MoFi FAQ
From MonkeyFilter Wiki
basdarroltro For the discussion of the FAQ see: Talk:MoFi_FAQ
The site
What is MonkeyFilter?
A website where members share interesting, thoughful or funny links and discuss said links. Kind of like metafilter, but not quite. Actually, we're exactly metafilter, but with more flinging and less bananas. Or something like that.
Cool! How do I join?
You have to Register by clicking on the "New User" link above and fill some forms. Please tell us a little about yourself, and don't worry about evil spammers taking your precious email address: we'll keep it hidden. You'll have to wait up to 24 hours before the admin authorises you.
Oh, yeah, we won't tell you when you're authorised, so you'll just have to keep checking back and trying the "Post" button.
How can I ask admin a question?
Email Tracy or post a comment in her blog. Try not to post a complaint or bug to the main page.
How can I contribute to MonkeyFilter?
Apart from posting and joining in the discussion, there's not a lot. Occasionally we're on the lookout for new logos, and if you have a stylesheet you'd like to see on MoFi, we'll be happy to add it.
We're rewriting MoFi slowly and the results won't be seen for some time yet. We've gone through the first phase of bug testing but there is still much to be done. Check the MoFi Watch Blog for updates.
Posting
How do I post?
Assuming you're logged in, registered and authorised to post, just hit the "Post" button on the navbar. Make up a title that will be shown in the right-hand sidebar and on the RSS feed. Then add the most relevant link in the URL box, and a brief description below it. The description will be the intro to your post. In the "Link description" window, type in some more information about your link. You can add extra links here if you like, using correct HTML. Any further info can go in the "Extended Description". This will be inside your post, on the comments page. If your post seems too long, move some of it to the extended description, or put something in here about why this post is interesting to you.
Some other useful hints:
- Note if your link is not safe for work (NSFW).
- Let us know if you found your link on a widely-read source such as slashdot, yahoo, fark, boingboing, or metafilter.
- Try not to simply post a link with no explanation: many people won't bother to look at it.
- State if it's a flash, shockwave, java, quicktime movie or other such slow-loading site.
- Do a quick search to make sure your link hasn't been posted before.
- At the moment, posting images in a post or comment is not permitted due to bandwidth and server space limitations. Post a link to the image instead.
- Last thing: special characters tend to show up in strange and unexpected ways. I'm talking about accents, umlauts, all those pretty letters that aren't from the English language, and occasionally characters that have been copy-pasted from MS Word. If you can, avoid using them. If they're integral to the post, it's cool. Just consider this a friendly warning that someone will probably say, "What on earth is that word??"
What are the Curious, George posts?
You're welcome to post a question about almost anything. Technical problems, advice on what car to buy, how to find a certain song or book, all these and more may be answered by your fellow Monkeys. When posting, put "Curious, George: $problem" in the Title, a little bit of info on the front page and, if it's a long question, place the remainder in the "Extended Info" box. To look up past Curious George questions and answers, do a search for "Curious George" in the search page.
Why is there a self-imposed posting limit?
We want quality of posts to be as high as possible. Many Monkeys believe that the more you post, the less interesting the posts will be. We ask that you post one good, interesting and discussion-worthy post per day. If you think you have more than one, so be it. We're certainly not forcing you not to post. Make 'em good!
What's appropriate to post? What's not appropriate?
Anything. Well, I suppose that's anything, within reason. Look around at the sort of things other monkeys have posted. At the moment there's not a lot posted along explicitly political lines, but mostly little oddities found randomly on the web. That isn't to say that news headlines aren't permitted, but discussions here tend to be lighthearted and war/Iraq/Bush links don't fit that scene right now. Self-links aren't allowed as the main link in posts, and full disclosure is expected at any other time. As a secondary link, or a link in a comment, it's fine. But we don't want to see you linking to your (or your brother's, or best friend's) blog right up there on the front page, okay?
If your link has been discussed on Metafilter, it's okay to link to the Metafilter discussion. It's fine to post something that's been on Metafilter, especially if you think us monkeys will have some unique things to say on the subject. Not everyone reads Metafilter so the general consensus is that reposting something from Mefi is fine. But not too often.
Bear in mind that minors may be reading this site, so websites dedicated to pornography might not be smart. If it's not safe for work (someone could get in trouble with their boss if said boss was looking over their shoulder), add a "NSFW" at the end of the post.
What makes a good post?
Anything is fair game for posting. Anything, of course, within reason. MonkeyFilter is directly descended from Metafilter, and this is what Matt Haughey, Mefi's creator, has to say:
- "A good post to MetaFilter is something that meets the following criteria: most people haven't seen it before, there is something interesting about the content on the page, and it might warrant discussion from others."
Seems sort of self-explanatory, really. Bear in mind that a lot of stuff out there on ye olde internet has been around for several years now, so make sure you've got something unique to show off. These guidelines are not very specific because posting is an art, and we wouldn't want to define any art too precisely. In fact, bad posts are much easier to describe than good posts,
What's a bad post?
First of all, read pope quidnunc kid's encyclical. Any post with one of the following serious defects is automatically a candidate for deletion, no questions asked.
- The post has no links at all. Example(s): [1]
- There is one important exception— Curious George (CG) posts need not have a link. However, we really hate "I was scratching me bum and I just thought, what if the moon were made of cheese?"-type questions. They can be made somewhat tolerable by putting a little more effort into framing the question. For example:
Cheesious George — I was just thinking about how people always use "moon made of cheese" as some sort of crackpot notion. Where did this notion originate? What is so obviously cheese-y about the moon?
- Still, we do not recommend such "chatty" CG posts.
- Your links don't work. We are very forgiving of minor typos or small mistakes as long as you correct it immediately. However, if your links just don't work, it's a bad post.
- Your primary links have been posted before. Example(s): [2] [3]
- You are linking to your own stuff. In an ideal world self-linkers would just be summarily shot, but we get by with just deleting the post and banning the user.
- Your link goes to illegal or highly questionable content. Usually these posts are really deleted from the site.
- You're linking to something old. Chances are, we've seen it.
There are some other minor defects that are correlated with bad posts; you should keep these in mind, but if you know what you're doing, you're OK.
- You're linking to rich media—Flash, movies, mp3s, PDFs, basically anything that's not a web page—without any warning. Some monkeys are on slow connections, pay for their download bandwidth, or are viewing MoFi at work. By the way, anything that's not safe for work or small children should be clearly marked.
- Your post has recently made the rounds of the major link-aggregating sites out there; a non-exhaustive list of examples: Boing Boing, MeFi, Gizmodo, Slashdot, Blogdex, del.icio.us/popular. (Not everyone reads those sites however, so if you think the link is particularly interesting, go ahead and post it.)
- Your post has obscure or inscrutable point(s). We love a good puzzle and all, but spare us the Cryptic Crossword clues. (Though some of us love 'em!)
- Your post is trollish or likely to cause a flamewar. Most political posts qualify. If your post would be right at home in DU or LGF, then it's not welcome in MoFi.
- Your post is of little or no benefit to anyone. These are usually CG posts of the "Curious George: my cat just did a backflip. What silly thing has your pet done recently?" variety. (Some of us love these posts, though.)
- Your sole link goes to an op-ed in some widely read news site, and you provide no supporting documentation or framework for discussion. If you want to make a point with such a post, kindly make it, and stick around to clarify and defend your point. We hate post-and-runners. (That being said, "moderating your own post' is considered poor form as well. It's a fine line and a slippery slope.)
- Your post doesn't provoke any discussion. We link to stuff, then we talk about it. Figures, really. You should note that many of our best posts have had very few comments, so this is not always a defect. Indeed, some of our worst posts garner a large, often unceasing number of comments.
- Your CG post is answered with a fairly obvious Google query.
What HTML can I use?
These are the usable tags:
| Bold | <b></b> or <strong></strong>
|
|---|---|
| Italic | <i></i> or <em></em>
|
| Underline | <u></u>
|
| Small | <small></small>
|
| Strikethrough | <strike></strike>
|
| Hyperlink | <a></a>
|
How do I post an in-line link?
Use a hyperlink tag like the one above. A basic link looks like this:
This is a link to <a href="http://monkeyfilter.com">MonkeyFilter</a>, the best mefi lurker site ever.
Type the URL of your link between the quotation marks and the title you want to give it in place of "MonkeyFilter". The above link will look like this in a sentence: This is a link to MonkeyFilter, the best mefi lurker site ever. Don't forget the </a> close tag.
Why is my post on the main page twice?
There's a couple of possible reasons: one is that you hit the "Post" button twice, or the "Back" button to repost the form. The other possible reason is issues with the Metaphilter engine itself. Let admin know if you receive any error messages while posting. If you can say exactly what the error message said (yay for copy-paste), we can resolve the issue.
In the meantime, keep comments to one of the double posts if possible and admin will remove the other as soon as she sees it.
Why didn't anyone comment on my post?
If no one comments on your post, that most likely means it's just not a very good post, sorry. A post should be discussion-worthy, or you should make it so. Take it as a hint that you should reconsider what sort of links you're posting, or the style you're posting them in.
What do I do if my thread is derailed?
If someone goes off-topic in your thread, you'll just have to grin and bear it. It happens all the time, and more often than not Monkeys will return to the topic at hand. On the odd occasion you may find that the new topic is as interesting (or more so) than the topic of the original post.
Technical
I don't like the site's colours. Can you fix it?
Nope. You're one of the minority. But if you have a colour selection you'd prefer, make it into a stylesheet (preferably a valid W3C css file, since we don't have the time or inclination to edit it) and send it to admin. You can select a prewritten style in which to view MoFi from your profile page. The site looks funny in my browser. Can you fix it? Most bugs related to the site in general are fixed. For a list of current unfixed bugs, check Tracy's blog. It's possible that if it's not fixed, it's related to the browser you're using. Try viewing MonkeyFilter in another browser if possible. If it looks fine, it's browser-specific. If it's still buggy, let me know. If your bug isn't listed on the blog, email Tracy or leave her a comment.
I lost my password. Help!
Email admin and she'll reset your password and email you a new one asap. There's no automatic password retrieval but we never forget a monkey.
I logged out and can't log back in. Help!
Delete any cookies for monkeyfilter.com and try logging back in.
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Abuse
What if I find a post or comment offensive?
Try not to start a big argument in the thread. If you feel you're being trolled or abused, the usual "ignore them" statement applies. If it continues in the thread or elsewhere on MonkeyFilter, contact admin. Trolls are common everywhere on the internet, and it behooves us as monkeys to be the bigger simian and ignore them until they go away.
What do I do if I think someone's abusing the system?
Contact admin via email or blog comment, and she will investigate. Don't, please for the love of God don't start a flamewar on the main page. Really.
What if I get in a fight with someone?
If you are drawn into an abusive argument with another user, it's best to walk away and/or even apologise - you may end up making a friend. At the very least, you should check their top trump card before you head off into verbal battle, as you will need to see their "vital statistics" in order to inflict maximum damage and humiliation.
Complementary
I want to chat with other monkeys!
MonkeyFilter has an irc channel available on slashnet. To chat with other monkeys in real time, connect using an IRC program to irc.slashnet.org, channel #mofirc. This is a basic irc tutorial. Monkeys recommend Chatzilla or mIRC if you don't have an irc program already.
I want to share information with other monkeys
There is a monkeyfilter wiki available at http://wiki.monkeyfilter.com
