MetaFilter, known as MeFi to its members,[3][4][5] 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.

[9] According to Time magazine in 2009, this fee had kept the site "remarkably free of trolls, griefers and other anonymous jerks", yielding a "public-spirited flavor of a small town or good university".

[27] Posters are presumed responsible for selecting only the most interesting or novel websites to link, and users' reputations are largely determined by overall posting quality.

Half-baked posts, self-promotion, open-ended questions, and other fare common on other community sites and internet forums are strongly discouraged at MetaFilter.

Online art, award-winning web design, photography galleries, and the like fit into a cool site of the day theme that is highly prized but often generates scant discussion.

Important news items or political arguments can turn into very long discussions, such as 9/11 (2001), the London Bombings (2005), and Hurricane Katrina (2005)—which generated over 80 front page posts in about a week.

In May 2001, MetaFilter played a key role in uncovering the Kaycee Nicole hoax,[28] 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.

Moderators may step in and temporarily suspend an offending user's account, but this is rare; permanent bans are rarer still, and are generally reserved for spammers and other egregious abusers of the site.

MetaTalk also sees particularly excellent posts called out for praise, and moderators regularly feature superlative contributions on the main page's sidebar.

In 2008, London user Ricardo Vacapinta assumed off-hours moderator duties,[37] and in April 2011 Jeremy Preacher (restless_nomad) came on to keep an eye on things over the weekend.

On May 19, 2014, Haughey announced that effective June 1, 2014, moderators West, LobsterMitten and goodnewsfortheinsane would be laid off from their positions due to a sudden and unexpected slump in traffic caused by updates to Google's Panda search algorithm, which reduced ad revenue generated by Ask MetaFilter by more than 40%.

[39] As mentioned under Moderation, the administrative area known as MetaTalk, or MeTa for short, allows for meta-discussion of the community, including bug reports, feature requests, and "self-policing".

AskMe quickly grew to a strong side community with slightly different etiquette requirements and many daily threads that cover a broad spectrum of topics.

[45] In 2014, FanFare was created to give the community a place to discuss entertainment media such as TV shows, Movies, Podcasts, Books, and Special Events.