Ask MetaFilter

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Contents 1 Meet MetaFilter 2 Ask MetaFilter 3 Advantages 4 Example Posts 5 References

Meet MetaFilter

Ask MetaFilter is a subunit of MetaFilter(1) (also called MeFi), a community blog created by Matthew Haughey in 1999(5). What does community blog mean? Generally, a blog is maintained by one person, or a small group of related people, but at MetaFilter, any registered member can contribute or comment. Registration is open to anyone for the token fee of 5 dollars for a “lifetime membership.” In addition to membership fees, ads and donations generate revenue for this site (4). Further, although you must be registered to participate, anyone can access and read the site.

Ask MetaFilter

Ask MetaFilter uses the tagline “querying the hive mind” which is a good summation of how the service works(1). As with similar services such as Yahoo! Answers (http://answers.yahoo.com/) and WikiAnswers (http://wiki.answers.com/), a user posts a question which can then be answered by any registered member. Also similar to Yahoo! Answers, Ask MetaFilter users can select which answers they think are best, which then boosts the reputation of the answerer. A great advantage of the requirement to register is that you can assess the profile of both askers and answerers. Matthew Haughey’s profile is a good example: http://www.metafilter.com/username/mathowie. Here, you can see his comments have been “favorited by others” 4500 times!

Advantages

Ask MetaFilter has an advantage over some other question and answer sites because it is moderated (one of the moderators is actually a librarian)(5). Moderators employ “chatfilter” by removing questions that cannot “be put to some practical use”(2). Moderators may also disallow posts which are “illegal, repetitive, trollish, unanswerable or obvious questions”(2). Not only do moderators keep an eye on things, so can all users through flagging. Options for flagging are: double post, noise, derail, offensive content, breaking the guidelines, other or fantastic post (2). Note that this system rewards as well as punishes, which is one aspect that Haughey credits for helping make this format successful(3). Although a person must be registered to ask or answer a question, the user can choose to post anonymously. However, the request can be denied if the moderators feel that the question does not require anonymity(2). Another great advantage of this site is that questions can be tagged, which helps when searching for related topics (see some examples below).

While this is not a reference service in the traditional sense – it is not affiliated with any library and the answers are not guaranteed to be useful or accurate – Ask MetaFilter is a viable option if you are looking for an answer. Some of the benefits of Ask MetaFilter over traditional services are:

• Experiential opinions: while you may encounter a librarian who has experience with your topic and is willing to share that experience, it is not the norm
• Speed: most questions have a response within 24 hours
• Interactivity: question askers can participate in the answering process easily, clarifying their needs, reporting on the success of answers, etc.
• Feedback: both askers and answerers can offer their opinion on the usefulness of answers
• Reputation: you can investigate the community reputation of anyone in MetaFilter, whereas in real life no one would ever tell you that you got stuck with the bad librarian

Example Posts

• Want to get freaked out about never finding a job as a librarian?

• Identifying an image -- a neat example of the benefits of the “hive mind”. Can you imagine trying to answer this as an IPL question?

• Two examples of questions (most likely) better answered with Ask MeFi than at a library:

1. Finding proper fit in catalog/online shopping
2. Why should I never boil my stock?

• The only question tagged with “FSU”

• Posts tagged with “MLIS”

• Posts tagged with “librarian”

References

1. Ask MetaFilter: http://ask.metafilter.com/
2. MetaFilter FAQ: http://faq.metafilter.com/#116
3. Haughey, Matthew. (2001). Building an online community: Just add water. Retrieved from: http://www.digital-web.com/articles/building_an_online_community/
4. Haughey, Matthew. (2003). A whole features: Blogging for dollars. Retrieved from: http://a.wholelottanothing.org/features/2003/10/blogging_for_do
5. West, Jessamyn. (2006). MetaFilter: Going your way. Library Journal, 131(17), p. 88.
6. Ali-Hasan, Noor. (2005). MetaFilter: An analysis of a community weblog. Retrieved from: http://www.noor.bz/pdf/ali-hasan_metafilter.pdf

Note: I created the word cloud at the top of the page by putting the content of this page into Wordle: http://wordle.net.

--JulieT 14:06, 15 October 2008 (EDT)

Ask MetaFilter by Julie Turner, Internet Public Library Learning Community site

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