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Yearly Traditions
Over the years MetaFilter has acquired a number of annual traditions.
Cat-Scan.com
The very first post on MetaFilter was made by mathowie on July 14, 1999 and linked to cat-scan.com. Titled "Cat-Scan.com" the post read: "Cat-Scan.com is one of the strangest sites I've seen in some time. I have no idea how these people got their cats wedged into their scanners, or why."
It has become a tradition each year for a user to post an exact duplicate of that original post on July 14, to commemorate MetaFilter's birthday. For MetaFilter's 12th Anniversary, mathowie purchased the cat-scan.com domain and launched a commemorative site containing user-submitted favorite memories and an explanation of how they discovered MeFi and why they chose to become a member. MeFi announcement. MeTa announcement.
Related posts: 1999, 2000, 2001, 2002, 2003, 2004, 2005, 2006, 2007, 2008, 2009, 2010, 2011, 2012, 2013, 2014, 2015, 2016, 2017, 2018, 2019, 2020, 2021, 2023.
April Fools
- Main article: April Fools
April 1st is April Fools' Day. In a number of years on April 1st the MetaFilter staff have modified MetaFilter to play some sort of prank on MetaFilter members. The first such prank was in 2000, which involved modifying the front page to look like Dave Winer's Scripting News.
Talk Like a Pirate Day
September 19th is Talk Like a Pirate Day. Mathowie did the first post in 2003 and it got some traction, but enthusiasm for it in the MetaFilter community appears to have waned.
Related posts: 2003, 2004/2004, 2005, 2006, 2007, 2008, 2009, 2010, 2014.
Caps Lock Day
October 22nd is "International Caps Lock Day." This parody holiday was first created in 2003 on Metafilter by user cellphone (Official Site / Official Twitter).
Each year, a post is made titled: "YAD KCOL SPAC" and with the following text: "OCTOBER 22 IS INTERNATIONAL CAPS LOCK DAY!!! EVERY YEAR WE GET TOGETHER AND MAKE SALMON FOR TOAST, EVERY YEAR WE GET A CROCKETY BLOAT, EVERY YEAR WE GET DRUNK ON THE DOCKS, AND EVERY YEAR WE HAVE SEX WITH OUR CAPS LOCKS!!!!"
- MetaTalk: Are Caps Lock Day posts considered 'stunt posts' and if so, why aren't they deleted?
- cortex: Pretty much. We let people do this and we let people make a CASP LICK DOG post and there's not really a very formally satisfying explanation for why other than (a) it doesn't scale beyond the once-a-year thing and (b) it's essentially a whole-community transgression rather than a user-vs-the-site thing and (c) *puts on yarmulke* and (d) TRADITION!
Related posts: 2003, 2004, 2005, 2006, 2007, 2008, 2009, 2010, 2011, 2012, 2013, 2014.
clavdivs' Halloween Costume Polls
Every year, clavdivs does a poll on MetaTalk about people's fantasy halloween costumes. Jessamyn rounded them up in this BestOf post.
Secret Quonsar
- Main article: Secret Quonsar
Secret Quonsar is MetaFilter's annual Secret Santa gift exchange, first suggested in 2007 by parmanparman. Public suggested it be renamed Secret Quonsar, after quonsar, whose account had been disabled shortly beforehand.
Related posts: 2007, 2008, 2009, 2010, 2011, 2012, 2013, 2014, 2015, 2016, 2017, 2018, 2019; SecretQuonsar tag for all related posts.
MeFi Mall
Every year around the holidays MetaFilter hosts a page, called MeFi Mall, which links to things that creative MeFites are selling or have for sale. The page is for MeFites only and is for online stuff that they've designed, created, built, made or otherwise had a hand in, but excludes stuff like brick and mortar stores, auctions, or one-off items for sale.
Related posts: 2007, 2008, 2009, 2010, 2011, 2012, 2013, 2014.
Zelda Day
Dec. 26 was deemed Zelda Day in 2010, and since then, JHarris has kept the tradition alive. This is the only unintentional theme day to survive to become an annual thing.
Overlooked Comments
At the end of 2008, Greg Nog posted a list of comments that, in his opinion, garnered little attention when originally posted but merited greater acclaim. This started a tradition of posting a summary thread to MetaTalk, in January, with links posted by members to comments from the previous year they felt deserved greater attention.
Related posts: ~2009, 2010, 2011, 2012, 2013, 2014, 2015, 2016, 2017.
