The site's rules are simple and loosely enforced. The moderators enforce a strict ban on posting self-promotional links, for instance, but many of the site's other mores are up for debate. (A separate discussion board is reserved for discussions of the MetaFilter itself, sparing casual readers the endless self-examination.) People who violate the site's spirit of civility have to worry more about irate locals than vengeful moderators.
“MetaFilter has a very active immune system,” wrote Josh Millard, one of the site's moderators, when I e-mailed to ask how the site's civility had lasted a decade. “People on the site have long memories, a keen sense of the spirit of the site, and a willingness to speak up when they think something is wrong.”
A few practical decisions helped along the way. Chief among them was managing the site's growth. Haughey kept a tight grip on new signups, even shutting them down altogether in some of the early years. Nowadays, to post links and comments on the site, members have to pay a one-time $5 fee. (A fee, in the spirit of disclosure, that I've paid myself.)
It's not much, but a buy-in is a buy-in. It's also enough of a barrier to discourage those who would join on a whim, drop a stink-bomb, and leave. The influx of new members is kept to a manageable dozen or so every day – only a fraction of whom will become active contributors – and the result is an exercise in controlled assimilation.
“It's enough that there's always new blood, new perspectives, new expertise showing up, but it's not so much that any surge of newbies is going to dilute the extant site culture,” notes Millard.
Over the years, the community has the same model to other endeavours. A thriving question-and-answer site, Ask MetaFilter, queries the hive-mind for most answers local or global. MeFi Music encourages members to post their songs, and runs regular challenges. (A June challenge to cover Leonard Cohen led to the appearance of no fewer than 28 different recordings of Hallelujah; the best was recorded as ska dance.)
The MetaFilter example puts the lie to a some entrenched online myths. One is that you can't have a conversation online without leaning on props like voting systems and heavy-handed moderation. Another is that growing websites are doomed to suffer from entropy, losing their focus and culture with time. And another is that “community” is just a euphemism for lettings commentators run amuck and calling it progress.
It doesn't have to be that way. A decade later, MetaFilter is thriving. Every year, on July 14, someone re-posts that original post from Matt Haughey as an item on MetaFilter, even though Cat-scan.com itself stopped working years ago.
“Cat-scan.com is one of the strangest sites I've seen in some time,” it says. It's a happy-birthday message, and many happy returns follow. For new joiners, the in-joke's origins can be confusing, but they figure it out. The old folks are good at explaining.
