Meanwhile, I was just reading a profile on ok cupid and immediately did a double take at Fox News. Seriously, that's a favorite tv show. Yes, that can easily ruin it for me, those two words.

Ok, I did it. Wow, I'm logged in.
Does this mean I can go to meet ups now?

no, but it means you can sneak in is-this-trolling-or-is-she-genuine comments into askme posts, one of the joys of life in those lonesome winter evenings

Maybe I should just run around favoriting things now. That's what all the kids do now, right?

I just signed up too and when you go to your user profile page they got this listing of posts called IRL which freaked me right out. Now I'm supposed to participate in a mysterious section called IRL?! Aw hell no

Just a note, y'all - this kind of conversation is something covered in the Guidelines of MetaChat, especially this part:

Offsite issues stay offsite...This applies also to MetaFilter issues: they belong on MetaFilter, not here. A good relationship with MetaFilter is important to MetaChat.

That is as true as ever. As a community, we've agreed to not use MetaChat as a place to critique MetaFilter or create any potential problems for the mods there. Lots of us are also regular users there and want to avoid fomenting misunderstandings. So MetaChat ends up being not a good place for discussions of what to do or not do at MeFi or what we think of site policies and features over there.

For those who haven't been on MeFi for a while/ever, the best place to learn about the new features like IRL are just to explore over there, be active, and maybe refer to the Wiki. If you have specific needs or questions, there is a contact link on the bottom of the page which goes to the MeFi mods.

I'm sure that pretty much makes sense to everybody - no harm, no foul, but we should probably set this conversation aside for now.

so we're supposed to be shook that they'd destroy us if we're cheeky about them? My understand about the policy was that it referred to actual 'spillover' about issues that are actually real and in progress over there e.g. threads

But we can talk about links from mefi, in fact, I miss the users thread link feature, it's why I read mefi much less than I use to.

I'm just sayin' neither ethylene nor I are about to go trolling Axme anytime soon--we been part of the community for-evah, before they implemented favs and mefi mail and AxMe for that matter--so whatever definition of 'relationship detoriation' we're applying as a dampener on this convo is painfully literal, void of context and clinically expansive

But we can talk about links from mefi


Sure, a lot of times there's a link of interest here as well as there, and sometimes we can have a little more freewheeling discussion here where we are free to go off topic. What we are avoiding are discussions about what MeFi is like, its structures and policies and things that happen there, its people, its dramas, etc. Link-based conversation, or "Hey, I saw this cool thing on MeFi and you should have a look" is fine.

in fact, I miss the users thread link feature

You know, I'm not 100% sure why that is not working - chrismear might know as I see he has posted a note about 'gremlins'. It was a nice feature!

whatever definition of 'relationship detoriation' we're applying as a dampener on this convo is painfully literal

It's more a preventative guideline. We don't wait for things to spill over, and it's not even that it pertains only when bad stuff is happening - we just generally don't use MetaChat as a place to critique/discuss/make plans for activity on MeFi or MeFi's structure and policies. Sometimes there's a topic that comes up over there that we also want to discuss over here, but that's different than a site-focused kind of discussion about "what's IRL for" or "should I rejoin MetaFilter," which are questions really pertinent to MeFi only. Does that make sense? I hope so.

In the worst case, if these threads go down a rough road, they can become outlets for people venting their spleen about things that happened to them in the past on MeFi, or ways in which they feel disappointed by MeFi, etc - and we just have agreed that we don't go there. The policy is based on past experience, and we're pretty confident it's the best way to go for MetaChat's own health as a community, and its continued positive relationship with MeFi.

I'm not sure I understand the question about being "shook," but if it's about a concern at MetaChat that MeFi people would be mean to us or something, no, that's not what it's about. This guideline arises instead out of mutual respect and keeping things simple and in places where they make the most sense. It's not an us/them issue at all (a lot of us are them, after all!). But feel free to email me and/or Boring Postcards if you want to discuss further.

So in conclusion - not shaming anybody, just wanted to point everyone back to that guideline. I'll probably close this thread in a couple minutes if there are no more questions about what the policy is.

I guess I always thought of that rule as just meaning we should not bring any mefi-related drama over to mecha. But it seems natural to me that we would talk about mefi in general sometimes.

it seems natural to me that we would talk about mefi in general sometimes.

Best done on MeFi itself, usually, unless it's really just a glancing mention. Drama can flow both ways, and we just don't want to have any of it start here. Even conversations that start innocuously can end up drawing people with axes to grind, and that can create problems. For now, keeping MeFi issues and questions on MeFi is usually the better option.

OK, going to close this up now. Thanks for understanding.