anecdotally it seems true that there is a certain set of new user/infrequent poster that loudly makes those claims. I have a theory that a superficial (including someone who has lurked for a long time but not participated, which I think can lead to different concept of the "community" as it where.) read of metafilter would lead one to believe that this kind of behavior would be a good way to fit in, which is:

1) Wrong
2) Lame

Personally, I don't see the point in leaping in with a complaint of "Single link" or "Newsfilter" or "Best of the Web?" no matter how long you've been around, I really do wish that was discouraged from the top down more often. Flag it, son, flag it. Much of what I enjoy on metafilter comes from a combination of the links and the discussion and things have a way of becoming more fleshed out naturally over the course of a thread. I go for the links but I stay for what the members contribute.

Could be that their standards of posting are so high that they rarely or never find suitable material to post themselves.

complaining about MeFi is wrong, it's an excellent flickr/YouTube link aggregator, just excellent.

No, you are making perfect sense, dano. I agree on both counts: I don't understand the need to judge either - after all, it's only God the Creator who can judge us come the day, huh? Seriously, I don't get that - although I have been guilty of it sometimes, too. He who is without sin, and all that.

The point about not-posting-but-able-to-judge does seem perfectly valid to me - but in my eyes there's something shifty about the reasoning which I can't quite put my finger on. As I half-jokingly snarked at a zero-post post critic in my post today, "What have you done for us lately?"

Again, I don't necessarily feel it's hypocritical, nor do I want to get bogged down in a pointless discussion of "membership as implied contract" and all that, and it doesn't trouble me so much either (else I would've flamed out eons ago), but I can't help thinking of these people as a bunch of sourpuss spoilsports. There, I said it.

In a sense, it's the critic vs. creator split, but on a supremely petty scale. :-)

Fuck those haters! I just picture them all looking like this:
≡ Click to see image ≡ (It also helps to imagine those comments as being voiced by Comic Book Guy in his most unappealingly sardonic tone.)

GODDAM DANES

I smell beer.

That, or cortex just got back from Legoland and was *really* disappointed.

Some people build their MeFi reputations by making consistently excellent posts (matteo, I'm looking at you, for example), and some think they can take a shortcut by slinging the snark.

No. It isn't just you.

It's not about "the perceived quality of MeFi posts", it's all about "the perceived quality of the web".

What matteo said.