So a meta post condemning meta is ok? Seems you've found either a paradox or a flaw in your logic. You wrote this post which means you condone an anti-meta post which is in fact meta. So you think there is some value to a meta post or at least a certain type.

"Allocate your time accordingly."

Hey what's your problem? This is a free market econonmy, thus we should be all pimping ho's

@Dinah Welcome to the incompleteness theorem.

So, "meta is murder", but "a certain amount of meta is healthy". How do you feel about metaphors?

@Hank: Indeed. I studied a few things along these lines but not this specifically. Thanks for providing the correct name so I can read up on it. I knew the concept but didn't know what to call it until now.

Sorry, I have to say this: OMFG!

Here we are (me included) meta-discussing a meta-meta-meta-post and not only that meta-discussing each other's comments! That's like at least 5 metas.

@Phenwoods: I prefer my phors direct, thank you very much.

>> So, "meta is murder", but "a certain amount of meta is healthy". How do you feel about metaphor?

Q: What's a metaphor?

A: To keep cows in.

Oh no, not again. For someone who doesn't like meta, you certainly go on about it enough, Jeff. Zzz.

Meta is the greek word for after and by. Meatah, means yur Amrican

You are right, I'm incredibly bored right now.

See also: inside baseball

1. Wikiquote: (idiomatic, US, sports) Technical matters concerning baseball not apparent to spectators.

You have those who enjoy the inside stuff (without necessarily participating), and those who don't care. I think instead of saying "Meta is Murder," a satisfying blog would figure out a good way serve and celebrate both constituents effectively without one interfering with the other.

Meta is so annoying I didn't even finish reading this blog post about blogging about blogging!

So did you enjoy your masturbation? Incidentally this was also the point I got bored and stopped reading.

Metaphors are rubbish!

Meta is super fascinating and dangerous at the same time.

What else is new? :) Your entire blog can be considered meta - the time you spend writing and I spend reading is obviously time both of us instead could have spent doing.

I don't disagree that meta is seductive - it's easier and more entertaining to discuss programming concepts than to fix bugs, and discussing policies have the added advantage that you don't need to know anything in particular to have an opinion.

But I do disagree that meta is murder. I think meta is more like Vitamin D: Necessary for proper functioning, but toxic in too large doses. So the interesting discussion is presumably "how much is too much"?

This is a great post (well mostly, it quotes some other great commentary, but still).

This pretty much puts in to words a subtle decline that I have been noticing for about a year or so on a forum that I visit regularly.

After reading Millard's explanation it IMMEDIATELY became clear that he is correct: I've been witnessing it first hand.

It's kind of like when your favorite band hits that point where all they do is write songs about how tough it is to be on the road. Yeah, I'm sure it sucks, but I can't relate so much.

So to summarize: You are blogging about a podcast referencing another site admin discussing one of his sites as a mechanism for shunting off-topic ("meta") discussion from another one of his sites. Not only that, but you are blogging about yourself blogging about this.

In other words, you're meta-meta-meta blogging about meta-meta-discussions.

Reminds me of the quote from Liz to Dilbert when he was reading a hint book for his golf game: "I think that's about as close as you can come to being a non-organic life form."

And yes, I am aware of the irony of commenting on a meta-meta-meta blog post about meta-meta-discussions, and no doubt somebody else will comment on my post, making this a meta-discussion about your meta-meta-meta blog post about meta-meta-discussions.

On a slightly different level, I fall into this trap when writing software. Instead of writing the software I set out to write, I decide the task would be easier if there were a tool or utility to help me implement feature X. So I start out writing that utility. And then that utility would be so much easier to write if...

void Foo()
{
cout << "Hello World!";
}

Hum, build something... That's a great idea

You realize you're meta-meta-blogging here?

Meta is an important part of my "artistic BS" meter. If it's a play about a playwright or actor, a film about a film maker of any kind, a song about music, and so forth, my standards for how good it must be to be not complete BS goes way up. There are exceptions (e.g. Johnny B Goode), but the rule does a lot to clear a lot of bad art out of the list of things to experience.

Meta programming is awesome.

Meta (en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metaldehyde) is simply wonderful. Since I started using it on my flower beds I have had no trouble with slugs and snails. This should be in every gardeners shed!

:-)

"Joel Spolsky had a great example of how meta-discussion can kill community in our latest podcast. ... And you go on there, and the first subject of conversation is who's going to be elected to the podcasting gear website board of directors. And the second subject of conversation is whether the election that was done last year was orthodox, or was it slightly ... was there something suspicious about that whole thing."

That was the same podcast where you discussed, at some length, the the best way to have a vote on what logo to use for your next website, wasn't it?

Meta (en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metaldehyde) is simply wonderful. Since I started using it on my flower beds I have had no trouble with slugs and snails. This should be in every gardeners shed!

:-)

"Triple-meta alert! That blog entry was me blogging about blogging about blogging. See? Painful. I told you."

Meta about meta about meta about meta, I can break the chain for you since this is a comment.

I love metaprogramming.

Many of your podcasts have touched on meta-discussions. The last one really talked about it. This really supports the idea that you get the most of what you focus on.

I was expecting more methadone / meta no done jokes...

honestly, who cares

This post is meta^2, meta about meta.

Really this boils down to "I'm bored by stuff that doesn't interest me". When it's meta you don't care about, it's annoying meta. Surprising.

What's worse than top 40 music? People talking about how bad top 40 music is.

The example Joel gives is a bit weak, given that meta only takes over when there's nothing left to talk about. So the alternative wouldn't have been a vibrant community talking about podcasting gear, but instead it would be crickets and an abandoned site.

Problem with Wikipedia is that it gets too meta about itself. It should just be a simple process of clicking a link and editing whatever you want. But in order to keep the project sane, and not destroy what someone else has spent hours perfecting, the logged-out edit page boilerplate is longer than the content itself. With rules about moving, images, inline citations, and proper capitalization it's hard for someone to just come in and make the mid-sized corrections they'd like to.

Jeff,

when you write something like this (now and again), do us a favor:

Ctrl+A
Delete

Or just reboot.

I can see a post about Agile smartiness coming.

P.S. I should know; I'm an administrator.

What about those for whom their line-of-business is metaprogramming? Resharper and Codesmith come to mind.

"let their freak flag fly"

I see someone liked Shrek: The Musical? :-)

Recursion alert: (at sentence) "Triple Alert:..."

Meta! XML! Meta! MXML! SXML! FUXML! META!

Got a reply for you:

http://daddywarbox.stumbleupon.com/review/34396304/

hmm, ive neverly truely understood what meta means, still dont.

Captcha: Hormones party, reminds me of the teenage years

You start about talking about talking about talking about blogging. and end with spend your time accordinglly. Isn't this post the mother of meta posts?

Then again, I could always blog about it and get a meta-meta-meta-meta-blog-post. I hope I counted that correctlly. On that note, please updated the post with any pingback so that we may know how much meta there is on this one.

Thats an idea for a new site, instead of digit or other sites for promoting web-content. A site that ranks the meta level of content.

I'll stop now, have a good day.

Thanks for wasting 5 minutes of my life.

I'd rather write a program that writes programs. That blog...

This reminds me of the discussions of recursiveness in _Godel, Escher, Bach: An Eternal Golden Braid_ by Douglas R. Hofstadter. Music, art, and incompleteness. A great read.

Headache.

My last blog was about how I had to hack WordPress so I could use Windows Live Writer without disabling a plugin. But I provided some excellent information on how to troubleshoot the problem.

Slow day I guess....nothing to see here move on

I am following your blog for 2 years now and I'm not a programmer, actually, I can't write a single line of code. So I guess I'm not your ordinary audiance.
I consider your blog to be a "model" of how to write and manage a good blog and I'm reading your meta posts more intentley than other posts.
So keep up the good mix :)

I can't tell whether this post was *meant* to be ironic, or not.

Jeff,
two comments:
1. the process is important, specialy when the rules are unknown and you have to coordinate effort. it has value in onlince communities because you need a place to hear people on how to do things.
2. people left unguided prefer to talk about people, so any place without guidance will become a discussion about the people themself.

Blog on system engineering:
http://design-to-last.com

two words: politics

I cannot agree more strongly with Jeff!

I haven't read your blog so I can't comment on it. But I think this comment system is really great, although it is sometimes difficult to read the captcha. Just thought, I'd let you know.

License plates... http://www.flickr.com/photos/3e/2622942332/

I agree that it can destroy a community. Any sort of internet forum typically suffers from this, too. You can either silence it (by banning folks and closing threads),confine it(akin to something awful's many meta subforums), or let it ride. But in the case of SA, it is a Very Good Thing since most other internet niche forums do not cater to "survival of the fittest" mentality, even though actual public discourse sways towards those that are most articulate, well-read, and with well thought out opinions. On the internet, ANY nobody can post whatever, which becomes mayhem.

"Anything you can do I can do meta."

Agh! Cleartype-enabled screencap! My eyes!!!

"And consider: how is progress made in the world? By sitting around and debating the process of how things are done ad nauseam? Or by, y'know ... doing stuff?"

That's easy. There would have been very little progress in the world without debating and understanding processes, before doing stuff. Do you think we got to the moon because people just decided to do stuff, or was there a huge amount of debating how things should be done before hand?

Of course, you do then have to do stuff, and you are trying to set up a false dichotomy with the use of the word “or”. But doing stuff without discussing how to do it, or asking yourself why you do it, can be the real impediment to progress.

Jeff,
With all respect, this is the worst I've seen on your blog. There was no content in this post at all, I feel like you've wasted my time in posting this. Please, if you don't have anything good to post, just don't post.

-Jarrod

I guess you think things like generics and templates are murder as well?

I think he's found a subject about which it is guaranteed that just about every post agrees with him, one way or another.

I'm blogging about you blogging about you blogging about blogging right now!

Someone please blog about me blogging about Jeff blogging about Jeff blogging about blogging please and the world will be a better place!

Captcha: Elleen vitiated (wha?)

I'm about one post away from deleting this RSS feed.

Am I the only one who felt the not so subtle reference to Meat is Murder by The Smiths? Was it intentional?

"I'm about one post away from deleting this RSS feed." - Casey

That about sums it up.

Jeff, I ccan't believe you missed the awesome pun:

a sort of METAdone for Getting Things Done.

Thank you for a very insightful article, it's a very interesting concept that explains the death of quite a few communities on the internet.

What about metaprogramming then? I actually read this blog because it is somehow connected to the topic programming..

I can't believe how much people are groaning about the meta in this post. Jeff actually says something good on the subject, and releases the news about meta.stackoverflow.com, which is an actual news item worthy of post. I think Jeff's doing a great job.

Get over yourselves, people. This sentence is false.

I agree with your message: meta is ok, but should be killed (as in dealt with) immediately. Some people want Stackoverflow to be some sort of canonical programming tutorial, for example, and that's not what it is.

I do have to say though that Jeff didn't need to reiterate this with a post. Slow week?

"And consider: how is progress made in the world? By sitting around and debating the process of how things are done ad nauseam? Or by, y'know ... doing stuff?"

Have to disagree.

Talking about how or why to do something in the context of engineering is given a special term: Design

Only the lonely who have garage projects have the freedom to do what they choose when they choose it. The rest of us work in teams and act accordingly.

alvrod,

"Am I the only one who felt the not so subtle reference to Meat is Murder by The Smiths? Was it intentional?"

Don't know about The Smiths, but didn't you see the knife and the fork below the skull? If you look closer you'll see by their angles that the T and the A were exchanged. And if you imagegoogle for "meat is murder", you can find the original. "Subtle" is something else..

Now that we talked about Jeff manipulating images for his blog post, what was the topic of
this post?

However, glad to hear that there's going to be some sort of meta-SO so that all these subjective things don't clutter up SO questions.

Metadiscussions are a real problem in discussion sites, because people are talking about themselves and others instead of the subject at hand. They could create new threads, but instead usually they hijack the current thread.

But I think there should be plenty enough discussion about software development processes in addition to plain doing stuff. Processes are essential part of doing work, so there is nothing wrong about talking about processes itself, too. Sure discussions should have their time and place, because also the real work should get done, but that doesn't mean that all meta is evil.

What the hell is 'social' software? Like social hardware such as a handgun?

Your article sounds like management meetings about management meetings. Bureaucracy loves meta!

I can't believe nobody mentioned this: Smiths++

Here and I thought it was going to be a post on meta-programming.

Here's a different take on meta. Remember how Al Swearingen and Wu made elaborate plans using drawings of stick figures? They got stuff done, because their brains had to be constrained to communicating the essential. Here's a post that develops this concept.

I think I'm about to lose my mind with all the levels of meta being discussed. It's starting to feel like that scene in Being John Malkovich where John Malkovich gets in the portal to his own brain.

For someone who is so against blogging about blogging you sure do it A LOT.

You went a little too far with the headline.
A simple "don't waste your time on meta blogging" would do.

You are also meta blogging a lot, so what's your point?

Seems to me that the infinite layers of meta and the level crossing between them is the essence of intelligence. Building software is also a task of tackling the meta as we continue to build more and more layers of abstraction. However, perhaps the concept of social meta is indeed a buzz kill.

Are all comments meta?

We're all murderers!

:O

I just spent 10 minutes looking for a "META IS MURDER" T-shirt before I realized that you had modified a "MEAT IS MURDER" one. D'oh.

I think a good META IS MURDER shirt would sell pretty well, incidentally. I'm an academic and META IS MURDER there as well (there is a good deal of talking about talking about talking, and there are quite a few of us who find that to be a bit unproductive).

Make it! Sell it to me! Come on, capitalism, do that thang!

...and, if I can say so, there is no community that illustrates the dangers of excessive meta-discussion than Wikipedia, where meta-discussion and meta-bureaucracy can, at any given time, threaten the productivity of the entire enterprise (and drive many a hard-working content producer away).

Obviously, SOME meta-discussion can be useful. A little bit of reflexivity sharpens the craft and allows one to come to terms with the means of production. Not inherently a bad thing, *if done in the spirit of actually facilitating further production.* Which unfortunately is more often *not* the end result.

(On a more "meta" point—the ReCAPTCHA bit fails to show up a good portion of the time on Safari 4 for me. "Can't find host" error. Means I am locked out of posting a comment a good portion of the time. Lots of reloading to try and get it work. Time ticks by. Kind of sucks. Just sayin'.)

"Triple-meta alert! That blog entry was me blogging about blogging about blogging."

If blogging about blogging is meta, then blogging about that is double-meta, not triple meta.

*This* is triple meta :-)

How many people have had to attend meetings about meetings before. Meta discussions take that into the digital/typed in format. The only problem is with speaking out loud most can tell when they're boring everyone else. On discussion pages that's not the case and making a point can take 5x longer.

I think thinking about Hofstadter is great.

Yo, dawg, I heard you like blogging. So we made a blog about blogging so you can blog while you blog.... ¬¬

Just wanted to say - love your blog posts and have been following "silently" for a couple of years. I love the practicality. Even this "meta" one is inherently practical: the message is - "do stuff; don't unnecessarily talk about doing stuff". (Some of my workplaces would benefit from such a message. LOL). Keep up the good work.

Like Darryn, I also spotted 'metadone', although I disagree that it's a good pun, because in the context of "Getting Things Metadone", it's pronounced too differently from 'methadone'.

Still, can it really just be a coincidence that 'metadone' and 'methadone' differ by only one letter? (Actually, I think it can.)

Observation: people do not read comments and so repetitive comments increase and then even lesser people read comments and then more repetitive comments ......
Vicious Comment Circle!
Someone's gotta get a clever "string similarity" bunch of code and apply it to popular blogs like this one and make a friggin Firefox extension so that most of the junk you anyway do not read is kept put of view - like Slashdot - just that you should be able to mod it as
"+5 Duplicate"

Oh NOW I get it... the true "coding horror" has been Jeff all along!

This site has been a blatant parody of true tech writing for quite some time, but enough is enough. There's not enough time in the day any more to appreciate the single shallow level that these posts cover.

Unsubscribing and never looking back....

Good article :P

I like the example about the podcast website... Similarly:
When I surf for programming stuff, finally find a forum thread that seems to be exactly my problem: you have the local forum whore who immediately steps in to say something like "you posted in the wrong section!"... Yea, well not everyone has time to hang around the forum all day for fun's sake... Then the conversation becomes an argument about the validity or placement of the topic.
Then you have to quickly read threw a dozen posts about writing without typos or posting in the right forum section, or why the topic starter is even asking such a question; you end up with nothing but 5 minutes wasted...

Did you just blog about blogging about blogging about blogging? i think you did... I'm going to go and sit down...

It's all about meth.

@wisecrack: I was gonna comment about meta-comments myself but decided to do find-in-page if others posted about meta-comments, kinda proving your point :P

@alex dante:

I clap for your final recognition. I cry for your lack of ability to get something out of his posts and the responses they bring. I personally love coding horror. For his "insights" and his commenters "insights."

Good day to you sir.

Captcha: "onism hoffmann" onism?

I thought this was going to be about the ridiculous amount of meta data Vis Studio generates, you know this being a programming blog; but no, just some complaining about other people's blogs.

@Dale: arguably it's Jeff complaining about his own blog. It could get dangerous. Hope he didn't use "On Error Resume Next"!

Meta might also mean all that stuff found in System.Reflection - which without there would be no ActiveRecord, no Reflector, no xxx (put in your favorite Reflection based framework here) etc. So meta in its pure sense have obviously different levels of values and justifications depending upon where and why you do it. I found SEO sites pretty interesting when I wanted to build a popular website for a previous startup of mine ...

For those of you querying the meaning of meta - it means many. As in metamorph (many form).

Is seems you think the meaning, and perhaps it has become so, is something to do with reflection and introspection.

Lets try and reclaim the true meaning of meta! Meta Means Many! Chant it with me.

"For those of you querying the meaning of meta - it means many."

Oh no it doesn't. It means many things, but "many" is not one of them. It's origional Greek meaning was along the lines of "after" or "with". It's modern usage is "about", as in "metamathematics"; using mathematics to study mathematics.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Meta

I'm not sure what this post means by "the meta" though.

(Captcha "information atop" - seems apt.)

postBlogEntry(void ***********meta)
{
//indirection here we come....
}

Reminds me of something I learned a while ago about group dynamics. Where the most successful groups tend to spent more time than average working out organizational issues when they're first organized, and then go on to spend less time than average on those issues when they're up an running. In other words it's not a simple issue, the hard part is having meta when you need it and not when you don't.

As a software developer, have you ever worked with a MetaMetaModel?

"For those of you querying the meaning of meta - it means many. As in metamorph (many form)."

Doesn't poly mean many? As in polymorphism.

I thought metamorph meant a change in form, as from caterpillar to pupa to imago.

Word verification: nadirs. How apt.

wow there are a lot of negative comments. this must be the least popular ch post ever.

i liked the story about the podcast gear forum. i've definitely showed up late at forums and found that nobody wanted to talk about what they're supposed to talk about anymore.

but my reaction has been to just check out. i never sign up for forums anymore. i just treat them as a readonly catalog of information.

I think it's about time you tackle (another?) post about how people will just get ruder and less appreciative the longer a blog runs, regardless of merit. I see it happen everywhere and it's pathetic and sad. Aren't developers supposed to be more mature than the average person instead of the whiny children I see in these comments all the time? Grow the hell up, everyone.

Then why are you going rehashing meta about an old blog post? Is this just a part of "keep jabbing?" You've made this point many times before and it, as surely you know, is kind of ironic.

As far as those talking about what "meta" means, I recommend studying some philosophy, it might make a little more sense. It doesn't mean "many" or anything like that. It means something much closer to "beyond" and in CS we typically use it to mean "about" so metadata is data about data. Pretty simple.

I found this one of the most interesting posts, to be honest. I think there is a lot to be said about the efficiencies or lack thereof, of meta-work. Obviously there is a certain level of meta thinking that is productive, and a certain level that is not.

The business metaphor is really what degree of management -- they aren't actually doing the work, but they are thinking about it and coordinating it. It's been rather extensively studied (optimal levels of management) , and frankly it remains a contentious and suboptimal aspect of business -- there is much hand-wringing about micro-management or why if there are so many adminstrators/overseers, things end up so easily missed, yadda yah.

I think that meta about meta is deadly serious. Too many people screw it up in either direction.

I'm amazed because I just stumbled on this post and site after having a conversation with someone yesterday who was complaining that his boss was making him write a 17 page evaluation of someone else's critique. Plus, one of the verification words I have to type to post this is kegel. Can I get more synchronicity? And now Walter Cronkite is dead, but it won't drive Michael Jackson out of the public driveling. What does this have to do with meta-whatever? I don't f-ing care!!!

Dude. Seriously. Let this one go.

I find Meta discussion far more entertaining and relevant than your Quixotic quest to end it.

BTW, I'm sad to see the orange go :)

Yo Dawg! I heard you like blogs so we put a blog in yo' blog so you can blog while you blog!!

For disliking meta as much as you do, you certainly do write a lot about disliking meta. Seems like it's own sort of meta.

I found this meaningful. I am using this knowledge in my bylaw change effort at church... (They are happy to have bylaws that don't match how we do business forever apparently in order to avoid talking about the meta discussion) I have to figure out how to either encourage people to tolerate the meta discussion or figure out how we as a "democratic Community" can avoid it all together...

I'd bet you didn't think of that angle. It seems to me that there are meta people who are willing to discuss how we are going to do things, and non-meta people who cannot comprehend why we would want to change anything ever... I'm sure there is some truth here I hope I figure it out before we try to bring it again to a vote.

I stand corrected. I had always assumed meta meant many, but I can't remember from where I read it.

Interesting post .. can't believe I read so many boring comments though .. I wonder whether your moderator would push this off to another site or section of the site.. oh wait, that's you. The best way to get your meta-post on the home page is to own the site, hey. Technically, you could have posted this on StackOverflow while the rest of us couldn't have - amazing the power one has when they are The Leader, haha.

Thanks for sharing

My company is especially bad at meta. We have meetings about having meetings...

You're starting to see it in food too. They have pizza flavored Hot Pockets, its only a matter of time until they have Hot Pocket flavored Hot Pockets. It'll be a Hot Pocket Hot Pocket!

I like how the people who are saying that this post is a waste of time are doing exactly what they're criticizing it for. Godel strikes again!

Isn't meta-thinking the cornerstone of humble programming? Doesn't that include the self-reflection about ourselves and our processes that makes us all the Best Programmer Ever?

I agree that writing about writing about writing has a limited audience, but murdering meta seems too extreme.

Thanks for information

we're going through CMMI certification now ... the process is already "meta", refining the process is "meta-meta", having meetings to plan on how to refine the process is "meta-meta-meta", or something...

This is a very real trap. Thanks for the warning!

yes it's agood web thanks for sharing .

Abercrombie & Fitch on Sale, Hoodies, Jeans, T-Shirts, Pants, Polos abercrombie and fitch abercrombie fitch abercrombie cheap abercrombie fitch Abercrombie Men Tee abercrombie womens polos Abercrombie & Fitch Men, women, and children's clothing

Google goes meta
http://productideas.appspot.com

It was a very nice idea! Just wanna say thank you for the information you have shared. Just continue writing this kind of post. I will be your loyal reader. Thanks again.