Like Metafilter...only different.

December 11, 2005 5:36 PM

I want to find other sites like Metafilter that focus solely on creativity rather than political issues or current affairs.

I really enjoyed reading Metafilter up until I joined and perhaps felt the need to join in. Trying to join in really highlighted how little I was interested in. AskMe is great but I would like to hear some recommendations for other communities where the focus is creativity: cool site designs, art projects, sculpture, music, painting, writing, drawing, architecture - without news and current affairs. This is not a troll, I still love the parts of Metafilter I loved before, and still love AskMe. I just realised that Metafilter wasn't all it cracked up to be once I turned the spotlight on it.

posted by oxala to Computers & Internet (18 answers total)

I hope you get some quality responses, because I can bet you anything there will be a lot of people watching this thread :) Like you said, not so much because we all HATE METAFILTARRR but just because we tend to get sick of the "roffle Bush roffle Paris Hilton" junk, and love to bits the really interesting stuff.

I know I've seen sites fitting the bill in the past, but I'll be damned if I can remember them.

And it gets a lot of flak, but I've actually found that certain sub-populations over at SomethingAwful's forums are quite quality-laden...but that's not quite the same format as a MeFi type site, nor is it open and free (although I've more than gotten my :10bux: out of it, heh).
posted by cyrusdogstar at 5:58 PM on December 11, 2005

Barbelith comes to mind, though it's somewhat more time-consuming to get an account there than it is at MeFi.

There are several sites which do a good job of providing links to interesting creative material — Arts & Letters Daily comes to mind — but few that allow discussion.
posted by IshmaelGraves at 6:15 PM on December 11, 2005 [1 favorite]

Ask Matt to start creative.metafilter.com? (not a snark response. I'm serious.)
posted by socratic at 6:19 PM on December 11, 2005

memepool has a ton of neat stuff, and is organized by individual categories so that you can at least ignore the ones that don't interest you. But it is not as high volume as metafilter and doesn't have comments.
posted by Rhomboid at 6:20 PM on December 11, 2005

speak up, for graphic design
posted by Dean King at 6:31 PM on December 11, 2005

The SA Forum's Creative Convention.
posted by holloway at 6:32 PM on December 11, 2005

Linkfilter.net has tons of interesting links, though hardly any discussion.
posted by LarryC at 6:44 PM on December 11, 2005

I Love Music. Snark factor is through the roof but if you want (often heated and highly opinionated) discussions about music, that's one place to try.
posted by mykescipark at 6:58 PM on December 11, 2005

Myke has it. There are sister boards there which are far more serious, like I love books and I love cooking. There's also I Love Everything, which is like the chat on Metafilter and nothing else. It's great.

Join: They'll be FAPing near you, for sure. Full board list here.

(BTW: The interface takes a good while to get used to, as threads pop up to the top when changed, and it takes time to work out which ones you've read and which you haven't. It's worth the investment. Basically, threads are "questions" there. To see what's being said, you look at the "New Answers" page for any given board. It's sorted by most recent postings. Bad form is to start a new thread when one exists on a topic, so threads get very long. This is good.).
posted by bonaldi at 7:28 PM on December 11, 2005

http://www.drawn.ca/
http://www.illustrationfriday.com/
http://photo.net/
http://www.worth1000.com/default.asp
http://graphics.com/
http://www.creativecow.net
http://www.photofriday.com/
posted by grumblebee at 7:30 PM on December 11, 2005

Hm... for lighthearted stuff I visit the b3ta board. Not high brow, or any brow necessarily, but I laugh at the fluffy tiem. Some quality as well as randomness.
posted by lorrer at 8:27 PM on December 11, 2005

How about just another section of MetaFilter for the news? It's kinda depressing to have to skim through the "Worst of the world" when you are trying to read "The best of the web".
posted by parallax7d at 9:12 PM on December 11, 2005

Oh, and monkeyfilter is a great MetaNews replacement if your are not snarky or an overly political type. If you are please don't go there.
posted by parallax7d at 9:17 PM on December 11, 2005

Craftster.org

Anything handmade and any type of craft/needlepoint/sewing/building/tinkering/handiwork you can imagine. Excellent source of creativity. Basically a DIY forum.

Warning, the estrogen-to-testosterone ratio is pretty high, but there are plenty of guys there too.
posted by Brittanie at 9:49 PM on December 11, 2005

oxala has posted no links 9 comments to MetaFilter

Not being snarky, but -- MetaFilter is what its users make it. Why not bring your own interests to the potluck? Why not find the links that interest you and bring them here? I would also love to come here and find links to "cool site designs, art projects, sculpture, music, painting, writing, drawing, architecture".
posted by Miko at 9:58 PM on December 11, 2005

Actually, http://politics.metafilter.com or http://news.metafilter.com could serve as a place to redirect 90% of certain posts.
posted by mecran01 at 10:03 PM on December 11, 2005

Kaliber10k is a fantastic site dedicated to design discussion, links, projects, etc. I used to visit all day, every day, for years, but I've fallen off lately.
posted by scallion at 1:43 AM on December 12, 2005

K10K used to be good. Haven't been there in a while. And they have many many blog neighbors like Design is Kinky.
posted by zpousman at 6:37 AM on December 12, 2005