Podcast 126 Transcript

A transcript for Episode 126: Ask A Moderator (2017-03-02).

Pronoiac passed the podcast to otter.ai.

Transcript

Unknown Speaker 0:00 podcasts for a podcast podcast Josh bar gentlemen where God was a master the best of the web

Cortex 0:24 the morning podcast ideas are really good one but everyone's while it's really really the morning for me, it turns out and I'm sort of slow getting the whole thing rolling.

Jessamyn 0:32 So lunchtime for me. So yeah,

Cortex 0:34 that's that's the way to go timezones, man. Hey, welcome to another episode of Best of the web, the medical or monthly podcast. This is episode 126. We're recording this on March 1. I'm Josh Malartic. A cortex.

Jessamyn 0:50 And I'm Jessamyn and we nailed that.

Cortex 0:52 We nailed that.

Jessamyn 0:55 Are you implying we didn't nail it? I can never tell.

Cortex 0:58 I'm being the worst sort of like, am I being sarcastic or not surly teenager right there. It's like,

Jessamyn 1:03 well, because you know, I can't tell ya. So I've just like, I don't know. March 1, how it's like one of those. It's a date and a sentence. Yes. Like March 4.

Cortex 1:17 Like March 4, as well.

Jessamyn 1:19 Yeah. So on many of the other March marches.

Cortex 1:22 Are there any other verb homonyms? Let's let's not work through the air but

Jessamyn 1:27 well, there's May which isn't a verb but it's a you know, whatever part of speech it is.

Cortex 1:32 Yeah. I can. Yeah, yes. Not really quite a sentence. March may but well, I guess you could be like, well do any do the end the month come after February? Well, March many, I guess. I guess that works. But that's Wait, that's not a date. That's another month. God dammit.

Jessamyn 1:51 I didn't understand what you were talking. I don't as per usual, just

Cortex 1:54 the numbers like, first fourth, or I guess ordinals. You know, like, but but like, 27 isn't a homonym for something else. It's just a number. So like, Hey, everybody. Let's march 27. Yeah, doesn't work.

Jessamyn 2:06 I see what you mean. It's only an ordered number. Yeah.

Cortex 2:09 I don't know. That's a question. Someone answered that in a thread come up with something. What we are clearly doing today is a Colin show. We're doing another Colin show. We had a fun one around the end of the year. Yes. Colin show? Yes. Yeah. Once again, do not trying to call Eileen the message. We don't have that much of a setup. Maybe one day we'll do a live Colin show. That could be entertaining. But I think it'd be super fun. Yeah, it just I don't know logistically how to do it. So that's the that's the thing we'd have to figure out. I could just have people

Jessamyn 2:38 as you could get your technical questions. I know. I

Cortex 2:40 know. Right? If only there were some sort of resource online, maybe from a community. Yes, we're doing a Colin show. again. This time we're doing an Ask a moderator I put up a meta talk thread saying Hey, call the phone number. Which once again, is in Los Alamos because it's a Google Voice number and the last four digits spell me if i and that amuses me. I gave that number to the the rest of the mod staff as well saying oh, by the way, you could just call in with answers if you want. And so I think we'll have a couple of those. But I gave it to them wrong. And so I brought him up ended up trying to answer a question by calling I guess a Firestone tires in Los Alamos, New Mexico. So sorry about that.

Jessamyn 3:23 Oh, my gosh, I bet they had a great conversation. I'm

Cortex 3:26 a good boss. So we got a bunch of questions. And that's great. And we're just going to try and go through them. And this is going to be a rare editing heavy podcast episode. So we'll be just more basically sort of answer these in real time chatting about and I'll throw in some notes for moderators, right? Have them and also edit in, you know, some voicemail potentially from other moderators and everything it'll be, it'll be a dandy talk, Josh's idea, and it's all extremely experimental. So if we sound like we don't know what the fuck is going on, at any given time, it's because we don't know what the fuck is going on.

Jessamyn 3:59 And also, I sound like that normally.

Cortex 4:05 So yeah, we're gonna get down to it. And we may or may not have running time for like, normal podcast stuff. So we're just gonna do this and, and then we'll see what else happens. You know, maybe I'll edit this. So these aren't even the first words you hear? Who knows? We don't know what's going on. We don't know. But yeah, you want to you want to answer some questions, Justin? I would. Alright. Let's start. We'll take these in order ish. Let's start with word shore, who had a question for us.

Jessamyn 4:31 Okey doke.

Unknown Speaker 4:33 Good evening. We're to hear from England. My question for moderators is while you're moderating What is your favorite food or drink that you are consuming to get you through your moderating shift? Thank you very much.

Jessamyn 4:50 could listen to that accent forever? I will. So I grew up in a culture where you basically have to repeat the question so it's word chart. Asking what kind of food you eat when you moderate?

Cortex 5:03 Yeah. Which drink? Yeah, we have a note from eyebrows MkII saying she drinks Diet Coke or Chardonnay. I don't think I have a specific moderating food actually. I mean, I eat like I'm at home. And you know, I eat lunch at some point during my shift because I'm usually working morning to early afternoon. But yeah, I don't I don't think I have a specific thing. I tend to I tend to drink a lot of water if I remember to. I don't, I don't really have a set food. I bet. I've had this question for four days. And this is how prepared me?

Jessamyn 5:43 Well, for me when I used to do it, I had like the morning ish shift morning for me, which was like 10. And so I would just stumble them with a cup of coffee and then do sort of mod stuff. And then like the coffee would kind of wear off with that kind of weird, bad jangly coffee wear off thing about three hours later. And then I just be like, What do I stuffed in my mouth immediately. It was never very well thought out. And my keyboard was always full of crumbs. And I think I told you maybe one of these podcasts that it's a problem I have in general like eating it. The computer probably shouldn't do it, but do it anyhow. And I woke up one morning and I've got kind of a mouse problem my house but it's mostly dealt with I put all my food away and all the stuff. But I woke up one day and I found that the mice had pried the keys off of my keyboards to eat the crumbs. And like he just have a real kind of a rock

Cortex 6:36 bottom. Yeah.

Jessamyn 6:39 I mean, and I mean, you've been in my house it's decently clean. But crumbs in keyboard mice on keyboard and I just so now i Nothing new there near the keyboard if I can help it just just have coffee or water.

Cortex 6:55 It's not a bad policy. I guess that's a good point that that reminds me I do drink a lot of tea. I think I drink tea every morning so consistently that I don't really think about it as like a thing I drink while I'm moderating it just I get up in the morning. I make a cup of tea I you know, use the bathroom. And I come in to the computer theater theater here and I just before I go on just because like I don't need to get up earlier because hey, the next commute working at home. You just went

Jessamyn 7:21 through like a little robot thing where your voice Oh, did I say computer? Peter, Peter Peter, but now your battle? Wow.

Cortex 7:27 Well, hopefully it's not like that everything's okay. Let me know if a robot up. Yeah, but yeah, excuse me. Oh my god, I would have I am turning into a robot. A coughing robot, I don't know where I'm going with this. My point being I usually drink a lot of tea in the morning to wake up. And so that's a pretty built in part of my normal moderating shifts. And I'm realizing that maybe I didn't have as much tea this morning, as I usually do. So we're actually seeing in real time the effects of withdrawal. Hey, oh, yeah, so tea, I'm gonna change my answer to tea tea is my my favorite moderating beverage, if only by necessity, necessity.

Jessamyn 8:06 I can't imagine drinking a glass of wine and trying to do work.

Cortex 8:11 What? And we'll come back to that because there's one other question on that more specific subject. But first, we got a question from Churcher here.

Unknown Speaker 8:22 Hi, this is trick for calling. While I should be writing my dissertation, but I saw that you're asking for questions. So I was wondering what your favorite recipe that you've ever cooked from meta filter is. Thanks, bye. Oh,

Cortex 8:39 yeah, that's so this is tricky. A lot. I mean, there's a lot of recipes that we've ended up cooking. Secretary has gotten scaring through various threads at times, in ask, looking for stuff because we've had times when we're aiming for specific dietary stuff, which we're kind of doing and it turns out my cholesterol is a little bit higher than it should be. So we're trying to sort of get out of the the winter of doom and back into slightly better eating.

Jessamyn 9:09 cardiovascular exercise three times a week will help with that as part of

Cortex 9:12 the plan. That's part of the plan, man, but uh, but yeah, so So we've eaten a lot of things along those lines. But I think my favorite recipe off the top of my head that we definitely got from Metafilter is a recipe for roast broccoli. That Oh, it was somewhere I I'll try and find the actual recipe but it's just it's real simple. You take some broccoli, you chop it up into florets. You toss those in olive oil a little bit, throw some salt and pepper on them. And just stick them in the broiler for like, you know, four or five minutes just like long enough to just starting to show like they're going to go up in flames. But while they're still mostly green, and then you pull them out and you toss Some created like Parmesan or their hard cheese on it and some lemon juice, and you just toss it and you eat it. And oh my gosh, it's so good. I'm not a big broccoli fan. But that's

Jessamyn 10:10 good. I can stand broccoli, but I've tried that.

Cortex 10:14 It's real good. So I learned a big fan on that one, I'll try and find the actual specific recipe for it.

Jessamyn 10:20 Yeah, I think the recipe that I associated with metal filter the most, other than the ones I share there all the time are a recipe that I didn't read on Metafilter. But that I learned from Matt, like I went to a, I don't remember some meal, that mat was at 9k were there and they made this salad that was like a rice, black bean, avocado like brown rice, avocado, black bean, roasted corn something or other and there's like lime juice and cumin on it. So it's like got like a bit of a kind of a Mexican vibe to it. But essentially, it's just a really good kind of protein, rice salad. And it doesn't look like much. And it's delicious. And it's easy to make. And it's become kind of my go to, like when you want to bring a salad but you want to bring kind of something with protein, but you don't want to bring anything with any meat in it and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. This is the thing that I made. Yeah,

Cortex 11:17 yeah. I also say just in general, I don't know how much of this was asked me and how much of this was a couple of friends who've done this but but Instant Pot as a cooking utensil.

Jessamyn 11:28 I've been reading all about instant pot because all the metal filter people are insane about it's great.

Cortex 11:33 It's I mean, it's it's basically you know, it's a it's a pressure cooker.

Jessamyn 11:39 steamer, right? Yeah. And

Cortex 11:40 if if you can think of a pressure cooker is essentially a fast slow cooker in a lot of senses. Like there's tons of slow cooker recipes, but God it takes 10 fucking hours, which you know, when you like, when you're at home the whole plan in the morning, and like there's not really a oh, well, I'm sure glad I could just put that on the morning, leave and come back. If you're here the whole time. What's the point? So Instant Pot, you can smell it cooking yourself crazy. Yeah, you can do quick stuff in like a few minutes and long stuff in a couple hours. We've made pulled pork with it a bunch of times out. So you just you get some pork and you cut it up and you throw it in there. And you'll you know, you let it go for a couple hours and you've got like, pounds of pulp. So good. So yeah, go buy that expensive gadget is my favorite recipe. But

Jessamyn 12:25 nice. And I would like to put in a plug, as I always do for the Metafilter wiki, which has a great page called Eat me, which is compilations of recipes that hasn't been updated since 2013. Hey, everybody,

Cortex 12:37 Guess what time it is.

Jessamyn 12:42 And there's some low carb, low cholesterol, special dietary needs links in there,

Cortex 12:46 John? Yes. Yes, I should. I should look closer we've done we've been aiming for sort of a paleo ish thing. And that's

Jessamyn 12:52 I can't even know that about Yeah, well,

Cortex 12:54 I mean, just as an organizing principle, it's a real weight, easy way to get rid of the carb aspect of things. And carbs tend to cause me probably the most trouble. So, you know, with cholesterol, they totally can, at least in theory, you know, I mean, I don't want to get into food science, because I don't. I don't feel like I know shit about food science. But the association between converting carbs into fat and cholesterol seems to be like a pretty strong one. So it's not so much does this thing you're eating contain animal fat so much as does your body create human fat in the process of coping with your

Jessamyn 13:36 intake. When I've worked on my cholesterol, I mostly just work on like, you know, getting my animal proteins out of there. But all right, all right.

Cortex 13:43 Yeah, no, no, I learn a thing. I'm not going to quote this stuff. Exactly. But but that is the that is the operating principle behind some of that. At least in theory, Q 1000 and responses back and forth about this. Shall we shall we do another question? Yeah, sounds great. There's a question here from Kimber Russell,

Jessamyn 14:05 Kimber Russell.

Unknown Speaker 14:09 Hey, this is Kimber Russell from the great state of New Jersey. My question is that you all make posts on the blue and green. So as much do you try to do that on your off time so that you're not tempted to moderate your own posts? And if you're on duty, do you find that your own content requires greater restraint on your part so that you don't overly moderate it? That was two questions, but I love the show. Thanks.

Jessamyn 14:33 She stuck into questions.

Cortex 14:37 That's that's devious. I mean, they're related questions. So you know, I'll allow it. So posting posting on the blue and the green is like just like, you know, asking a question or just making a post during your off time or not, which I guess we should acknowledge upfront that like some of these are, do you versus Did you for us since you haven't actually But whatever people can sort that shit out. But yeah. Do you do it during an off time to avoid having to moderate? Or do you have to show restraint when you do do it when you're on the clock?

Jessamyn 15:13 Well, I mean, my feeling back when I was doing this all the time was it if it was really slow, and I could post during my shift, that was great, because then I could sort of pay attention to it. But I feel like all the mods, and I think this is true across the board, have a tendency to not post the things that require a lot of moderation to begin with. Yeah, you know what I mean? Like, none of the mods post, like, super heavy drama, asked me stuff. None of the mods, posts super heavy political stuff, sometimes on the front page stuff that's a little contentious, but very rarely stuff that's super contentious. Ya know what I mean? Like worst case, you'd have some kind of early drive by snarkiness or something in a mi fi post, but I feel like that's almost sort of handled before. Only certain kinds of posts need a lot of moderation. Yeah. And I feel like the mods don't make those kinds of posts. Yeah, I

Cortex 16:12 think I think that's I think that's pretty broadly true. I certainly certainly it's true for for me, I like I I'm almost never gonna post something along those lines to because I'm probably not going to post something's, like fight starting in a real world stakes way. Right? Not because that's, that's not important. But it's just it's not what I ever thought of as what I posted on the front page. It's not what gets me excited about making a post, even if like, I appreciate when some people are inclined to make well structured posts about more serious subjects.

Jessamyn 16:43 So yes, you're great, too. It's just it seems like it's not topics that any of the mods are super into. Yeah.

Cortex 16:49 Or at least into posting about, you know, and it's interesting, because, like, I don't know that that's intentional on my part. Or if it's just situational, it may be something that like being a mod has just made me so naturally inclined to avoid that stuff that even if something would have been a borderline case, maybe I would, without thinking about it too much be like, Yeah, I'm just gonna give that a skip. Like when I make a post and expect to fight about it. It's usually because it's a deliberately relatively minimal, something like, well, it's more like, art, is someone gonna be like, really, this is a post and at a certain point, well, what are you going to do, but, you know, I posted a single link twitter feed the other day that eBay, Garfield, it's just, it's a Twitter feed that posts Garfield merchandise that someone finds when they search on eBay for Garfield, and it's amazing. And it's just a Twitter feed. But it's great. It updates several times a day, and it's got all this super weird Garfield stuff. And, like in 2018, that's essentially a Tumblr. Yeah, exactly. You know, and several years ago, this would have been probably a little bit of a fight starter. You know, I might have been deleting it as hey, you know, it's just a Twitter talent that's kind of thin. But like, the web has changed significantly. And if I find some weird internet joy in a Twitter feed, great post about it, and someone else might Yeah, exactly. You know, and there were there were no fights in the thread. And people seem to basically enjoy the Garfield wheel weirdness. But, but that's definitely that's like, that's pushing it for me. I've been, I mean, I don't post the blue a ton in general, I've actually been trying to do so more lately. And it's, it turns out, it's a lot easier to come up with stuff to post if you just see some art somewhere and say, you know, I really liked that art. I'll make a post about it. And then like, you know, 10 people favorite it, and five people comment on it. And that's fine. It's just a nice little post about a thing and so

Jessamyn 18:35 well, and I always find my stuff from like, books I'm reading or like podcasts I was listening to so I learned about the what is it the international time capsule society. And I went to go search meta filter to see if anybody had posted about them. And of course, they did in 2003. So I spent, you know, a little bit of time this morning being like, well, post, I'm not sure how I feel about it. I basically I wrote them a note, because basically it's an international time capsule society. And they keep track of they have like a time capsule database of all the time capsules, and they've got this great web page of like, nine missing time capsules, and it's fascinating. But it they're basically just kind of Time Capsule fans. So the international time capsule society was like somebody's idea of a good idea at one point. And it isn't a real thing anymore. So you have to kind of email the individual dudes and be like, is this thing anymore? And so we'll see, but I figured I'd wait to hear back to see if it's a thing before I start giving it more eyeballs. The hardest thing for me though, is posting something on AskMe Metafilter. And walking away. Yeah, like almost always I will post something on AskMe Metafilter. I'll wait 20 minutes just to make sure there's not an immediate question are like I broke a link or something. And then I try and leave it alone for hours. So that I'm not like, like, you know, I asked a question about apps for my phone finance apps. And, you know, I'm like No budgeting and people are like, Yeah, but this does a budget, which is fine, like people are gonna do that. I know they do it. They're trying to be helpful. It's awesome. But it's really hard for me not to jump in and be like I said, no budget. And what I need to do is walk away, and come back and say, Thank you so much, everybody, even the people who suggested stuff I said, I didn't. Totally, you took time and whatever.

Cortex 20:24 Yeah, I rarely ask questions where I have super strong feelings about the detail. So it doesn't come up for me much. But. But still, I make that effort to like, yeah, yeah, exactly. The thing you said, like, watch it for a little bit to make sure it's not someone's not like, Oh, what about this really, obviously important detail. But other than that, it's like, yeah, put stepping away from it.

Jessamyn 20:46 Nothing but strong feelings about the detail. Yeah, no. And the good news is if it works, like I found the perfect app, you know, yeah. Amazingly, yeah, I would not have thought I could have, but it's got everything I want. But I had to be patient and sift through many imperfect apps to get to it.

Cortex 21:04 Yeah, exactly. It's a process. You know, it's all probabilistic.

Unknown Speaker 21:07 Hey, guys, I wrote, most of what I post to the blue is uncontroversial space is really cool. Or whoa, this article is amazing. So they don't tend to require a lot of moderating. So I do tend to do those during my shift often at the end when everything's really quiet. But when I post to the green, I usually do it on someone else's shifts, because when people don't read the question and answer, it's wrong to get really aggravated. And it's just better if there's someone else there who can get those answers and cut them out. And I don't have to get into it.

Cortex 21:43 Let's do another question. We got a question from elementary Penguin,

Jessamyn 21:46 elementary penguin. Okay.

Unknown Speaker 21:49 Hi, cortex, this is elementary penguin. And my question for you is, on average, how much alcohol you think you consume during a regular morning shift.

Unknown Speaker 21:59 Thank you. So

Jessamyn 22:04 drink on the job.

Cortex 22:06 As a general rule, though, so coming back to, to that from from earlier, I make a point not to drink with a capital D on the job ever. Like that's, there are nights Well, I will have a few drinks, but not while I'm working. There has probably been one or two occasions where it was just impossible to avoid having to work in the evening, while also attending like, you know, get together at a friend's house that couldn't be like, avoided or rescheduled, Sasha had a couple drinks while keeping an eye on my phone. But that's one of those situations where even I'll have my laptop in a bag somewhere. And if something really goes weird, I'll just say Hey, I gotta go. You know, go sit in your bedroom and work for a drink a cup of tea yellow, some people. But ya know, just just to avoid having that situation. You basically don't have like, a beer during lunch sometimes. If I am working an evening shift, which I I mostly just work morning, early afternoon shifts at this point, you know, I might have a drink with dinner or whatever. But otherwise, like, that's, you know, nope, no, no drunk model as a general rule. And I say the same thing the rest of the team so like, you know, eyebrows is you know, Chardonnay is like, you know, a glass of Chardonnay. Sure. But I mean, she's also got three kids running around. So you know, she's already sort of has to keep it in check. Just to just to manage the small ones. So yeah, I would say on average, I consume about point one drinks per shift. You know, there's been the occasional you know, long shift in the evening or pitching in while not being the actual mod on duty during say things like, you know, horrifying election outcomes. Where maybe going and just get a glass of scotch was part of the process too. But that's that's always much more of a Hey, someone else is working. I'm here for backup, but also, I'm gonna need some backup on my backup.

Jessamyn 24:06 Yeah, well, I don't think any of the mods is much of a drinker. I mean, you know, Tesla have a glass of wine. I think she talks about and eyebrows. I don't know if Jeremy I mean, I just don't know. I don't think so.

Cortex 24:19 Yeah. We've never had really sort of a talking about drinking culture.

Jessamyn 24:26 It seems like it's never come up. Yeah.

Cortex 24:29 So I'm probably I'm probably the drinker. On average, just based on personal impressions. Like Matt was never much like we would go to meetups at bars, and he would have like a beer and not like

Jessamyn 24:42 he doesn't really drink. Yeah. Oh, speaking of drinking. I had a trivia question that drove me crazy today. And maybe you can look at this picture and tell me if you just know off the top of your head what those two

Cortex 24:58 passions were looking at Danny The old fashioned donut, a sort of broken surfaced, high density donut with glaze, and then an old fashioned cocktail.

Jessamyn 25:08 I felt like I knew my donuts reasonably well. I mean, this, you can't put this podcast up now until midnight tonight, but I felt like I knew my donuts fairly well. And I felt like I knew my drinks fairly well. But I look at these two things. And they're like, what they came to these share? And I'm like, no, because I don't know. I didn't know what an old fashioned donut was. For good. Well, it's my lesson is drink more, because I'm sure I just gave my trivia. Several points because I thought that might have been a hard question. All right, well, thank you.

Cortex 25:41 In summary, friends, don't let friends mod drunk. Right. Let's see. Next question. We got a question from Infinite window.

Unknown Speaker 25:51 Hi, this is infinite window. And I have a question for mods in general. Do you feel like being a mod hinders your enjoyment of meta filter as just kind of a normal user? That's all thanks.

Unknown Speaker 26:07 Something I miss. Since I started moderating, this had a dial my natural sarcasm like way, way, way down, because start taping doesn't come across very well. And I'm a little worried that my sarcasm gland is getting swollen and it may burst. So I may need like a new sarcasm outlet.

Jessamyn 26:27 All right, I have to tell you, I enjoy Metafilter more now that I'm not moderating it.

Cortex 26:33 I can believe that.

Jessamyn 26:37 Because I ignore all the parts that I don't like, and I don't feel like I'm dragged to them kicking and screaming and then have people emailing, being upset about my attention towards those things. Yeah.

Cortex 26:48 Yeah. And I think that kind of gets to because I'd say like, in that sense, unambiguously, the answer is yes, it does hinder my enjoyment of Metafilter to be a mod. And I think the the truth that the same is probably true for everybody on the team, at least, especially when things were sort of busy or weird. Yeah, it's not that having to do mod stuff specifically makes the stuff I enjoy about the site less enjoyable, because I still, like, genuinely enjoy tons of stuff on the site. And I like having goofy discussions, I like learning new things I like wandering around on on the blue and finding out about stuff I didn't know it was going on. I enjoy, you know, with with a degree of qualification, I enjoy dumb arguments about stuff on the internet, at least when it's relatively smart people being dumb in their arguments about stuff. So I mean, all that stuff is still very much true for me the same way it was, you know, you know, in 2007. But there is a there's, there's definitely a very real aspect of the requirements of the job and the need to be aware of all the stuff that's going wrong on the site. impinging on sort of like the casual purity of that enjoyment. Like, I can't really look at a thread that has some sort of notable problematic element without kind of thinking about that, even if I'm not actually moderating as

Jessamyn 28:13 well, and you've got the buck stops here job. Yeah. So that must be even more difficult, in some ways, just because you've got kind of meta levels of concerns, as opposed to just micro levels. Yeah, there's

Cortex 28:23 some of that like, degree of sort of obligation and concern that I think probably plays into it for me as well. Not as not as much as I had sort of worried when I first took the job over from Matt.

Jessamyn 28:35 Well, because I think Matt took a lot of this stuff hard in a way that I wouldn't say was a choice, but which had to do with his own particular personality is differentiated from yours. Yeah,

Cortex 28:45 maybe a bit better at sort of like saying, Well, you know, I need to worry about that. But I don't need to worry about that. Right now. I've got some stuff, but like, the, the more cultural stuff, it's been a hard last year or so obviously, we've talked about this before, but it's been a hard year just because of the political environment in the US and in the world, in general, you know, in Britain and, and so that's, that's, that's sort of emphasize, I think, some of those hindrances, that's that's made it harder to relax a little bit on the side of times, just because there's kind of always something sort of tricky going on. One thing that's been working for me to get away from that is just trying to really not pay attention to political threads when I'm not like on the clock. Right. There was definitely chunks of last year where I was following everything like really closely and even, you know, beginning of this year, some to around a long duration, because it was just, it was hard not to, but I'm definitely trying to like On days off, I just kind of don't look at anything on the site that I don't like, literally have to be looking at right now. Which is working for me. It's not always great. I feel like I've been a little bit less attentive to some of the complicated discussions in meta talk during my days off, but on the other hand, I've had days off and it's been so important. Yeah, so it's it's tricky, you know, it's it's It's a it's a complicated thing. And I think, on the one hand it absolutely, you know, sum it up does hinder my enjoyment to some extent, but in a way that I feel okay with because I think metal filter provides enough of a sort of organizing, you know, sense of like space to relax and enjoy yourself for so many people that a few of us have. And that hindered a little bit is that okay, trade off like I Oh, and

Jessamyn 30:26 what I miss of all the things too, is, you know, getting to be paid for something you would do anyhow. Yeah, you know what I mean? Yeah, because I still hang out there and still enjoy it. And I don't have that kind of mod limitation on what, you know, being able to ignore parts of the site is probably the best part for me. But you know, there is a sense in which it's like, Oh, hey, this is a paying job. Like when it's not stressful, which, unfortunately, has been a lot more lately. You know, there's, there's a joy in being able to do what you really like doing and have that, you know, bring useful joy to other people. And as well be your gig, you know, exactly.

Cortex 31:04 Yeah. Like, as much as I have frustrations about it. Sometimes, like, it's frustrations about a job. I'm really glad I have, you know, so that's Yeah, exactly. Compared to like, I know, lots of people who are super frustrated about jobs they don't even like and you know, it's a temper is some of that, like, you know, oh man, today is the worst feeling to sort of put that in context.

Jessamyn 31:25 Right? Oh, that was one of the interesting things that happened to me lately, because, you know, one of the reasons I sort of moved on from Metafilter was to do more library stuff, I worked for Open Library for a long time, and that was great. But now that I'm not working for Open Library, I'm like, are like I really need to do library stuff, not just talk to librarians. And my friend Virgil, who's a local librarian, just got a better job, which is awesome for him. And what that means is he's leaving his job before they're going to be able to find a replacement. And it's one town over from me, and I'm gonna get to be the small town librarian in virtuals library for about a week and a half, you know, not so much work that I've got to learn to hate it, but enough that it'll be fun to like, keep my hand in. And I'm very excited about the whole thing like excited for Virgil because he got a good job. And I gave him like a glowing recommendation, because I think he should have it. And it means I'm gonna get to go work in the library, which helps me not feel like an imposter when I go talk to librarians about libraries. And they're like, which library Do you work in again? Yeah. And I'm like, on the internet, you know, and just so yeah, nice. Congratulations, my local work. Nice.

Cortex 32:33 We got another question here. This one is from Michelle Lee.

Unknown Speaker 32:37 Okay, this

Unknown Speaker 32:38 is Michelly.

Unknown Speaker 32:39 So here's my question. I've been trying to figure out whether it was worth the meta talk. So

Unknown Speaker 32:41 this is awesome. When you're a mod,

Unknown Speaker 32:44 do you check your favorites?

Unknown Speaker 32:46 And if you do, check your favorites. How often do you check your favorites? Or are you just above it all

Unknown Speaker 32:51 and you consider them all bookmarks?

Jessamyn 32:55 So do you question about checking favorites? Yeah, I probably can tell you my favorites now within probably 20 Oh, yeah. Yeah. Do you know yours?

Cortex 33:04 I looked recently I would have guessed lower actually. Well, I

Jessamyn 33:07 mean, I looked recently too. That's how I know. Okay, well,

Cortex 33:10 fair enough. I thought maybe he just like kept like years long drag. I would have guessed actually, if I hadn't just glanced at that. My favorites. Were somewhere around 1000 It's actually more like 1300 Apparently.

Jessamyn 33:20 Oh, wait, the ones that you favorite favorited

Cortex 33:23 Oh, I've been favorited something like 125,000.

Jessamyn 33:28 Which is nice. Yeah, it's

Cortex 33:30 it's, it's there's some there's some easy force multipliers on your mod, I suppose. But also, I'm just how can you not like me? Especially with all that humility? Is that a rhetorical question? Yeah. Yes. Let's move on from that question. Do I? Okay, so I do check my favorites. I don't check my favorites to like monitor them, per se. I just sort of check them as a rhythm when things are slow. Like, if I'm sort of in a just sort of reading the site I will years ago, I got in the habit of sort of like checking recent activity and popping over to the Favorites tag on there. I can't remember what the tab is called. A recent favorites, which I have never clicked that. See. That's that that one is that one is an interesting one to me. Like, I don't really care about my favorite count. I try not to care too much about whether or not people favorited something at all, because I don't want to feel wrapped up in that. But you know, I am human. I totally understand the natural sort of like, Oh, hey, people, like a thing, sort of thing. But I find it interesting as a way partly to sort of keep track of where the zeitgeist is like, the interesting thing about me getting some favorites on something it's not so much Oh, look how awesome I am as what's landing like, you know, it's I'm kind of curious where things I made a joke in one of the political threads recently. That was there was a tweet about B, or a tile falling in Queens Midtown Tunnel in the New York subway, and there was a typo. In the tweet where I think the word bin became the word be. And then I made a joke about, you know, a Midtown Tunnel. But every time a bee is injured by a falling tile, the trains go 50% Faster, which I thought was hilarious because like, hey, the beating but also the booth is kind of crested. Right. So like, I don't know, is this gonna get like to favorites and someone writing comic just to say boo? Or is it gonna get a bunch of everything I got a bunch of errors apparently people are still happy with that, you know. So I find that really interesting above and beyond. I moved on Joe, I know what

Jessamyn 35:30 you mean. I mean, that's like similar for me too, which is like, it's almost like sort of like, like when I swim a lot, like, I'll take my pulse to see like, am I swimming about the way I should be swimming? And sometimes I'll check my favorites on metal filter to be like, am I better filtering the way I feel like I should be better filtering. I mean, the favorites that I give are sort of 5050 like, hey, I really liked that. And oh, I want to remember to mention that on the podcast. So if you've received and then lost a favorite for me, it's probably because you were mentioned by jazz. And I have a stupid system. And you know, sorry about that. It's

Cortex 36:09 kind of annoying, but like that's an amazing like super favorite, though. It's like it's self canceling favorite, because you're so rad that you got mentioned on the podcast.

Jessamyn 36:16 That's the way I look at it. But what's interesting to me that I delve out of favorites is finding kind of like deep dive things where like people will favorite like some random thing that I said five years. Yeah, and figuring out why. Like was at LinkedIn, something I like a lot of times and asked about a filter, because I'm reading AskMe and a filter fairly closely. I can kind of see why that happened. But sometimes it's like some random joke from Metafilter from a decade ago. And I always wonder like, why? What is I like, it's interesting to me to sort of think about it. And of course, I know I've mentioned this before, but Jim not on display and on when we're getting close to like, a round number of favorite will like call the other person or text the other person and be like, Hey, I think Jim lately it was like, Hey, I've almost got 16,000 favorites or 14,000 favorites or whatever the hell it was, you know, favorite something of mine so that I could be his

Cortex 37:11 role? odometer?

Jessamyn 37:12 Yeah. It's goofy as shit. But yeah, so I was just 14,000 favorites. But he's been sick and home with a cold. So he was not my whatever it is 120,000 favorites. So I pay attention to them. But I don't like because I find them interesting because their numbers. But I don't spend a lot of time being like, oh, what does it mean? Or why didn't people like this? Or therefore what

Cortex 37:38 that from the archives effect is really cool. I really liked that too. That's definitely one of the like, upsides of checking, like I someone just for some reason. favorited this post I made five years ago about a site called shrimp. And I had to

Jessamyn 37:53 learn about shrimp. There's one of the following questions is about

Cortex 37:58 this is about szerint with an N. Which is just a goofy thing that mefite I believe made years ago.

Jessamyn 38:09 Yeah, BT Billy, you call him BT? Yeah.

Cortex 38:13 Or Rupa or anyway, you know, he made this and it's still going apparently. So whoever favorited it wasn't favoriting a post about a dead site. But how did they come across a medical post about Trump five years later? I don't know. But I'm delighted to be reminded that exists.

Jessamyn 38:28 Scott, one of the old user pages. Oh, yeah. Yeah, I didn't know there was any more of those left.

Cortex 38:35 Yep. Well, only if you're on classic. If you're on modern, it doesn't look like anything. It. What it looks like is some CSS. It's got a great. So depending on what theme, you're viewing the links in the podcast from you may or may not see anything interesting there. But yeah, so that's, that's a neat effect. The other thing, and this is, I guess, sort of what you were, I find it useful every once in a while to check my recent favorites to see if it feels really static. Because if it is, it probably means I've sort of forgotten to like, engage in threads. Right? You know, it's like, if I'm seeing the same stuff I saw two days ago and my REITs and favorites.

Jessamyn 39:12 And you've been participating, are you? Well, it's

Cortex 39:16 yeah, I'm not trying to talk myself up by saying well, no, if I'd been participating, I'd have some new favorites. But like, if I've left 20 comments, you know, over the course of a day, probably one or two of them would get a favorite, you know, just because I said something thoughtful or funny or whatever. So if I'm not seeing like any movement, if everything if the time on my last favorites is all like two days ago, three days ago, I'm like, oh shit, I kind of checked out. I gotta, I gotta go, like, be around and enjoy this place more. You know,

Jessamyn 39:41 I have a confession. I have that feeling about AskMe Metafilter if I haven't gotten a best answer and my last 50 comments, because, you know, there's that view of the AskMe Metafilter pages that's like a grandfathered view. You know, where you can see the checkmark In line so you can see if you got a best answer. And you know, I'm not obsessive about best answers. There's definitely times I felt like I've given good answers other people get best answer. I'm like, great, whatever, you know, but I feel like a lot of times I, you know, look up the thing and I'm like, this is the answer, boom. And so I feel like if I'm not getting the best answer sometime in the last, whatever, 5050 answers, which is usually about half a month, maybe three weeks, I should probably work harder to help people answer their questions

Cortex 40:52 we've got another question here from an unidentified caller. We'll call him sock guy. So it's a sock guys question.

Jessamyn 41:00 Is the second number one, one? Yeah. All right.

Unknown Speaker 41:05 Where are my socks? I can't find my socks.

Jessamyn 41:12 I swear that's a me fight. I don't know. Is that possible?

Cortex 41:15 It's possible. I don't know. I? The worst part is, if it's if it's going to turn out to be someone who have like actually, like sat in a room drinking beer with but like phone voices are hard. I'm not great at placing a voice so who knows? Or maybe it's some random, you know, prankster? It's hard to say. In any case, I don't know where their socks are. I'm just gonna be upfront about that. I don't know how to help them find them socks.

Jessamyn 41:38 I usually feel like socks are either somewhere near your shoes. Or you. I mean, in the wintertime I changed my socks all the time. Because like your socks get sweaty. And then your feet get cold and that's totally avoidable if you put on new dry socks. Yeah, so sometimes I like leave socks in random places in the winter, whereas I normally don't. But you know, they're probably under a shirt. Like where your laundry is? Yeah, maybe you took them off in your sleep. I know there's still some people who haven't heard the good word and sleeping their socks any you know any number of things. There's not that many places a sock could be right if you try checking the dryer.

Cortex 42:19 Yeah, they might be stuck to our inside or something. Do you Oh rats can cats can run off with a sock. So it's a puzzler. Good luck with that. Sock guy. Good luck with that. We got another question here from Josh are seven one.

Unknown Speaker 42:34 Hi, this is Josh are 71. And I had a post deleted recently. And it was about someone who was saying that non smoking rules tend to damage solidarity. It was a very dumb article, and I understand why it was deleted. I just wanted to say that was something I posted because I wanted to see a hate on for something that wasn't Trump.

Jessamyn 42:58 So that wasn't a question. Yeah.

Cortex 43:00 So this was our first non question question, which is okay. It asked the moderator versus just say it being

Jessamyn 43:09 a moderator. I mean, I think that was good, right. I mean,

Cortex 43:12 every statement is, in a sense, a question. You know, it's, there's, like, Well, I mean, I'm just saying like, you know, if what Josh was saying, was, you know, he posted something just because he wanted to get people to sort of be grumpy about something non Trump that asks questions about what's the state of you know, the zeitgeist where, where are we at as a community? What's the what's the nature of catharsis as a novelty versus a daily practice? Yeah,

Jessamyn 43:38 that's exactly what I got out of. Oh, yeah.

Cortex 43:47 This is a this is a question from bond cliff. For eyebrows McGee and eyebrows called him with an answer for it. So we'll let him ask and I'll play her answer.

Jessamyn 44:00 Okay, I will I will. Listen.

Unknown Speaker 44:04 Oh, well. Metafilter mods. This is bond Cliff calling with a question for eyebrows McGee. Eyebrows McGee.

Unknown Speaker 44:13 Why have you never eaten the shrimp?

Unknown Speaker 44:15 Thank you very much.

Unknown Speaker 44:18 So Bankwest wants to know, Why have I never eaten a shrimp? So I'm Catholic, but I grew up in Chicago in the 80s, where the seafood was absolutely disgusting. And I grew up in a very Jewish community on the North Shore actually were really close to restless Nomad, we shopped at the same bakery, although I never met her. So none of my friends were actually allowed to eat shellfish and hardly any of the grocery stores carried it. So between the Judaism and the general robustness of shellfish, I just never ate it. By the time I went away to college, and I started seeing at a cocktail party. It was way way too late for me to start eating a garbage feeding arthropod just because it's from the ocean, not eating a garbage feeding arthropod my kids do eat shrimp, but only when my husband who's a native of Florida is there because you have to peel them or something. And I don't really know which parts are supposed to eat or not eat, so they can't eat them when it's just me because I will poison them. I actually don't eat any shellfish. I will eat fish. I can't avoid it. I don't eat pork hotdogs either. Because, oh my god, what is wrong with you people all the Franks is where it's at. I was actually hopped on day at my kindergartener school this week. And he came home and he told me he had a hot dog and he put mustard on it and he put ketchup on it. And I was so horrified. I gasped and horror and then the baby burst into tears because the gaps didn't word too loud. And I told my kindergarten or your sisters crying because you put ketchup on a hot dog. Shrimp are gross.

Cortex 46:01 Why are shrimp gross? Wow. I mean, I mean, kid, they're

Jessamyn 46:06 essentially insects of the sea. Well, I mean, sure. Only they also taste like

Cortex 46:11 fish. Well, but they taste good. They got little legs.

Jessamyn 46:15 Gotta like pull the poop out of them before you eat them.

Cortex 46:18 Well, yeah, that's that's that's the grossest part. But the meat The meat tastes so good. So shrimpy I'm on Team. Yes, shrimp. Clearly,

Jessamyn 46:30 I'm on Team No, thank you shrimp. I mean, I would eat them if I were starving to death. But I would have to be almost that hungry to want to put one in my mouth.

Cortex 46:39 She can't have a shrimp cocktail without shrimp. And I don't. But they're so good that the cocktail sauce. I mean, I could feel this

Jessamyn 46:47 way about people who don't eat bacon. And I know that they have perfectly good reasons. But yeah, not my thing. So eyebrow says their gross basically, her answer. Yep. Her complete answer.

Cortex 47:03 I think I think her Colin answer was longer. But I haven't listened to it yet. Because I was this morning. Next question, we got a question from crisis. Tom.

Jessamyn 47:13 Crisis. Tom. Really? That's how you pronounce that?

Cortex 47:17 I think so. Well, we'll find

Unknown Speaker 47:22 a chord next and all bonds. This is a user crisis. question I had was, you know, a while back, when was the change in management. And Matt stepped away, there was a lot of talk about maybe doing occasional state of the site updates, like on an annual basis or something like that. And I think maybe in light of all the excitement that we had in the latter part of 2016. And now moving on, to 2017. With the politics spreads, and so forth, it might be worthwhile to let the user base know what's going on. And are, are we doing okay, in terms of revenue? Can we look to keep in the same amount of mods have more mods to somebody have to go? What, if anything, do we as users need to do to help out that kind of thing? It doesn't obviously have to be incredibly detailed, but it would it would be good, I think, to everybody just up to speed on on the general state of the ship SS metal filter. So

Unknown Speaker 48:21 thanks a lot.

Jessamyn 48:23 Good point.

Cortex 48:24 Yes. This is a good question or questions or thoughts? Basically, crisis Thomas right on this is very much something that's the intention of doing regular updates got interfered with by everything else happening to the point where it's really been a while since I've gotten one posted. I think I've had a couple podcasts over the last couple months where I said, you know, I should really get that done real quick here. So I will I will risk, you know, tempting fate by saying I should really get that done real quick here. I'd have actually been talking about it with the team. Last week or so. The good news is no news is good news in the sense like, we haven't needed to say, oh, shit, guys, we got a problem. stuff has been pretty steady revenue wise, the ad markets. You know, it's a weird sort of mysterious fucky things. So there's ups and downs. But all in all, it's been maintaining. And we've actually reduced costs on a couple occasions by sort of trimming the fat on stuff or when PB left, we brought Brimble on part time. So that's some budget savings right there. So we're doing okay for now, and I'll get it I'll get a detailed up date up soon because it has been an interesting sort of seeing how the revenue landscape has moved over over the last few years. But yeah, it is weird how much the events of the political world in the last like year and a half have kind of so dominated a lot of things along With other little bumpy stuff, but that really is sort of a weird overriding theme on other stuff sort of falling by the wayside. Which I think we're going to keep sort of working on pushing back on some so we can pay a little more attention to site development and, you know, sec communication stuff. Yeah. Next question we have is from duffel.

Unknown Speaker 50:26 Hello, this is Mefi user duffel. And I'm calling with a question for anyone who wants to answer it of the month, which is really just

Unknown Speaker 50:39 what are the lessons you learned from moderating meta filters that have unexpectedly bled into other corners of your life? Is there?

Unknown Speaker 50:52 Is there anything that you've

Unknown Speaker 50:53 that you've picked up that you've

Unknown Speaker 50:57 been able to use elsewhere?

Cortex 51:01 So the question basically, what lessons that you've learned from moderating, you've found yourself sort of bleeding unexpectedly into other parts of your life unexpectedly. Yeah, that's a word

Jessamyn 51:12 see, unexpectedly is the is the is the hook for me. Because, I mean, as you know, being a person who, like me had a poor work life balance until recently, like, you know, I was like, what, there's a life that isn't metal filter, when I work there, you know, so of course, everything bleeds into everything else, it's just one big bloody mess. But um, you know, I found the thing that helped me the most when I worked at Metafilter, to like, bring out of metal filter, was because I knew so many people who were having challenges being on, you know, kind of one side of an issue, if I found myself out in public, sort of on the other side of that issue, being able to be more sort of empathetic, because I felt like I knew more what that experience was, like from the inside, sort of so like, you know, people who are anxious talking to authority figures, for whatever reason, like I'm not the most awesome person on the phone, but I'm pretty good at kind of walking into a room and talking to people. Yeah. And so I've been that person in the room, where people walk in and talk to me and hearing so many different people on AskMe Metafilter, talking about what's hard for them about that, how they would like to do better, what would make that interaction better for them, has enabled me to kind of model what a, you know, more useful response to more different kinds of people, because obviously, if you're not kind of anxious, or freaked out by that situation, whatever, you'll just take whatever happens, and you'll be fine. But for people who are having concerns about it, there are kind of a couple basic things you can do to help people be more comfortable. And so part of it for me with Metafilter was getting outside my own head, you know, because obviously, I've got my own concerns and anxieties about interacting with other people and learning how to kind of set that aside to try and sort of whatever make the user experience better for someone who comes up to me in the library for somebody who walks into drop in time, or somebody who buttonholes me in the shower at the gym and starts accessing tech support questions like whatever the thing is, being a bit more mindful about how to make those things go better. And obviously, all the specific things I learned about, you know, more sort of diversity and inclusion and awareness of people from different cultures and how different things read to them. Where I was like, Whoa, it wouldn't have occurred to me, and thank god, somebody told me so that I can just be more appropriate and more different situations, like Vermont is a very non culturally diverse place. But I feel like I know so many more different kinds of people from being medical there. It's not even a mod situation, you know, as much as just being part of that community. Yeah, I mean, for moderating, it's more about, you know, realizing that most people want to do a good job, you know, and so if you have negative feedback for somebody, trying to couch that, in, look, things are mostly fine, but there's this little thing we have to work on instead of, you've got some work to do. Everything better.

Cortex 54:21 I think the thing that's been most surprising to me is finding myself sort of facilitating and you know, sort of in the in the same sort of territory, but like I found a couple times I've ended up being sort of the person really making a discussion cohere when people are trying to like brainstorm or work out a plan or policy idea for something, which is not something that like, feels like super crazy foreign to me. Like, I wouldn't be surprised that I could participate in that discussion, but I've been surprised to find myself sort of ending up really kind of working that discussion and being able to say, Okay, well let's break down this problem and actually try and figure out the productive route forward on this is on stuff. Right, right, right, in a really organic way that like it sort of sneaks up on me. I've also just gotten better at not getting into stupid arguments online as a result of being a moderator. I think, whether that's just out of exhaustion with it, or I think there's an aspect of really sort of internalizing some sort of sense of well, what's gonna go well, and what's gonna not here. I've definitely gotten better at not engaging with stuff that's gonna piss me off. But gosh, it's right there. So that's, that's been a nice sort of accidental bonus.

Jessamyn 55:39 Well, and I've developed empathy for other people in other different types of moderating situations, you know? Yeah, like, I mean, a lot of times, you know, I've tried to leave comments on like news articles that are about library topics, just because I feel like it's useful to have people know, like, hey, librarians are paying attention to this. But every now and again, you wind up in a comment section, that's just a nightmare. And my first response is like, Yeah, well, of course, blah, blah, but also being like, you know, these people probably do have a plan, it's just not a very good plan, you know, and trying to trying to feel a little bad for them with that, at the same time, as you kind of determine how to engage and not to engage. And, you know, I've also helped a lot of people in a lot of other communities who aren't, you know, haven't been doing moderating stuff for a decade about being like, you know, here's what I might recommend, like, in the trivia league that I'm in, you know, it's 1000s of people and people die occasionally, you know, there was that very notable, like, woman from Jeopardy, who was like, you know, televised on Jeopardy, and she had already passed away at home, and, you know, kind of went around and went around the trivia thing, but I talked to the guy who runs that community. And I'm like, you know, it might be nice if there was a way to memorialize people who were part of the community who had died. Because, you know, Metafilter does that to a certain extent, you know, the user's profile page gets a little banner, whatever, Meditec thread if there is one. And, you know, he built one, he's like, Oh, good idea, you know, and it's just one of those things, where if you're not thinking about, what can we add to this community to make it feel more like a, you know, real group of human beings? You know, you might not think about it, not everybody's proactive in that way. But because metal filter has made so many affirmative decisions, you know, community positive decisions, a lot of those are lessons that unless you're inside metal filter, you might not think about Yeah, exactly. It's, and it's useful, and you can pass on that information. And often people who are running communities are unhappy to hear it, you know, they might not take your brilliant advice, but at least

Cortex 57:48 it gives them something to like, think about like, and it puts it on the radar, at least, which is nice. And maybe

Jessamyn 57:53 it helps them solve a problem. And that's nice. You know, it's there's a, there's a mitzvah aspect to that, which I appreciate.

Cortex 57:59 I also want to mention, just since it sort of related in the other direction, there was that recent meta talk this month about sort of asking, you know, other members of committee, what things did you realize you sort of honed as a meta filter skill without realizing it till later. So sort of the same spirit, but everybody answering so that's a fun thread to read through. Next question we've got this is from WNS vet, whose name I'm finally getting correct. Yeah, what Oh, man.

Jessamyn 58:34 Oh, man, I was just in your neck of the woods. I finally stopped by to see the Cumberland library yesterday, and they let me walk up in the tower. It's very cool. Check my picture tower picture on Instagram. Joshua was excellent.

Cortex 58:46 I will take a look. Now that I'm using Instagram. Yeah.

Unknown Speaker 58:49 Hey, cortex, this is ws man. I'm just wondering how you keep finding such excellent mods all over the place every time you need one. And just watch his hiring secrets are and what you can share with us for cultivating the awesome people, you and your team.

Unknown Speaker 59:03 Thanks. Bye.

Jessamyn 59:05 How do you find those awesome people?

Cortex 59:07 I learned from you hiring me clearly.

Jessamyn 59:11 I didn't hire you, Matt hired you. Once thing straight. Like this kid, Josh. And I'm like, I don't know who that is. He's like, Well, he's your new. He's your new brother. I mean, it worked out. But I can remember that feeling of being like I what, who? A million years ago. It's so hard to even get my head around.

Cortex 59:35 I think it worked out is sort of part of the answer. I mean, because I think I think we have had just an enormously good crop of moderators over the years. And and, you know, I mean, somebody

Jessamyn 59:47 internally is the big part of that. Right? Sorry, you got robot for a second. Oh, hiring internally. Yeah. Part of that. Yeah.

Cortex 59:55 I mean, we like get good moderators for your online community by having a good The online community and looking within it, and I don't, I don't mean that as in, that's the only way you could do it. And certainly depending on your community size and your community needs and your your specific hiring goals at any time, it may or may not be the only or best option for you. But I think for us, it generally has worked out very well, because meta filter has such an idiosyncratic community and has such a complicated sort of oral tradition of moderation in a lot of ways. So taking people who've been paying attention to that, and who have sort of shown themselves to be engaging positively with the site is a really good starting point for any sort of potential moderator position, because you know, you have some of the qualities that are really difficult to test for ahead of time, you know, to take, you can take someone who is, you know, very thoughtful, and has some moderate of experience somewhere and say, Okay, well do this job now. And they're probably going to do a reasonably good job, but you won't know about some of that cultural fit stuff, you won't know whether or not they really get the place. You don't know whether they sort of agree or disagree with some of the overriding, you know, ethos of the community. So having having hired internally, I think, has helped a lot with that. As much as it's also it limits the employment pool. And that's tricky when we went to hire a replacement for PB last year. I talked to a lot of people most of whom were not on medicals, right, I very explicitly went looking wider partly because we had a idiosyncratic, even for meta filter level of requirements in the technical aspects of the site. Yeah. But the two strongest candidates I talked to, were both mefites. And we ended up hiring Trimble and, and they've been fantastic. And part of that is, you know, we were hiring specifically for a technical position rather than a moderation position there. And it could have been someone who, like did nothing but, you know, touch the hardware and the software and had no contact with a community. But because we ended up with someone who was a member of the community, we've instead had a new tech person who is very happy to interface and be chatty and and sort of gets the place to so there's been so much less technical friction when trying to work out site stuff with Brimble than there might have been with someone who was totally qualified. But

Jessamyn 1:02:22 I think having the developers show up in the threads is so important. If you can make it work. Yeah. Yeah. Like it's not every developer is going to be able to do that. I think PB was pretty good at it. I mean, I think PB is a god among men. But, you know, sometimes I think in threads, he was a little bit like, well, it's this way, because I'm an engineer, you know, and not quite like, well, I feel you and I think Trimble is even a little bit more touchy feely in ways that I feel like are pretty great, actually, like, works really well with this community specifically. And that's awesome to see. Yeah. So that was his like, you know, PBS and amazing wizard. And when he was leaving, I think everybody was like, Oh, God, there's no way to get even approaching his greatness. And I think Trimble has a different kind of greatness. And that's a wonderful thing to be able to see and realize.

Cortex 1:03:18 Yeah, so that's working. Well, I'm really happy about that. And I think I think just to some extent, we just have gotten lucky, you know, there's there's always a possibility that there could have been some Mod hired at some point that just really didn't work out, for some reason, for unforeseeable reasons. And we haven't had that. So to some extent, we're in the correct timeline, I guess, is the answer. But but you know, you never know so

Jessamyn 1:03:40 well. And I think, you know, making affirmative decisions to pay attention to having a gender mix, having a timezone mix, having a nationality mix has also paid off, not like, everything's exactly perfect, but I just think being mindful of that stuff going in, paying attention to the mix is also as important as making sure people have, you know, individual specific skills.

Cortex 1:04:07 Yeah, and that's one thing I will say is like, long term, you know, thinking about diversity in hiring is more and more on my radar. But, but, but in terms of like hiring versus like a resume versus sort of feel, I think the field thing in this case is really important. And it would be pretty easy to do a bad job of hiring a moderator based on line items on a resume, like, you know, this is this is a hard job, in particular, to try and really codify what you do versus having a sense of whether that person gets it. So that's another thing where the community experience again, comes into a lot, you know, knowing that that person has eyes wide open about a lot of stuff rather than sort of thinks maybe they can do that thing. And then it turns out no.

Jessamyn 1:04:50 Right. I mean, there's a lot of people who are wonderful community members who might not also make great moderators and you guys being able to sort of discern the difference.

Cortex 1:04:57 Yeah, it's hard. It's hard to work that out on paper. You kind of have to sort of know, based on actual interactional experience stuff like that. So next question. We've got a question from Gregory nog.

Unknown Speaker 1:05:13 Hey, mods.

Unknown Speaker 1:05:14 This is Greg Greg nog. Obviously moderating is a difficult task with a lot of moving parts. So my question to you all is what celebrity impression do you like doing the best? Please do it on air so we can hear it. Thank you, champ

Cortex 1:05:34 What do you got? What's your favorite? You

Jessamyn 1:05:36 do celebrity impressions? I don't do celebrity impressions.

Cortex 1:05:39 I would easily fall over to walk in as as my good to go just Christopher Walken, you know, answering questions on the podcast. It's it's nice. It's about as good as it gets. But I you know, enjoy it and we'll do it drunkenly meetups. Surely sure you you impress someone like it doesn't have to be good. It doesn't have to be detailed, but like,

Jessamyn 1:06:04 it's just not a thing. I do. Like, you know, it's a big secret of mine. But like, I don't have any imagination. I'm very good at like working within the structures of Ah, wow. We may have to come back to this because I

Cortex 1:06:22 don't know. Think on that. We'll just peppermint.

Jessamyn 1:06:24 I mean, I've got it. Nelson months. We'll do it.

Cortex 1:06:28 I think we've been over there. That's a solid Knelson laugh. That's a really solid. I think I failed miserably one in a previous podcast a year or two ago was impressive.

Jessamyn 1:06:40 We'll go to the transcript still carrying that around Josh. No, not

Cortex 1:06:43 not actively just. Oh, yeah. No, no. I'm excitedly remembering that we had that discussion. That's

Jessamyn 1:06:51 yeah, see, my impersonations are all like, you know, caddy impersonations of friends. So it doesn't, you know, yeah. So you can't put them on the podcast because either people don't know them, or they do know them. And neither one of those is I, you know, I can impersonate people, my family. I like. But yeah. I think about it.

Cortex 1:07:15 Okay. Next question. We've got narrative priorities, asking us something.

Unknown Speaker 1:07:22 Hey, this is narrative priorities. And I recently have transitioned back to spending literally all of my time at home working on my graphic novel full time, and I'm thinking a lot about working from home and routines. And I would just love to hear what you guys have to say about kind of how you've managed over the years to sort of keep your work life balance and sort of structure your day. I mean, I feel like, I don't remember actually of all of you that I know that there's some of you who are part time and some of your full time I don't remember the exact divide at this point. But yeah, hearing a little bit more about how you personally, kind of keep yourself from disappearing of your own assets while doing a job like this. I'd love to hear about it. It's always interesting to hear but other home based work people's experiences. Anyway. Yeah. Awkward phone call. And

Jessamyn 1:08:22 everybody talks about being funny on the phones, but like, everybody sounds awesome on the phones until they're like, Oh, God, and I'm like, what? Everything was fine. The

Cortex 1:08:30 only part that sounded awkward was when he started talking about how it sounded awkward. That's a self reinforcing thing. Well, congratulations on working full time from home on your graphic novel. That's your graphic. Yes.

Jessamyn 1:08:42 We're all excited about that.

Cortex 1:08:45 Yeah, it's, it's weird. Okay. So just when I feel like you have a more varied sort of work environment than me at this point, just because you haven't been doing the exact same jobs steadily. I I've been doing this for 10 years now. Like we we bought the house in Portland that we live in. And like, I think a month later, I quit my day job and started working for Metafilter so that like, I've really never had much experience working not from this home. And it's so normal to me to be like working in this office. Your

Jessamyn 1:09:24 home is a place where you work yeah. When always has been. Yeah,

Cortex 1:09:28 yeah. Like you know, this, this office has always been my office. So it's it's hard to have context on what it was like to start doing it. Which makes it harder to see how that's changed over time. But it's it's a tricky thing. It is a tricky thing working from home. I'm lucky in

Jessamyn 1:09:48 life, for instance, because you're married and like your wife. She just got a job job but she was in school for a while she was at home for a while like it would seem like that pattern was almost more interesting. Yeah. have you personally managing working from home?

Cortex 1:10:02 Yeah, that was really the source of change more than, than anything in my routine, because, you know, she was working full time for a while. And then she stopped doing that. And then she went back to school. And that was, you know, sort of like part time job in terms of hours, you know, she'd be gone a few days a week.

Jessamyn 1:10:20 You work from Alabama? Yeah,

Cortex 1:10:21 we did that for Yeah, like 10 weeks. Summer before last. And, you know, and so like her, her schedule has been an influence on the flow things, but then many filters stayed on basically the same schedule that whole time. You know, so it's been sort of just steadily plodding along. But balancing like the the work like that, the biggest thing I hear people talking about, like working from home is trying to stay on task. Because it's so like, when you're at work at a job sitting in an office somewhere. You have at least the illusion of being on task as a requirements, like you're always surrounded

Jessamyn 1:10:58 by people who are nominally on task. Yeah, you're all at

Cortex 1:11:01 your desk to be there. And you need to basically look like you're there. Whether or not you're literally getting work done as a whole other question, but you have a very confined sense of where you are and what you can do, you certainly can't just like say, oh, you know, what, I'm just gonna kick my feet up for a couple hours and play Gameboy. You know, depending on your job, generally speaking, in an office job, you can't. Whereas at home, you could be like, yeah, maybe I'll just do something fun for a while they're not feeling it. Metal filters, not as much of a challenge, because when you're on the clock, you've got a specific sense of stuff you need to get done. And a lot of is reactive, it's sitting around waiting for flags to come along, or monitoring threads or answering emails, but it's all you're getting prompted naturally by stuff. So it's not so much, I don't feel like doing this, if something happens during your shift, you deal with it, because that's, that is what the job is. So that sort of helps. It also means that goofing off is a little bit more natural, and okay, it's not like you're, if it's quiet for an hour on the site, during your shift, it's not like you feel bad about, like watching TV, or, or reading something, or playing a video game or working on a craft, cuz you're not fucking off, you're just waiting for the next thing to come along. So I think that helps it be a little bit healthier of a work from home balance than a lot of jobs. It's not like you're deciding whether or not you're going to earn your money that week, you're not like, do the work. I

Jessamyn 1:12:21 think narrative priorities, you know, doing a graphic novel is more, I mean, I don't know how that works. But I would assume some of it's kind of like hanging out at home by a drawing table. Because one of the things about Metafilter, that was always kind of great, from my perspective, was that it was wherever the laptop was, you know, because it was just a combination of online things to interact with. And so I could take the laptop and go to the library, or even co work at a friend's house, or, you know, go to the coffee shop, or whatever the thing was, as long as I could get there quickly enough that if stuff blew up while I was in transit, which always happened. You know, I can kind of sit my ass down and get work done. Whereas I feel like if you have a work at home, job that's attached to things, you know, like, you can't necessarily schlep your drawing table with you, if you're drawing, you know, freehand. That's a more challenging thing. And I often tell people, like, people, when you're working on like, sleep hygiene stuff to sleep better. One of the things people talk about is like your bedroom is for sleeping, like it's for sleeping and fooling around. And like, that's it. Yeah. So don't, you know, don't have a bunch of crap you do in your bedroom, you know, don't make your bed into sort of your little play zone. And, you know, play games there and watch TV there, and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And I think for like work at home stuff. For me, a lot of times, that's kind of the same thing, like have a place you go to work. That isn't I mean, you have that at work at home with an office, but like have an office and have other people if you live with other people understand what being at work means. And part of that is kind of sort of boundaries and whatever. And part of it that makes it useful at Mehta filter, is everything's time limited, right? So you, you know, go to work at x o'clock, and you're done at y o'clock. And then the trick is stopping working. Not so much. Yeah, staying working. Yeah.

Cortex 1:14:18 And that has probably been the biggest challenge for me at times, off and on, depending on the situation. But like, I think especially early on as Metafilter I tended to not sort of clock out even when I should be clocked out. And I've gotten better at that over time, possibly just getting older and getting fatigued or something was the

Jessamyn 1:14:35 mat model. Yeah. You know, like worry about it all the time. Yeah. wasn't necessarily useful to helping the community be better at being the community.

Cortex 1:14:44 Yeah. And I feel like that's part of what ended up sort of, like tiring and burning him out is like it was a constant stressor. And so finding, finding a way to make yourself really not work when you shouldn't be working is part of it. That's maybe less of an issue for something like hardware like, all the work is work, that's more of a try and keep yourself on task to try and make yourself sit down and do it. thing. But yeah, it's it's tricky. It's really interesting stuff. But I think the the basic sentiment of trying not to disappear for your own ass is, is the big challenge. That's that's that's everything else details but just trying to be aware of how much you're working, how much you want to be working, and whether the way you've got it set up is really a bedding that I think that's the big question there is like, try and make sure your situation and your habits serve your actual goals as far as working exactly as much and not more well, and being

Jessamyn 1:15:37 aware when you're not working. Like when I was working for Open Library, which was you know, 10 hours a week, but kind of whenever it was, and so I kind of kept track of my own hours. And, you know, I always kind of I felt like I worked a lot sort of, but at some point I really started like clocking in clocking out keeping track of my hours in a spreadsheet, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And I realized I felt like I was working a lot because I was kind of thinking about the job all the time. But the time I was literally sitting down and doing the activities of the job was a lot less. And so I spent more time trying to corral myself into not ruminating about the job when I wasn't at the job, but also being productive when I was there, you know, I'd have like 30 emails to answer and I'd be like, Well, I kind of put it off, put it off, put it off, you know, answering 30 emails might only take 30 minutes or 45 minutes. But putting it off for two hours makes it feel like it took two and a half hours. Yeah. And being mindful of when that's happening because it's a trap. And it's worth trying to, you know, get out of and away from

Unknown Speaker 1:16:43 TSA, but I was in terms of work life balance. My work life balance is basically having children, I have three, they are seven, five and seven months. So I spent tonight for example, at a science fair admiring baking sort of volcanoes and similar projects, there was a kid who dissolve the shells of eggs and there were like creepy naked eggs very creepy. My child's project obviously was about space. It was about how he could do better stargazing. If he was away from the light pollution of the city. This involves me having to drive outward, there are no streetlights, which I was not in favor of. But I did in the name of science. So that's my work life balance is having lots of little kids stuff to do.

Cortex 1:17:52 The next question we have is from hippy bear, who had a great deal of trouble calling in last Colin show, so I'm so happy that the call actually went through. It's worked.

Unknown Speaker 1:18:01 Yeah, hi, this is hippie bear, aka Graham. And I'm wondering, and this is a question for all the mods. I'd love to have all of you answer this. You've had some moderation experience, or some such before you got into the job, or you didn't, and you were learning as you go. But what are the things that surprised you about working as a moderator at Metafilter compared to your expectations about the job, when you took it on? I would love to know what those contrasts are. Thank you very much. Bye, bye now.

Cortex 1:18:43 What surprised what surprised you about working as a mod compared to your expectations about the job when you took it on? Which is a good question. Again, it's been 10 years it's been it's been like literally 10 years. Now, by the way, I I started part time, way back when? Late February 2007. So I just crossed the threshold. 10 years of my life working here, don't regret it. But so long ago now the guy don't remember what I thought was gonna happen.

Jessamyn 1:19:20 I think the thing that surprised me the most is how many people could hold a grudge for a decade. You know, like a lot of this stuff. I think in order to be good at moderating, there has to be some stuff that you've just got to be like water under the bridge, you know, like, maybe there's a user, they have some problems, they're a pain, but then they get their shit correct. And then they come back around and you're like, great, come on back. We're happy to have you glad you got your shit straightened out, whatever. And you kind of have to learn to sort of let bygones be bygones to a certain extent. And that's what makes you good at your job. Yeah. But being a user, there's no such requirement, you know, and so it's been It's been interesting over time, especially now that I'm more of just a user now to, you know, meet up with people, you know, at meetups or just randomly or exchanging email about some different thing. And then oh, hey, used to be a metal filter. And every now and again, you meet somebody who's like, oh, Metafilter, I had a bad experience there once or whatever the thing is, I mean, you get it with libraries, too, right? You talk to people about libraries a lot. And often they're like, Oh, yes, I like them, or I don't like them, or do people still use them. But every now and again, you'll find people who are like, I had a bad experience at a library once. And it really lives kind of front and center in their mind. And I feel like it's just kind of a personality type. It's not anything to do with metaphysics. It's

Cortex 1:20:44 like a one star Yelp refute view phenomenon. Like, you know, I know one thing about this, and it's that I hate it, that I'll never forget that.

Jessamyn 1:20:52 And I'm so it's important to me that everybody else understand the, you know, the reasoning for my hatred, and like, whatever I am like that about certain things in my life. Don't get me wrong, you know, but not metal filter. And so it was always interesting to me to meet people for whom that thing for them was a metal filter thing. Yeah. And so as a mod, it was really difficult to kind of do anything with that, because they were like, Yeah, but remember the time Matt did that thing? Yeah. And you were like, Yeah, but he left. So like, it's a different. So you won. I guess Matt's not there anymore. So but tricky work in that kind of stuff out? I'd be really interested to hear what the other mods have to say about

Cortex 1:21:35 that. Yeah. And we'll see if we get some other answers collected in. For me, you know, as I think I'm I think one of the things that surprised me, that I've really sort of had to learn. And I feel like I still have to kind of constantly remind myself to learn this with is sort of the flipside of some of what you're talking about how often it turns out, if you can manage to get on to a more human connection note with someone who seems like really jerkish or upset about something, how often they can turn out to actually be kind of reasonable, but they're just bad at communicating their concern in a reasonable way. You know, and so like, I've had that happen, I'm sure dozens of times to greater or lesser degree over the years, in a way that I didn't see coming at all, like, you know, I think when I took the job, there was sort of the sense of if someone's an asshole, they're an asshole, you know. And so like, when they present in an assholey way, that's because they are, that's who they are. And that's how they are. And that's how they want to be. And they understand that they're being that too. And that can be tricky when they don't feel that way. Because then they can seem pretty actively frustrated. And it can actually exacerbate the difficulty, the discussion, when they're then getting vibes of someone thinking they're an asshole when they don't really get that they are. And, you know, I think some of that is socialization. Some of that is language barrier, sometimes when it's someone who's, you know, speaks pretty good English, but it's English second language. In a way, it's not obvious, you know, I think it can be that when someone is maybe just accustomed to a less empathetic environment. And so they sort of assume from the get go, that they are not going to get an empathetic response. And so they just sort of go into asshole mode. And that's stuff that I really hadn't thought about beforehand. You know, I sort of came to the site. As a college kid who hung out in the like, Usenet flame recreational group on my college server and internet arguing was kind of the normal thing. And I sort of had to unlearn that from metal filter in the first place. And you know, I grew a lot in the six years between when I first found this site, and when I started working at it, otherwise, we never would have gotten the job there. But, but I still hadn't totally learned all those lessons. I hadn't sort of unlearn some of those expectations that like, well, an apples and apples an asshole. And you know, once you've paid them, you respond from there. So working on really trying to say, hey, you know, I may be fucking frustrated at you, but let me tell you what I'm hearing and tell you what my concerns are. And sometimes that works. Sometimes they're like, Oh, well, you know what, I appreciate you breaking that down. I guess. I had assumed x and I guess I'm hearing you say why and I didn't think y was even on the table. So yeah, yeah. So I feel better about this, all I'm cooling down about and you can sort of see that happen. That's, that's, that's a great outcome. You know, you don't always get there sometimes someone really just is an asshole. But it can be there. And that was that was definitely something that was sort of a revelation. It was something I had to learn sometimes, you know, through significant stumbling with someone to sort of realized it's a possibility and something that could be sort of aimed for that.

Jessamyn 1:24:34 And along those same lines, what's been interesting to me like reading AskMe, edit filter, and it kind of filters into you know, mod work and library work is people's degree of certainty about a thing and rightness feeling about a thing. I used to believe that level of sort of confidence and assuredness and just this is the way it is had some relationship to the actual likeliness that they were correct. I mean, it sounds funny, but it's also super true that I just used to feel that people who were confident about how they felt about the world, probably that was based in some having been write a lot about things or something. And it's fascinating to read these kind of AskMe Metafilter threads where there's, you know, two completely opposing viewpoints that are both fundamentally correct to the people who were saying them, you know, like the most recent one was like, I want to leave my dog tied up outside the store, how do I best do this? And you know, the person was trying to be thoughtful, so there was not like, You're worse than Hitler. Don't ever do that. But there definitely were a chunk of people who were like, you should never do that for reasons. And a bunch of people who were like, I always do that it's fine. And both of them were completely convinced of their correctness of their point. But also kind of talking past each other. Yeah. And, you know, that's what the world is like, in the larger sense, you know, that we're all looking like who could have voted for Trump without being mentally defective? But like, no, that's not. You know, in order to understand the world, you have to understand how people can be that Sure. And that not sharing your viewpoint, whatever that means, you know what I mean? Like, I hate to say wrong, but, you know, so a lot of times I met a filter, you'd get people who were absolutely sure of the proper way to have an interaction. And you can watch it from the outside being like, Yeah, but that's the absolute wrong way to go about that. But But yes, but no, you know, it's very interesting thing to me. And that's really helped me. Yeah. In my, in my larger life. I know, that wasn't what this question was, but like, in my larger life, because I can look at somebody's degree of confidence and being like, you know, confidence can actually be extractable from the likelihood that they're correct about this. Yeah, exactly.

Cortex 1:26:57 We have a question here from Phil's

Unknown Speaker 1:27:04 Hello, Metafilter, moderators, it is Phys. Just got home from work, and I thought I would call in. So trying to think of a good question to ask, and I couldn't, so I googled good questions to ask on this, like, want to work at Google, Apple or Facebook, answer these questions. And the number five is if you had a choice between two superpowers being invisible or flying, which would you choose? So I thought, let's slightly tweak that if you had a superpower, but it was related to moderation. What would you choose? Like, like instant perma ban? You know, you've just like snap your fingers, and someone is in there locked in a room with an old 286 computer and a bunch of disks that are unlabeled? I don't know. You know, that's sort of evil. But maybe you want good superpowers how you can like, think of, I don't know,

Unknown Speaker 1:28:05 consolidate all of Trump's,

Unknown Speaker 1:28:08 like, all of those threads into one giant thing. And there's no delay, and it's super fast. Now, these are just wishes that I'm making. That's gotten really weird. But yeah, that's my question. If you had a moderated, related superpower, that you could apply to medicine doctor, what would it be? Hopefully, this hasn't been too weird. And you guys have a good evening, day or night or morning. Take care. Bye.

Unknown Speaker 1:28:40 So mod superpowers, I actually was just making a joke the other day, if I had a moderation superpower, it would be to make people get a time consuming offline hobby. So if someone was picking fights online, because they were bored, which people do all the time, I could make them go learn to knit, or go take up like model trains or something like that. That would be my moderation superpower.

Jessamyn 1:29:06 You know, I've always appreciated this as just a me fight. And I've appreciated him even more since he posted in one of these threads about God, I don't even know what it was, oh, in the meta talk routine thread, which of course is like God justments name written all over it the like, you know, the medic, talk tail, whatever that thing is called? Yeah, like he's got like an internet friend that he gets together with once a year and they hang out and have a little thing that they do. And he just, I don't know, he told the story about it. That just was delightful. And, you know, I've always thought of him as good at Metafilter. And now I'm, you know, maybe elevating that to be it's just good. But I have an easy answer to this question. So I'm curious what your answer. Okay.

Cortex 1:29:52 I would actually I would like and I've thought about this in non moderation context, too, but I would like a Some sort of psychic mirror of self revelation, like, I would like the ability to like stare at a comment that makes me think what the fuck dude. And just like, focus on it and then all of a sudden the person writing it like would have a clearer picture of exactly what the context of all that WHAT THE FUCK IS and sort of see their comments through the eyes of someone receiving it without any sort of internal attachment to or sense of righteousness about it and I like to think that that would create a lot of OH SHIT moments for people where they'd like the next time they went to do the same sort of thing they pick. Oh shit, no, I remember that asshole that did that thing. Well, that was me. I should not be that guy. You know, whether that would actually work or just feel

Jessamyn 1:30:44 like it? I mean, like it would jab somebody through the keyboard is what we're talking about. Like what we've always

Cortex 1:30:49 but zap them empathetically. You know, like, I don't want them to get physically shocked. I want them to have like an internal sort of like, oh, like a sudden forced change of perspective on their own participation in a way that makes them become more thoughtful about the footprint they're having on a on a conference.

Jessamyn 1:31:05 That's really interesting that you've decided you want to use your superpower to help make other people better people. I just want to know if people are lying the end. You know what I mean?

Cortex 1:31:17 You just want you want lion cat to manifest in moderation context.

Jessamyn 1:31:22 What is lying cat? I mean, I can imagine

Cortex 1:31:25 a cat that can tell us when people are lying. And it's is it real internet thing? It's a comic book thing. It's from the comic book. Sega. Sega FPGA. That's what what? That's the saga. Yeah. Saga saga either way.

Jessamyn 1:31:45 Well, your way through this part, you

Cortex 1:31:47 know, I didn't say Sega. Because that's that's, that's the they make the computer games.

Jessamyn 1:31:53 Wow. This is an amazing cat. Yep. Yes. I want that because I want that amazing cat. And I want to know what people because I mean, it would save you so much time, right? Somebody's like, Yeah, but the cat would be like they are lying. It'd be like, I don't care what you think. Because I think there are, it is hard sometimes to determine the difference between good faith misunderstanding and miscommunications and miscues and somebody is just kind of slow motion trolling you because they are bored. Exactly. And that's, that is what I would like to know, because we just saved me the time of dealing with it. Because, you know, I'm always this gracious person. And so I you know, give people the benefit of many, many doubts. I love this cat. Flying cat. Awesome. Yeah, but that's what I would want. Yeah, I want to know if people are lying and beginning and

Cortex 1:32:47 I like that. No, I mean, it because that is like that is one of the that is one of the vulnerabilities I guess you could say, of taking a good faith benefit of the doubt approach to stuff is people can exploit that just by being disingenuous in a deliberate way. And that sucks. So it'd be nice to be able to snap your fingers and shortcut that. Yeah. So yeah, I think that next one, we got a question. Very important question from Mr. H. Hello,

Unknown Speaker 1:33:18 good morning from the island Great Britain. This is Mr. H Metafilter. user number 16151. My question for the moderators is a frivolous one, as follows. When the midfielder movie gets made, who do you want to play your partner? Whether it's a big name actor or an unskilled one or a CGI animation or inquiring minds will do Thank you. Bye bye.

Unknown Speaker 1:33:46 Hey, it's eyebrows to celebrity played me in a movie about meta filter. It was happy Amy Adams because my husband loves Amy Adams and she's a redhead like me. But I think she'd have to get prosthetic eyebrows to do it. I don't think she could do it with her normal eyebrows. I just don't think it would you know play it wouldn't come across this realistic.

Jessamyn 1:34:08 I know we should have been saying this all along with all the questions but that is a great question.

Cortex 1:34:14 I have I have some write in answers from from various people on the mod team. Real quick. Lobster mitten. Her first thought was Joan Cusack excellent call but also maybe Katharine Hepburn and desk set or maybe Oh,

Jessamyn 1:34:31 hey lobster mitten can't have that. That should be mine. Well,

Cortex 1:34:38 I mean you could share

Jessamyn 1:34:39 maybe I'll be Parker Posey and party girl but go hacker work.

Cortex 1:34:42 She also said maybe imagery and Coca who I don't know who that is. And I feel like I should have looked it up but I got lazy. Nifty good news for the insane says Rutger Hauer or or he'd also be happy with Melissa McCarthy.

Jessamyn 1:34:59 Those are both Are you good? Yeah. In fact, I would like to see Melissa McCarthy playing Rucker house got tears in the rain. Sandy from the other has a haircut kind of like lobstermen, if I recall correctly. Comic actress just FYI.

Cortex 1:35:13 Restless Nomad would like to be played by Quinlan Christie, who you may know from Game of Thrones is Brienne Oh, the new Star Wars movie and further ones as the Captain Phasma who you never see those grand Christie.

Jessamyn 1:35:30 So good. She's great. She's so good.

Cortex 1:35:33 RNs thinking there was that she'd always wanted to be tall so like, get this great big tall actors to play it would be fun. Yes, and locksmith and suggested that maybe tattoos should be played by Angelica Huston, which Taz has just very recently thumbs the hell up. So that's that but what you so what look Peppermint Patty. Okay. Like Yeah. I feel like that's, I feel well, no, no, I guess I guess it could be like an animated. I needless to say, Why am I saying no Lego guy

Jessamyn 1:36:10 that plays Batman? No.

Cortex 1:36:13 You should totally be prepped. That's awesome. Yes. No,

Jessamyn 1:36:15 I was. Who are the people that I had the curl who was in my so called life? I mean, I'd like to be played by Tilda Swinton only cuz she's weird. And people. Realistically,

Cortex 1:36:28 are you talking to Claire Danes are one of the other Yeah.

Jessamyn 1:36:31 I mean, Claire Danes would be a, you know, attractive version of me that I think if that's what you're aiming for.

Jessamyn 1:36:43 Again, no imagination whatsoever.

Cortex 1:36:46 It's tricky. You know, I was, I would say, like, if I was going to sort of like, maybe aim for type, I was thinking like, I would be totally happy with like John Cusack or Edward Norton? Sure, they would have to be like the, in a good mood versions of them. Because they can both be very, you know, full of pathos and an anger and expression whatnot. And I think I want more like, you know, sitting around, having a good time, John Cusack, you know, in a happy Yeah,

Jessamyn 1:37:15 well, and like, you know, there's like Adrienne Shelley, who was like an actress and a whole bunch of how Hartley movies, who got like, murdered by the somebody who was like fixing her house, like the whole thing was just a weird thing. But like, she's an amazing actress and had really great hair that I used to think was like, the coolest. So, you know, and she was not entirely not my age, which I think is the other thing you kind of you kind of go for

Cortex 1:37:44 yeah, there's Yeah, and I'm definitely sort of thinking of like, you know, that you know, plausibly be played by cheese who would play mat that's a good question. Oh, Jesus Christ. Okay, that was easy.

Jessamyn 1:38:00 They're the same person.

Cortex 1:38:01 Yep. Yep. I would also take Idris Elba for me just on principle. Like I don't I don't know why I was

Jessamyn 1:38:09 new stand up.

Cortex 1:38:10 I have not

Jessamyn 1:38:11 it's all like kind of jokey. Like he does a lot of comic voices but he does this like Idris Elba James as James Bond. That's super worthwhile.

Cortex 1:38:22 Yes, I would like to be played as played by Idris Elba. Also trying to play James Bond that's that's

Jessamyn 1:38:29 played by Idris Elba. Or like anybody that knows how to dress themselves. I

Cortex 1:38:32 want Lars von trir. to film a certainty, quote, unquote, movie about metal filter that is completely unfaithful to the source material and stars Idris Elba in every roll. That's I think I think that's what we should go with.

Jessamyn 1:38:45 Someone's gonna wind up playing me Kristen Wiig.

Cortex 1:38:49 Or remind me Are you felt like not so much on the Christian wig?

Jessamyn 1:38:52 Well, I saw her in masterminds and she was really good in it. So I'm trying to like turn that boat around a little bit. But historically, she drives me crazy.

Cortex 1:39:00 I think he's keep trying turning up because I think she's pretty good when she's not in sort of like oh, what's

Jessamyn 1:39:04 your name with the freckles? She used to be on SNL

Cortex 1:39:10 Wendy from Wendy's.

Jessamyn 1:39:12 She's black and has freckles. She's a comedic actress. Her mom was a dancer.

Cortex 1:39:21 Through fucking Center in Atlanta. She

Jessamyn 1:39:22 was in bridesmaids.

Cortex 1:39:25 I felt like I saw bridesmaids I need to see that still. This is this is good. This is good radio. Good radio is what this is. Oh my Rudolph.

Jessamyn 1:39:33 Yes. I would like my Rudolph. I like her.

Cortex 1:39:37 All right. Yes. All right. move onward. Katie question we've got we've got another question from sock guy. It turns out it looks like i guess

Jessamyn 1:39:52 i Let's see.

Unknown Speaker 1:39:54 No, seriously, man. I can't find my socks. My feet are getting cold. I can live this

Jessamyn 1:40:00 I think you can wrap newspapers around your feet. That could work. I mean, socks are very inexpensive.

Cortex 1:40:10 Yeah, buying socks. What if? What if they also have no shoes and so without socks as a kind of shoe, they can't go into a store because of like no shoes. No

Jessamyn 1:40:21 socks is not a kind of shoe discuss. Hot dog is not a sandwich sock is not a shoe.

Cortex 1:40:28 Well, I would say comfortably a sock is not a shoe. But I don't know for the purposes of interpreting no shoes, no shirts, no service, whether a sock would qualify as we walk into 711 and sock. Yeah, exactly. So at that point, like if it's a sock type, it's a shoe type object. For the purposes of that is my feeling. Like because because is a slipper issue. I think a slipper is more of a shoe if you walked around and slippers, it's not shoes, but it's also going to

Jessamyn 1:40:52 711 and slippers. Yeah.

Cortex 1:40:56 So again, it's tricky. What if, what if what if he can't find his socks, not because the socks aren't findable, but because he's suffering some sort of, like taxonomical crisis where he can't like place socks in a category that he can then navigate?

Jessamyn 1:41:16 Turns tricky.

Cortex 1:41:17 Also, this one was not a question. This time this this. This was just a series of

Jessamyn 1:41:22 Josh has a little column in the spreadsheet of these answers. And they have x's in them for not a question.

Cortex 1:41:29 You've got to organize these things. I can completely fail to organize every other aspect of you know, a podcast, but that column is going to be there. I'm gonna keep track of

Jessamyn 1:41:39 that. That's fine. Good work.

Cortex 1:41:42 We got another question. We got a question from believing.

Unknown Speaker 1:41:45 Hi, I fell in the fights. This is believing. So my question is every so often there's a pony request for a specific subset of Metafilter. So politics or dating or whatever? And the answer is always no, because there's not enough Monique resources and time. So I was wondering if you could wave a magic wand and create a subsection of that filter that you'd like to see? What was the focus of that be? Thanks for coming by.

Jessamyn 1:42:19 So if there were just wave a magic wand subsite you don't even have to think about it. Yes. No

Cortex 1:42:23 complications, no downsides. No worries. Just you can have that as now. something.metafilter.com. What would you want? Me? Yeah, Lists List. What

Jessamyn 1:42:36 I want is what I've always wanted a subsection of the metal filter website where users can curate their own sets of meta filter content into their own curated sub lists. So you can have like the whole way, there's stuff on the wiki, right? That like eat me, read me there is help. But there would be a way that you could compile your own kind of Best of lists, kind of like Flickr galleries, if that doesn't make me sound too much like the old person. But like, you could pick like, Hey, here's 10, AskMe unfilter questions that are all thematically related. I'm going to curate them myself. And then it would be shareable or linkable or whatever the hell else a ball. You know, Matt hated this idea when it first came out, but I have always liked it. And that is what I would do. Because I think letting me fight to create more content, even if they don't feel like making posts. I feel like curation is where it's at for this decade. And I would love to see that

Cortex 1:43:31 that's a nice idea. Kind of like that.

Jessamyn 1:43:33 It is a nice idea.

Cortex 1:43:34 Mine. Honestly, mine is is fanfare, except for we've added video games to the mix. Is

Jessamyn 1:43:42 is and this is just your aspiration. You haven't actually done this. Right, right.

Cortex 1:43:47 We have not done this yet. Video games is what got me thinking about fanfare back when we like even first started talking about

Jessamyn 1:43:53 it. I remember you were the only one who didn't hate it.

Cortex 1:43:57 Now, we've managed to build out everything except for the part that got me excited in the first place. I mean, I'm very happy with the fanfare, and I'm looking forward to adding more stuff to it. Don't get me. And it's at some point, I will realize this, you know, maybe in like 20 You know, 22 or something. But no, I would love to just chatter more about video games. I love chatting about video games over on my fight club. I like chatting about it in a couple slacks on Twitter. And I like talking about video games on the front page of Metafilter when it happens, which happens fairly often. So having that be like have a little bit more of a formal hey, let's just go nuts with this. The way people are able to with you know TV and podcasts movies right now, I think would be a lot of fun. If I had to get goofier I would like a sub site that was just riffing.metafilter.com and it would be nothing but stuff like I looked into riffing Yeah, exactly. Look, look, that's too many pawns in one thread, get over there and just make a permanent home for it. So I can see real upside to that in a also everyone would get so sick of it sort of way

Jessamyn 1:45:00 Yeah, well, and I, you know, still wouldn't mind seeing politics filter just so I could put it somewhere and you know when to 7001 it and never see it again.

Cortex 1:45:13 Well, and we're sort of, we're sort of partway there now. So you know progress with that. That sidebar widget. We got another one here. This is gonna be a tough one. This is from stanczyk.

Jessamyn 1:45:27 stanczyk.

Unknown Speaker 1:45:30 Was not stanchion. Hi, this is Stan Jack and I just was wondering, which 60s British subculture do you guys most identify with? Thanks.

Jessamyn 1:45:38 All right. Josh. British subculture

Cortex 1:45:41 I guess mods you

Jessamyn 1:45:50 was that just a setup for that pawn? Oh, it

Cortex 1:45:52 completely was that absolutely had to be.

Jessamyn 1:45:58 I mean, are you more of a worry about myself sometimes.

Cortex 1:46:02 I had time to think about that. What I had time to time to

Jessamyn 1:46:05 and I still didn't catch it. I was all like Emma peel on the Avengers. Right?

Cortex 1:46:12 I think you can answer away from the fun though. I mean, I That's a good answer. That's a solid. There you go. All right. Yes, Dan chick I should I should clarify. called in for the last Colin show, too. And it's hard to make out usernames. It's one of the tricky things about this. I

Jessamyn 1:46:28 saw when you were like it, Stan.

Cortex 1:46:31 I can't believe Stan chin is calling. After we haven't heard from stanchion in forever. I can't understand why stanchions bumbling his own username so badly. But okay, crazy. But he really and I went and checked as you've written and he had touched the site recently. Like he's still lurking high stanchion. I sent it. And so I was like, Oh, I guess it was and then stanczyk posted in that thread saying, is there another meta filter user named Stan chin and I was like, Oh, shit, until I fix it, apologize. And it's those but anyway, so I'm so excited to hear from you again. stanczyk.

Jessamyn 1:47:07 Yes, thanks for keeping with us.

Cortex 1:47:11 We've got we've got another question from Vesper Bell. Hey, Metafilter

Unknown Speaker 1:47:15 This is the bell. Just wanted to say hi. And to let you all know that the lovely Oh Bender and I got married today. And he mentioned that a filter in his house. So that was very sweet. Anyway, I hope you all are having as lovely a day as I am by

Jessamyn 1:47:35 you said that was a question. No, no,

Cortex 1:47:37 I clearly got the mark does not a question. I mean, I said it but the spreadsheet is the final authority and clearly it's not.

Jessamyn 1:47:43 Well, you guys

Cortex 1:47:45 know better gov. They are they live in town. They're friends of mine. So that's super exciting. Oh,

Jessamyn 1:47:50 that's so great. Yep. Mentioned Metafilter in his vows she did not

Cortex 1:47:56 but she's been a mefite for a lot longer so she's pretty probably just kind of done with it. They may have they may have gotten together partly because of I'm trying this is how how wonderful a friend I am i I'm vaguely maybe kind of remembering some aspect of their origin story but but yes, so Congrats guys. That wasn't a question.

Cortex 1:49:00 We got one from honest knave here this one's uh, this one's a chewer. Otter.

Jessamyn 1:49:04 Honestly have a chewer honor. All right.

Unknown Speaker 1:49:08 Hello. I'm making an honest name on medical term. And I'm a PhD student who studies the work of moderation. I have been a nice light for many years now. I've really appreciated the moderation work that you've done on the site. And I'm really curious to hear whether you've ever encountered research on online behavior or online communities that has helped you think differently about how you moderate mental filter? And if there are questions that you really, really wish that researchers like me who do anything from ethnography talking to people to data science, on behavior to experiments, things that you think would help you You think more clearly out for dues moderation work better on Metafilter? Thanks.

Jessamyn 1:50:07 All right. All the research you do, Josh?

Cortex 1:50:10 Yes. I will say, you know, the first thing I think of is actually some of the stuff that's been posted about on Metafilter. By mefites, actually, which there's roundup of some of that in the sold meta talk post from several years ago, when I went to Seattle, I think it was to meet up with I am Kim I am and discourse marker and Louis tape. And we all gave talks about oh, I forgot about that stuff. I didn't give a talk about research, I gave a talk about the info dump and some of the goals of having that as a research tool. But then they all talked about some of the work they've done. And also, actually, I think, in particular, of Lewis Tate's work that he did his dissertation research about community and ethos, and this was back, when we finished it up looks like it was 2010 here, and he posted about that. And that was really accessible. I would say, go read it. It sounds like if you're like, oh, wait, it's a doctoral thesis in philosophy about ethos, what is exactly where I was basically, at the time too, but it's actually very accessible. It's very readable, even if you're not remotely in that. And he sort of looked at trying to break down the idea of how a community understands itself. And I think he did, first of all really good job with that, and got a really good picture of sort of how Metafilter operates, and how Metafilter deals with the idea of sort of community sensibility and trust and reputation in a way that benefits the site. So there's a lot to read and think in there. That's, that's really good. But it also it helped me think about Metafilter, especially since I was still relatively, I mean, I've been working the job for a couple of years. So you know, settled in very much. But it was, it was helpful for me to sort of think about how the community structured itself, and I got some nice insight into the site, from reading his take on it. But I've also, I mean, I try and read papers about online behavior and online communities in moderation, when I see them, and when I have the patience for them, you know, some are better written than others. And I've definitely taken like things there. You know, there's, there's definitely been times that I've read something that sort of gave me a slightly different way to think about, maybe you know, this or that endemic difficulty with Metafilter. And you know, how we can handle it better. But nothing super jumps out at me. Questions I wish research to tackle is a good one. But I'd really have to sort of think about that, because it's it's hard to step away, sometimes from the process and take a real 10,000 foot view of moderating the site. Just because, you know, we're in it every day. And it's such a normal, day to day part of how I think about stuff that really stepping back and saying, Okay, what are the things that I'm not questioning? Because they're working versus what are the things that I'm not questioning every day just because it's impractical to fix them? And so I'm just going to carry on and I think Satish saucing those out to find the stuff that I'm actually just kind of putting up with, because we don't have a solution would be a good path for me to figuring out like a good answer this of like, oh, well, I'd love to hear someone really tackle this or tackle that?

Jessamyn 1:53:33 Well, I'm one of the things I always wanted to see. And I don't know if it's as much a researcher thing as like, just a really slick tool kind of is, like I think as moderators, you guys have developed ways of kind of being able to tell almost like a sixth sense, like when, when the threads go and bad, kind of like, like, you know, somebody makes a comment, or there's a couple comments, and you're like, Oh, if this doesn't kind of wrap up, it's gonna make this thread messy. And I often wonder what that looks like to just users. And one of the things I always wanted for meta filter were like, kind of user participation heatmaps of the threads, kind of so like, not like users would just flag things, but that they would kind of literally be able to go through and like, like, tag every comment, like, green, yellow, red, you know, like, This comment is completely fine. This comment is completely not fine. I feel like this comment is kind of on the edge, or maybe even like five things, and then each of those comments would be displayed sort of in that color so that you could actually watch a thread kind of pulse width. You know, a lot of activity A lot of you know, if he activity the mods do a thing and it makes it better the mods don't do a thing and things get worse the blah blah, blah, blah. Just so that you could kind of visualize it without having to read the whole things. Yeah, you know, because I really feel like there are overarching trends, and it would be interesting to know, like, okay, that's where the threads starts going into the read what's actually happening there? Yeah, what are the mechanics of that feel like we know. But there's probably ways to quantitatively determine what's really happening. And I'd be fascinated to have not just mods, but also users point to where they feel like things are going weird. Yeah, but I don't know if it's a research thing as much as like, kind of a tool thing.

Cortex 1:55:37 It seems like, I mean, some some sort of qualitative, my research looking at that could be really interesting. Yeah, I cosigned. I'm on board with that.

Jessamyn 1:55:47 And also, you know, what I would also really like is to look at things like the coral project, who I feel like are really, really trying to help people make comments better, but realistically building a bunch of kinds of tools that should help. I want sort of qualitative analysis on whether they are helping, because it's easy to be sort of self congratulatory, and be like, we've done this awesome thing, which helps people, but to see it from the user perspective, and like, how did the users feel about forums where those kinds of tools are being used? Do they feel like things are better? Or do they feel like things are worse? I feel like kind of analysis of some of the solutions people have tried to bring to the table is one of the things I would love to see.

Cortex 1:56:29 We have another question here from pirate Genesis.

Unknown Speaker 1:56:33 Hey, this is spider chinensis. From a stone anaphor places. But I was always wondering, do you people have jobs? Just moderating Metafilter? Thanks.

Jessamyn 1:56:56 Hello is Estonia?

Cortex 1:56:59 Do we have jobs? I wonder sometimes.

Jessamyn 1:57:02 I can't tell if she's making a joke, or Is she serious?

Cortex 1:57:06 I think he's making a joke, but maybe an informative joke. Well, but it's see the thing is like it's a it's an actual question that comes up sometimes rather clumsily. When I talk about work, and I think, you know, probably everybody who works for the site has had this sort of conversation was like, what do you do is really, and that pays you like, that's your job. That's you get money for that?

Jessamyn 1:57:28 Well, because there's a lot of people who sort of volunteer moderate all sorts of different things. Yeah.

Cortex 1:57:32 Yeah. And I think the idea that it's actually something that pays a solid wage is, I guess, surprising. But maybe also, just like the idea that like it would be all you do. And so the straight faced answer is yes, this is all I do. You know, this is my full time job. And that's true for everybody else who is full time on the site. Part time, I don't keep real careful track of what people are up to, because it's fine with me if anybody else does but a good news for the insane and eyebrows McGee and Trimble are all working part time. But for for everybody, like even the ones working part time, you know, it's a serious Gob job. For that part time aspect for

Jessamyn 1:58:18 it. It's definitely serious be any fit. Yes,

Cortex 1:58:21 we're, we're available. Yeah, but we're available. But yeah, so it definitely, it definitely is a real real job, which is a constant point of discussion. When I talk about my job. The fact that I have a full time job doing it, I feel like it's easier for people to buy when I say like, oh, well, I run the site, you know, yeah, I help run it. And I also, you know, like, manage the business stuff. And but then when I explained that I have like, full time employees who don't do that stuff, they just do the moderation is like, really, but yeah, really. And I take it so for granted at this point that it is a proper, like, for reals job that it always throws me a little bit when people are confused about because like, well, but yeah, I mean, but then I remembered Yeah, why would they necessarily? Why wouldn't this be something that you do want you Well, you did that internet thing on the side, but what do you do? I mean, what's your job? You know, I think that's probably

Jessamyn 1:59:15 because they're invisible. I mean, it's invisible labor to a certain extent, right? Because like some of the support stuff on the back end. And you know, is just people wouldn't see it unless they're sort of deep in already. Yeah.

Cortex 1:59:31 So yeah, I know it's an interesting thing, but But thankfully, yes, I'm very happy that it is real jobs. We have a question from Mrs. pterodactyl pterodactyl helping

Unknown Speaker 1:59:44 to do a less disastrous job with a message this

Unknown Speaker 1:59:47 time. My question is,

Unknown Speaker 1:59:49 what if any phrases from men filter comments or posts whatever, that people think people are set on metal filter have worked their way into your everyday vocabulary like for For example, there's

Unknown Speaker 2:00:00 a comment someone made about

Unknown Speaker 2:00:04 his daughter giving away my little ponies. And he said, But you love my little ponies. And she said, they're third generation, it makes me sick to look at them. And that's not something we say all the time. It makes me sick to look at them. I was just wondering if there's anything like that any phrases or whatever that people have said that you now use as part of your everyday vocabulary? I'm sure there are a bunch of other ones that we have. But one, probably a lot of them are like, not sold appropriately. And I can think off the top of my head. So anyway,

Unknown Speaker 2:00:34 thank you very much.

Unknown Speaker 2:00:35 And I'm very curious as to whether this is something that must help because

Cortex 2:00:43 I'm sure I've picked up so many phrases from Metafilter. It's hard to it's hard to break them up. One thing I know, I definitely picked up via Metafilter was I started saying I know, right? Because of you like yeah, I definitely picked that up as from using that a lot years ago. But yeah, I don't know. I mean, there's it's hard. I mean, there's there's in-joke Stuff like you know, there's

Jessamyn 2:01:07 well and there's words like I use the word Hakuna Matata outside of Metafilter to be like, you know, when when something starts to be kind of a nattering irritation, but it turns into kind of a full up conflagration of people bickering with each other. Yeah. So some of the words Hakuna Matata gras

Cortex 2:01:23 Yeah, I'll use gras Grier a lot. But yeah, gosh, that's a it's a good question. And it's one of those sticky things where like, once you stop being aware of having acquired something you sort of don't notice it. And I think part of the problem is, there are probably very distinct idiosyncratic bits of metal filter phraseology that I actually use out loud. And then don't get weird reactions to because I use them with like a metal filter meetup. And everybody else was like, oh, yeah, that's a totally normal thing you just said so they don't comment on it. They don't blink in it.

Jessamyn 2:01:54 Right, lol, but I'll say that occasionally at Metafilter meetups. I don't usually say that and sort of the outside of meta filter. World. View. Yeah. And I just assumed it was kind of internet speak, but no, it's your own very particular.

Cortex 2:02:09 Well, my, my preferred formulation was buts LOL, but I feel like lol bus has sort of taken over on the internet in general. So I accept I accept all of them. As long as there's buts, and laughing, I'm happy. But, ya know, it's it's, that would be a fun metal talk thread. Honestly,

Jessamyn 2:02:25 I must have gotten I know, right from

Cortex 2:02:29 I mean, using invented or anything. I certainly seen it elsewhere, too.

Jessamyn 2:02:32 I mean, I must have gotten from metal filter. I don't think I got it from anywhere else. But some of the stuff too is hard to differentiate from, you know, oh, I got it from the internet, as opposed to I got it from my own particular particular group of mefites.

Cortex 2:02:52 Yeah. And there's there's that sort of smeary stuff, too, that sometimes there's stuff that like, it's in various places on the internet, but then for whatever reason, got our particular cache on meta filter, and it's easy to think of it as a medical thing, even if that's not strictly true.

Jessamyn 2:03:06 Jim's username when we play online, scrabble is her after. It's a classic, which becomes hard to explain.

Cortex 2:03:14 Yeah, yeah. But definitely, that was a that was a strong sort of metal filter, valence there for a number of years.

Jessamyn 2:03:22 I make Can I eat that jokes pretty much constantly.

Cortex 2:03:27 Also, think about this, I'm going to try and note down if I catch myself doing these, and maybe well, and that's

Jessamyn 2:03:33 one of the things that I do a lot, where if I'm hanging out with a group Metafilter people, there's often a lot of kind of funny, awkward jokes about the things that come up that we know are the things that come up in those 5050 You might be right, you might be wrong. Yeah, kind of like you'll tell somebody you're going to the bathroom and they're like whoa, standing or sitting you know, or or, you know, they come to your house shoes on shoes off, like et cetera, et cetera. Yeah, and yeah, the banjo thing is actually the thing that doesn't translate but that I like to use because it explains a very specific thing. You know, it's the thread about the guy there's this woman he thinks is beautiful. He wants to give her a banjo. But it's not a very good idea. People talk him out of it. But that concept of like you're enamored with somebody you want to make a grand gesture because in your head there's this whole story about how it would play out but realistically it would be a trash fire and it all comes down to like I want to give this girl a banjo and I love that phrasing but it doesn't translate but I would love using it with metal filter people because they get it like you can have just a few words and they can totally get a ton of context. Likewise like to me when it happens

Cortex 2:04:52 the blouse and mother's on Yeah, I've seen like that. That is that is that is a powerful like you know some Asian have a specific sort of set of ideas. But like you said, Well, let's see there was this quote, so it doesn't really work. Yeah, I don't know. It's good question. I think I think that would be a fun meta talk thread just to spin off of the element at some point. But we got another question here from Lyman air,

Unknown Speaker 2:05:18 as well, I'm an air. So my question for you guys is, I guess, respectively. What is your favorite metal filter tradition? Apropos of the other current open metal talk or metal talk tale thread right now. So that's my question for you guys. And I think you guys are awesome. So thank you. Bye.

Jessamyn 2:05:42 Favorite tradition,

Cortex 2:05:43 favorite tradition. I'm a I'm a big fan of CAT scan day. I just think I think that's the best possible way to celebrate the site's birthday is with this increasingly opaque thing based on a site that now no longer exists.

Jessamyn 2:05:58 I started that makes no sense. Wait, didn't that buy the domain?

Cortex 2:06:03 Domain exists? We have content there. But the original site, okay. It's partly the thing that the site stopped meaningfully existing, I think for years before the domain even transferred. Yeah.

Jessamyn 2:06:12 So maybe you should, you should explain exactly what CAT scan day is just in case somebody doesn't know. So in

Cortex 2:06:19 1991, on July 14, Dax posted posted a thread to meta filter, its first thread if you count all the other threads he'd already posted then deleted. But the first post that he decided, okay, now everything's working, the system is working thread number 19. On the site was about cat scan.org. And this post was like, this is the strangest thing I've ever seen, I don't understand how these people got their cats wedged into their scanners or why. And that was just that was a very first post on Metafilter. And due to design oversights, it stayed open for many years, in fact, before final posts close after 30 days, and so there's a whole long slow string of jokes in there. And it's become a tradition every year on the site's birthday to post another cat scan thread using the same, you know, framing and phrasing as, as the original intent every year that goes up. And every year a bunch of people will have a goofy good time in the thread. And every year, a few people who have no idea what's going on flag it or complain. And they're like, No, it's It's tradition. So I feel like it sums up so much of the weird, Goofy, occasionally inscrutable nature of the site as a fun place to be. You know, we have stuff like Caps Lock bay that similarly sort of like a goofy yearly tradition and some pirate day Pirate Day, and you know, stuff like that. But the CAT scan thread really feels like a central pillar of all that. It's like, it's the basis on which all the rest kind of realize,

Jessamyn 2:07:56 well, and I think the what I like are the things that kind of bring the whole community in. So like, I really like best post contests when they come around. And I kind of liked the fact that they're a little random, like every now and again, that'd be one. I mean, sometimes they've been in the same month, but a lot of times they're not. And I just think they're fun, because I like that. Users get to provide, you know, their own, like have their own, like, I want the best books, posts, and users can contribute their own prizes. And I just sort of always enjoy that. And the thing I also really like it's I love the Metafilter mall, because I love I mean, I love projects, but I don't get there enough. And so just being reminded of how sort of creative and talented a lot of people in metal filter are in a lot of different directions like summer writers, summer artists, summer, you know, outdoorsy nature photographers, some do crafts, some matte family, businesses, whatever. You know, it happens to be around holiday time, but it wouldn't necessarily have to be and I just love seeing what people come up with. And you know if I'm buying stuff for the holidays shopping there. Yeah. I sold a couple T shirts.

Cortex 2:09:11 Nice. Yeah. Hey, I made the wise decision to not try selling anything. So I couldn't fail to fulfill any orders. Felt like,

Jessamyn 2:09:20 Oh, hey, that's a good idea. Know thyself. Exactly. Although if you ever start like selling any of those like orange paintings you're making let me know we should work out some kind of trade. Oh, sure. Totally. Because your color sensibility and my color sensibility are very, very similar. Your house is going to fill up.

Cortex 2:09:38 Yep. Now we could talk about that. Good. Next question. We have a allegedly a question from Peter.

Jessamyn 2:09:50 I have an accent not a question. Yeah.

Unknown Speaker 2:09:53 Hi, guys. It's Peter. I was not really calling the question. so much as a request for the community, I would like to see more people feel a little more about themselves data on their profiles. I understand that there are reasons why some people would not. But I think, a great deal of your time simply that, okay, I'm

Unknown Speaker 2:10:21 in. And maybe they don't go back to that page so much.

Unknown Speaker 2:10:28 But it's a little disappointing for me when I someone write something that I find interesting and intriguing. And I want to know more about that person. And I go to their profile and blank. Well, that's it. You guys have a great podcast by?

Jessamyn 2:10:48 I think that's a good point. It is. One of the ways you can meet other people is putting more information in your profile. Not everyone wants to for all sorts of good reasons. But if you don't have good reasons not to do it, consider doing it.

Cortex 2:11:04 Yeah, I really liked profile pages. I think they're a lot of fun. I think they're one of the nice characteristics of the site, the fact that we have these, you know, somewhat optionally, but public facing sort of, hey, here's me, and here's why I'm here and what I do and what I like on the internet and what I'm interested in,

Jessamyn 2:11:21 yeah, and where I'm around, and, yeah, that kind of thing. It's nice to figure out if there's me fights near you. It's nice to figure out if you share certain tendencies, it's, yeah, I've gotten I've gotten a lot out of it. I turned my email back on sometime in the last, I don't know, five or six months. And it's been great getting to sort of chat with people a little bit more. Like I closed it forever, because people were forever sending me sort of mod.

Cortex 2:11:51 That seems like a good thing to shut down for a while. Yeah. Yeah. I don't work here anymore. Leave me. Yeah. Right. Yeah. So yeah, folks who just haven't thought too, but don't have concerns about a gopher like, like, like Peter noted, like, like, you know that it's, you know, that you may have reasons for wanting to prefer to have a pretty on the DL profile. And that's totally fine. Do what makes sense for you. But if what makes sense for you is sharing more about yourself and just haven't thought to buy gum goat, stick some stuff on there, let people get to know who you are, what you're doing, where you've got those common interests? It's, it's nice to be able to connect like that. So I endorsed this non question. Great. Looks like we've got one more question from sock guy.

Unknown Speaker 2:12:34 When do we get Minnesota sub site themed socks? I wanted meta filters, sub site themed socks for a very long time. And just seems to never, ever happen. When do we get socks? Thank you.

Jessamyn 2:12:51 I think you guys should get on that.

Cortex 2:12:52 I think so too. Like, I got to look into socks and figure out how expensive that is. But man, that'd be great. I would totally fucking

Jessamyn 2:12:59 mad I feel like it's a thing he knows about for like cycling reasons. And he might have some good intel.

Cortex 2:13:08 That's an important point. Yeah, we should we should look into that. But God, we want to look into merchant stuff in general, too. And that's another one that was yeah, we'll get to that as soon as everything's not crazy. So we should just by God, get to that and let the crazy worry about itself. So yeah, that's a good call. When are we going to get those? Dang it? We should get those. Yeah, that'd be that'd be great. Thank you for getting around to an answerable question by the way. mysterious guy. All right. We got two more questions from it looks like my wife

Jessamyn 2:13:46 and your wife. Yes. So all right, Secretary, I met a filter let's go

Unknown Speaker 2:13:50 Hi. What the fuck? Mad?

Cortex 2:13:56 That's pretty good question. What the fuck man?

Jessamyn 2:13:59 I don't even think that's one question. I think it's four questions.

Cortex 2:14:02 Yeah, yeah, yeah, I mean well does not really a question well, what the fuck Matt and it's like are you arguing that's because I feel like the thought doesn't really I don't know. I'm not sure where to go with that yes yes What the fuck man I agree.

Jessamyn 2:14:27 who originated that?

Cortex 2:14:29 Oh geez years and years and years ago. Speaking I just saw

Jessamyn 2:14:33 that on the in jokes page when I was trying to remember any like slogans I use for Metafilter that have creeped over. First cited in this meta talk thread. See I love the hyperlinked nature of Ctrl F for fuck Oh, I see iron Tom. Put it in his question.

Cortex 2:14:56 Nice searching meta talk for just for What the fuck man does not get you there? As quickly as I know,

Jessamyn 2:15:03 I went to the source and started at the start at the wiki.

Cortex 2:15:08 Very nice. Yeah, speaking of but it does have the filter history

Jessamyn 2:15:13 tag, which we should make sure we're continuing to use. Yes. Yes. All right. Last

Cortex 2:15:22 Last. Okay, one more question.

Unknown Speaker 2:15:25 Hi, this is Secretariat. I really appreciate all that you guys do. Thanks a lot, moderators. So I was wondering if this meta filter podcast Colin show is something that I would need a phone to hurt us?

Jessamyn 2:15:43 See, that's awesome. That's one that that answers one of my earlier questions, because that is one of those things that I do bring into my kind of daily discourse. Is this something I would need a blog to understand? I mean, obviously, that's probably larger internet, but my experience with it has been through metaphor.

Cortex 2:15:58 Yeah, no, that was such a definitive sort of like, chasing its own tail joke for a number of years, especially early on. You know, it's funny, because that was a joke that like, for anybody who's like, but what this is also, you know, early stuff, there was a lot of riffing on is this something I would need a TV to understand, in particular, when people would know something about like some pop culture TV thing on Blu and then some people were probably serious, some people were probably just sort of trying to be ironically, history before it was cool. Which is itself ironic. But see, there you go. You bring it out. I like that, like like that, that half Nelson to Oh, that's a restaurant. Oh, my God. Everything's so complicated, right at the end of the show. But yeah, so people would be like, Oh, is this something I need a TV to understand. And some of them may have actually been kind of being hassled, some of them were just like, oh, it's funny to pretend to be. And it became a running joke for a long time. And then eventually it sort of, I think, to some extent, the war over whether pop culture should be part of the front page was won by the people who were like, of course, it fucking should get over it. Which was my position as well. But also, people blasted them. Yes, yes. But also, the meme, as memes tend to just metastasize to the point where people would say, like, is this something where I would need whatever to understand? And increasingly silly circumstances where obviously, it wouldn't be or obviously, you don't have one of those or etc?

Jessamyn 2:17:26 Or that answer like a pet question what I need a dog to understand that.

Cortex 2:17:31 And I may or may not have made a big exhaustive blog posts on pointing like 2006 or seven or eight on that. I should look that up, actually. But But yes. But yes. Another fun thing, I'm fond of that thank thanking me for calling in. We had been discussing what had been called in and the lack of people calling in to ask, just in jokey questions as questions was palpable on us going over, everybody was so thoughtful and well behaved. You jerks. What do you think and I appreciate true. Yeah, you know, like, No one. No one No one asked. You know, if this broom vibrates, you know, no one asked after like, elephant piss anything like that? It was It was surprisingly well behaved. So I appreciate that. Man, we asked a lot of questions is long. This is this is like, a solid couple hours here. But I guess

Jessamyn 2:18:26 that's your best shot. Yeah. I mean, we did spend a lot of time kind of bullshitting at the beginning. And maybe that can be tightened. Yeah, I'll pull some of that out of the podcast at like 1.2x speed. Oh, there we go. Just like

Cortex 2:18:37 Yeah. I don't know. We'll see how cut this up. Somehow, this may or may not be a conversation that exists in it. I don't know. I may just cut down some of the questions because it really was a lot. Even though I enjoyed them all. I don't know. We'll see what happens. But I sure did enjoy getting this question from y'all. Thank you so much for calling in this is. This is a fun thing. This is a thing we're gonna keep doing because this is a fun thing.

Jessamyn 2:19:01 Yes, well, and I think the more often you do it, the more people get comfortable with the format of calling and leaving messages and they know how it works. So you can have I mean, it's a different version, kind of the meta talk tail hour, which is my favorite, newest tradition. Where you know, eyebrows just kind of has an open chatty thread and meta talk about kind of a narrow topic, but you don't have to stick to that. But you know, having something like that on the podcast, or just having people call in with short answers to whatever question i think it's a great idea. Yeah, more participation.

Cortex 2:19:33 Yeah, absolutely. I think it's a goal. So yeah, I think that that kind of does it I'll pass in some music too, but I don't really have like a Music Minute prepared yet. There's just several things. There's a bunch of good stuff on music, so go listen to it. There was a bunch of good stuff on other stuff on the site. It feels so weird to basically have not talked about metal filter, like the way we usually do for for once in 100 episodes, but, but I really enjoyed the show. So

Jessamyn 2:19:59 I get to Do I have to save my favorites for last time? So, next time so anybody who, you know, got favorited for me is gonna keep that favorite longer than usual.

Cortex 2:20:09 You've gotten a reprieve, but just our limits. All right. Well, it was it was great chatting with you.

Jessamyn 2:20:16 As always, I will talk to you next week.

Cortex 2:20:18 All right. Sounds something like that. Let's just do this again next week. Yeah. I'll talk to you soon.