Head Tale

I don’t hang out there nearly as much as I used to (and worse, a lot of my “community web site” time has shifted to <gasp> Reddit!) so it was a bit of a shock to see a librarian colleague post on Facebook about the big changes happening at MetaFilter.

Cash-strapped after a recent downturn in advertising revenues (aka “Peak Ad”), the site is laying off three of their moderators including long-time MeFi moderator and librarian super-hero, Jessamyn West, who has chosen to voluntarily leave the site to move on to other endeavours.

I’ve got a few random thoughts I’ll throw out…

• MetaFilter (and Reddit and most sites) probably struggle with the need to balance implementation of new designs and new features without turning off the user base (hello Digg!).  MetaFilter looks almost exactly like it did when I joined in 2001 and I wonder if that’s part of why it lost a bit of its appeal to me recently?
• This is my own opinion which is definitely not shared by the top folks at MetaFilter but I think they also really missed an opportunity when they said there would be no “ChatFilter” questions allowed in the AskMetaFilter section (ChatFilter = generic questions like “What’s your favourite book?” or “Who’s the funniest comedian you know?” or whatever.  My take is people really enjoy those types of questions which are very engaging.  That’s not just a sample size of one talking – if you look at the top voted posts on Reddit’s front page at any given time, many would be classed as ChatFilter.
• My fingers still want to type “MetaFitler” every time I type the site name which is essentially me Godwinning myself.  😉
• Jessamyn will be a huge loss to the community and much of what I learned about moderating an online community – most recently the 80+ members of the Social Media team for the Ryan Meili campaign but various other places as well – was modeled on what I saw Jessamyn doing: being humourous, responsive, open, fair, thoughtful among many other techniques she used. (I wish I only had 1/10 of her success!)
• It’s embarrasing to admit that I’ve long thought that if I ever won a lottery, one of my first moves wouldn’t be to invest in Google or Facebook or any of those sites.  I’d probably rush to throw a big chunk of money at MetaFilter because, even if I don’t visit it as much as I should anymore, it’s probably the site that gives the best sense of being around literate, thoughtful, engaging, insightful people I’ve ever seen (the high librarian to regular user ratio probably helps!) 😉
• They don’t like NewsFilter posts either but because of the types of users it has, it’s still the first place I go to see feedback about breaking news and events – just as it was in 2001 when the 9/11 disaster inspired me to stop lurking and finally join the site…which Jessamyn has laughed about to me on more than one occasion – “Oh, you’re one of *those* people.” – since the site saw a massive influx after 9/11.