10 Facts About MetaFilter

MetaFilter, known as MeFi to its members, is a general-interest community weblog, founded in 1999 and based in the United States, featuring links to content that users have discovered on the web.

MetaFilter has developed a fairly stable community with a variety of in-jokes.

MetaFilter was included in Times 50 Best Websites 2009 feature.

In July 2017, the ownership of MetaFilter was transferred from Matthew Haughey to long-time moderator Josh Millard.

MetaFilter's name derives from the idea that weblogs "filter" the "best of the web", and MetaFilter posts would be the best of the best.

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Net and blog culture discussions percolate through MetaFilter, reflecting its early connections with Blogger, but this is becoming less common as membership expands.

In May 2001, MetaFilter played a key role in uncovering the Kaycee Nicole hoax, in which a woman made up a fake online persona of a teenage daughter who was dying of cancer, fooling many bloggers and garnering sympathy and gifts.

In October 2004, MetaFilter members uncovered the identities of the writers of the hoax Website Nick Nolte's Diary.

One of MetaFilter's founding tenets and an important factor in the "feel" of the site is the idea that the bulk of moderation is done through social norms and peer pressure, referred to as "self-policing" in a site tagline.

In 2007, MetaFilter launched a podcast, which lives at the Podcast subsite.