Welcome megathread explorer--this is a guide to help you transition from the megathreads on Metafilter to ones hosted in this community.
Summary:
![[profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
megathreads has a custom style meant to provide a similar reading experience to Metafilter. However, you don't have to view it that way! There are settings to view everything in your own journal's style. There are also "light" and "site" modes you can use to view pages as well. The control bar at the top has those options ready at hand.
The dark style is not sticky; we don't have the ability to set cookies to save that preference. However, any link that has ?s2id= in the URL will be shown in the dark style. Most of the important reading links you see will have it, like the links to comments.
If you need help with your journal style,![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png)
style_system can help or you can comment here.
Unlike Metafilter, comments on Dreamwidth can be threaded. They are also paginated.
You always have the option to view the comments on a post in flat mode, which will put them in order from least recent to most recent. If you need to see a comment in threaded context, there will be parent links.
For convenience, each entry's footer has links to the threaded and flat viewing versions. There is also a latest link, which will show the most recent comments in flat mode. These links all retain dark styling!
If a moderator wants to stop a threaded conversation from developing further, they can freeze the comment, which will keep it visible but make it so no one can reply to it. Our community style will gray out the background of frozen comments to make them noticeable at a glance.
If a moderator wants to hide a comment from public view, they can screen it. Moderators and the person who made the comment will still be able to see and reply to it. Other people in the community or anonymous viewers will not be able to see it. Moderators have the ability to prescreen all comments from a given user if deemed appropriate. Screened comments will have a yellow tinted background.
Moderators can make comments specifically marked as moderator comments, to distinguish those comments from normal participation. These are highlighted light blue in the community style.
If you have an account, you can have Dreamwidth add an explicit comment hierarchy indicators to the title of the comment. Look for the "Comment Hierarchy Setting" here.
Registered accounts have the ability to embed images; however, please do not do this in the comments of the megathread itself.
The HTML to make a link: <a href="[URL HERE]">text of your of your link</a>
To bold: <strong>Your text</strong>
To italicize: <em>Your text</em>
To stop "@example" from linking toexample, precede it with a backslash: \\example
If you choose to get comment notifications to your email for this community, you can reply to comments and entries by replying to the email notification! The reply will be formatted using Markdown syntax
Anonymous commentors won't be able to make links directly: the URL will be displayed to copy paste; this is a spam reduction effort made by the Dreamwidth platform and not under our control.
Entries on the front page of the community display in reverse chronological order, with the exception of sticky posts. The moderators will make the most recent megathread the top sticky post in most situations.
On Metafilter, you'd make your lede and then put more in after. On Dreamwidth, you can interleave cuts with normal text, and there won't be limits, so it's up to us to make concise posts above the fold.
Entries can be public but they can also be made to just the community members. Right now, only the moderators are making posts to the community, as an account that makes a post is able to delete comments on that post.
Whilemegathread is a paid account, you can use this interface to search through its entries and comments.
Notifications go to your Dreamwidth inbox and optionally to your email account; you can, for instance, have Dreamwidth email you every time a new post is made to the community.
You can manage your notifications and whether they go to your inbox here. You can manage notifications for this specific community here, like getting notified every time there is a new post or comment. You can also reply to comments and entries by replying to the email notification in your email comment! These replies will be formatted using Markdown.
If you want to connect your Metafilter identity with your Dreamwidth one, we suggest you specify your Metafilter username in your profile, and perhaps add "metafilter" and/or "megathread" as one of your interests! You can see anybody's account profile by clicking the icon before their username, example:foxfirefey
To report a situation in the community, please comment on this post. Your comment will be screened for your privacy and only visible to community moderators.
If there is an account you would rather never see a comment from and you have an account or the ability to use user style sheets you can use this CSS, replace the [USERNAME] part with their username:
Put it in the Custom CSS of your style
Every user has the ability to ban other users. When you ban a user, that user won't be able to comment on entries you make to the community (or anywhere else on DW), and they won't be able to reply to comments you make. They won't be able to use the direct messaging system to contact you even if you have that feature on.
To make a link:
This is an [example link](http://example.com/).
To italicize:
Now with *emphasis*
To bold:
Now with **more emphasis**
To blockquote:
A fuller guide to Markdown
When you subscribe to other accounts and communities on Dreamwidth, their posts from the past two weeks will show up on your reading page, in reverse chronological order. This can even let you use Dreamwidth as a general Feed Reader for sites that have RSS/ATOM feeds, as described in the section below!
You can use your Dreamwidth account's reading page as a feed reader! You can add feeds here. If no one else has subscribed to that feed yet, you might have to choose a username for that feed, which will end up in the format [yourname]_feed. Entries from that feed will show up on your reading page.
A good example ischrysostom's blog at ![[syndicated profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/feed.png)
chrysostom_election_feed!
Dreamwidth, having no ads, is supported by the purchase of paid accounts. To incentivize this, and provide features that would be too costly to offer for everyone, paid accounts get the some extra perks including things like:
* More user icons, 150 instead of 15
* The ability to subscribe to notifications for specific comment threads
* 4000 inbox items instead of 2000
* 500 inbox tracking subscriptions instead of 25
* A forwarding email address, username@dreamwidth.org
* The ability to keep around more than one style
There's a plainmetafilter community too, and you can read publics posts from the journals of MeFites who have joined it here!
Feel free to comment on this post with any technical or platform specific questions!
Summary:
- Community membership is currently open to all accounts. Click here to join. If you join, your public personal journal posts will also show up on this page.
- Comments are currently allowed from all registered Dreamwidth accounts.
- Comments are currently allowed from anonymous users, and they are not currently screened by default. Additionally, anonymous users have some limitations for things like making link HTML.
- Viewing Styles
- Comment viewing and moderation
- Making Comments
- Entries
- Search
- Notifications
- User Profiles
- Conflict
- Markdown
- Other miscellaneous
Viewing Styles
megathreads has a custom style meant to provide a similar reading experience to Metafilter. However, you don't have to view it that way! There are settings to view everything in your own journal's style. There are also "light" and "site" modes you can use to view pages as well. The control bar at the top has those options ready at hand.The dark style is not sticky; we don't have the ability to set cookies to save that preference. However, any link that has ?s2id= in the URL will be shown in the dark style. Most of the important reading links you see will have it, like the links to comments.
If you need help with your journal style,
style_system can help or you can comment here.Comment viewing and moderation
Unlike Metafilter, comments on Dreamwidth can be threaded. They are also paginated.
You always have the option to view the comments on a post in flat mode, which will put them in order from least recent to most recent. If you need to see a comment in threaded context, there will be parent links.
For convenience, each entry's footer has links to the threaded and flat viewing versions. There is also a latest link, which will show the most recent comments in flat mode. These links all retain dark styling!
If a moderator wants to stop a threaded conversation from developing further, they can freeze the comment, which will keep it visible but make it so no one can reply to it. Our community style will gray out the background of frozen comments to make them noticeable at a glance.
If a moderator wants to hide a comment from public view, they can screen it. Moderators and the person who made the comment will still be able to see and reply to it. Other people in the community or anonymous viewers will not be able to see it. Moderators have the ability to prescreen all comments from a given user if deemed appropriate. Screened comments will have a yellow tinted background.
Moderators can make comments specifically marked as moderator comments, to distinguish those comments from normal participation. These are highlighted light blue in the community style.
If you have an account, you can have Dreamwidth add an explicit comment hierarchy indicators to the title of the comment. Look for the "Comment Hierarchy Setting" here.
Making Comments
Registered accounts have the ability to embed images; however, please do not do this in the comments of the megathread itself.
The HTML to make a link: <a href="[URL HERE]">text of your of your link</a>
To bold: <strong>Your text</strong>
To italicize: <em>Your text</em>
To stop "@example" from linking to
example, precede it with a backslash: \\exampleIf you choose to get comment notifications to your email for this community, you can reply to comments and entries by replying to the email notification! The reply will be formatted using Markdown syntax
Anonymous Comment Making
Anonymous commentors won't be able to make links directly: the URL will be displayed to copy paste; this is a spam reduction effort made by the Dreamwidth platform and not under our control.
Entries
Entries on the front page of the community display in reverse chronological order, with the exception of sticky posts. The moderators will make the most recent megathread the top sticky post in most situations.
On Metafilter, you'd make your lede and then put more in after. On Dreamwidth, you can interleave cuts with normal text, and there won't be limits, so it's up to us to make concise posts above the fold.
Entries can be public but they can also be made to just the community members. Right now, only the moderators are making posts to the community, as an account that makes a post is able to delete comments on that post.
Search
While
megathread is a paid account, you can use this interface to search through its entries and comments.Notifications
Notifications go to your Dreamwidth inbox and optionally to your email account; you can, for instance, have Dreamwidth email you every time a new post is made to the community.
You can manage your notifications and whether they go to your inbox here. You can manage notifications for this specific community here, like getting notified every time there is a new post or comment. You can also reply to comments and entries by replying to the email notification in your email comment! These replies will be formatted using Markdown.
User Profiles
If you want to connect your Metafilter identity with your Dreamwidth one, we suggest you specify your Metafilter username in your profile, and perhaps add "metafilter" and/or "megathread" as one of your interests! You can see anybody's account profile by clicking the icon before their username, example:
foxfirefeyConflict
To report a situation in the community, please comment on this post. Your comment will be screened for your privacy and only visible to community moderators.
If there is an account you would rather never see a comment from and you have an account or the ability to use user style sheets you can use this CSS, replace the [USERNAME] part with their username:
.comment-wrapper .poster-[USERNAME] { display: none; }
Put it in the Custom CSS of your style
Every user has the ability to ban other users. When you ban a user, that user won't be able to comment on entries you make to the community (or anywhere else on DW), and they won't be able to reply to comments you make. They won't be able to use the direct messaging system to contact you even if you have that feature on.
A brief review of Markdown
To make a link:
This is an [example link](http://example.com/).
To italicize:
Now with *emphasis*
To bold:
Now with **more emphasis**
To blockquote:
> I'm quoting > > this in a block >
A fuller guide to Markdown
Other DW Features
Your account's reading page
When you subscribe to other accounts and communities on Dreamwidth, their posts from the past two weeks will show up on your reading page, in reverse chronological order. This can even let you use Dreamwidth as a general Feed Reader for sites that have RSS/ATOM feeds, as described in the section below!
Using Dreamwidth as a Feed Reader
You can use your Dreamwidth account's reading page as a feed reader! You can add feeds here. If no one else has subscribed to that feed yet, you might have to choose a username for that feed, which will end up in the format [yourname]_feed. Entries from that feed will show up on your reading page.
A good example is
chrysostom's blog at chrysostom_election_feed! What a paid account gets you
Dreamwidth, having no ads, is supported by the purchase of paid accounts. To incentivize this, and provide features that would be too costly to offer for everyone, paid accounts get the some extra perks including things like:
* More user icons, 150 instead of 15
* The ability to subscribe to notifications for specific comment threads
* 4000 inbox items instead of 2000
* 500 inbox tracking subscriptions instead of 25
* A forwarding email address, username@dreamwidth.org
* The ability to keep around more than one style
Other places on DW
There's a plain
metafilter community too, and you can read publics posts from the journals of MeFites who have joined it here!Feel free to comment on this post with any technical or platform specific questions!
more tips
Re: more tips
Navigating comment threads on mobile
screen shot
This is independent of what style you use. Turn it on at Manage Settings > Display and tick the "Display Explicit Comment Hierarchy."
Re: Navigating comment threads on mobile
no subject
no subject