
Metafilter, The Internet's First Family - samclemens
http://penguinrandomhouse.ca/hazlitt/longreads/internets-first-family
======
daniel_reetz
I'm fake, the guy who asked for help with his Russian friends. This is by far
the best article on what happened, and also the best description of MetaFilter
I've seen yet.

It was good to have an opportunity to reveal a few additional details, like
how the guy wanted their passports in exchange for a "room", and other behind-
the-scenes info I didn't want to share with the whole internet while it was
happening.

The incident helped catalyze and strengthen anti-trafficking efforts within
the State Department. Pollomacho, the State Dept. rep who contacted me, ended
up receiving a meritorious service award for his work.

I posted other updates over the years if anyone is interested.
[http://metatalk.metafilter.com/23482/Hazlitts-love-letter-
to...](http://metatalk.metafilter.com/23482/Hazlitts-love-letter-to-
MetaFilter#1176162)

~~~
themodelplumber
It was awesome to read about that as it happened. Amazing stories like that
really heightened my frustration at learning that MeFi was being punished by
Google's ranking algorithms because it was too old-looking. The new look is
great but on Google's end there are so many search results where there should
be an AskMeFi link at the very top but you still get a bunch of ad-bloated,
low-quality sites coming up.

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keypusher
For me one big lesson from metafilter, similarly to HN, is that you cannot
create a truly amazing community from self policing and algorithms alone. At
least not yet. To build a strong community, incentivizing people to submit and
curate good content via upvotes and downvotes is not enough. Hands-on
moderation is critical to cultivating a truly great community, because you
need truly dedicated users and mods to set the tone, and to quickly step in
when a post or comment is really inappropriate. Setting that tone from the
very beginning was something metafilter did better than almost any other site.
You also need to attract and keep the attention of the top-tier users, those
who contribute high-quality content on a frequent basis. And once a few
windows are broken, and users start to feel like nobody up top is paying
attention, the whole thing starts to break down. Of course, the $5 paywall
cannot not be ignored. It's a route I haven't seen many other sites take, and
I'm not sure how much revenue it actually generated, but it definitely helped
to keep the quality of discourse high. Also, I can hope that someday it turns
into a great investment for me when I sell my 4 digit user number.

~~~
anigbrowl
At the same time, none of that prevents Metafilter from being an echo chamber.
I suspended my membership a couple of years back because I found the political
discussions there increasingly toxic. Stepping even slightly outside the group
consensus can lead to aggressive and sbusive pile-ons, and obvious moderation
biases are often handwaved away on the grounds of 'community preferences.' I'm
pretty liberal but I got tired of getting crucified for even considering/
analyzing opposing points of view rather than condemning them.

Metafilter _qua_ persistent community has quite different dynamics from Ask
Metafilter.

~~~
mrxd
I remember your posts, and always appreciated your perspective.

I also canceled my membership a few years ago for the same reasons. Post and
comment counts seem to be down significantly from those days, so there may
have been an exodus.

~~~
anigbrowl
Oh thanks, that's a nice thing to hear.

I kept reading without participating for a while but eventually stopped. After
a glance at the redesign I don't guess I'll be going back, though I'm sure
there's some retro edition for people who prefer the denser version.

~~~
jessamyn
Yeah you can just keep the old style if you want to. It's the one I still use.

------
egypturnash
One of my proudest moments on the Internet was being mentioned as "MeFi's own
egypturnash" in a FPP linking to a Kotaku article I happened to show up on.

~~~
devindotcom
Heh, there have been a couple links to stuff I've written before, but I don't
think I've had the honor of being MeFi's own'd.

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mrbill
It's kinda weird to see an article that I'm meta-mentioned in spread to the
sites I read.

------
imkevinxu
Reminds me of some old relics of the Internet that are still around (and
active apparently) like [http://www.i-am-bored.com/](http://www.i-am-
bored.com/)

------
mrbill
Speaking of MeFi being awesome, pomegranate, her lady, jph, and joethedough
all meta-dragged me to dinner last night for my birthday. :) Great people.

