You almost certainly posted the wrong link to the P&L, I see a transaction statement that outs mods by name.

This is not a good way to start an update post when members are having trust issues and issues with organizational effectiveness.
posted by shock muppet at 2:19 PM on November 21 [10 favorites]

Also, the contact us link is just back to this post.
posted by Sparky Buttons at 2:23 PM on November 21 [5 favorites]

Might I suggest some work be put into promoting the pet tax poster? Namely, breaking it out into a real post, and linking to a poster in an appropriate size, rather than the generic redbubble store, which recommends a miniscule sticker as the first product?
posted by sagc at 2:30 PM on November 21 [4 favorites]

with the contribution of a fellow MeFite who offered help but has been unable to get it done yet.

The phrasing on this considering the demonstrated time management capability of paid staff makes my tummy hurt.
posted by phunniemee at 2:34 PM on November 21 [17 favorites]

An “accountability partner.”
posted by jgirl at 2:50 PM on November 21 [2 favorites]

The lack of appropriate mod engagement

okay, that's a good start

and lack of clear expectations when it comes to MetaTalk are two problems we want to address (collectively). We want Metas to stay on topic (fundraising in the fundraising thread, marketing in the marketing thread, and so on).

If this translates to more deletions and policing, no thanks. What mods think the topic is and what users think the topic is should be allowed to conflict. If you don't like the way a thread is going, open a new one yourselves, point to it, engage with it seriously.
posted by trig at 3:02 PM on November 21 [18 favorites]

What'd I miss with the X TOS?
posted by mittens at 3:24 PM on November 21

What'd I miss with the X TOS?

Lets Musk use all user content for AI training.
posted by brook horse at 3:26 PM on November 21 [4 favorites]

There is way too much stuff on the site todo list, especially given the team’s ability to execute. Members have been clear, focus on transition. Some of this stuff should give way.

Have you started looking at this list with an eye on what you can cut. Why would you do a podcast at this time? Why does MeFi need a Bluesky account? Can you sunset the BIPOC advisory board and let your successors handle it? Should mods take a back seat on engagement (such as theme posts) until the site cools down and the mods have some user trust.

I’m also a little concerned about the lack of tech updates on a project that was supposed to be almost done. Is that project realistically going to finish? The old saw about how the last 20% of the project is 80% of the work comes to mind. I like the idea of the rewrite because your successor could then implement mod tools for non-paid moderation, done right the rewrite is strategically important. That said, site migrations require operational excellence and I don’t have confidence in those abilities at all. If the rewrite is not ready now, should it be paused until after the transition takes place.
posted by shock muppet at 3:49 PM on November 21 [27 favorites]

We were told a month ago that the pet tax poster was done, but needed more work to be available for sale. We were told seven days ago that the pet tax wall was done and available for sale and that Loup would make a post about it. 3 days ago, I submitted a MeTa promoting the pet tax wall which was rejected with the rationale that there was still polishing to be done.Finally today the Pet Tax wall is mentioned in a MeTa post below the fold in the 11th paragraph with the “pet tax” text unlinked. How much staff time has been spent on this in the past month, and why are you so resistant to promoting a fundraiser?
posted by bowbeacon at 4:06 PM on November 21 [12 favorites]

We’ve been kicking around ideas for Theme Day posts and welcome any suggestions to have some fun along these lines

Maybe do it as a bingo for December ... e.g.

----------+-----------+----------+----------+----------
Rework an | Games     | Under-   | Who??    | A land
FPP from  | people    | ground   |          | of con-
2009      | play      | or sea   |          | trasts
----------+-----------+----------+----------+----------
Rework an | Begins    | Over-    | How??    | I, for
AskMe as  | with      | head     |          | one,
an FPP    | J         |          |          | welcome
----------+-----------+----------+----------+----------
Via Music | This is   | WILD-    | What??   | Your
Fanfare & | just to   | CARD     |          | favorite
Projects  | say ...   | POST     |          | band ...
----------+-----------+----------+----------+----------
Via       | The art   | In the   | Why??    | Schmoopy
Mefi's    | of the    | mind's   |          | 
Own       | essay     | eye      |          | 
----------+-----------+----------+----------+----------
Dedicated | Ballet,   | Inside   | When??   | Eponys-
to a fave | holiday,  | and      |          | terical
Mefite    | or entree | outside  |          |
----------+-----------+----------+----------+----------

Not sure those all work, but the idea is, like, if you choose to make 5 front-page posts in December that match any 5 categories arranged in a line (vertically, horizontally, or diagonally), then you have completed the bingo challenge. How to interpret the categories is up to you. As always, FPPs should meet community guidelines, and posts run the usual risk of, uh, feedback.

If trying for a bingo gives someone a reason to take that risk, then it's a success in at least one respect.
posted by Wobbuffet at 4:33 PM on November 21 [9 favorites]

The fundraiser is a failure and it would be best to just move on from it.

This is a horrible time to resurrect the podcast.

I don't know what an accountability partner is. If you need one to do this job, maybe this job isn't a good fit for you.

Please, for all that is holy, no more MeTas asking for community feedback. Do something with the feedback all of you have already received.

Can you or someone please provide an update on the new site beta test?
posted by Diskeater at 4:43 PM on November 21 [27 favorites]

why are you so resistant to promoting a fundraiser?

Actually, hiding the Pet Tax Wall away from public scrutiny is probably the only mod decision I find myself agreeing with lately. It was a well intentioned I'm sure but frankly a weird idea to start with, and its unfortunate use as a rhetorical device to excuse why other site projects fell to the wayside both built up expectations and became a local meme. I don't know what I expected, but the execution--given the buildup and the implication that other projects were put to the side to work on it--is embarrassing. Making a whole metatalk to advertise this would NOT be a celebration of a fundraising opportunity, it would be yet another opportunity to centralize the failures of site management. I'm here for the lulz, the Pet Tax Wall is stupid and I would love to make fun of it with all of you in good humor, but it's not going to be that in a whole post. It's going to be shit on site management again time (rightly), and people will get mad, and more people I like will probably button or get permaband [sic].

I would LOVE to move past all this recent trash with a staff that says you know what, you right, we've been fucking up. But we're moving forward now with full effort into the transition. Make a Metatalk post/banner link about the Redbubble account later, if/when there's new and more merch. The Pet Tax Wall can definitely be a part of a bigger and better merch selection, but it would be Bad Idea Jeans to make it the sole focus of anything.
posted by phunniemee at 4:44 PM on November 21 [26 favorites]

We want Metas to stay on topic (fundraising in the fundraising thread, marketing in the marketing thread, and so on).

At a time when there's diminished mod capacity, I think it would be really helpful if you could explain what you actually want here. Ie: "We are really broke, and we are worried if people shitpost in the fundraising thread, no one will donate." or "We don't have the mod capacity to engage as much in Metatalk and are worried we will miss something important if we don't engage in a triviality thread". As it stands, without explanation, it comes off like shuffling deck chairs on the Titanic, and I don't think it actually is: ie, it's making mod decisions look worse than they should.

I suspect mods are doing a very natural thing, which is reacting to criticism by being defensive, instead of reacting to criticism with vulnerability. But the latter tends to actually work to diffuse the criticism, whereas the first one only increases it.
posted by corb at 5:22 PM on November 21 [8 favorites]

As a user, I would actually prefer that MeTas stay on topic. Then it is easier to track and follow any given topic.

But I also realize that MeTas have generally gotten less moderation in the past, and maybe this isn't the time to change that.

I think if mods are going to review practices in general, it should be about making moderation more consistent.
posted by NotLost at 5:30 PM on November 21 [10 favorites]

If the bingo thing happens, I’m in to provide a prize TBD to the first person to make a bingo with their first five FPPs.
posted by box at 5:30 PM on November 21 [4 favorites]

Site was $5k in the red last month and staff costs exceeded revenue. Staff costs need to go down for there to be an asset to transition. I am suggesting curtailing elective activities, with a corresponding curtailing of hours, to free attention and funds for transition. Expedite transition with haste.

It is the job of your successor to grow this asset. It’s your job as the MeFi LLC team to steward the stagnating asset, just stop the bleeding and adapt to shrinking membership. This means thinking differently and thinking smaller.
posted by shock muppet at 5:31 PM on November 21 [19 favorites]

Also, in case it’s not obvious, please don’t spend a bunch of extra money because you need to be extra rude/defensive/snarky to members
posted by knobknosher at 5:41 PM on November 21 [1 favorite]

The additional hours could well be development time for the new site, which is probably not something to curtail depending on how that’s going.
posted by warriorqueen at 5:56 PM on November 21 [4 favorites]

Anyone know of an online place we could set this up and invite people to play?

That is the instinct for making things more complicated than they need to be striking yet again.
posted by trig at 5:57 PM on November 21 [22 favorites]

Also I realize that the MetaTalk moderation suggestion came from me, but it came with other suggestions that I hope - especially clear warnings - will come alongside them.

Given the difference in a year since I made that comment, I also want to point out
that keeping Metas on topic is not the same as disallowing critique. (I do still think it would help ppl who want to not see the same arguments over and over still be able to participate in other things.) this is the hammer that was deployed in the Global thread and it is a bit worrying.

So I hope this new model includes letting critical topics through the queue. Last year I wouldn’t have felt I had to say that but the last few months has shaken my trust in the reasons for deletions a bit. I say this knowing mods are human and in a system that hasn’t set everyone up for success. But I think timing and implementation of this is important and I worry that the timing for this change isn’t free of - charge, I guess. I counsel going thoughtfully on that at this point.
posted by warriorqueen at 6:05 PM on November 21 [11 favorites]

... I'm still of the opinion that things went off the rails clear back when it was decided that a whole community of cooks needed added to the kitchen, and it's (understandably) gotten progressively worse, because now there isn't just too many cooks, many of them are Entitled Cooks.

Trying to make everyone happy just results in making no one happy.
posted by stormyteal at 7:35 PM on November 21 [2 favorites]

Also, about where to spend mod time, other than regular modding, I think the staff is doing some amount of frills. But restless_nomad's previous idea of running summaries for each MeTa has a lot of merit.
posted by NotLost at 7:40 PM on November 21 [2 favorites]

We are considering having the MeFi podcast back and are looking for help in production and editing. Please Contact Us if you would like to be part of it.

This is absolutely a waste of energy and a drain on your focus. Most of what al listed at this point really is ancillary to the two essential jobs doing no harm to damage Mefi and its assets, and supporting the transition.

You’ve had one call recently with the nonprofit group and they…didn’t seem to want anything? What a huge red flag. Rather than waiting to be asked, isn’t the staff putting together a timeline and road map for transition that you can collaborate on? Aren’t you all best positioned to be crafting general budget outlines and and operating routine documents for them to work with? Is this that seat of the pants that all this time later, no one’s done that?

I just….it’s too uphill.
posted by Miko at 8:32 PM on November 21 [27 favorites]

Actually, hiding the Pet Tax Wall away from public scrutiny is probably the only mod decision I find myself agreeing with lately. It was a well intentioned I'm sure but frankly a weird idea to start with, and its unfortunate use as a rhetorical device to excuse why other site projects fell to the wayside both built up expectations and became a local meme

Okay but what if people keep treating it as an incredibly serious item of business and it inflates the irony/meme value to the point that it actually sells thousands?
posted by atoxyl at 9:42 PM on November 21 [6 favorites]

As someone who used to listen to the podcast, please consider not reviving it at this time for the various reasons others have already stated.
posted by coolname at 10:30 PM on November 21 [3 favorites]

Thanks for the update! I got my Pet Tax Wall mug already, looks good.

I agree with Miko that staff should really concentrate on the essentials rather than new podcasts etc.

I would appreciate more detail on what's happening with the new site.

This update says "Work towards the new site is still ongoing"

The last updates we had were:

September 18th update:

Early access to the new site has been delayed in order to include more complete features and actions that users can test and kirkaracha and I are expecting to make it available by Sunday, September 29.

October 16th update:

Early access to the new site is delayed due to some issues with the new host service. kirkaracha is working as we speak to fix it and we hope to have it ready later this week.

October 30th comment:

For full context, those DNS issues were resolved and then others popped, kirkaracha has been tackling them and monitoring them. As soon as we are certain we are good to go we’ll share access to the new site for testing.

Previously it sounded like the site was ready for preview, but only hosting issues and DNS issues were delaying it. This update seems less specific.

What state is the actual code in? Is it ready to go live, ready for preview, or not yet complete enough for preview?

Is it the code or the hosting that are delaying the new site preview?
posted by TheophileEscargot at 10:35 PM on November 21 [7 favorites]

BB, for what it's worth, I appreciate that you're motivated to encourage more posting and activity - trying to attract new users is ultimately probably the thing that matters most and you're clearly making an effort.
posted by Think_Long at 6:17 AM on November 22 [5 favorites]

In the last podcast, I learned that along with emails, checking flags, and talking to staff about their individual projects, loup spends time each shift "going down MeFi rabbit holes" in the archives. So that was useful, at least, to find out that's some of what payroll goes to. I guess if the podcast has info like that each time, it's useful, but otherwise probably not where I would choose to focus paid staff time.
posted by donnagirl at 6:23 AM on November 22 [8 favorites]

As someone who likes to take on too much and is learning how not to do that, the focus should be getting the new website up and running, and the work associated with getting the non-profit up and running. C'est tout.

The podcast, the cookbook, the pet tax, all of that straight up feels like busy work. You can do all of that--and lbr, it's not like there aren't already significant delays with things--AFTER making sure the new site looks great, runs great, and that the also very delayed non-profit stuff is dealt with in a timely fashion.

And while it's nice that MeFi is on BlueSky, I really don't know what ROI would be on that. Keep it as a placeholder, use it minimally if you want to have that.
posted by Kitteh at 6:37 AM on November 22 [12 favorites]

spends time each shift "going down MeFi rabbit holes" in the archives

Well hell, I've been doing that for free.

IF YOU'VE FALLEN DOWN MEFI RABBIT HOLE YOU MAY BE ENTITLED TO FINANCIAL COMPENSATION
posted by phunniemee at 6:42 AM on November 22 [20 favorites]

And while it's nice that MeFi is on BlueSky, I really don't know what ROI would be on that

You say that now, but wait until MeFi's Alf Hog Theme Week.
posted by mittens at 7:26 AM on November 22 [7 favorites]

loup spends time each shift "going down MeFi rabbit holes" in the archives.

I was ... struck by that.
posted by jgirl at 7:43 AM on November 22 [5 favorites]

this is a "moving the sick patient from the regular hospital bed to the ICU" of a site update

and I typed that even before I looked over the last ten days of Metatalk car crashes, good lord.
posted by Kwine at 7:57 AM on November 22 [9 favorites]

Good god so much of this discussion is awful. If I worked on Metafilter I'd find this thread terribly depressing and make me want to quit trying. I get that members are unhappy about some of the leadership discussion and want to criticize. But consider the people who are reading your message before you hit send. And whether that criticism is constructive or just something to vent your anger / make other people feel bad.
posted by Nelson at 8:43 AM on November 22 [11 favorites]

Nelson, I'm not sure what you mean by "the leadership discussion" but if you'd like to get a sense of why people are so vocally disenchanted, consider reading this thread for just the tip of the iceberg. (Some others from this month).

I know it is not fun to read. But it's not surprising that when polite, constructive input makes no difference, a lot of people won't bother sticking with it. Right now we're at a point where polite, constructive input has made at most a slight dent over the course of years. It sucks all around.
posted by trig at 9:01 AM on November 22 [11 favorites]

Most of the anger you see here is pretty restrained, given that some people have spent literal decades contributing to this endeavor and are saddened by seeing it handled with so little care. I'm not trying to make anyone feel bad, I'm trying to save something I value from indifference, incompetence, and poor decision making capabilities.
posted by donnagirl at 9:04 AM on November 22 [15 favorites]

loup spends time each shift "going down MeFi rabbit holes" in the archives

So I think Metafilter is in danger of something that, when staff is organized, I call “progressive union busting,” and when unorganized, I call “Big Boss Energy.”

Workers never, in any industry I have organized, spend every minute of every day productively focused on the most efficient means of accomplishing the company’s mission. Attempts to make them do such are the bane of workers existence and unions existence, because they are soul sucking and hellish Taylorism.

What I would expect of Metafilter staff is to try to work in the interests of Metafilter and the interests of moderation. Sometimes that might involve rabbit holes. Why do two users keep getting fighty? What *is* the history of moderation in this area? How did we use to do things? All of that involves deep diving. And the freedom to do it is what makes people willing to work without throwing up a middle finger and quitting.

We are not going to dig ourselves out of the financial hole by time studying the staff.
posted by corb at 9:10 AM on November 22 [22 favorites]

corb, agreed on the general point, though when the worker in question takes literal years to get stuff done and keeps using "I have too darn much on my plate" as an excuse - it does get ridiculous.
posted by trig at 9:15 AM on November 22 [17 favorites]

That was not the flavor of what loup described on the podcast. It may be what they're actually doing, but it was not at all how it came across. More that they were satisfying their curiosity about very old suggestions or user histories that didn't related to current moderation issues.
posted by lapis at 9:17 AM on November 22 [4 favorites]

Sorry corb, maybe I didn't include enough of my thoughts about the podcast. It was clearly described as a leisure, "just for funsies" kind of thing. I offer no comment on whether that is acceptable or not from workers while on shift generally. But maybe post the BIPOC board meeting minutes from eight months ago first, then kick off for a bit of on the clock noodling. Or don't complain about how there's no time to respond to active user questions in MetaTalk. Especially if you're billing hourly. I work retail, and was formerly a librarian, I have no desire to extract the maximum labor possible from every second of a worker's day.
posted by donnagirl at 9:19 AM on November 22 [9 favorites]

If I worked on Metafilter I'd find this thread terribly depressing and make me want to quit trying.

Maybe it’s some kind of 12 monkeys thing and some of the staff traveled through time and read this thread years ago.
posted by snofoam at 9:19 AM on November 22 [4 favorites]

If I worked on Metafilter I'd find this thread terribly depressing and make me want to quit trying.

It is an opportunity to serve a community and assist it in reminding it about how good it is. Obviously there’s issues, but they can be worked on and handled.
posted by Brandon Blatcher (staff) at 9:47 AM on November 22 [1 favorite]

Obviously there’s issues

Such as?
posted by Diskeater at 9:53 AM on November 22 [3 favorites]

Oh goody, more negativity in Metatalk. What a shocker. I'm definitely grumpy today, but this never-ending dumpster fire of discussions on how the site is run, who is and isn't doing what "the right way" is so draining. Anyone else just exhausted by this? This is the only place I know where the internals of how a organization is run, and all the skeletons and inefficiencies and what not that exist (which every.single.organization has) are just laid out publicly in an org-sponsored way for anyone with $5 to discuss and dissect.
posted by cgg at 9:55 AM on November 22 [16 favorites]

Oh goody, more negativity in Metatalk. What a shocker. I'm definitely grumpy today, but this never-ending dumpster fire of discussions on how the site is run, who is and isn't doing what "the right way" is so draining. Anyone else just exhausted by this?

I used to get exhausted by it like you describe. Then I became convinced (years of disturbing staff stuff convinced me) and now it is the "you're all so negative and terrible" complaints that drain and exhaust me. Not saying you should stop - your take is legit and it would be hypocritical - but your negativity and my negativity are both, you know, negative and can equally affect others negatively :-)
posted by trig at 10:07 AM on November 22 [14 favorites]

Anyone else just exhausted by this?

Not at all. Watching people spend years of their lives holding grudges about the minutiae of a site's operation is often entertaining. I'm not obligated to read it, though. I'd probably think differently if it was my joerb.
posted by Captaintripps at 10:13 AM on November 22 [3 favorites]

For what it’s worth, the hospital I worked at hosted a series of town halls every four months or so, and I don’t think a single poster has yet to exceed the seven (7) single spaced typed pages that one of our staff brought and recited at every town hall.
posted by brook horse at 10:19 AM on November 22 [12 favorites]

Did you recruit them to Metafilter??
posted by trig at 10:30 AM on November 22 [9 favorites]

We actually never spoke, as we worked opposite shifts on different floors in units that rarely interacted. But who knows? She could be among us as we speak…
posted by brook horse at 10:53 AM on November 22 [1 favorite]

Workers never, in any industry I have organized, spend every minute of every day productively focused on the most efficient means of accomplishing the company’s mission

Of course, but you understand that the underlying frustration people have is that the missions get accomplished unbelievably slowly, if ever, and that why, what more important things staff have to take care of, is quite opaque? The MeFi-rabbit-hole remark wouldn’t raise eyebrows - would be endearing, even - if everyone thought we were getting this:

What I would expect of Metafilter staff is to try to work in the interests of Metafilter

But that’s not the situation!
posted by atoxyl at 11:52 AM on November 22 [7 favorites]

Me: "hey, you folks are being angry and it's hard on the folks who run Metafilter maybe take a beat."

Replies: "we are angry grawr!"

There's a reason I don't participate in Metatalk often. It's the lightning rod for a lot of awfulness. I do believe that constructive work happens somewhere else. Sure ain't happening here.
posted by Nelson at 11:54 AM on November 22 [7 favorites]

We all have different interpretations of "grawr", I guess.
posted by trig at 12:34 PM on November 22 [2 favorites]

I do believe that constructive work happens somewhere else.

Are you talking about the people paid to run Metafilter? Where is that work happening and what is that work?

Sure ain't happening here.

Agreed. Some people on the Metafilter payroll aren't doing work, are making up busy work to do instead, and then they aren't doing the busy work either.
posted by Diskeater at 12:35 PM on November 22 [5 favorites]

Where is that work happening and what is that work?

I cannot read this comment as written in good faith.
posted by Nelson at 12:45 PM on November 22 [2 favorites]

Nelson - It's not in bad faith and any negativity is not directed at you or any other civilian.

I don't think constructive work is happening. Read any of the BIPOC meeting notes and see how many times the sentence "waiting on loup to do X" appears. We are in month four of fundraiser month and so far the only thing that has happened is the Pet Tax Wall merch. The new site beta is MIA. The most recent update, in its entirely, is "beta testing for the new site isn't ready, will look into more details about it."

And there's years of this.

That's why I think what I think.

What constructive work is the staff doing?
posted by Diskeater at 12:57 PM on November 22 [5 favorites]

If anyone really wants to wonder what staff is actually doing, compare today's site guidelines with a version from a couple years ago. This has been a task listed on basically every site update since they were started. From the outside, it is impossible to say how much work has gone into this, but anyone can look at it and decide for themselves if the actual changes in the document seem to reflect a good value for years of constant labor.

Also, if you maybe have never looked at that page, then that could also be a way to gauge how much value has been delivered for years of constant labor.
posted by snofoam at 1:42 PM on November 22 [3 favorites]

I appreciate the hard work that goes into running this place. I really enjoy Metafilter and I'm glad that it exists.
posted by BlahLaLa at 1:51 PM on November 22 [5 favorites]

Moving forward Brandon will be the main communicator in MetaTalk

This is a clear, concrete change that the community has been asking for, and now it has been implemented. Great to see!

Let’s give Brandon a chance.
posted by umber vowel at 2:00 PM on November 22 [10 favorites]

While I've agreed with quite a few criticisms that have come up in the recent threads, I'm not sure it's useful to let that metastasize into some "you must account for every second of the day that you spend tending my comments" outlook.

As demonstrated by your (kind!) comment, mefites are really really nice to moderators. I don't think there's any huge danger of them being micromanaged -- the problems with loup not completing work have really been noted (by me at least) for years.

I don't think it's micromanaging to want loup to do their job or [censored because I will get banned for saying it]. Like, I'm really not trying to be a jerk, but if someone needs an accountability buddy, it's good that they get one, and I want every job to be reasonably supportive. But also, this site does not have money to burn on that.

Someone who has been that notably poor at doing their basic job over the course of years does not need more staff hours, they need a long runway to find another job because that's the right thing to do. They also need a deadline to find another job so the community's resources are generally preserved. In my opinion the necessary "please find another position" talk needed to happen a year ago. Hopefully it's happening now.

Saying that is not an attempt to score points or be cruel. That's the reality of a situation with limited resources. When the non-profit board can't get $5,000 (or can they??) it's totally fine to be worried that there is a really questionable value-for-money situation happening and say something about it.

Mods definitely don't need to be perfect, but they need to be generally doing their job. The community needs that.

And if there's no leadership at the top to be making that decisions, unfortunately it's going to come across as very mob/grudge/give it a rest from people. When the only resources you have are rhetorical power and persistence, yeah, you become the "annoying" protesters who won't give it a rest. (Sorry, the union talk put me in the overly grandiose metaphor mood).

Workers never, in any industry I have organized, spend every minute of every day productively focused on the most efficient means of accomplishing the company’s mission. Attempts to make them do such are the bane of workers existence and unions existence, because they are soul sucking and hellish Taylorism.


So I think both of these metaphors are hopelessly tortured (perhaps because I do not know what Taylorism is, perhaps it is a libertarian thing?) But what I see here are (1) working class people* trying to maintain a non-capitalist community space, something rare and important in our current culture (2) donating their funds (earned by labor) and their labor directly (commenting, posting) (3) which labor is being directed to the benefit of a handful of people (4) who control the means of production (the servers, the copyright to the content) (5) while suppressing dissent in order to maintain that control of the means of production.

Under this metaphor, the mods aren't the unionized or non-unionized workers. They're something like management.

But again, both metaphors are pretty tortured.

*If you live off of your labor, instead of your investments, you are "working class" in this scenario. I know it's not the usual American use of the term, but I think it's a good way to think about things.
posted by knobknosher at 2:26 PM on November 22 [4 favorites]

We are not going to dig ourselves out of the financial hole by time studying the staff.

Ah, forgot this!

Staff are the number one most expensive thing about this site. Most sites like this spend much less money on staff. People who seem to be nit-picking staff are doing so because they have basically been told that they can't suggest big changes (like staffing changes). It is what it is. But to the extent that this site is in financial trouble, we absolutely do need to take a look at whether the staffing budget is being used well. Not perfectly, no one is perfect, but decently enough that it's not a net negative.
posted by knobknosher at 2:32 PM on November 22 [4 favorites]

Since there's been a lot of talk about fun, games, and whatnot, I would like to put a word in for those of us who are attracted to Metafilter for other reasons. Metafilter's unique "value proposition" for me has always been its political, cultural, and idea-based posts, which have always been hard to come by elsewhere.

Over the last several years, the political ones, in particular, but certainly others have repeatedly been "informally managed" by a small group of users who harass — rather than debate or ignore — users they disagree with. The harassment can get quite extreme, with folks following you around a thread, piling on, lying about you, and following you to other threads to continue the abuse.

This is exhausting, it's unpleasant, and over the years it has driven lots and lots of people away, including me. I have brought up the issue from time to time, most recently in this thread, and easily found if you search for the words "hector" or "bully." Although Loup claimed steps would be taken, they weren’t. So I brought it up again in this thread, but other issues drowned it out, so I will ask again here: When is Metafilter going to set and stick to a no bullying policy? To me, that’s central to protecting the assets.
posted by Violet Blue at 3:42 PM on November 22 [1 favorite]

These observations probably overlap with knobknosher but I started writing them earlier before being called to attend to my own actual job duties so here they are:

- It’s just a message board, and it’s not a good idea to get too worked up about it. But it is a message board that actually has a significant budget and a large staff, relative to the number of users and the amount of traffic. It shouldn’t be a surprise that people feel like the site could be getting more out of that somehow.

- A few years ago there was a move (as I understand deliberate) away from having staff drawn from the community and towards bringing in people with relevant experience from outside. There are upsides and downsides to this, but it’s not a surprise that users tend to think of these folks a little more as employees and a little less as community members, and thus being a bit more demanding about results.

- a couple of fundraisers ago the site had an emergency fundraiser, which revealed just how messy MetaFilter was on a business level. It also brought a lot of energy to bear on fixing the deficit, improving business practices, and building toward the future. Since then, however, concrete change has been slow, and the energy has plainly petered out. I am lead to believe that the reason fundraising, specifically, hasn’t been as big a deal is that site finances are doing fine, and I’m glad to hear it, but the desultory nature of the official efforts has not given us another pep rally moment like we had in 2022, and the pep gauge is lit up on “E.” So again with the sense of unrealized potential.

- of the two genuinely big things that we know are in the works, one (the nonprofit transition) seems to be driven primarily by unpaid volunteers? This could be a misunderstanding on my part but that’s how it feels.
posted by atoxyl at 3:46 PM on November 22 [6 favorites]

When is Metafilter going to set and stick to a no bullying policy?

It's only considered bullying if it's directed at the mods. Otherwise it's just sparkling aggrievance.
posted by phunniemee at 3:48 PM on November 22 [8 favorites]

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