A friend recently sent me a Metafilter Link, and after reading about why Washington Post writer Lonnae O’Neal Parker gave up on hip-hop, I asked my friend about how a tech-savvy senior in college like himself uses MetaFilter. Although the answer is “to waste time,” he explained that fairly eloquently and identified the site as a huge source of information. 

See Jessamyn West’s Oct. 15 LJ Reference Backtalk for information about how MetaFilter is best-used by librarians, primarily through Ask MetaFilter.

Here (only slightly edited) is how my friend explained MetaFilter (versus Ask MetaFilter) to me after reading West’s article:

“AskMe is a subpart of MetaFilter where people ask random questions about anything and anyone and everyone can respond. MetaFilter itself, though, is self-described as ‘the best of the web.’  It’s a community of users posting to one big blog.  Everyone can make one post a day and the goal of every post is to share something the poster thinks of as ‘the best of the web.’  So MetaFilter itself isn’t about answering questions, just sharing links.  Because of a few rules (no double posting, no self-promotion), a $5 membership fee, and a general fear of being made a fool of by commenters, the posts that are made (like 50ish a day) are usually pretty good, or at least interesting.  Which makes metafilter pretty much a limitless time wasting site.  Posts can be ‘the best of the web’ because they are breaking news, hilarious, cool, important, interesting, or just plain fun.  I mean, via MetaFilter I’ve read about how bad electric voting machines are, found great flash games, heard about the earthquake in Hawaii, found new music, books, and movies.

“It’s just a nice site to browse through when you’re bored, to see if any of the posts are interesting.”

Although that final word sounds like a put-down, for an antsy undergrad, I think it’s pretty positive.  And, as West points out, it’s just another version of the public’s “librarian bug” and itch to share information.