Gonna post my long-ass comment here instead of the other post because this one's shiny and is hopefully likely to get more eyes on it ('cause I'm an attention-whore like that):

When I first joined MetaChat and before I got a MetaFilter account, the thing I loved about it so much was that it reminded me of one of the very first Internet groups I joined as a college student in the early 2000s. Everyone knew each other, everyone was supportive of each other, we did silly things like call up phone numbers left on flash resumes, etc.

It's because of that chummy atmosphere that I was able to write down a lot of frustrations in the form of shouting posts, and you have no idea how helpful it was to have a group of "friends" who didn't know me in real life give honest, thoughtful consideration to what I was saying.

I've never been the focus of a mod banhammer here, though I can appreciate that there may have been tons of reasons why over the 2008 election. If there have been other kerfuffles, then I didn't see them and that's just good moderation right there.

If there is a problem that I have with MetaChat, it's that I didn't get a birthday thread this year, or last year (even though it's on the wiki and everything) and this could be my own personal insecurities cropping up about whether or not people like me anymore and I've erased and revised this paragraph so many times that I am starting to see the pattern of "Well, it's so much easier to beat up on yourself than to express how you really feel so perhaps you should throw in some self-deprecating humor and then people will think you're okay" and now I think I have to call my therapist (there I go again)...

See, stuff like that? And the fact that I feel safe saying that here? That's why I'm still here.

At the same time, I don't think there's anything wrong with a mostly-passive style of modding because it's the kind I employ over at the LiveJournal New Yorkers community and the community members who really care are quick to alert me when people are violating rule number one: "Don't be a dick." I went back and skimmed over your last post in j_p's thread and believe me when I say that I understand and identify with the "Is he/she trolling?" concerns you have.

It's a shame that I can't throw my hat into the ring and volunteer to co-moderate here because my NewYorkers are pretty chill with me getting back to them on mod issues maybe a few hours after the fact and it doesn't seem like that would work here.

As for the "slow down," it's because of my crazy work schedule that I can't post as often as I'd like or comment as much as I'd like to. This is one of the places I check into every day (yeah, I have an account now and I don't even read MeFi every day) and I'd be very sad if it went away.

Just a quick thought: there's those 4 photos there on the front page, and they're nice, but they've been there forever. It seems that, unless those pix are really some sort of Metachat logo (as in, 'this is our permanent photographic image reference for the site'), they should change more often. I wonder if maybe there could be some automatic/random shuffle system put into place, that would, say, pluck 4 photos from the Metachat Eye group on Flickr, and have them appear here, on a continually changing basis... I think that'd be interesting.

I've been thinking a lot about Photo Fridays... I think we can be more cleverer about how we do it - I want to comment on so many of the pics in context and I think comments get lost in the thread itself.

There is a plug in for the CMS metachat uses for Gallery - perhaps if we could upload smaller versions of images it wouldn't put a load on the server space?

And then we could maybe have new images revolving from the Photo Friday gallery on the side bar to make things fresh and exciting.

Dammit flapjax I thought it was my turn to use the communal brain today?

Facebook and #bunnies are the two things that have led to my decreased participation here, I'd say. What I get out of metachat is primarily social, so the threads like 3-point updates or other personal chatty posts are the ones I'm drawn to. For a while, maybe a year ago, I was posting/refreshing non-stop, but then when metafilter had the Great Breakdown last year, I discovered IRC. Not too many people there, often, but I have made some great connections with individuals, and the real-time factor is extremely satisfying for me. It's a way to deepen the relationships forged here, in many ways.

Often people I don't "know" from metachat or metafilter (but who are still participants, usually) find their way into #bunnies, but the fact that I do know many of the names and feel comfy there has really added to my life. At the expense of this site? Quite possibly. I'm going to make an effort to post more here as I can. I also have had some real life changes that are occupying much of my time. Now that I'm homebound (at least this week!), I'll have some more time. Maybe that will help me get back into the habit of active participation here.

gomichild, we can share the communal brain, what the hell, right? But your idea is better than mine, in fact: pulling pix from Photo Fridays would be better than pulling them from Metachat Eye, I think, because Metachat Eye has a buncha meetup type pix, and that might not be so great.

I guess I'd like to hear a discussion amongst the mods. I've felt for a while like the space was getting less attention, and it felt sort of lonely. The photos being static for so long are sort of a symbol for that.

I'm aware that in saying this I might be ruffling feathers, because I'm not aware of or privy to what the mods may be doing or saying to one another behind the scenes, or how they feel about this work. And I don't mean to do that because all the mods are people who I truly enjoy and respect and I'm grateful for all the time they've given and patience they've exhibited. But it has just felt like they were spending less time here, and were maybe less interested, for a while. I'm probably wrong, but part of the reason for that is that the mod presence really hasn't been visible. It's often been observed that web communities take on the personalities of their owners/moderators, and I think that's somewhat true - people are attracted to the general tone and style of a website, and that's a reflection of moderator decisions. To me, moderation is more than just fixing typos and banninating; there's also visioning, developing, community-building, and other stuff that can happen. One of the reasons the site was vital for a while is that there were all these ideas and activities - active moderator direction for the site, community investment, and site-building projects. That all lent a sense of energy and helped create the site identity.

I'm the first one, though, to understand that it's impossible to sustain that degree of involvement on a volunteer basis for very long. I don't speak here in an angry or critical way, and am not trying to call anyone out or wag a finger. I'm really only interested in recognizing some of what's changed, surfacing the present situation and figuring out how it happened, so that we can see if there's interest and energy for fixing it.

(And I completely agree that there are many outside factors involved in the participation decline, among them people spending less time online, life changes in the user community, competing social sites like FB and Twitter, bad experiences at a personal level, perhaps something about the atmosphere or 'clubby' appearance, and a lack of growth in new users. Some of those factors are within our control and should be talked about too, but I think the decision to act on solutions for some of them is something that mods could lead).

So I guess I'm curious to hear where you (the current mods) all are, how involved you feel, and how you view the site these days. Do you have a chance to talk with one another? Has anyone formally withdrawn? How busy does it keep you? Have you lost interest in MeCha a bit, or moved on to other projects more? Are you doing it to fill a gap because you're worried no one else would do it? Is this still current? Does anyone look at this anymore?

Oh gosh, I just went and looked in the older thread, and hadn't realized the mods were already posting in there. Sorry, it probably looks like I'm super-axe-grindy, but I didn't see that before I posted here. Reading it now.

I'd like to see favorites and tags. It's hard to find stuff or remember stuff. I know it's come up in the past and oh, we don't want people competing for favorites, but what's wrong with that, really? Not everyone cares about their favorites, and those that do would be more involved, and those that don't get the weird validation they look for would move on.

I think the salon feel of wit and banter and discussion fell away to a touchy-squishy Hallmark vibe.

I agree with Miko that a lack of visible moderation hurts the site. If there's no one to turn to when there's a problem, if there's no one taking site concerns seriously (and I've felt that in the past), then, yea, people do get disengaged, and plenty of them leave. If all the current mods aren't interested in moderating the site anymore, I think new mods should be brought in (and I'm not volunteering, lol).

Much longer front page, things disappear too quickly.

If not a longer front page, at least a "Older Posts" link at the bottom of the page. Not that I think that's a major issue with the site but it would be a nice addition.

I've been pondering issues with the site but don't really have any helpful suggestions yet.

I know it's come up in the past and oh, we don't want people competing for favorites, but what's wrong with that, really?

It distorts the discussions. It leads people to try wayyy too hard to impress other people.

MeCha, ideally, would be like a mellow summertime backyard barbecue.

Would you find a barbecue enjoyable if people were engaging in the kind of favorite-whoring you could find at another website? Would it be enjoyable if people started getting pissy about how much people liked that thing he said as opposed to what I said?

I think the salon feel of wit and banter and discussion fell away to a touchy-squishy Hallmark vibe.


You skipped a step. That would be the "FUCK YOU!!! NO, NO, FUCK YOUUUUUU MANNNNN!!!!!!" stage that came in between the banter and the Hallmark. I totally hear you about the squishiness, but I think that that is largely a reaction to the goofy shit that happened around the election. You're right. It could be a little sharper around here but I think people shy away from that because they're afraid that banter will degenerate into the scorched-earth aggro routine they've seen in the past.

For Photo Friday, can we have pre-announced themes? Announcing a few days before the posting gives me a better chance to find something. My photos aren't tagged. My memory is clunky. What can I say?

Also, if we're just talking tech about the site in general, I've never liked the way opening a thread always goes to #comments or to #more. I'd rather the page just opens at the top like metafilter does. Does this bother anyone else?

j_p, you are spot on with your last two sentences. But the favorites, ok, let's call them bookmarks? Would lead some people to the negative behavior you mention, not all. I think it would self correct, and people with that tendency would leave. I dunno.

Mostly, navigation stuff - older posts, way to find favorite things that I remember, and yes I like photo friday theme ideas, but lots of people have taken that on and burnt out on that, and like the "new mods" talk, I'm not even willing to wrangle photo friday, so what can I say, really.

I wouldn't mind some way of keeping track of things I like on the site- like rainbaby says, navigation is tough. Like the Favorites thing on Metafilter, but we could keep it totally on the inside (where nobody can see my favorites and I can't see anyone elses).

For Photo Friday, can we have pre-announced themes? Announcing a few days before the posting gives me a better chance to find something. My photos aren't tagged. My memory is clunky. What can I say?

Yes, I'll definitely do this from now on. As I usually work from home on a Friday and am in a time zone which means I'm up before most of you. I usually post the PF as my first online task on a Friday morning.

I'll make sure that I announce the theme on Wednesdays too.

It would be nice if it were easier to post images without breaking Flickr's terms of agreement. I'm always struggling to remember which part of the image tag to delete so that Metachat will accept it.

What I'd like to see is:

1. the return of Mecha Radio - I personally would DJ as much as possible if we can make it work financially.

2. favorites and tags definitely.

3. opening links in new tabs - it's hella frustrating to have to back-click every time I want to re-visit the front page.

4. And not to be too much of a dick, but I like the sharp edges sometimes - too much "OMG! this" and "3-point that" just makes the site static, predictable and altogether too squishy-safe.

I like mixing it up once in awhile. Within limits, of course - there's mixing it up, and then there's "off my meds today" trolling nonsense that goes nowhere.

Lately Metafilter seems less like a community than a comfort food for old-timers. What use is having a website, however downtempo, if everything feels like you could read the front page in your sleep or recite it from memory on any given day?

Just poking my head in to say: I have little to contribute or request here, though I admit that some sort of bookmarking function would be handy. I coooooould just bookmark in my browser (and sometimes I do), but I love the portability (though not the name and implications) of MeFi's favorites feature.

I don't speak for anyone else, but for me, stepping away from MeCha for a while was a half-conscious choice, a chance to cool down and re-assess my own participation. A few nasty (non-political) outbursts spurred it, and I needed some time to recover from those. I've noticed a soft-focus feel-good squishy quality to the site for a few months, and that seems to me to be a not-unusual reaction to a big blowout.

I notice that other members have been quiet lately, but that the community voice seems to be returning. I'm chiming in where I can, and even when I'm silent, I'm often silently enjoying the conversation others are having: the playlist posts, the Photo Friday threads.

Just a quick thought: there's those 4 photos there on the front page, and they're nice, but they've been there forever.

Running out the door so I didn't have time to read the whole thread (I will later! I promise!) but I just wanted to say that I TOTALLY AGREE. I mean, I know my photos are awesome and you'd all love nothing more than to have that bird silhouette grace the front page for 40 years, but I would like to pass on the throne to someone else now. I retire. If you need me I'll be spending all the money I made from that photo being on this site in the cayman islands.

As one of the 'fluffier' contributors to the site, it might sound strange to hear this coming from me, but I miss the sparkier threads of old where there'd be genuine back-and-forth debate and argument, and sometimes vociferous disagreement.

Having said that, I was very sad to see bunnyfire leave and felt that people did gang up on her. I also miss paulsc.

Well, I miss people, and it's quieter than it used to be, and the site may have peaked in a way, but I dunno that I want to see it go away. It's a lot homier here than the blue and I know I'll be a member of that as long as it exists. My time has been limited and things that slough away for me are Facebook and Twitter, not here. Even if I don't participate very actively right now I do lurk. And I so appreciate the support I've gotten through what has been a very difficult year. If anything, MeCha is more important to me now than before.

Well I'm in two minds as to whether to post here or not. So this is probably gonna be a bit disjointed.

I decided to walk away from metachat in September. I'm not going to bore you with details, but don't let me stop you. You do't have to be sherlock holmes to work it out.

Because of my position as site admin, there's still stuff to do, and I'll continue to do that until around about June 2010 (when our current website hosting runs out). But I'm not an active member, and you should look at what I have to say through the prism of that fact.

First: It's no good asking for ponies. You're not going to get them from me, and personally, I think anyone stupid enough to get involved with the site development at a point when the site is dying isn't going to be able to provide the programming ability you need for these things. I'd be happy for someone to convince taz that they should get the site admin gig though. If you think I'm wrong, then knock yourself out. As far as I'm concerned, you can have the job.

Next: You should know that I'm sounding angry because I'm trying to be honest here. I don't want to upset some of you. Know that there are some people on the metachat continuum I consider to be proper friends.

That said:

There was no mythical bad time. The US elections highlighted certain behaviours, and stuff was a bit more intense, but everything that was unsavory about the site then has always been there. And it was still there when I decided to leave. As far as I can tell there's a collective hostility on metachat which pushes away anyone who might be a little bit different from the norm. Y'All really like a good witch burning. I'm not pointing at individuals, partly out of respect, but partly because I think this is a societal effect.

You want to know why your model village is dying. It's dying because you're smothering it. I've seen it before. You're a locals only pub, and even while they're making sure that strangers aren't welcome, the locals are dying off.

Or you're every poetry group I've ever been a part of. You start off strong, and then you reach a level of cohesion that means you've got the big old shell which stops new people getting involved. And you're really happy about that for a while, and then one-by-one, you realise that it's a bit boring and you drift away.

Here's what I think needs to happen:

On the 3oth May 2010, I think that metachat needs to be closed down. It needs to be sudden and it needs to be harsh. If you all need a place to hang out, you'll make yourself one. This new place will be ramshackle, and it'll be chaotic and it'll be full of the wrong sort of people. But it'll be new, and because it's new, it'll be exciting again.

If you no longer need a place to hang out, then so be it. Maybe you don't need this place to hang out in.

Of course, exciting is scary when you've got worn and comfortable, but it'll be better. You can get it written with the new modern programming languages, and maybe that'll mean that it won't be as creaky, and you'll get better integration with flickr. Exciting means that you'll have new people in who'd love to set up radio or do other crazy things. Exciting means that you'll meet new people, and as has happened here, maybe you'll see those new people fall out or pair off or get married. Exciting means you can be part of something new. Again.

So yeah - That's me. Invisible old me, who tried to do his best and ended up filled with the knowledge that the mob will always be ugly. I'm pretty certain that you're not going to believe what I've said. No group that I've ever seen disintegrate in the way metachat is disintegrating has ever realised that it is the thing that is wrong. You'll continue to blame the lack of moderation, or facebook or the sidebar pictures or some other outside force. But I think you did this to yourself, and the only thing left for you to do is to burn it to the ground and start again.

On the 3oth May 2010, I think that metachat needs to be closed down. It needs to be sudden and it needs to be harsh. If you all need a place to hang out, you'll make yourself one

Well I think your attitude stinks. Be involved or don't be involved, fine, but don't burn the place to the ground with all of us inside just because you're unhappy.

Yeah, especially not on my birthday, you big meanie!

As far as I can tell there's a collective hostility on metachat which pushes away anyone who might be a little bit different from the norm.

This statement really surprises me, and either the fluffy wool is so deeply attached to my eyes that I didn't see it, or I ignored it, or whatever.

I stopped posting as much because I was in a bad place. I'm out of that place now, and wanting to post more.

I don't want the site to die. It seems like a great place for me.

I would like to commit here to pledge ten pounds a month indefinitely for site maintenance, and I would also like to offer to take up other duties if that would help.

I don't think the site is dying and I don't want it to die.

Here's a hug for seanyboy, who is sweet and wonderful, and a kiss on each cheek.

seanyboy, I read your post with great attention, and will return to reread it when I have more time and have had a chance to reflect on everything you say.

Let me now say thank you for all your work.

Much of what you've written makes me very sad, for you and for us. If you feel such a potent disconnect with the community here, it seems a particularly harsh sentence for you to have to continue maintaining the place. (Note: I do not mean that anyone should feel unwelcome here, only that your desire to get away from the place should be honored if possible.)

I ask with no agenda and with only the best interests of all of us: is there any reasonable way to take that responsibility off your hands? I have absolutely no idea what that would entail --- financially, technically, in terms of time and skill and dedication --- or if it's even possible. Who does know?

I'm going to be away from my desk off and on for the rest of the day, so I won't be checking back in here til tonight or tomorrow --- maybe later.

I do earnestly thank you for all your work, and for voicing concerns that I'm sure are unpleasant to voice. I disagree with a lot of what you've said, but criticism is useful to any process.

Not attempting to sound like a jerk, but I do not understand Seanyboy's analogies or hyperbole. There is a large chance it's just me.

I blame Twitter for much of the slowdown here. When I was there, I followed at least 40 of Mecha's major players or they followed me, and I know many more Mechazens were there as well. What struck me most was how many tweets would have been posts on Mecha, not just comments but actual posts. Also, I am now finding that I miss Twitter somewhat and that my deleting my account was probably premature. Further, I suspect that Twitter is the model for future social sites; all they really need right now is an @mailinglist1 function.

seanyboy - sorry you didn't enjoy it dude.

{your post has convinced me that i really should do a blog post about my metachat admin experiences. it was pretty funny. and scary (you have no idea how scary).}

umm, anyway i lurk here occasionally but hardly post at all. but you know, it's a nostalgia thing. it reminds me of when i was handsome, witty and had an enormous willy.

man, i miss that willy.

however...

the not too subtle subtext here seems to be that these guys don't want to do this anymore and maybe you other guys who still like this site should work out who's going to take over.

or maybe i'm wrong

(hint: i'm not wrong)

so here's my advice on what to do with this thread:
forget drama, it won't make you feel better. concentrate on getting someone to run the show who's actually interested in running the show. and by golly, have fun with it!

I used to arrange games and the Exquisite Corpses (that was fun) and organize Photo Fridays and did a lot of things behind the scenes, but always got the feeling that I was not "one of you", for various reasons which I will not go into here; let's just say that I usually felt invisible and lost interest and left because of that. I still log in once in a blue moon to fix a borked link or to do the "more inside" thing, I just stay quiet.

Thanks dg and danf, for mentioning me! Hugs.

Either I'm oblivious or I'm part of the problem but I don't really remember too many GRAR, GRAR episodes or flameouts here. I'm not really looking for anyone to point them out to me, just observing that I'm not sure that they're a big problem here.

I still don't get the twitter thing, I've had an account for years but haven't looked at it in at least six months. Since there's no easy way to have a dialog between twitters, it's just such a read-only medium.

And not to be too much of a dick, but I like the sharp edges sometimes - too much "OMG! this" and "3-point that" just makes the site static, predictable and altogether too squishy-safe
Yes. I've said it before and I still feel the same way - sometimes, this place is just too nice and we have always had trouble getting that happy medium between happy-happy-joy-joy and total GRAR. As a moderator, I've often struggled with situations where things look fine to me, but other people seem to be getting upset and I keep wondering if it's because I'm just an arsehole or that other people are being too precious about their personal opinions. Unfortunately, I think the latter is the case more than the former, because people here tend to be very protective about their opinions. I'm being brutally honest here - I like you all a huge amount, but many seem to be seeking an echo chamber than a thoughtful, honest discussion. Perhaps it's because so many of us spend time on MetaFilter with that very pointy, hard-edged discussion style and the no-holds-barred style of MetaTalk that many are seeking a gentler place to unwind without the stress.

I miss the sparkier threads of old where there'd be genuine back-and-forth debate and argument, and sometimes vociferous disagreement.
Me too.

Having said that, I was very sad to see bunnyfire leave and felt that people did gang up on her. I also miss paulsc.
Yeah, I was sad to see her go and I agree that some people did gang up on her (which was an awful time for the mods, because it meant taking sides where we may have preferred to either stay out of it and it left us unable to participate in the discussion properly because of having to slap various people for pushing too far), although she's her own worst enemy when it comes to getting all sensitive when people disagree with her. I don't miss paulsc, because he's too much of a blowhard and, IMHO, is something of a troll. A great storyteller, though - I'll give him that.

As far as I can tell there's a collective hostility on Metachat which pushes away anyone who might be a little bit different from the norm.
I think this is a bit strong, but the sentiment is pretty right. People here are pretty welcoming in a surface sort of way, but I can see that it would be hard for someone new to really feel accepted because it's a very clubby sort of place where you need to know people and the history of the community to really be able to relate properly.

I pretty much agree with seanyboy, apart from the shutting down the site part. I'm really sorry he feels the way he does, but respect his honesty in putting it out there. Its certainly true that 'you people' have, on quite a few occasions, put the moderators in an impossible situation by complaining that someone is being mean, then complaining when something was done about it (sometimes the same people!) because the action taken wasn't exactly what you wanted. To some extent, that's the burden you accept when you become a moderator and I'm not complaining that it happens (people are human, after all), but you have to accept that, when you act this way, the consequences are that people get chased away or become disillusioned and give up on getting involved in anything that might turn into a shitfight. The workload of a moderator here is pretty light, overall (or maybe I'm not pulling my weight ;-), but that's as it should be in a place like this - I expect people to have enough respect for each other not to have to intervene. The workload is presently more or less non-existent apart from the occasional 'OMG I accidentally linked to something wrong' or request to delete a comment that was posted in haste (or while drubk, possibly).

I really like it here and want to see the community stay together. We obviously have some stuff to work through to make that happen and not the least of that is finding someone to replace seanyboy. It's good that people are being honest here and, hopefully, a picture will emerge about what the core problem is and maybe even a solution.

For what it's worth, I see the problem as two things:

1. There needs to be more robust discussion to compel people to hang around and participate about things that matter (even if only to a few)
2. Everyone needs to be much less precious about their feelings being hurt when the above happens. Everyone is entitled to their views and opinions, even if they are dark and scary. Everyone is entitled to be treated like a human being, even if you loath them and every word out of their mouth makes you want to puke.

Of course, it's all moot unless someone technically capable and otherwise willing steps in to take over from seanyboy. If not, we're wasting our time, because the site will go dark in June 2010.

iconomy, I guess you have your reasons and have every right to keep them private, but to say 'always got the feeling that I was not "one of you"' makes me very sad and hurts somewhat and I hope I have never caused you to feel that. To me, you have been an integral part of this place from day one. Between taz and yourself, you made up a great part of making the place grow and prosper. The loss of both of you has contributed to the decline here, I feel. Not blaming either of you, just saying you were both so important here that the loss of you has had a huge impact.

In August of 2007 I had decided to leave metachat altogether. Obviously I didn't leave but I did stop participating other than as a mod. Slowly I've started participating a bit more.

As for mod activity here I have been the most active in banning and time outs and for a long while I've often seemed to be the only mod around most days. So I can shoulder the blame for a lot of the allegations of both heavy handed and aloof modding (neat trick huh?).

Sure metachat has been a friendly place but it has had plenty of back channel anger that has erupted into some truly ugly public behaviour. As some people have suggested a firmer hands on and defined leadership of the site might smooth out those sorts of things but then metachat would be something else again. I admire and respect Matt for what he has done at metafilter but I really don't want to get THAT wrapped up in a site and, judging from my conversations with some of you about becoming a mod, it's not something many folks want to do. I came here for the sort open concept free form aspects.

I've banned people for writing stocker type emails to other members, posting fake links that go to hardcore porn, and for having a fake email addy in their profile so we could not contact them about an issue. By far most of the leavings seem to have come about when people have felt pushed out by the collective will.

There was a lot of "if X is not timed out, slapped, banned, then I am leaving!" and "I am leaving because of..." crap and all I say to that is "goodbye". Yes YOU are different and YOU really feel STRONGLY about THIS and so on, but you sound like every other "I'm leaving if..." soul. It's not fun to read your emails and if it's not fun to be here then why stick around? As I've said numerous times "it's just a website".

On the upside; every time I have said "it's just a website" the reply has been hurt or angry so I guess I can infer that people still feel an attachment to the place.

seanyboy has done a ton of work for this place and it's sad that he has disengaged. I do want to say thanks for all your effort seany.

I won't offer any ideas for the future because I don't feel that what I have done here has helped to make this a fun or interesting place. I'd like to see a rebirth but I'm not counting on it.

Just to answer a couple of things.

dodgygeezer: Don't think I didn't enjoy it. I absolutely loved it.

By the Grace of God: Money isn't an issue.

ThePinkSuperhero: This isn't the place for telling people that their attitude stinks. Don't personalise things. Stop demonising people because you disagree with them.

Also, I never said I was going to burn the place down. I said that you all should do it. So you can create something new and exciting again. I've made and detailed my decisions re involvement, and they have nothing to do with what you will do with the site.

Offering again - is there some work I can take up?

I will be posting more links here and fewer on fb.

Seanyboy, I also want to thank you for the work you've done here, sincerely.

But hey, it's okay for TPS to tell you your attitude stinks; she's not demonising you, she's expressing her dissatisfaction.

Look, either people are going to find it worthwhile to be here, or they aren't. If you don't want to be a mod anymore (and I can't imagine why you would), just peacefully pass the torch and let someone else deal with it.

Hmm, so it sounds like I have til June 2010 to become competent enough in javascript and the like to take the reins of this site.

On a more serious and wistful note, I wish I could get paid (a la MetaFilter) for running this site, because I'd totally do it. Not like OMG rich! But it would be fun to have a full-time website coding project to work on.

I definitely thank everyone who has sacrificed their own time to make this site run. Running the IRC channel is not without its challenges, but they must be nothing compared to the webdrama, especially around election time.

I hope that doesn't sound too mercenary. I just have been spending a lot of time looking for a job lately. If I'm going to be less personally involved in MetaChat, it would be nice to get paid for it! ;)

Right, I'm not demonizing you. I'm disagreeing with you.

Hi. I agree with a lot of what seanyboy said; I too have watched other groups burn to the ground and while I thought perhaps metachat would escape that particular fate, maybe it won't. There aren't new people coming in and without them, it cannot last. How to reorganize it? I have no idea - there would need, I think, to be all new people, a big changing of the guard. I don't know if anything can ever last forever, particularly online. People change and communities change and not everything can or should live forever. I've been debating saying anything, but, well, if anyone is interested, the following is why I am not here anymore.

I decided to leave last April and as y'all may or may not have noticed, I've been gone. There are a variety of reasons for that - I didn't send anyone an I'M LEAVING email, by the way, I just walked away - but mostly it was just a personal decision. Somehow, I wasn't finding what I needed here anymore - I too, miss the back and forth and the conversations. I have never been much of a one for schmoopy love love love everything is okay stuff. Everything is not okay. Some things need more help than they can get from any amount of cyber handholding and pictures of kittens and eventually that mindset got to me.

While there was always a lot of that here, I could handle it when until it began to feel that the seesaw had landed permanently on that end. I think the salon feel of wit and banter and discussion fell away to a touchy-squishy Hallmark vibe. This, a thousand times this. And frankly, I just don't have it in me to be constantly offering support. Yes, I've gotten support here many a time and appreciated it deeply; there are many, many mechazens who I will always think of as true friends. For whatever reasons, many of them have wandered away, just as I have. I'd like to believe that I have also helped out in my time here and I'm glad for that. But it seemed as if while there was a balance between support and conversation and fun once, eventually that balance got subsumed. Somehow it began to feel as if all there was here was a constant barrage of feed me, help me, tell me I'm okay. That got too hard for me and there was nothing more I could say. When I started getting angry myself and wanting to say angry GRAR bitter things I knew it was time to leave. I recognize that saying those things would never help anyone but I got tired of holding my tongue, so I split. I am not good at always being nice.

I've also been reevaluating my own online life and online relationships and realizing that for me, at least, I need to concentrate more on real life stuff. I love a lot of you, don't get me wrong, but you're not here and I'm not there and meanwhile, I have friends and dogs and family and all the panoply of a life to attend to. I think I realized that I needed some boundaries, to make sure that my offline life was a higher priority - because honestly it is more important. And, yes, Twitter may well have had something to do with it: I like twitter. It's like a great one night stand: fast and commitment free and that's working for me right now. I'm still on Metafilter, of course, actually a lot more than I used to be, and I think it's the impersonality of it that I like as well.

I wish you all well but while I lurk occasionally - I don't think I will be back. I don't think you need me, anyway - you need new people, totally new people, fun new people with fun new things to say.

But it seemed as if while there was a balance between support and conversation and fun once, eventually that balance got subsumed. Somehow it began to feel as if all there was here was a constant barrage of feed me, help me, tell me I'm okay. That got too hard for me and there was nothing more I could say. When I started getting angry myself and wanting to say angry GRAR bitter things I knew it was time to leave.

I know the dynamic you're talking about. And it annoys me too. I got tired of people who never contribute anything to the site, neither goofy pictures nor news of the weird nor even chatty contributions to three-point threads, showing up and needing a hug and handholding and all the rest. It was a little too Tragedy of the Commons for me.

I guess we were just too nice to call people on it.

I need you, mgl.

From an organizational dynamics standpoint, it strikes me that a number of those who have been in the position of moderator have been uncomfortable with the role. I know that it's quite difficult to deal with people and their politics and the back-channel discussions; I don't know it from moderating an online community, but I know it from working in real-life communities. It's difficult work.

But what makes it the worst is when it's arbitrary. What makes that work the toughest is when you really don't know where to draw the line, don't know if you have any support, don't have any guidelines to refer to, don't have community consensus, and don't have a good way to justify your action or non-action to people who inquire.

This is part of what I think has been a problem built into the DNA of the site. There was a desire to be free-form, but that meant that we couldn't agree on what made an allowable or non-allowable post or comment or bit of site-related behavior. I think that each of you sounds as though you were operating on your own, trying to make your own decisions, and not always feeling comfortable with the decisions. And not always feeling you had backup or a structure to rely on that gave you the confidence and ability to moderate with greater consistency and transparency.

The difficulties with user personalities, nasty arguments, bans, timeouts, bad judgment and so on are definitely going to happen. That can be expected in any community, fully stop. People will push boundaries, especially when they're comfortable. That's what makes leading/moderating a community so hard - yes, you're a member of the community, but you're also taking on another level of responsibility for interacting. It sounds as though this duty was highly stressful for most of you at different points, and I understand that. Would it have been easier had you had (a) more communication amongst one another; (b) a firmer set of guidelines; (c) a different understanding of your role; (d) more sense of ownership, empowerment, and ability to make changes and statements without waiting for the community to respond; (e) other stuff entirely that I can't think of?

I find myself wondering to what extent the moderating mindset was just not a good fit for some people's natural approaches?

Seanyboy's statements were strong, and I'm glad they were offered, but I think that so many of the incidents he bemoans could have been nipped in the bud earlier on. Things didn't have to descend so far into the nastiness he calls out. There are ways to limit the behaviors allowed so as to prevent the most egregious clashes.

I am quite surprised to see iconomy saying she wasn't noticed - I always looked up to her, admired and enjoyed her contributions, and considered her one of the Titans here as well. I'd never have imagined that she felt excluded. How are we to know when people feel excluded? How are we to know what behaviors are being perceived as exclusive? What can be done to make the site feel more open and welcoming to others?

There's a degree to which the community as a whole can be responsible for the feeling of newbies that they're unwelcome, but the degree isn't 100%. People don't arrive as blank slates, and it can be easy for someone to feel slighted simply because they haven't been noticed, but does that mean that someone failed? Has everyone here made a point of noticing and speaking to everyone else, like in an AA meeting? I can relate a bit to what mgl said, the feeling of constantly having to be supportive. I have offered (and received) a lot of support here, but haven't been able to sustain that all the time and for everyone, in part because to some extent sometimes the offering of support feels a little empty. A while ago, for instance, I gave myself permission not to comment in birthday threads. And we've seen that the effort to note birthdays, as kindhearted and inclusive as that was meant to be, has backfired and left at least one person feeling dismissed. And that's a person who I would think has a lot of positive relationships on this site and enjoys the site and is enjoyed as a member of the site - as iconomy was, as countless others are. When even those people can feel neglected, what's going on? How much of that is due to site behavior, and how much is due to expectations? How many of those expectations are stated or suggested by the environment, but not fulfilled?

There is such an inherent conflict here, in that people seem to be wishing for and seeking a sense of safety (in that there should not be intense debates, pile-ons, or serious anger) but also a sense of complete freedom in which there are no limits and the disciplinary moderator functions are used only rarely and at the point where a total destruction of the relationship between users and the site is imminent. It just can't be both ways. Humans are humans, and communities are communities, and both act and evolve in quite predictable ways, as Seanyboy notes. Unlike Seanyboy, I don't see that as a personal moral failing of members of the community, who need to be shamed or accused for their actions. Not a bit of either the negative or positive behavior on view here is unique to MetaChat, the people of MetaChat, or the goodness or badness of those people. The behaviors are fairly universal aspects of what can happen given certain social conditions - one of which is an absence of clear guidelines for discourse, another of which is a lack of shared purpose, and another an absence of consequences for poor behavior (or inconsistent consequences).

In order for the site to survive, I would think it needs lots: a new coder and maintainer, several new and non-burned-out mods, and (I'd argue) a set of guidelines. Developing those guidelines would take a fair bit of work; one reason is that we don't all even agree on what's best about the site. For instance, jason's_planet wishes it felt like a mellow summer barbecue. I don't wish that; I miss the days of deep detailed conversations, sometimes on heavy questions, and I certainly don't mind a good debate. I've fallen off because that's gone away for the most part, and I wouldn't hang around for just a barbecue, which is nice, but there are so many other places that are a bit closer to my real life to get the 'barbecue' feeling. So we don't all have an agreement on what the site should be, we'd have to hash it out together, and I'm not sure the community's up to it. The peculiar mix of playfulness, earnest dialogue, vociferous debate, and opinion/preference/quirk-sharing that existed here may just not be a blend of content that has legs. It might just not serve any of its kinds of audiences well enough to make all of them want to participate more frequently.

So perhaps the site should indeed die with its contract. Perhaps it would be reborn, in different form, by someone who wished to start a new community, on its own new terms, but invite the present community to migrate over. Or perhaps it would splinter into a few separate communities: a meaty discussion forum, a cooking and gardening community blog, a "happy place," and Facebook.

I miss iconomy :(. She is beast and tank.

I'd just like to say many thanks to all mods/admins past and present. I know it's a difficult job and I believe y'all have handled it as well as can be hoped for with this sometimes rowdy bunch of bunnies.

Iconomy, it's so hard for me to believe (although I do - I know you're not lying about your feelings) that you of all people felt like an outsider. You were such a core person, a person who did so much here and was quite visible. I think you may be surprised if you search your name and see how many "I miss iconomy" comments there are. And if I wasn't one of the people saying it, I was surely thinking it.

I can't think of any changes that I'd like that haven't already been suggested (longer front page, bookmarks). I'd just like to state that I can't help technologically-wise, but I'm available for whatever I can do.

This place has been more than just a website to hang at. It's always been a community and I hope it continues.

For instance, jason's_planet wishes it felt like a mellow summer barbecue. I don't wish that; I miss the days of deep detailed conversations, sometimes on heavy questions, and I certainly don't mind a good debate.

You're leaving the barbecues too early. When it gets really late, they turn to those kinds of deep discussion.

It would be nice if it were easier to post images without breaking Flickr's terms of agreement. I'm always struggling to remember which part of the image tag to delete so that Metachat will accept it.

Yes! Could that be done, I wonder?

As someone who joined the site relatively recently compared to some others here and who has been extremely grateful for the cool people and things I've found here, I just want to say that I hope some form of this site continues for as long as people here want it to. I love reading about the basic humanity we all share: the crazy neighbors, the lunches eaten, the photos taken - especially from this far away, in the wilds of an unpronounceable regional Polish city.

This was also the only place I could discuss some things I had, literally, no other arena to discuss. I came to the site once from inside a robbed apartment a week before Christmas and I received good wishes and follow-ups from what non-site members would regard as total strangers. I have shared good news and bad. And I have offered my own advice for people I felt that advice could help.

So for those who have commented above about the lack of participation or enthusiasm on the part of site members, I can't really do anything other than shrug my shoulders in relative confusion, because I didn't come to the site with any expectations other than what the site says on the tin: "MetaChat is an informal place for MeFites to touch base and post, discuss and chatter about topics that may not belong on MetaFilter."

Is the site what it "once was"? I don't know, because I wasn't here. I can't say I've been the most active member, and my geographical location essentially prohibits me from meeting any of you personally. But I have been the recipient of great kindness and compassion here, from people I have never met, and that is something rare indeed.

So whatever the site becomes, I feel strongly that it needs to maintain an element of humanity, a sense that members can come to share their joys and pains and questions and answers. Every community evolves over time, but as someone who's come to enjoy his time here, I'd like to see it resemble - in spirit - what it does now. Peace.

Other relatively new members of note, just off the top of my head: Melismata, Joe Beese, and The Whelk.

Man, am I sorry to hear how much heartache modding seems to cause. I don't think I realized how tough a job it can be. I also hope that I was infrequently a contributor to that frustration.

I don't have much to say here. I love this place, even when it's quiet. Metachat is the source of the only online friends I've ever found, so to speak. I like the place, even when I find it too huggy/kissy for my taste, and I've learned to ignore a lot of stuff that I likely could not have ignored in the past.

I've learned from some fantastic people. I've learned patience, compassion, some understanding. I've also learned that it's possible to speak your mind without being a dick about it. I'm still not too good at it, but...I really have seen it done, and it continues to impress the hell outta me. There's a large number of folks here that I'm REALLY, REALLY glad I got to know, even if only a little bit.

I'm not a coder and I'm not sure I've got what it takes to be a decent mod. I also don't have enough time to contribute to the site really. I wish I had some time, or skills. I just hope that if the site does burn down, that someone emails me and tells me where we're hanging out next.

I'm SO glad this place was founded, and I can't thank taz, dodgy, seanyboy, and everyone else who's modded, or contributed.

Lastly, man, my heart almost broke reading ico's comment. I really miss ico, and have fought the urge to try to track down an email address, feeling like I should honour her desire to be less around. For whatever reason, I don't feel that I know everyone here as well as everyone else, but gosh-a-mighty, I liked iconomy a lot, and really came to miss her wit and personality. I miss ya ico!

It would seem I did have some stuff to say. And I hope this place doesn't go away.

But it seemed as if while there was a balance between support and conversation and fun once, eventually that balance got subsumed. Somehow it began to feel as if all there was here was a constant barrage of feed me, help me, tell me I'm okay. That got too hard for me and there was nothing more I could say. When I started getting angry myself and wanting to say angry GRAR bitter things I knew it was time to leave.

Yes, yes, yes. That is exactly what I was talking about in the other thread when I said a quiet site isn't necessarily a bad thing. Quiet means everybody's happy!

iconomy, you're one of the reasons I stopped lurking and joined. I loved your posts and comments very much.

I mostly lurk now, since I don't have a lot of time during the day to post. Nosy boss. ;-)

When I posted more frequently, I mostly tried to stay out of disagreement threads that got personal because I tend to avoid confrontation in general and honestly didn't understand most of the subtext, but I do like a good issue-related debate.

I miss the radio. A lot.

I can't add to the discussion other than to say that I've never really engaged here because I ran out of things to say on Internet forums in I think, 2002. But it's a nice community and there have been good, smart, fun discussions here.

You asked, so here are some "you shoulds" from a relative outsider:

Archive this site as a nostalgic look at the site's formative years.
Keep the URL.
Scrap the database, the CMS and the design and start fresh - even new usernames maybe.
New look and feel, new outlook, new approach.
Bring back the alien.
Be really welcoming to newbies. REALLY welcoming, asking for participation.
No more clubby, no more clique-y.
Focus on the creative, the fun, and the helpful. Foster discussions. Polls are fun when they're not facebooky.
Clear member rules, clearly stated, and enforced.
A focus on the community aspect of the site, not on moderation. We members should see mods as enforcers, facilitators and goto folk for problems, not babysitters.
Backchannel bullshit shouldn't be tolerated from members. That's like, highschool stuff. No one should have to put up with that nonsense.
Use a back end that facilitates site messaging and collaborative modding.
Mods should be rotated and have clear responsibilities that are well known to the members.
Mods should be badged, or identifiable in some way.
Form some kind of er, "company" or something to handle money and administration. That way the burden doesn't lie on the site admin and situations like seany's can be worked out more easily.

Just some thoughts. Take what you like and leave the rest.

Dodgy really has it... what happens in these discussions over the next week (?) will determine what happens here, so you should take the ball and run.

In terms of blame game stuff, I don't really see that working out. You can see that some people are complaining that the site is too schmoopy while at the same time others are complaining it's too hostile. This is a fight with no winners, trust me. Everyone here has the option of making it more of what they like. If you do decide collectively that it should have an interest-oriented mission statement - like, we are here to do/discuss X, Y and Z, but not A, B or C, then that is a different site.

If you want it to be open for a lot of different things, then you need to be active in promoting those things that you enjoy. And some of that is hard. Radio is hard because people complain about time slots and show-length, and it takes energy to organize that and resolve disputes. Art projects are hard because you need to herd the cats and try to keep some schedule for submissions as well as doing the work to display the results - and the more fun and successful things are, the more people want to participate, and the harder it is to get everyone sorted.

Moderation is hard because no matter how non-authoritarian or objective you are, you can always expect to be accused of censorship, being dictatorial, having favorites, doing too much or too little.

So, the simple answer is that people with energy and enthusiasm need to guide and organize - and not just as mods and admins, but as participants and project leaders, to maximize the positive things, whatever they are - creative efforts, deep discussions, fun games, refreshing silliness, whuffles and schmoop. They don't just happen.

I miss mix tapes. A few days ago I looked into a site (drop.io), to see how it much it would cost to host a page for a month where everyone could add their mixes. I sort of dropped the idea because they only accept credit cards, and I wanted to do paypal, and I wasn't sure that the size I could afford would be enough for everyone... But I miss mix tapes, so I want to figure out a way for us to do that.

Positive energy in, positive energy out, I think. It's okay to be passive when that's your mood, but not everyone can be passive and expect things to be fun and lively.

Starting with the fundamental stuff, we need about three people to run the site administratively and technically. Personally, I'm not interested in doing that any more (/obv.), but I can be backup for some things, or maybe if my main job is changing front page art and organizing holiday pages with none of the other stuff I won't be such a laggard. Or sluggard. one of those gards.

After that, you can tackle moderation, and how you want that to be. I would like to remain involved with the site, but more as a user and maybe creatively, possibly with legacy administrative access as a backup if the site doesn't start new from scratch, and also to be able to make site pages (for example for special days, or possible art project stuff).

I hope dg, arsey and ico will continue in whatever way feels right to them. I love them all very much, as well as my sweet British boys, seanyboy and the dodgygeezer; they've all been wonderful-wonderful, and we haven't had any backstage problems at all, just me wandering away which was my own deal, so they all got stuck holding the bag.

Whoa... iconomy felt left out? We have a huge failure to communicate, here. Not only was she one of my first MetaChat friends, but I have seen her absence mentioned MANY MANY times, not just in the last year, by people who wished she was still here. If a member who was a guiding force behind the site feels "invisible", we are not communicating properly.

on preview: Taz, I'll take on whatever we need to do to keep the site alive and vital. I have zero technical ability, so I'd need backup in that area, for sure.

Most of the real-life friends I have these days are people I met through MetaChat. It's the only online forum where I've ever felt really at home. I wasn't aware of most of the "back-channel" stuff, thankfully. Y'all tell me what I need to do to keep this place alive. I am game.

Okay, this is very good to know, BP!

I post on a few forums, and they all seem to losing traffic. It seems to me that the common factor is competition from Facebook and Twitter. Partly it's existing members drifting off there, partly it seems new users do all their online socializing through the huge sites (Facebook, Myspace, Twitter, Yahoo Groups) and don't see the point of self-contained web forums.

(I'm not on Facebook: it seems pretty sinister to me to have one giant corporation with a closed network taking over everyone's relationships. Twitter seems more open at least.)

But maybe the way forward is to embrace them instead of fighting them.

On another site I use they've just put in a "Share this entry" box when you're inside each story. That has "Share on Facebook" and "Post to Twitter" links. (This is technically easy, you just need to link to a custom url).

The hope is then that people will write longer posts there, but spread them on Twitter and Facebook. It might also attract more traffic from these sites.

Twitter now has a Lists function for groups of people, and there's at least one unofficial Metachat list:
http://twitter.com/rachelrachel/bunnies

Maybe a new mod could create an official Metachat Twitter List, and link to it from the site. It might be possible to have some equivalent of the Recent Twitters by MeFites page, possibly even a sidebar on the front page, from that. (I have no idea how technically hard that would be). So someone looking at Metachat would see some activity.

It could be that keeping the community going means shifting more of the activity to Facebook or Twitter groups. I don't know how Facebook works. But I think the 140 character limit on Twitter means it could co-exist with a Metachat website: metachat.org would still be useful when you have something longer than that to say.

Most of the real-life friends I have these days are people I met through MetaChat. It's the only online forum where I've ever felt really at home.

Same here. Whilst I've also met people from the 'other place', I feel that the ones I'm friends with are the people I've got to know over here.

Metafilter is like a huge university campus, with tens of thousands of students and you might connect briefly with a few of them, but if they don't share your classes, your connection is brief. There are a few who stand out, either for their brilliance or their assholery but you're either not brilliant enough or don't want to be seen as an asshole to hang out with them too much. You feel you don't quite fit in with the cool kids, and you're not brainy enough to be seen as one of the academic high flyers. The frat/sorority houses scare you and you never got an invitation anyway.

MetaChat is (or was) the dorm where we all hang out after class. There's a big home room for people to chill, play music, watch TV, play games and sports, debate the news, share what's happened in their day. Occasionally over in the corner an argument will break out and people raise their heads at the sound of the shouting and go 'huh?' as they hear the door slam where someone storms out. Sometimes they come back, sometimes not.

There's a kitchen for people to cook and share recipes. Outside is a rabbit hutch, and a garden for the green-fingered to cultivate. People laugh, sometimes they cry, they talk, eat, have fun, go off in little groups to the park, or the pub or the movies. Every now and again a couple of people will give each other a knowing glance and sneak off to a bedroom ...

I would be sad to see this site shut down, but it does need to be revitalised. I lack the technical skills to do anything behind the scenes but will help in any other way I can.

Thanks, Jan... I can think of one thing that is a kind of a pain in the ass thing that might be shared by some folks on revolving basis, because though it's pretty easy it gets tiresome, but I'll discuss that more later.

One thing that you should realize, though, is that handling the Photo Friday is major; it would have died without you after we lost the earlier people who were taking care of that. You've been the savior of that site feature - which is what I mean when I talk about how members are so important as leaders in terms of keeping things interesting and fresh, and maintaining those good things.

Twitter now has a Lists function for groups of people - Thanks for sharing this tidbit.

I post on a few forums, and they all seem to losing traffic. - I am reading the same complaint on the major blog sites.

a kind of a pain in the ass thing that might be shared by some folks - I was once an editor on Plastic! Oh, wait, I totally abused that position. Nevermind.

jan you and BP have kept PF alive and we should say thanks.

Yes, BP has been instrumental in keeping PF going.

Or you're every poetry group I've ever been a part of. You start off strong, and then you reach a level of cohesion that means you've got the big old shell which stops new people getting involved. And you're really happy about that for a while, and then one-by-one, you realise that it's a bit boring and you drift away.

There's a degree to which the community as a whole can be responsible for the feeling of newbies that they're unwelcome, but the degree isn't 100%. People don't arrive as blank slates, and it can be easy for someone to feel slighted simply because they haven't been noticed, but does that mean that someone failed?

Yup, these summarize up pretty much any group anywhere anywhere, online or off. (It's always a problem at our church.) The new people get angry that they're not being accepted. The old people get angry that the new people don't understand the group and say they won't give up all their history and in-jokes just to please the new people. Both sides are completely right, and both sides need to get off their high horse and just all friggin' get along. I don't know why this is so hard; I think the internet in general has taught people to be very selfish: hey, I can print things at 3 a.m.! I can do what I want! I don't need to leave the couch! Everyone else will think like me!

I'm fairly new, but I think I've blended in because I've respected the history and in-jokes, read things quietly for a while to get a feel for the site before posting something (just like at the mother ship), and not demanded that HEY! Everybody look at me! I'm new! to the point of being obnoxious. Not being obnoxious goes a long way. One of the quotes I swear by is "Respect the dignity of every human being."

I love the chatty aspect of this site; it's impossible to reproduce it on Facebook, let alone Twitter. You can't write thoughtful, long opinions on Facebook that don't take 5 clicks to get to. It's not a discussion. It's just announcing, more hey look at me stuff. Selfish. Also--very important--Facebook is NOT anonymous. My mom's on Facebook. I have to limit it to things like "Melismata enjoyed her Las Vegas vacation." A bit dull. :)

Seanyboy, I'm so sorry that you're angry and burned out. I hope that there aren't other bad things happening in your life that are contributing to this.

And finally, no matter what happens to metachat, I will be eternally grateful for the day it saved my sanity, when I was having scary Zoloft withdrawals and didn't know what it was. Metachat helps people in a real, tangible way. I hope that can continue.

Facebook is NOT anonymous.

This. Not that Metachat is really anonymous, you could figure out who I am pretty easily but my identity is at least obscured enough that I feel more relaxed here. On Facebook (and I assume twitter if I used it), you have to worry about who's reading it and who's going to throw something back in your face or get offended. I certainly don't want to bitch about my job on FB since my professional network is so incestuous, it would certainly get back to someone I work with.

From a moderator point of view, I totally see where seanyboy and the others are coming from. I can't offer much of help or advice on that, but I can offer free hosting (in fact I stlll have a backed up version of metachat from the past on one of my backup tapes somewhere, I noticed when I moved to a new host and laughed at the fact that I had forgotten this backup, while managing to loose three months of my own non-backed up site in a servercrash, d'oh!).... So yaknow, if you want metachat archived somewhere where hostingmoney isn't an issue, I got space.

Facebook is NOT anonymous.

Yes! But also, Facebook gets superannoying if you befriend X people from around the world and you don't want to get nekked in front of all of them. Like Melismata said, your mom is on it. "Dabitch enjoyed her Las Vegas vacation" just isn't fun, everyone in there is guarded with statements.

I feel compelled to comment, although I don't think it will add anything much. Most of my observations tend to fall along the lines of richat's and Boring Postcards's comments. So I'll try and bullet-point, or summarize, or something.

1. where I'm at
Although I have been here I think from about the second or third week of MeCha back in '05, I've never really considered myself a huge contributor. I think I read 95% of the threads, but I rarely feel the need to actually comment. that said, I've never felt left out or anything. Even though I have no interest in IRC or most of the creative stuff, I don't worry when other people talk about them (I always have a tiny "weird, some ppl mainly interact on IRC" moment). I don't feel the need to be an integral part of every bit of the community.

2. Mods stuff.
- thank you all so much
-dismayed at the thought that y'all have been doing modding stuff that you really don't want to do for such a long time. I honestly thought that you just had other stuff going on, not that you actively disliked the site. That's upsetting to me. Ditto on iconomy feeling not "one of us", although I have no idea if I'm the "us" anyway. (see prev. comment). Iconomy was, like others said, one of the first commenters for whom I felt some real admiration and really liked.
- I don't know what I can do to help. I know shit about coding and stuff. If there is any little job that I can do, someone needs to let me know because I will do it.
-who are these someones that will be doling out jobs? otherwise we will be going around in circles

3. community
- I've been fairly blase about the cycle of participation just because like others have said, these things do go in cycles. I'm always a little saddened when people actively decide to not participate.
- I can't imagine not coming here even though I don't post much, mainly because it's dropping in visiting with friends.
- agreed with taz's observation about how some people are complaining about the schmoopy while others are complaining about the hostility. Argh. Personally, I am not worried about either of those things. *shrug*. I think that the fact that people complain about both ends of the spectrum is probably pretty indicative about how people are projecting their own issues onto the site/community. And easing back from each end just makes the site more bland. Also, for the record, I think that while this

there's a collective hostility on metachat which pushes away anyone who might be a little bit different from the norm

is probably true to a degree, I also think that there is a difference between that and people getting frustrated with someone that deliberate provokes and says hateful things for attention, and lashing out when they don't stop after being asked to do so.

Um, so yeah, I don't really have much to contribute, but you know, another voice and all that.

No more clubby, no more clique-y.

Feels like we're getting somewhere.

Disclaimer, your list was very thoughtful, but I'd like to hear you say more about this "clubby/cliquey" thing. The reason I ask is that, as I said earlier, it's a fairly regular critique of the site, and yet, I personally find it hard to pinpoint what specific behaviors people find clubby or cliquey.

I can certainly understand how an appearance of cliquiness arises when a brand new user encounters a small and individuated user group with a history. BUt I think there's a difference between that perception and the reality of members' collective approach to new users. I do think that the new users could be made to feel more welcome by having more overt "welcome new member" rituals and structures, for sure. But I also find that some people dip into the site, form an impression, and then don't seek to probe or test that impression at all, just give up, or harbor disappointments and resentments that remain unspoken until threads like this.

I've been a member of web communities since about 1993, and lots of real communities too, and there's a simple truth about group dynamics - it is always hard for a single newcomer to penetrate and knit themselves into a group whose relationships were already established. In fact, this is such a tendency in human communities that it is embedded in the very reasons why schools, universities, and summer camps take in their new attendees on the same day and assign them randomly into subcommunities. As any transfer student can tell you, it's a lot harder to arrive in the sophomore year and always be aware that you do not share that freshman orientation experience with everyone else! It's hard to be the kid that moves a lot and here you are again, starting 6th grade midyear. It's the same reason that the military coordinates training into new classes, taking green people and forming bonds amongst them in an intensive intake program. All of this is experience design, and it recognizes that group solidarity and relationships are more easily built when everyone's new at the same time.

Web communities are different. They're more like workplaces or churches in that way. People arrive at different times, and are somewhat unknown until they indicate a bit about themselves. Some institutions really work to facilitate this process and I think it can be amazingly helpful - that's why I suggested new member intake could be an area we can work on. (Though I'm a member of some sites where they go so far as to assign you a 'mentor' or 'angel' who sends you chirpy "hi there!!@!" emails and offers to show you around...**shudder, ick**. Let's not do that).

So my view is that intake could be improved to create a thoughtful welcome process.

But the second idea - not to be clubby or cliquey - I think in order to understand how to NOT be that, we need to understand what it looks like, and I don't think we do. What posts, comments, events, behaviors seem clubby? And the question arising from that is, are they really clubby, or are they a natural outgrowth of this "dorm" type of environment that we don't want to discourage?

We need to determine where the perception/reality line is there, what's within our control, and what can be put down to individual sensitivities that a web community can't properly address.

Side thought: currently on MeFi there's an experiment going on about trying the site without favorites. It's producing a lot of learning, and one thing I hadn't realized until now is that sometimes that system can help people feel included. It's one thing to make 10 comments that no one happens to respond to and conclude you're shouting down a well. It's another if someone favorites one or two of your comments - that positive reinforcement may encourage continued participation and build a sense of inclusion. I'm not arguing for favorites here, but one thing I hear is that people who are new have no way to tell if or when they feel accepted or noticed, especially if they only make a few comments and nothing raises a response. With favorites you often get much earlier, simpler feedback and that can short-circuit the anxiety loop.)

If you do decide collectively that it should have an interest-oriented mission statement - like, we are here to do/discuss X, Y and Z, but not A, B or C, then that is a different site.

What if it were not interest-oriented, but community-standards-oriented? "We're here to discuss anything, but these are the ground rules...:"

It strikes me that one of the great difficulties of MetaChat is that it isn't interest-oriented. We cluster around certain interests, but that's not why we're here, and as the user group changes interests change...reflected in postings, we've at times seen more music, more design/art, more food, more interpersonal, etc. Which is all well and good; there are subject-specific communities out there for those of us seeking that. What makes MetaChat tough for people as users, and tough to moderate, is that it's primarily social. It exists for no other reason than discussion and making connections and being playful with one another, and that sort of presumes that the people here want to talk to one another. The lack of a content focus makes it certain that the context the site operates in is about socializing and social relationships. So of course, the difficulties users experience will be primarily social. If we're all here to talk, and no one's talking directly to me, I must be being rejected. If people don't like the content I post, they must not like me as a person. If I get only 12 Valentines, people must not like me.

The fact that the kinds of people who gravitate toward a purely social site are (a) people who enjoy chatting, bantering and socializing for its own sake and do it in all contexts and are fairly secure about it, and (b) people who have a strong desire to be social and a lot to offer socially but perhaps are more awkward or less developed in terms of their social comfort and skills means that the presence of feelings of social anxiety here may be larger than what you'd find on other sites. Those who feel more secure will always be saying "Chill out! It's just a website," and those who feel less secure will often say they feel overlooked or unsuccessful.

And finally, I'd be willing to be one of a team of moderators for a one-year term to start. I would suggest that the rotation of those responsibilities would help prevent burnout and increase shared understanding in the community of the difficulty of the role, which is built in.

who are these someones that will be doling out jobs? otherwise we will be going around in circles

True dat. I don't want to make my suggestions or express my current thoughts on this right now, because I'm hoping that the discussion will bring things forward organically, plus it seems pretty crappy to go on a walkabout and then come back and say, hmph-hmph, here's how I think you guys should organize blahblahblah. I do have some thoughts on this, though, which I'll put up for discussion if it seems like things don't begin to come together.

And you right that we need something to coalesce here before refinements can be logically tackled. It goes:

Admin/Tech, then Moderation, then Policy, then Goodies.

Truth? Over the past year, many of the more provocative posters either were frozen out or drifted off. The site may be more agreeable, but it's also a lot blander. FWIW.

Yeah, I, too, feel like I should say something, even if it's nothing somebody hasn't said before. I haven't been around as much lately as I have in the past (and, even when I was around a lot, I'm not sure it was really all that much).

I feel like the site changed, gradually, a little--no point in going into detail, so let's just say that there started to be fewer things I liked, and more things I didn't. I tried to change that, a little, but I could've done more.

Thing is, though, this place is near and dear to my heart, and I'd hate to see it go. It makes me happy to see that other people feel the same way.

Other thing is, there are two discussions going on here. To oversimplify, there's the one about what happened, and the one about what's going to happen. This last graph is about the second one.

I don't know jack about the technical end of it (and, if the site's going to go on, we absolutely need somebody who does. And thank you, seanyboy, from the bottom of my heart, for sticking around when you weren't into it), and I only know a little bit more about the personal/social/whatever end, but I'm willing to learn. I don't know that I could handle taz's job, and seanyboy's is way over my head, but I want to give back, and I'd be happy to just be on the team.

Wow. I'm glad I didn't wait my usual two months between visits to follow up on this thread. So many insightful comments. Thanks for starting this, taz.

I must be very bad at reading other people online. I honestly had no idea that I was even noticed or that I had made an impact in any way. This is not false modesty. Thank you, everyone who mentioned me, I feel the love! Now I feel stupid. But I'll get over that ;) I'm not going to say anything else. I don't want to make this thread all about me, because that's jonmc's job.

I'm kidding, jon. I really am ;P

Anyone still into the EmCee (Exquisite Corpse)? The old ones are linked on the sidebar if anyone wants to take a peek: http://emcee.metachat.org/

If anyone's interested, I still love them to bits and would love to organize one. I know everyone is busy with the holidays coming and understand if no one's into it right now, but in a day or two I'll try to do a "do ya wanna" post.

TPS, how much do I love that you remembered beast and tank!? Hah!

And yes, what taz said about there never being any mod strife between any of us or behind the scenes. Old mods don't fight, they just fade away.

:D

Anyone still into the EmCee (Exquisite Corpse)?

Yes!

I'm all for a round of EmCee and i've missed ico desperately.

I'd be interested in hearing more about the tech side of things, what maintenance is required and what the workload is like. I'm not a web developer, but an old coder in a variety of languages, so I may not really be qualified, but I may be able to learn. I wouldn't touch moderating with a ten foot pole, however.

I honestly had no idea that I was even noticed or that I had made an impact in any way.

I think it would be pretty easy to feel that way here. A lot of stuff goes unacknowledged.

If anyone's interested, I still love them to bits and would love to organize one.

I would love to have that return. I was always awed by the talents of people here.

I am serious about learning to run the backend of the site. Esp. if I do not have to worry about hosting costs (yay, dabitch!). I understand, though, that there are probably folks who would not like to see me in any kind of administrative position (since I don't really have a problem with, as taz said, being "accused of censorship, being dictatorial, having favorites, doing too much or too little," and I don't hide that fact). I also understand if running the "unofficial" IRC channel as well as parts of the site muddies some waters that were painstakingly unmuddied awhile back.

Otherwise, it would be great if dodgy or seanyboy could point me in the right direction as far as learning to work with the existing codebase. Six months is, I think, plenty of time for me to learn what I need to know to be able to take over as required.

Wow, I just spent an hour reading this entire thread - I haven't fully processed it all emotionally, or rationally, so this is a bit scattered.

0. THANK YOU to all mods throughout all time for your work. You are the hand on our tiller, and I know from experience how hard it can be.

1. The need for technical programming/admin work keeps popping up. I speak jive... but mostly sysadmin stuff, not so much the presentation layer. Problem is, I don't know what the MeCha backend looks like, so I don't know if I can offer to help. Is there a list of what needs doing, both ongoing and one-shot? Perhaps if we can define discrete tasks, we could use something like the Amazon Mechanical Turk or another bid-for-work marketplace?

2. This thread made me well up with tears in a few spots.

3. The closed/clique charge: On one hand, I can see the basis for the complaint; despite the odd frowny moments, we get on pretty well, and have for quite some time. It could be intimidating for a newcomer. On the other hand, I feel like everyone here *is* open and welcoming to folks who put a little effort into participating. A newcomer needs to build a wee bit of "conversational equity" - Make a few chat deposits in your account before trying to withdraw some emotional support, ya know? When folks talk about feeling excluded from the clique, I always wonder how much they gave in order to get. Yet that being said, we could use some new folks.. I just don't know how to attract & encourage folks to stick around long enough to find out that they truly are welcome.

4. The election-era bad blood: I must have been more absent in the last year than I realized, because I confess I didn't really notice the intensity of the acrimony. A slight uptick, perhaps, but not the scorched earth that I'm hearing about now.

5. The back-channel drama with Mods - I've always seen mods as benevolent fixers of inadvertently unclosed tags, not the kindergarten teacher or the cops. If we want people to continue to volunteer to mod, then we need to be adults, and not require mods to actually moderate the conversation.

5a. I worry much more about the people who silently drift away than I do about the "Mods, delete my account, this is my last post EVAR" histrionics. (That "last post" never is, is it?)

6. Radio is difficult, because (at least in the US) internet broadcasting is subject to complex and onerous regulations brought about by the large media industries using legislation to protect their commercial fiefdoms. It simply may not be possible to do Radio the way we used to. Even though we were very very small fish, the companies further up the food chain were killed off, and we needed those streaming-reflector content distribution networks to make the radio work. Sucks, I know.

Um, I'd like to offer to sit in on meetings, or something. I still worry about not being able to commit to much, but I like this place enough that I'd feel better if I was able to offer something. Maybe I could help moderate for a period, if only someone assigned me a "mentor" who would email me sometimes.

:-D

p.s. Hi iconomy!

mmmmmmmmm... EmCee!!!!!!!!!!! Yay, yes, yes. ♥s ico

Man, am I sorry to hear how much heartache modding seems to cause.
Mostly, it hasn't. Speaking personally and not pretending to speak on behalf of any other mod, I've generally enjoyed being able to help out when people bork links or forget [more inside] and stuff (it's also cool being able to correct typos in your own comments ;-). I also don't have a problem with playing policeman if the situation calls for it. For me, the feeling that it wasn't fun any more was really just that period when election bullshit was causing angst and that seemed to coincide (cause? I don't know) with a lot of GRAR and (I think) with taz and seanyboy stepping back a bit. In general, the mods did what needed to be done with no drama and no need for direction - we just cc'd each other into things and it seemed to me that we were all pretty much on the same page (but I've been known to miss obvious social clues before). When the site suddenly got quiet after that period, there wasn't much 'work' to do - before that, I would check in a few times a day and keep a close eye on my e-mail in case anything came up. Because I'm not really into pictures of bunnies and kittens and that seemed to be mostly what was left, it was hard to maintain my interest for more than a quick visit every few days. Then work and other stuff got busy and I got out of the habit of coming, which left all the moderating to arse_hat because we were the only two left by then (although I never really knew that the others had gone away, just assumed that I hadn't noticed them because I wasn't here so much), which was really unfair of me. I'm sorry for letting the team down. I was truly honoured when taz asked me to do this and I feel bad for not living up to expectations (even if they're only mine).

To me, the absolute key to moving forward is getting someone to work the engine room because, without that, the site will sooner or later fall over and that will be that. I don't see the hosting costs as a huge issue, as long as someone can manage the donation drives that have worked so well in the past. The offer from dabitch is also an attractive option, but concerns me that it then puts her under some obligation if her circumstances change.

Revitalising the moderation team would be next cab off the rank and there seems to be a few takers up there. I'm certainly happy to stay on board if I'm still wanted, but understand if a new broom approach is considered better.

Policy is (always was, always will be) the biggest issue. Personally, I'm in favour of the 'don't be an arsehole' approach rather than documented rules, because setting rules means you have to defend them when different interpretations are brought into play. I'd rather see a set of broad guidelines written up that say 'don't be an arsehole' in several bullet points and leave it to the moderation team to have the right combination of common sense and hard-headedness to apply them fairly and then stick to their decisions. The last bullet point in that list should be 'moderator decisions are final and will not be debated publicly, but feel free to e-mail your concerns'.

From an organisational point of view, it would be ideal from my perspective to have some sort of back-channel available to the team, so that there is a central place where private discussions could be held about moderation issues rather than via e-mail, which is not really suitable for group conversations.

Finally (for now), I would like to thank arse_hat for carrying the can for so long. I'm sorry I let this happen and I understand why you feel like you don't want to keep doing this, but wish you would stay on, as you do a great job and have just the right balance of fairness and firmness.

I didn't mention it... because I don't want to guilt or pressure him into anything, but chrismear is our backup-tech/admin-God (plus official Cupid), and already has experience with our site - so I'd like to hear from him. Eid has IRC going on, which is important on its own, and I'm not comfortable with the overlap.

I'M GONNA REPEAT THIS...

I don't want anyone to think that the programming / website maintenance part of this wasn't fun. It was huge fun. My side of things neither made me angry, or burned me out. It was not difficult, or when it was difficult it was the fun sort of difficult.

I NEVER HAD A PROBLEM WITH BEING A SITE ADMIN.

Having said that ... to business.
I'll sanitize and zip up the website so those that want to look at it can. And then I'll post asking for people to say they want the job. I'm guessing that it's up to you guys to decide who you want to do this. I have ideas on who *could* do it, but if you want a new broom - it's probably best if you work it out yourself.

Eid has IRC going on, which is important on its own, and I'm not comfortable with the overlap.

othankgod

From a moderation standpoint, I'm all in favor of dg's notion that having rule number one be "Don't be an arse/ass/dick/cunt (did I get every possible permutation?)" be implemented because as I stated before, that's how we run our NewYorkers and it's worked out well.

Controversially, we also have a statement in our userinfo that states that if you're asking a question that's easily researchable or you don't provide specifics, the regulars are free to snark at you at will because we already warned you that there may be mockery on the userinfo page.

Anyway, if there are a few more people who want to club together and be a mod team, I don't mind being a backup because I do try and check into Gmail now and then and I'm also up early and stay up late. But again, if it's a thing to where y'all need moderation TOUTE DE SUITE, I wouldn't be able to do it.

Just some personal reactions about the 'community' aspect.

I often feel I have a kind of blind spot when it comes to group dynamics (and, frankly, social stuff in general), and so a lot of this discussion has left me quite bemused, I'll admit. My natural reaction to 'the site is dying' and 'there aren't as many posts as there used to be' was simply 'well, we should all just post more'. Or, rather, I didn't see any of this as a shift in what the MetaChat community is, but just a change in volume.

Similarly, while I've been aware of tempers rising around certain subjects/events/people, I'd never have the conviction as a moderator to 'step in' to such situations in that capacity, and so I sometimes found myself surprised by the reactions and actions that have been taken. This is just me perhaps, and maybe I am just lucky to be speaking as someone who's never been affected by these things, but I wonder if to have a community where deep feelings of belonging and positive connection are genuine, you also have to leave open the possibility of antagonism and people who you find difficult to deal with -- neuter one and you neuter the other? An interesting world is made up of more than the people you love.

With regard to the site feeling 'abandoned', I've always thought of moderators on community sites as primarily being there to deal reactively with negative problems that come up, rather than needing to be the active creators of positive experiences. I can understand the ideas of stewardship and demonstrating community standards but at the same time those feel like things that can come from any member, not just from a group that happens to have been blessed with the power to fix double-posts. Perhaps this is naive of me.

Personally, I've never been a prolific contributor to this site, but I have noticed that over the last couple of years I've been writing a lot less in all the places online I could be posting and commenting, so it's not just MeCha. Part of this, I think, is being a little older and a little less sure of myself and my opinions, and also feeling more guilty about spending time on 'entertainment' activities versus work activities. I'll often start writing a comment on something, and then give up because I don't really believe I have anything useful to contribute, or I because I don't feel I'll have the time or energy to keep following the thread. Everyone's life has ebbs and flows, and perhaps what happens when you start a community made up (almost by definition) of people who currently want to hang out on a social web site, a few years down that line that cohort is more likely than a random selection of people to be busy with other things going on in their lives.

Now about keeping the site running.

In late 2007 seanyboy asked if I'd be a backup administrator for the site, and I said yes. But although I had a copy of the house keys since then, I haven't ever really done much, even though there were a couple of things I was supposed to be working on...

When I first read seanyboy's first comment on this thread, my initial reaction was "Hey, I'd love to take responsibility for the site", because I like volunteering for stuff because it feels good, you know? But I sat on my hands, because I know that that's just my default reaction to things like this, and for it to be a genuine offer I need to know that I'm actually going to follow up and get things done. And to be honest, my last two years of MetaChat backend involvement have been stark evidence that I'm not really getting my hands stuck in.

The biggest reason behind this is that, although I am a web developer by trade, I only have a passing acquaintance with PHP (it's a language I can get around the city for a weekend with, not a language I can write a sonnet in; I'm a Rails-head), and MetaChat runs on a general-purpose blogging platform that is itself a bit intimidating to dig into. Now these are not problems in themselves, but as someone with some major motivational issues, these give me a reason to not particularly relish digging into the backend of MetaChat. Because of this, I'd need to be really, really excited about something (or something would need to be really, dangerously broken) for me to rustle up the self-motivation to actually get something done about it. Hence my inaction to date.

I am actually pretty excited about things like better Flickr integration, bookmarks and easier following of threads that you're participating in, and so on. But I'm not excited about the prospect of trying to graft them into the existing MetaChat code.

So I am keen to help, and I could certainly maintain MetaChat in its current state. But realistically it would end up in a similar "don't expect any ponies from me" situation as seanyboy is currently in, although for different reasons. While I think I could manage it from a technical point of view, I don't want to over-promise in terms of what I'm actually capable of getting myself to do.

The first part of what Chrismear wrote is pretty close to where I'm at, too. As for the second half - contributing from the back-end - I'm pretty spark at XHTML and CSS, and little else. I've tried to put together and manage two CMS sites and it nearly killed me, both times, so I can't help there. However, If you'd like, you can come over and look at my scares. They're really butch and I've been told they make me look ruggedly hansom. *wink*

Really, though, what I need to do is participate more then I have been and from now on I will endeavor to do so as RealLife™ permits.

I'd also like to thank everyone who has been working to keep the old girl a-float, low these many years. Y'all are a fine bunch of eggs and I'm right happy to know ya.

Logging in for the first time in 4 months. I disengaged from Metachat for various reasons. At the time I mostly felt that they were personal and "my fault", so it's sort of surprising to read similar stories from various other people who have disengaged. In my case, I felt like I was a toxic presence in any discussion deeper than "what we did last week", and that any statement of opinion by me was grounds to start a huge negative derailment. I also felt that I had become the spokesperson for a certain political outlook, when I am actually completely incapable of representing any opinion other than my own. Part of this is my own, personal, social-anxiety-related paranoia.

But part of this is the fact that, in the absence of any community standards specified and enforced by the moderators, the most prolific and most personable users of the site determined their own standards and enforced them through various methods. Perhaps at one point I was part of that group. But I guess over time I changed and I no longer fit in to the shifting sands of what was acceptable behavior here.

I hate to criticize moderators anywhere because, well, I'm not putting the time into it so what right do I have to say anything? I guess all I can say is that I've gravitated towards two types of forums. (1) Places where I have sole authority over the experience (Facebook, mostly), or (2) places that have active moderators enforcing a consistent community standard, where controversial and I daresay combative discussions can happen without turning into personal attacks or a series of personal vendettas.

And I thought I was posting this to jasons_planets thread, not this one, so not it seems out-of-place. **headdesk**

I have been socializing on the net since '94 (1994). I have cycled through a number of sites, most of which are probably still in existence. Groups of people on the net have tended to have a shelf life for me.

Joined MeFi in 2001 and have never been more than a very peripheral presence there. Found out about MeCha via an AskMe question, I think and I checked this place out and found a very smart and very funny group of people and some splendid banter and repartee and wanted some of it.

I have had NO idea of the back channel stuff, of any kind, but assumed that the usual flame wars and pair-offs have been taking place privately, as is the norm for groups of people on the net.

I have highly valued meeting people in person (a first for me) and also making friends with people I have not met up with in the flesh. Y'all are still smart, funny, attractive people.

The only pony I have ever wanted here is a function that will make any given user invisible to me. Not sure if its possible, or even desirable, but on a few other sites, that was possible and it seemed to be a passive way of avoiding some of the sturm and drang. But I never asked for it. I would have never advocated for anyone's ouster here. I don't have to read what anyone posts, and often did not.

So any given day, this place is what it is. Tamer, more polite, fewer trolls, but less fun. I am still reading, posting, and commenting, but less than I did once for whatever reason. Part of it is, as you get to know people online, you run into the limitations of the medium. We'll reveal only a certain amount of info, and once that's out, we'll struggle to come up with equally interesting content.

So I'll keep on being here. Y'all are interesting folks, and I learn a lot about stuff I would not have known about. And I'll be on the flaming boat as it leaves the shore, if it comes to that.

It took the first hour of the work day for me to get through this thread as it stands now, and it will be lunchtime before I have a chance to collect my own thoughts well enough to type them out. I want to say, though, that something about this thread feels like either a break-up or a make-up. I'm not sure which. It feels good that we're hashing out the aspects of the relationship that didn't work. But I also can't tell if they're leading to a reconciliation [and makeup sex!] or an agreement to part ways, and that makes me sad.

I miss the Metachat of 2006. I really needed it then; it filled a hole. Maybe the Metachat of 2010 will have its own sexy lure. I sure hope so.

And it's weird to think about it that way, because what filled that hole wasn't any damn website, it was the people typing on it. Y'all were [are] great friends. I don't think of you as any less now. So why does it feel different?

Just posting here to say that I will do what's needed to contribute to the site - whether it's money, moderation, organising a community activity, or the like.

i didn't realise how important this site was to me until this thread. Well it is important to me, so I want to give back. i'm willing to put in several hours a week doing it.

I think I'd be a good assistant moderator, radio organiser, photo friday organiser, email list admin, or the like. i have mod experience. I do not have much technical experience but I can do some coding and unix config.

I'll do what it takes to keep the site alive, taz.

But part of this is the fact that, in the absence of any community standards specified and enforced by the moderators, the most prolific and most personable users of the site determined their own standards and enforced them through various methods.

I did a MetaFilter post about that phenomenon a couple of years ago. The actual link was a radical feminist essay from the early seventies. But the insights it provides quite germane to this discussion and the points you're raising.

The Tyranny of Structurelessness

"[T]o strive for a structureless group is as useful, and as deceptive, as to aim at an “objective” news story, “value-free” social science, or a “free” economy. A “laissez faire” group is about as realistic as a “laissez faire” society; the idea becomes a smokescreen for the strong or the lucky to establish unquestioned hegemony over others. This hegemony can so easily be established because the idea of “structurelessness” does not prevent the formation of informal structures, only formal ones..."

With regard to the site feeling 'abandoned', I've always thought of moderators on community sites as primarily being there to deal reactively with negative problems that come up, rather than needing to be the active creators of positive experiences. I can understand the ideas of stewardship and demonstrating community standards but at the same time those feel like things that can come from any member, not just from a group that happens to have been blessed with the power to fix double-posts. Perhaps this is naive of me.
Or, more likely, we have taken the greater responsibility on our own shoulders by our own choice. I have always felt some responsibility to be a 'good example', but that is something that has come from me, not from any explicit expectation of members.

It feels good that we're hashing out the aspects of the relationship that didn't work. But I also can't tell if they're leading to a reconciliation [and makeup sex!] or an agreement to part ways, and that makes me sad.
This for me too. I'm desperately hanging out for reconciliation and feel more positive about that than I did at the start of this thread and the one that spawned it(don't worry, I'm not expecting any make-up sex, though ;-).

It sounds like there are some skills in the neighbourhood, IF metachat were floating on different code? From that sentence I think it's clear how much I know about this stuff, but it's making me wonder. Is it completely crazy to revamp the site in a language/format so that some of the people with skills CAN feel more comfortable? My guess is that this suggestion is cuckoo, but I thought I'd ask.

Oh, and I think I'm hearing a pretty broad desire to NOT break up. Just a lack of skills, perhaps, to really be able to move forward.

I'm sure I could count 5-6 mod volunteers. I'm not sure I am up to the task, but I'd be willing to try, and it sounds like there are others in the same boat. I do have my email open all day for the most part. I'm just not sure if I have the people skills, and moral compass to be what the site sometimes needs. I am around though.

We seem hung up on a site admin though. That's why I'm asking the poorly worded question above. Anyone understand what I'm getting at?

richat, I've have the same wondering. My take is that, if you are the site administrator, you get to change the codebase if that is what makes the site work better. Anyone doing that would have to be careful not to break the social things that work - changing the UI can make people do strange things (see the MeFi favourites experiment thread for an example).

That's the fear, I would imagine, that some stuff would work better, other stuff might go away. I've seen that happen in similar, but NOT the same situation. Still and all, am I nuts or do we lack a site admin, but...have a generally sound group for other stuff? Can we perhaps look at a couples retreat to rekindle the fires, with counseling help, of course?

That's my take on the situation, too. I'm all for the couples retreat, too, but who decides how the couples are paired up?

I'm not sure I am up to the task, but I'd be willing to try, and it sounds like there are others in the same boat. I do have my email open all day for the most part. I'm just not sure if I have the people skills, and moral compass to be what the site sometimes needs. I am around though.

This, exactly. Though the couples retreat metaphor might be over my head.

Is it completely crazy to revamp the site in a language/format so that some of the people with skills CAN feel more comfortable?
It's not completely crazy, but it's pretty crazy, and even though there's a tonne of noob programmers who'll tell you that it's the way to go, it's not something that tends to work.

IMHE.

but who decides how the couples are paired up?

Keys in the punchbowl, if I remember correctly.

Keys in the punchbowl, if I remember correctly.

Would that work with ANY combinations? It seems like it would work with a totally het bunch, but, of course, that ain't what we got HERE.

*doing the math, er, geometry*

You might need a Venn diagram.

I will admit that it's entirely possible that I stretched that metaphor to its breaking point. Although, some of the continuations remind my why I like it here.

So...I suspected it was a foolish approach to scrap the existing setup. I guess, as seanyboy says it might not be crazy. But...yeah, pretty crazy.

I'm just not sure what else can be done with the existing structure, with low skill sets to administrate the site. Is it possible to look at a mod-mix-up (that phrase should get scody to the thread btw) while asking someone to try to keep the old girl running as is, for now? Thoughts?

It seems like it would work with a totally het bunch, but, of course, that ain't what we got HERE.

Dude, you're so uptight!

Why are we limiting it to couples?

Poly-mod-bunnies? I'm down with that.

Or maybe Mod-Podge bunnies. They stick together with a pleasingly glossy coat.

P.S. I love that many (most?) MeCha threads eventually devolve into bad puns and goofy jokes. Don't ever change that.

No more clubby, no more clique-y.

Feels like we're getting somewhere.

Disclaimer, your list was very thoughtful, but I'd like to hear you say more about this "clubby/cliquey" thing. The reason I ask is that, as I said earlier, it's a fairly regular critique of the site, and yet, I personally find it hard to pinpoint what specific behaviors people find clubby or cliquey.

Hey Miko:

Thanks for asking, I'm feeling a little gratified.

The clubby/clique-y is pretty easy for me to see, as a relative outsider: it's all about members who, for whatever reason, publicly shame or shun other members. It should not be allowed here. Ever. Not in an overt way. And not in a passive-aggressive way, either.
The site rules and mission statement and even a subtle banner should be very clear that public "fighting" or shunning will not be tolerated, and there should be ample opportunity for members to report problems to moderators, rather than airing grievances in public.

I like rule #1: Don't be a d*ck. I think rule #2 should be: "If you think a member doesn't belong here because they don't 'fit', quietly inform a moderator, and be ready to back up your words."

For a brief backstory I come from a background as a total underdog nerd. I've outgrown it but I'm really sensitive to public shaming. That happens here. It should not be allowed to.
When members publicly shame other members in an environment where it's not expected (i.e. not Metatalk), that shuts down people like me, really quick. I won't start new conversations, especially ones that aren't about bunnehs or whatever, when I think I might get my ass handed to me for the effort. This may be a contributing factor to the "bland" nature of the commentary here.

Some examples I can think of:

- There was a user who had a strange habit with question marks in their username. They were shunned like a leper. Blatantly. And for not a whole lot of reason other than that they were different. I'm not going to link to examples, but I distinctly remember at least one comment that clearly stated they did not belong here. It was like a high school cafeteria moment - you can't sit here. That comment should not have been allowed to stand.

- chuckdarwin, as abrasive as he was, got pretty much told to f- off, quite publicly. There may have been backchannel stuff going on there, but NONE of it should have been allowed to have a public face. That stuff should have been hidden or deleted. You can see that crap go on at Metatalk, but I don't think it has a place here.

- A member who seemed to need a lot of support, and pretty much demanded it, also was shunned, publicly. Somehow, someway there needs to be a method of taking that stuff off the public site and into a private conversation. That's why I think its important that the site have some kind of messaging system that's part of the site dynamic.

- The most fun threads around here are those that encourage participation from newbies. I loved the "questions you dare not ask at askme", the "delurk!" threads, and the "say hi, new members!" threads.

I agree that there is a community experience in starting a new team, school, class, etc on the same day. It builds rapport and is welcoming. So maybe when a new member joins, there needs to be a "hurrah" moment - like a "Welcome to our newest member, DeputyDawg" in the site header or something, welcoming them. There could be a "new members this week - every one throw an egg at em" area on the sidebar.

Anyway, that's my take. No public shaming. And clear indication, via non-subtle "having a problem with a thread, comment, member, or the site? Report it here!" type links, to encourage the reporting member to take the problem off the public side of the site.

In AA, there is a concept of a "group conscience". It is the process by which the completely unorganized members of a group take a period of time, usually once a month, to assess the "health" of the group - air grievances, discuss group business, and basically "take an inventory" of rights and wrongs and future direction.

I see this whole discussion that way. It's very healthy and gratifying to see Metachat's members taking an interest in deciding its future. It's really good to see positivity being such a natural part of the process. I really hope a lot of good comes out of this whole thing.

Leaving aside the question of who can run the back end of the site I'd like to focus some attention back on the state of the community. First, it's great that there are people who want to help keep the place going but a few new mods is not enough to change things.

We have had a team of mods. We had two great admins and three mods working at the same time. That is more than enough for a site this size. The problem seems to be that all of us behind the scenes have felt tired, besieged, or angry. A change of guard would buoy things up for a bit but I think the cracks would show again in a short time.

We have made a few rules: Don't bring Metafilter drama here and Don't ask for money or ask people to buy you things and Slagging off other users is not cool.
Also from the FAQ: "Is Metachat "self-policing"?

Many Metachat users also use Metafilter which has a self-policing policy - that is, users are encouraged to publicly call attention to poor quality posts, doubles, self-linking, etc. usually within the thread.

This is heavily discouraged in Metachat.

Metachat's policy is so loose that no user should ever feel the need to admonish another user for not meeting the guidelines.

If you see a post or comment that you think should be deleted or edited then e-mail the mods and they'll deal with it.

So, just chill out, enjoy yourself and leave all that crap to someone else."

When people bring up someone's bad behaviour we have tried to address it in a timely fashion with direct contact with the accused and with a minimum of public show. Often times however the call is not just for correction but for a banishment and that call comes with a threat to leave. Many have left because some other member is still here and when a member is banned there are always people who leave in protest.

I've always tried to be fair and I know the other mods have too but I've been attacked for letting people stay and for banning them.

So what rules do people want? If the community needs more direction how does that come about? What do you expect from a mod?

Miko made some good suggestions. Go back and reread them. I have a couple of times. Maybe we do need more rules but too many rules and a heavy bureaucracy would drive me out. jason's_planet seems to have looked at group dynamics a bit and I would ask for any other input he could provide.

Too everyone who has said they want the site to go on; please read seanyboy's post again. There is a lot of truth there.

disclaimer made a number of very good points but "Somehow, someway there needs to be a method of taking that stuff off the public site and into a private conversation. That's why I think its important that the site have some kind of messaging system that's part of the site dynamic" You always have the option of emailing a mod. I only sleep about 5 hours a day so I am often around.

I know my moding has pissed off some folks but I really would like to see this place go on. taz and DG have said a lot about the site that makes sense. For a mod's perspective read what they have said.

" A member who seemed to need a lot of support, and pretty much demanded it" Sadly there has been a lot of that and it has mostly been talked down behind the scenes. In a lot of cases the person has come back with a more thoughtful less demanding way to ask a question.

non-subtle "having a problem with a thread, comment, member, or the site? Report it here!" type links, to encourage the reporting member to take the problem off the public side of the site.
While this is entirely the wrong time to ask for new ponies, this could reasonable easily (I think) be accomplished with a 'report this' link under each post/comment that sends an e-mail to all the admin/mod people with a link that goes direct to the offending post/comment so that it's easy to identify where the problem is. This would save some time in figuring out exactly which comment is offending someone. This is just fiddling at the edges, though and doesn't help our current problems.

Often times however the call is not just for correction but for a banishment and that call comes with a threat to leave. Many have left because some other member is still here and when a member is banned there are always people who leave in protest.
To me, this has been the most challenging behaviour to deal with - no matter what you do, you end up with someone upset. I've always taken the approach that, if you want to leave, leave but I'm not going to ban someone so that someone else will stay. If you act like an arsehole, you get treated accordingly. There needs to be some trust that the mods are dealing with things in the best way they can and the understanding that, if you have a problem with someone else, it isn't always them that is causing the problem - it is possible that your expectations are unrealistic. This is by no means a common thing, though - I don't want people to be thinking that the banhammer has been wielded all over the place, because it hasn't (with the exception of a couple of early periods where a certain group decided to test the limits of the site security and management). Banning someone here, or even any kind of admonishment, is a pretty rare occurrence.

In a way, the 'nice' vibe here creates its own problem, because it's hard to reconcile that with any sort of disagreement and comments disagreeing with someone that wouldn't raise an eyebrow somewhere like MeTa seem to be considered as the most heinous behaviour here. I've said before that I would like the discussion here to be more robust, but we seem to really struggle to find that middle ground where robust discussion happens with the level of respect needed to stop it turning into a shit-fight. We're pretty good at agreeing, but we suck a bit at disagreeing, for some reason.

Keys in the punchbowl, if I remember correctly.
So why are mine the only keys in there, then?

A great person once said: "I really think that any given community has everything in common with a Shirley Jackson short story." True dat.

It's not completely crazy, but it's pretty crazy, and even though there's a tonne of noob programmers who'll tell you that it's the way to go, it's not something that tends to work.

Yeah. I mean, 'rewriting MetaChat' would be a fun personal indulgence, don't get me wrong, but it's probably not the best thing for the site as long as there are still a handful of people out there who can hack PHP to a greater or lesser extent.

- chuckdarwin, as abrasive as he was, got pretty much told to f- off, quite publicly.

Yes, and? What you reap you shall sow. chuckdarwin was a huge dick to a lot of people here, publicly, and he got it back publicly. Who's the victim- him or all the people he was so nasty to? There are two sides to most of the public battles around here, they're not black and white.

What I'm saying is that there's no cabal. There's just individuals reacting individually to things as they see fit. I think we should do our best not to lynch anybody, but I also don't think we should allow individual assholes to take over and ruin the site for the majority of us.

Warning - my usual disjointed thinking follows:

Actually, TPS brings up something I've been thinking about for the last couple of days with respect to in-group stuff, and the concept of "community" vs. an individual. I was trying to say something about it in my earlier comment but I don't think I conveyed it very well (as usual!) It's something that surely must give the mods headaches(?) I know it would me.

And that's... where do you draw the line between "community" as a monolithic entity and "group of individuals" all of whom may have the same reaction? Like, OK, say user X is being inflammatory and just generally an asshole, as perceived by maybe 70% of the rest of the users. Now, every one of those users surely has the right to be upset at user X, and surely has the right to call them out on it? (or do they? is this where our guidelines say that this is the exact time to email a mod??) But then when there is an overwhelming feeling in that direction, it looks like (is) a pile-on. What disclaimer calls "public shaming".

For the good of the "community" it's probably fine to keep user X around. Blah blah blandness, making the community more boring, etc. But then, if 70% of the individuals are genuinely upset at user X, that's not really cool either. But surely we have to protect people from "mob rule" as it were? Or am I making a fallacious slippery slope argument? Will calling out the asshole (as described by 70%) lead to calling out the shy non-participant 6 months down the road?

See, I know these are things that have been thought about since the interwebs were invented, but I'm still going back and forth and round in circles and not getting anywhere. It's why I couldn't be a mod.

The problem isn't assholes, it's people allowing their friends to be assholes whilst calling out non-friends who exhibit asshole behaviour. There's your cabal right there. You can't see it, but it'd probably serve you better to spread a little trust towards those people who say it exists, but who you don't necessarily like.

"You shall reap what you sow"??? You can quote Galatians if you want, but for my mind, this is just another example of bad biblical propaganda. What happened to turning the other cheek?

As to where you draw the line... I believe that sometimes the aforementioned 70% of people are wrong. And I believe that as soon as they've managed to get rid of one person, they'll turn their attention to another person. And so on, until all you're left with is a small self-congratulatory circle jerk that does nothing but complain. This is human nature, and all the cognitive dissonance and confirmation bias in the world isn't going to make it right.

fwiw gaspode; The fact that you're going round in circles on this probably means you'd make a fine mod.

The problem isn't assholes, it's people allowing their friends to be assholes whilst calling out non-friends who exhibit asshole behaviour.

Yeah, that's true. And I think that it's definitely a function of this site, where a lot of the people know each other off-site. It's far easier to give someone a pass when you know "they're not *really* like that". Well, if they are prepared to put it out there online, well, maybe they are really like that.

More food for thought. I think I've definitely been guilty of cutting people I know a lot more slack.

I think I've definitely been guilty of cutting people I know a lot more slack.

Oh, definitely. I was thinking about the way people describe Metachat as "friendly", which I think is almost true but not quite- it's more a place for friends. A place to make friends, to keep in touch with friends. There are definitely sites where you can blow in and be a jerk to everybody and still find reason to stay (like, the topic of the site itself will keep you engaged- I see it all the time on wedding blogs), and I don't think that's the case here, because we have no set topics to discuss. If you manage to piss off a majority of people here, I don't see what reason you'd have to stay, and I think in the end that's why our more controversial characters end up leaving.

...which is why some of the stuff like Photo Fridays is important for site cohesion, IMO. It gives structure to the site beyond complete chatting/hanging out.

Does stuff like that enough structure that it's something that will draw in and engage new users, or is it just interesting to the people who already know each other?

I dont' know about drawing new users in, but I think it's a jumping off point for users who are here but not so active. It's an easy way to ease your way in to the community. Maybe?

from seanyboy:

And I believe that as soon as they've managed to get rid of one person, they'll turn their attention to another person. And so on, until all you're left with is a small self-congratulatory circle jerk that does nothing but complain.

This intrigues me. There have been two posters here that pretty much infuriated me. Neither seems to be around anymore and I'm not sure a) it's worth naming names, and b) if names are relevant. Please let me know if it would be easier if names were used.

BUT, in at least one case, I felt really strongly that the individual was a kind of troll who was upsetting a lot of people. Somehow, I could sort of imagine that this person wasn't pure evil, but...man I was happy to not hear from this person anymore. And, I felt that the site was likely better for them not being here anymore. That's how I felt, anyway.

Is that me doing what seanyboy describes? Targeting the most obviously different, and slowly moving toward a bland middle ground?

I'd like to be really honest here. And I'd like to VERY strongly make the point that I'm NOT demonizing, but am simply pointing out something that I think, at this point, needs to be part of the discussion. In this entire thread of 120+ comments, there's been a lot of citing of both the positive and the negative aspects of the site. There's been discussion about what works and what doesn't in regards to the site. There have been references (mostly unnamed, though not always) to people who have, over the history of Metachat, caused some friction on the site. But I think in pretty much every case people have refrained from saying "______ was an asshole and needed to go," or anything like that that brings the discussion to a personal level.

But -- and here's where I possibly violate the code and address someone directly -- seanyboy, the subtext of almost all of your comments seems to be "you people are just a bunch of assholes and I don't like the way you act and good riddance." That is honestly the impression I'm getting from you -- that, as a group, 'we' don't know how to behave. 'We've' violated your moral and/or ethical tenets. Your comments, to me, honestly sound hateful. In this entire thread, you're the only person who has expressed such vitriol against people. And it's hurtful. It's hurtful partly because I'm not sure there is a 'we' at this point, but you certainly seem to think there is. And you seem to think that 'we' are pretty much beyond repair, that we're mad-eyed, rabid dogs who ought to be just taken out behind the woodshed and shot in the head for everyone's own good.

And I think we need to discuss that. I understand that you want to walk away. There are no shades of gray in the way you've expressed it. But if you think this place is beyond fixing, maybe you ought to stop trying (in this thread). Disagreeing constructively is one thing -- and, in fact, reading through this thread, it seems to be a welcome thing. But it sounds more like you're standing in the way of people who are trying to hash things out. It sounds like you're standing there, shaking your head with your arms crossed, and saying "Nope, it'll never work. You're all collectively broken."

I say this with respect, and with apologies for typing what may sound like a call-out. It's not. (And again, I want to state emphatically that it is NOT demonization.) I just think it needs to be addressed in the context of this discussion. I really debated about whether to email it instead, but decided that I should have the courage to say it publicly.

There's a lot of good work going on in this thread. There's a lot of good will and good hope. I don't want it to get drowned out. Ironically, 'drowning out' and negativity seems to be the thing that made you hate Metachat in the first place.

It's making me sad.

Really?

You know what I've said...

1) How I feel and what I think should happen with metachat with extra information about any bias I may have. I think I deserve to be able to do that.

2) a reiteration of what I *actually* said with a note that I loved the gig & a request that people not personalise things. This after I'm told that my attitude stinks. A statement which frankly really upset my feelings.

3) Another statement to the effect that I loved being an admin with a promise to provide data to people who want to take over. BTW, After saying that I made sure I provided what was promised in a super timely manner so as not to cause any problems / damage / friction. That's just my crazy way of making the site fail.

4) A statement about rewriting the codebase with a link to an article explaining why complete rewrites are a damaging thing.

5) A response to TPS where I try and explain what I think about saying "there is no cabal", her outing of assholes, quoting the bible and my thoughts on banning people who piss everyone off. I mention 70% of people as a response to a previous comment. I also state that I think gaspode would make a good mod.

ooooh - destructive...

At no point after my initial comment have I done anything akin to stating that whatever it is will never work. I HAVE NEVER SAID THIS PLACE IS BEYOND FIXING. I think I've been pretty consistent after stating what I felt, in trying to ensure that, it does work.

I'm not going to rehash my original statements, but I do believe I presented a reasonable (but rejected) option. There's some bad blood between me and TPS, and I don't really understand what that's about, but I'm not going to be called names / questioned without responding. I *am* expressing things as black and white because I think that's currently the best way for me to be heard.

And yes - I am angry about stuff, and I don't think metachat is the right place for me, but this doesn't mean that I don't care very deeply about what happens to the people here.

I appreciate that you're saying this with respect, and in that spirit of respect, I ask that you reread the things I have said in this post in the spirit of someone who is *not* trying to break it for everyone. Please.

And that's... where do you draw the line between "community" as a monolithic entity and "group of individuals" all of whom may have the same reaction? Like, OK, say user X is being inflammatory and just generally an asshole, as perceived by maybe 70% of the rest of the users. Now, every one of those users surely has the right to be upset at user X, and surely has the right to call them out on it?

But it shouldn't be the responsibility of a mob to 'call someone out', for exactly the reasons seanyboy describes. The problem in my eyes is that no one every told the users what constitutes an appropriate reason to ask for moderator action, beyond "If you see a post or comment that you think should be deleted or edited then e-mail the mods and they'll deal with it."

What do I do if someone uses hate speech that targets me or my friends?
What do I do if someone expresses that they think my lifestyle is perverse, then blows up when I call them out on that belief?
What do I do if I feel like another user is "thread-stalking" me (ie, looking specifically for comments I post so that they can specifically rebut them, or so they can throw previously-held opinions back at me)(something I was guilty of from time to time)?
What if someone is acting really oddly and it seems like they are doing so intentionally?
What do I do if another poster is belittling me, or accusing me of "blowing things out of proportion" and just generally refusing to move on to another thread that they claim to "not care about and neither should you"?

Moderators, because they are people and busy or because they want to remain behind-the-scenes, rarely seem to step in and use their moderator hat in-thread even if it's just saying "Stop doing this", which gives users the impression that, if we don't like something, we're on our own On one hand we don't want cabals or cliques, but on the other hand no one wants to do anything to stop cliquey behavior?

It's not just about deleting clearly problematic comments and posts. It's also about nipping problematic comments in the bud by setting clearly-enforced and non-biased standards of conduct.

Right, which is why I ask in the line after the bit you italicized:

(or do they? is this where our guidelines say that this is the exact time to email a mod??)

because I just didn't know. Because as you said, we have no specific guidelines. Speaking personally, I always tend towards NOT contacting mods, because I don't like to bother people. AFAI can remember, I have contacted mods on any forum exactly once, ever (happened to be this one). I also don't like the feeling of somehow having to appeal to an authority to sort stuff out for me. However, that is my personal weirdness, and if guidelines were in place specifying when a time is right to do so, I'd do it. I'm a rule-follower :)

gaspode - I wasn't calling out your question - I thought it was a good question! I was using it as an example to illuminate some of the problems I've been having.

- chuckdarwin, as abrasive as he was, got pretty much told to f- off, quite publicly.

Yes, and? What you reap you shall sow. chuckdarwin was a huge dick to a lot of people here, publicly, and he got it back publicly. Who's the victim- him or all the people he was so nasty to? There are two sides to most of the public battles around here, they're not black and white.

I agree with you to a degree, TPS - asshole behavior needs to be shut down, but here's where we diverge: If a member IS being a huge dick, it's on the community NOT to engage at that level. Do NOT pile on. Do NOT engage if you are not directly involved. Stay out of it. Notify a moderator. Let the mods sort it.

right, muddgirl, just clarifying!

What's the definition of "direct involvement"? It's difficult to say on a site this small. It seems to me that people are generally good about staying out of other people's business, but business here just tends to involve a lot of people, if that makes sense.

As for "let the mods sort it out", is that what they want? All the comments I've read suggest that none of them have any desire to play referee on the backchannels (correct me if I'm wrong, mods). In which case, why is it bad for users to address issues themselves? I don't think it is, if everyone does their best to not go too crazy or pile-on.

There's some bad blood between me and TPS, and I don't really understand what that's about, but I'm not going to be called names / questioned without responding. No, there isn't. Perhaps there's a grudge on your side, but there isn't one on mine. I'm just responding to the things you say. There's no vendetta against you personally included.

I think there are two end points on the continuum of moderator activity: one is reactive and one is proactive. All mods are somewhere on that continuum, but I think the sense here was that mods should be more reactive than proactive - respond to needs, fix things, be visible only if completely necessary.

Some of the interpersonal problems could be headed off by increasing the percentage of proactive moderation practiced.

If a member IS being a huge dick, it's on the community NOT to engage at that level.

It's an honorable ideal and nothing's wrong with aiming for it, but human beings are going to fail sometimes, and right now we don't have any other mechanisms for this aside from emailing a mod. As gaspode says, it's hard to tell when and whether to email a mod, especially when they aren't that visible, and if we're talking about a site in which people are afraid to even post a chatty comment, what are the chances that they're going to email a mod? If a nasty comment goes unchallgened, it just stands, and it's then reasonable to assume that's all right with the whole userbase.

Think about how MeFi has built-in mechanisms to increase mod accessibility and activity. You can flag a post or comment for a lot of reasons, including breaking guidelines or being irredeemably offensive. You can email a mod. You can go to MetaTalk. You can use MeMail to take your discussion out of public view. I'm not suggesting we can or should have these same features, but I hope that people note that in that case there are multiple ways for conflicts to be handled more subtly. And note also that a flagging of a post doesn't automatically result in its removal on MeFi. Posts or comments come down when, in the judgment of the moderators,they are flagrant and knowing violations of standards, when they are badly thought-out but mostly innocent mistakes by a user, when a critical mass of users has made objection, and when the mod's experience of the user's history gives some context for managing that user. No set of guidelines can spell out to the letter when or whether a user needs to be managed, but on the other hand, moderators operating without guidelines have only their judgment to fly by, and they may not feel empowered to use that judgment as quickly as they would if supported by the scaffolding of site participation standards.

I think there are big differences between a user who engages in harrassing or trolling behavior around the site, especially in a repeated pattern and after conversation, both personal and public, about that behavior, and users who just get cranky or disagree every now and then, or whose point of view comes under discussion. We like to think this is a muddy line, but it's really not. There's appropriate participation, which sadly sometimes includes times when each of us will feel unsupported by others and butt heads with other people, and there's inappropriate participation, which will draw large amounts of objection. How public those objections are depends a lot on whether a mod has had a chance to do some interventions with users experiencing a problem on the site.

As for people saying "If X isn't banned, I'm leaving" or "I've had it, I'm flouncing out," that has to be viewed as their choice, but the choice is going to be in reaction to a mod decision. I hear some of the mods saying "you're damned if you do, damned if you don't," but I don't really think those decisions are 'six of one, half dozen of the other' in that evenhanded way. The applicable question there has to be "What's best for the site's health, now and in the future?" If what's best for the site's health is that you side with a single user and then a dozen others leave, you can rest comfortably knowing you had the site's long-term health in mind, and in your belief that because you made the choice, the community will rebound and function better. If what's best is that you ban one user who can't seem to participate non-problematically, then you can rest comfortably with your belief on that as well. I hear some unsureness and discomfort with the responsibility involved in making those decisions - those decisions can't be made on the basis of how people will react, whether they will or won't leave, but rather on what will increase positive participation and community health over the longer haul. It seems that because there have not been many structures put into place promoting that vision, mods have not been able to make a considered decision about what's best for the health of the site, but instead had to just react to today's explosion by delving into a morass of personal feelings and doing something in response to an already very bad situation that has festered for some time....Which is really the last place that they should be, and the place where it's too late to be very effective in creating good outcomes.

I know I probably seem to be picking on mods, and I'm not, I'm really trying to look at it from an organizational standpoint and totally ignore the actual individuals who've been performing the function. But I want to look at this because it is leadership and management style that cohere a commmunity and establish frameworks for interaction. I think it's very positive to examine the "group conscience" mentioned above, and to look at the responsibilities of "the community," but we also have to note that "the community" is not a fixed roster of individuals and does not have a monolithic viewpoint. It's quite variable, in fact. So telling "the community" to behave one way or another on a voluntary basis is likely to be ineffective: some people will miss the announcement, some will be uninclined to support the viewpoint expressed, some will go 'rah rah!', and some will just walk away out of exasperation. This is why explanations for MetaChat's decline that blame "the community" may not be terribly helpful - because some of us will always be saying "What community? We're just a bunch of people representing ourselves alone. We come and go, we participate more or less, we speak for ourselves, and if we happen to agree or disagree with one another, that's just life."

There is no "community" anywhere in the world unless there is a degree of shared culture. Since this is a visual and written medium we're in, any culture developed that governs "community" behavior needs to be written and/or depicted. And culture includes principles for behavior. Right now we have few cultural touchstones, few places to discover or enshrine principles of self-governance or management or leadership, so of course MetaChat as a community evolves in a looser and more organic direction. And it can get unpleasant; and that's because that is exactly how human communities of all kinds will get if there aren't processes for building and attending to the frameworks which guide our behavior.

We're just talking about what I want, right? What would make me, specifically, feel comfortable enough to comment on Metachat threads again?

If the rule is (and this is from the FAQ) "Metachat's policy is so loose that no user should ever feel the need to admonish another user for not meeting the guidelines", then I feel like moderators have a responsibility to post in-thread and stop the people who are admonishing another user for not meeting the guidelines. Especially if they are admonishing someone for being a jerk, when "being a jerk" is currently allowed as long as you are not "slagging off" about a particular user or about Metafilter. (and I feel like sort of moderator intervention did happen sometimes, but often it was too little, too late, and the "offenders" were allowed to bicker and argue and eventually the thread would just fall of the page with little actual progress, wherein it would happen again).

If the rule is (as has been suggested) "don't be a jerk", then I feel like moderators have a responsibility to step in and tell people, in-thread, that they are being a jerk and that further jerkiness will result in a time-out or some other punitive measure. And the rest of us should respect that instead of complaining, even if the jerk was on the side of the 70%.

And so on. Basically, enforce the rules, whatever they are. Enforce them in a way that makes it clear there are rules. Because otherwise we have the exact same situation that seanyboy is reacting to, where everyone acts how they want, and 10% are yelled at for it until they leave and 90% get away with it and stay, repeat and repeat and repeat.

Or what Miko said, from a more global perspective and less from a "all about meeeeee" perspective.

The problem isn't assholes, it's people allowing their friends to be assholes whilst calling out non-friends who exhibit asshole behaviour. ... I believe that sometimes the aforementioned 70% of people are wrong. And I believe that as soon as they've managed to get rid of one person, they'll turn their attention to another person. And so on, until all you're left with is a small self-congratulatory circle jerk that does nothing but complain.
I agree with this (apart from the incorrect spelling of arsehole) and I'm pretty sure I know what seanyboy is referring to. Having said that, I don't agree it was all that widespread, but certain people were ganged up on by the very same people who refused to stop feeding the behaviour that was causing the angst. If someone is either deliberately baiting you, or is refusing to engage in debate, but continues to blurt out their opinion without engaging in the discussion, stop engaging! I have stepped in a couple of times and asked people to stop trolling (or engaging in what has been perceived this way, sometimes incorrectly), but this is somewhat against the general site policy, which has been to keep moderation in the background.

If people would be happier to have public comments from moderators saying "cut that shit out, yo" I'm happy to do that. However, if I drop into a thread and tell people to pull their heads in and anyone continues to taunt, poke, prod or otherwise goad someone into continuing, they can expect to be treated the same way as the perpetrator, without fear or favour. Where we have had examples of someone dominating or shouting out their opinions and insisting they have the right to their views while ignoring others, the situation has quickly deteriorated because other members seem to seek out an argument with them. Coming into the middle of a discussion like that, it can be hard to tell who fired the first shot, because often everyone present has started to act the arsehole. You have to ask yourself the question "If I respond to bad behaviour by acting badly, am I any better than them?"

Be careful about setting standards that you aren't prepared to adhere to yourself.

Just a wild thought - would the dynamics work better if the site was divided up? One section for funny photos etc, one for seeking help, one for serious discussion where it is expected that there will be vigorous debate? Personally, I hate the idea and love the flat, open format as it is, but would that help people understand better how they are expected to behave? I moderate on another forum which has a format similar to this (did I mention I hate that format) and there are different rules of behaviour for different places, which seems to sorta kinda work for people (even if I hate it).

This conversation is absolutely fascinating, I've been following it constantly. I had no idea about tons of this stuff. Thanks everyone for allowing their strong thoughts, theories, and passions to come out.


In an attempt to move discussion forward - if the site goes on (big if) with new mods, how would those mods be selected? I would hope the full compliment of present mods would discuss and select. I would also encourage them to offer the appointment to current members who have not volunteered - this idea comes from seanyboy's comment that gaspode would make a good mod. I don't know if she would or wouldn't - I think she would, but then I know her, so as has been wisely pointed out, my opinion may be clouded. Of course any draftees could turn down the offer. I'm suggesting that a volunteer only approach may not be optimal - no offense to anyone who has volunteered, in fact, thanks very much to those who have done so. The theoretical new mods could change the tenor of the site very strongly in one direction or another. In fact, that's what probably will happen, because I don't see one opinion or philosophy gaining a groundswell here.

how would those mods be selected?
I vote for mud wrestling.

I, too, would love to move the "new mod" discussion forward. I suppose first we'd need to know if the current mods are interested in staying on, then we'll know how many new ones we need.

I'm happy to stay on, if wanted.

I would also like to hear from chrismear as to whether he is prepared to take on the admin job, given that there seem to be no other serious takers (although there seems to be some people willing and able to offer technical support on an as-needs basis). If it helps, we could offer a 50% increase on what seanyboy got paid.

I'd also like to hear that taz wants to stay on, even if in a diminished capacity and, if that is the case, what capacity? We may be left with some gaps in the design area there.

From my perspective, once the 'management team' is sorted, they can come to the community with some ideas on how they see things moving forward. If we aren't careful, we'll fall back on our habit here of discussing things back and forth and never coming to any point. Not saying the discussion should stop, but most everyone who wants to has probably put in their 2c worth by now. Making some decisions about who is going to be running the place will give a view of how things are likely to happen and allow people to think about what they feel in that context.

Sorry that my long comment above was so waffly and vague. I wanted to make sure you knew what you'd be getting if I was to take on the role.

But to clarify: yes, I am prepared to take on the admin job.

This would also mean I stay on as a de facto mod, but it's fair to say I have done almost zero modding activity in the last couple of years, so take this into account in your mod number decisions. Having said that, I would like to try and help more in this area in future, particularly as people seem to want a clearer mod presence.

(Also, I made you something out of some bad sweets I was eating.)

I haven't said anything so far, partly because I've been wrestling with how I feel about the possible demise of a place I once loved so much but have drifted away from, and partly because when I do come to a conclusion, others have said it before me and better than I could.

I've decided that I do care whether and how the old girl goes forward (especially as I see some of the people who I found so engaging returning to post and comment), and so here are my votes, for what it's worth: I hope it includes dg as mod, and I'm glad he'd like to stay on. Indeed, I'd support the continuation of any current mods who'd like to stay, as I think they've done a fine job and certainly are not to blame for the decline in attendance or involvement here. I also think that gaspode would make a good mod and chrismear a good site admin. FWIW, I do not know either of them IRL. I do believe, however, that Sr. Mear should use better sweets in future if he wishes to impress :P

Well, I'd already eaten all the cola bottles, so what's a boy to do?

I ask that you reread the things I have said in this post in the spirit of someone who is *not* trying to break it for everyone.

Seanyboy, I will absolutely do this. Again, out of respect.

I haven't posted before now, but I've been obsessively checking the post ever since it was first posted. I don't really have much new to add, but wanted to contribute. I basically agree with pretty much everything upthread that miko said. I love this place, and have made heaps of friends here, but I'm so busy with work that I barely have time to comment these days. And I frequently don't have anything new to add, so I keepmy mouth shut.

I think the site will go on. I think there are enough odyssey here that love the place to carry on the torch. I don't think it will be the same, but it will be good. I think that getting things out in the open feels healthy and that good will come of this.

I love you all, and thanks so much to everyone for sharing your lives with me! Xx

also, am writing on my phone, so sorry for any mistakes. Oops.

Well, I'd already eaten all the cola bottles, so what's a boy to do?

You have a point, sir. Though the absence of chocolate is somewhat disappointing.

I think the idea of having the mods suggest potential replacements is a good one, too, though I wouldn't blame them if they declined. They know what's involved in the job, and have a better idea of what makes a good mod. However, everyone would have to be grown-up about it, which might prove difficult. It's not a popularity contest, and shouldn't be treated as one: there are many people here for whom I have great fondness but who I think would be crapulous at modding the site. Also, they would have to suggest several people, as many who would probably be great candidates probably also don't have the time and/or the inclination. Given some of the complaints about what's happened here, we'd have to be very very very careful to avoid having that kind of process turn into a slanging match with the huffing and the tears and the flouncing and the GRAR. Can we do that? I don't know.

You are right about potential drama, elizard, but I think current mods appointing future mods is better than nominations from the floor and votes and all from the gallery. That would be sure to be a hot mess.

I absolutely agree. I can see the collective groan of 'Nooooooooooooooooooo!' arising from modland, is all.

Well, I may be biased, but I would certainly support the idea of the current 'staff' selecting any newbies. The last thing anyone needs is for moderators to be selected on the basis of popularity. Also, the selection process shouldn't be public because that would inevitably result in hurt feelings. Some things are better done in private, including selecting moderators for Web communities and masturbation.

dg, you have moderators for masturbation? Whoa.

Well, we have at least one moderator that masturbates - does that count?

It's very odd that I should have chosen to come back to MeCha now, when all of this is going on. I've been gone because I was going through some stuff. I'm still going through it, actually, but isolating isn't helping me much.

There have been some knock-down drag-outs here -- I was only active over here for about a year and a half, but I've seen a bit of nonsense. Still, I've really enjoyed what the MeCha community has to offer, and I think it could be made "new" just by doing (a) a redesign, (b) adding some sort of MeChaMail component, and (c) coming up with some new ideas. There are all sorts of silly things that I think the members here would enjoy -- I'm specifically remembering when we all played Botticelli for a little while. And I'd gladly do all that again.

For what it's worth, I've come back, and I plan to stick around for awhile this time. Who knows, maybe one day you'll even get me to leave the house and come to a meetup. ... Maybe.

"As for people saying "If X isn't banned, I'm leaving" or "I've had it, I'm flouncing out," that has to be viewed as their choice, but the choice is going to be in reaction to a mod decision. I hear some of the mods saying "you're damned if you do, damned if you don't," but I don't really think those decisions are 'six of one, half dozen of the other' in that evenhanded way. The applicable question there has to be "What's best for the site's health, now and in the future?"

IMHO what's best for the site in this situation is to ignore anyone who approaches a disagreement in this way.

"any culture developed that governs "community" behaviour needs to be written and/or depicted."

As I said before I agree but I have not seen a lot of concrete suggestions as to what needs to be codified. This is why I keep suggesting that people go back and read seanyboy's post. Also, if we do, do that, mecha will be a different place. That may well be good or it may be bad depending on how you see the place.

"Be careful about setting standards that you aren't prepared to adhere to yourself."

Yup.

"Basically, enforce the rules, whatever they are. Enforce them in a way that makes it clear there are rules."

I have tried to do that. When we as mods do this we get a lot of negative feedback. Someone gets a time out and several others sit out the time in protest. Every time we have banned someone a number of people have let us know they are leaving because of it. And they have left. No hollow threats.

Still, I hear a lot of folks say they have left because people have not been chastised for poor behaviour or that the mods are not active enough. Can we draw the conclusion that those who dislike active enforcement are more likely to make their feelings known than those who want more active enforcement?

As for having the current mods approach people to come onside I can tell you that in 2009 I have asked several people to be mods and the answer was always no. The most common reason for turning it down; "I'd go ballistic at some point!". Next is "I don't really want the hassle." Third is "I don't have the time." I'd still like to try but maybe I just make poor choices.

I want to see this place thrive and I would stay on as mod if wanted. I see a lot of renewed activity in the past few days and that is good. That said, I still don't see a lot of movement addressing what seanyboy has said or actively taking up the challenge laid out by Miko.

I do want to say I love all the folks who have given time to mod, code, run and just add fun things like music exchanges and Photo Fridays etc.

Waaaay late to the discussion, as I was out of town.

I've definitely been participating less, and for me it's a combination of external factors (new jobs that don't require computer time at sites with one public/shared computer for all the therapists, which means I don't really like to tie it up frivolously) and site-specific factors, I think.

When I first joined MetaChat, it was small enough that I felt like I could be pretty open about everything that was going on in my life, because it felt like it was "among friends." I also joined right after a MetaFilter meet-up, where I had met a number of the MetaChatters in person, and then there were a bunch of MetaChat meet-ups in San Francisco that I attended, so the site felt like a space populated by friends and friends-of-friends -- and yet I still had enough distance from everyone that I felt vaguely anonymous. All of which helped me feel comfortable engaging on a deep level.

Now, it both feels like I don't know the new people very much and like people in my real life see what I post here (because they're friends or partners I made through the MeFi universe), and so I feel much more exposed. In some cases, I don't really know who's reading what I write; in others, I know exactly who might read it and get hurt/confused/upset and so I self-censor, or who might appreciate it most and so I just email or call that person.

To me, that's what I've been attributing the feeling of "generic niceness" to. I certainly in no way mean to blame the new members, because y'all seem like extremely wonderful people, but there's less of an intense history there so I'm not sure how much of myself I'm willing to risk sharing in front of y'all. Maybe that's where the feeling of cliquish-ness is coming in?

And it's not really the new members as individuals that have made me pull back as much as the arrival of a bunch of new people made me more aware of something I should have been aware of anyway, that anyone with an internet connection might be reading what I'm posting. Which isn't always a reason to be inhibited, but on a more chatty, personal-revelation site, it can be.

Again, all this coincided with a total revolution in my work and with a new relationship that turned into an engagement, so it's a bit hard to pinpoint cause-and-effect. I really liked chrismear's comment:

Everyone's life has ebbs and flows, and perhaps what happens when you start a community made up (almost by definition) of people who currently want to hang out on a social web site, a few years down that line that cohort is more likely than a random selection of people to be busy with other things going on in their lives.

and I would add that early on, at least, we also "knew" each other, for the most part, through MetaFilter; so even when we were "new," we were generally known (I know there were/are a few exceptions to that). Since I'm not on MeFi anymore I may be missing some of that overlap with the new members, but it does seem like the newer kids are at a bit more of a disadvantage than earlier new members, because the connection with MeFi seems to have decreased (though, again, that may just be because I'm missing it).

So that's my two cents. I should say that I visit the site pretty much every day, though I don't always comment lately. Some of it's lack of interest, some of it's a time issue, some of it's the self-protective factor I mentioned. I still do think of MetaChat as "my" online community, but I'm not sure exactly what that means anymore, I guess.

I can't say a lot right now because we're going to go meet Theophile Escargot in less than an hour (woohoo!), and my hair's still wet...

But we'll start putting together our admin/tech/mod list suggestions now - between me, seanyboy, dodgy if he's in for that, dg, arsey and ico.

I need to go back and read some of the longer comments more carefully, but in terms of the moderation, I think my ideas (and dodgy's) were really more anarchistic than most people here want. With very few exceptions, everyone here was/is also a Metafilter person (it's the reason for the site... so...), so basically all members were pretty much prescreened in a sense. My personal preference was to make banning and timeouts as absolutely minimal as possible. My preferred standards are time-outs for when people get OCD flooding the threads with comments because they are not in a good mental place, so every single post becomes dominated by them, situations where people are really lashing out or losing it because of personal problems, drubk posting... that kind of thing. Banning for trolling (see also, is it or isn't it?).

It was never our intention to do pruning-type moderation in effort of encouraging the site to be a certain way, and mods were encouraged to be tolerant and lighthanded. So... ack!! I have more to say, but I've run out of time. I'll be back later to continue with the my "so..." (it's nothing revelatory, just more like "so... in that sense, there is a reason why you haven't seen a lot of mod activity about blah, blah, blah" okaygottagoseeyasoon - eep...

Funny, just when I was "touting" my prowess as a mod, a member of my community "flounced" out, called me an "asswipe wannabe mod" (I'm a co-moderator), and asked to be banned.

So I did, with a note saying that I was sorry to see him/her go and I meant it because prior to that she/he had been a good contributor to the community and had tried to personally help me find a new job a year or two back.

And while one person said he'd buy me drinks for the ban, another person thought I was overreacting...

*sigh*

And I have to wonder if I'd handled it correctly, even knowing that if the main mod disagrees she can always overturn my decisions.

As I said before I agree but I have not seen a lot of concrete suggestions as to what needs to be codified. This is why I keep suggesting that people go back and read seanyboy's post. Also, if we do, do that, mecha will be a different place. That may well be good or it may be bad depending on how you see the place.

In a lot of ways, it's a different place already. I was thinking this morning that it might be interesting to survey the user community - how do they use the site, what they most want to see continue, what they'd want to change. A survey wouldn't need to be equivalent to a democratic vote for how things would be, but it could be a starting point for identifying commonalities, frequently arising issues, most- and least-cited aspects of the site that have value, etc. Seanyboy did this with ponies not too long ago, but it could be done in a more open-ended question format.

Chrismear's observation that a social site will definitely change as users' lives change, as quoted by occhiblu, is an excellent observation.

And here I am back again, even though I said I was gone. Huh. Flighty! ;-)

Anyway, this has made for some fascinating reading and has definitely made me think about Metachat, my online life, etc, - all of which I have already addressed. However! One thing nobody seems to have brought up is Metachat's unique relationship with Metafilter, so I will. They need counseling. They've grown apart and I think it's not so good. They used to be a couple: there used to be a closer/chummier relationship and I for one miss that. Perhaps re-engaging the wider Mefi community might be a good idea, either before or after reorganizing the site? Ask for help?

And then, I think it was an ongoing mistake not to continue actively recruiting new people after the initial May 2005 push with regular MeTa threads. You know there are more people out there in Mefiland - the Meef, if you must - who want to know what everybody's favorite color is. Instead, it's gotten to the point where Metachat rarely comes up on the gray and then it's often sort of disparagingly "ooooh that place where they look at kittens, ewww" which is unfortunate.

At its best, it seemed to me that Metachat really was a valuable and fun adjunct to Metafilter. I don't think it functions so well as a standalone and I'd like to see the two sites move closer again.

An interesting reference to metachat and this metadiscussion here came up today in metatalk, actually.

Yeah, Stewriffic, I was just about to link that here. I've been reading this discussion for a while and have had some things to say but haven't felt like articulating them completely until now. I'm going to repost part of my comment that Stewriffic linked:

"Many seem to want to blame drama or moderator inattention driving away individual users, but in my mind there is a simple reason for why the site is less active than it was. Some people will always move on and stop patronizing a community. This almost always happens, and the reasons for it are relatively unimportant. What is more important is whether they are replaced by new community members. And at MetaChat there's nothing to draw in new members. Originally a big part of the draw was that MetaFilter went down a lot, but now that is fixed, so people don't need an alternate hangout spot for that reason."

The problem is, there's no good reason for new people to want to come here. And one of the few reasons that are good in my mind, coming here to post things that wouldn't be good on the blue, is shot down because it's considered insulting to the unique and vibrant community here. The community here is still unique but it is a little less vibrant than it used to be, and encouraging people to post the stuff here that they can't or don't want to post at MetaFilter is one way of drawing in new users.

I have never admitted this before now because some people are touchy about it, but almost all of my posts on MetaChat are things that are posts I might have made to MetaFilter in a different universe. They're links that I don't think meet the high bar for interestingness on the blue. Or that I think could be an interesting post on the blue yet I do not have the inclination to flesh them out further and am hoping that someone else will repost. Or they're questions that are too chatfilter/surveyfilter for the green, or maybe I've used up my AskMe question for the week already, just need a few responses, or don't want to open myself up to the famously judgmental MetaFilter crowd. I know this annoys people but I hope not too many people, because for me the most interesting parts of this site are the posts similar to the ones I've just described—I come here when I have a little more time and a little less seriousness and am happy to see some extra links beyond what I would get at MetaFilter. I also think that new users would feel similarly—very few new users would be interested in the three-point status updates of people they don't know, but they might be interested in a cool link that someone wanted to share but thought maybe wasn't good enough for MetaFilter, but is still pretty good.

grouse, for what it's worth, lots of my posts are similar. I've never posted to the blue, despite reading it for years...I'm chicken. Maybe some of the stuff I've posted here COULD be blue material, I'm just not sure. I feel waaaayyy freer to post here, not to suggest that metafilter is mean, or anything.

Hey, just in case people are watching here and wondering what's going on - wheels are moving and some announcements will be made soon. Some things are better considered in private and that's where we are at now.

Watch this space, as they say in the classics. Actually, it will probably be a different space, because nobody will see this as it's disappeared into the archives, but you get what I mean.

Roger.

no, that was dg saying that, dabitch. NOT ROGER.

Roger. Over.

Surely you jest!

no, that was dg saying that, Hugh. NOT SHIRLEY.

Shirley always made my pants feel too tight.

Man, what did charlie ever do to you, taz! So uncalled for.

Charlie's tops with me.

Alpha? Bravo, Charlie!

Delta Delta. Echo.