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Comment by IvyMike | Hacker News Reader

> Jessamyn, who has worked in some capacity on the site for almost 10 years and was instrumental in shaping the voice of Ask MetaFilter, is taking a voluntary layoff.

Holy crap. I think this is a giant mistake; IMO she's the heart and soul behind that site.

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Thanks, that's really sweet, but it's been almost a decade and it's definitely time. I've got some stuff coming up (will post more about it later on so as not to take any of the attention away from mathowie's post) which is all good news. It was really time for me to get a little more librarianing in.

After a decade of gently beating wayward mefites over the head with a clue stick, you deserve a break. Thanks for all those years of work!

agree - you are one of the reasons mefi is what it is. thanks for all of your hard work.

Thanks for all your work Jessamyn. I've lurked since 1999 and found a lot of useful information over the years (has it been 15 years already? it seems like it just was yesterday!). Made a small donation just now.

Too many valuable things die or are simply discarded these days, whilst utter nonsense by 17yo's that have no purpose get funding in the millions, which are rapidly squandered.

I respect your decision. I also suspect that Matt seriously underestimates the amount of goodwill the site has generated over the years... There's no shame in collecting on this.

PS Get off my lawn young'uns.

I had the same reaction, but it seems to dovetail with her needs. She said "this is literally just 'I am moving on in my professional life.' MetaFilter remains my online home."

http://metatalk.metafilter.com/23245/State-of-MetaFilter#114...

Yes, Jessamyn has an amazing knack for handling users. That sounds rather pedestrian but she makes it into an intellectual art. I hope she's making a positive move.

Also the whole site is just so personable. I hope it stays around.

Can you go into more detail when you say "handling users"?

Jessamyn is amazing at being empathetic when people have issues with the site, but being firm about the actual decision that have been made, without being patronizing (it's very hard to say "I totally understand your concern, but we're not doing what you want" in a way that doesn't annoy people). And she never ever yells at people unless they totally deserve it, in which case they then realize they deserve it. Unless you are a real malcontent (and of course there are a few), it is really hard not to believe that she is genuinely on your side.

By "issues" above I don't mean technical things like "I can't log in" but disagreements about how the site should be run. Metafilter has a official side site called Metatalk that is largely a forum for people to complain about Metafilter. It is a testament to the Metafilter mods that this actually works.

Especially in some of the more heated discussions, it's very common to see a jessamyn comment like "Removed a few comments. This is a sensitive topic. Please take it to MetaTalk if you need to."

In my opinion, this is one of the major reasons why MeFi is such a pleasant community compared to something like Reddit. Because the mods don't let discussions spiral out into people yelling at each other, and because drama can be dealt with on a separate subsite, it truly feels like a community of mature adults. (For the most part.)

The interesting thing about Reddit, is that in a select few subreddits that are fortunate to have moderators as good as jessamyn, the experience is phenomenal and there is a concentration of domain experts sharing knowledge at a rate and depth to put even Hacker News to shame.

/r/askhistorians is one that comes to mind immediately.

I hope she has something bigger, better, and more exciting to move on to. She's well-respected due to her role in shaping Metafilter to what it is today.

And her work in the librarian community. And the warrant canary. And IIRC, a trickle-charging story-telling bear that almost was.

As amazing as her work at metafilter is, it's only a small portion of why she's well-respected. In a sense, this is quite appropriate, and is why she's been so perfect as the heart and soul of AskMe, if not much of MetaFilter for the last decade.

I am incredibly curious as to what she does next, because I'm quite sure it will be both revolutionary and personable in a way that is rare and getting more so.

No it's fine, changing is needed in a community.

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