MetaFilter FAQ

Favorites are an internal bookmark system for MetaFilter -- a way to save a good thread or comment to a central place that you can come back to later to catch up or read again. To save a post to your favorites, you simply hit the [+] link, located at the bottom of the text of the post on the front page. Within a post, you may click the verbiage "add to favorites", which is also located at the bottom of the verbiage of the post. It should show up on your favorites page, which is linked in the header menu and on your own user page. You can remove your favorites from the Favorites page or by clicking the [-] link.

Your favorites are public, so other readers will know what you've saved for later. If you want to keep things private, use your browser's bookmark functionality instead. If a comment has been chosen as a favorite, it will have a number in brackets next to the [+] link indicating how many people chose it as a favorite. Clicking the number will show you a list of who favorited that comment. You can mark your own comments as favorites (but your userpage does contain a link to all the comments and posts you have made, so you do not need to favorite them for reference).
(tags: favorites features ) May 10, 2006 - permalink - back to questions

The Popular Posts tab on MetaFilter and the Popular Questions tab on Ask MetaFilter show posts and questions that have received the most favorites from members within a specific time period: the last 24 hours, 7 days, 30 days, or all time.

While browsing these pages you can see both the total number of favorites and the number of favorites added within the current set time period. Favorite counts are shown as a text link that says something like [24 favorites (12 in the last 24 hours)]. That means the post has received 12 favorites in the specified time period and 24 favorites total. If a post only has [x favorites] listed, that means all favorites were added within the specified time period. Click the link to see the list of all members who added the post as a favorite and when they added it.
(tags: favorites customviews stats ) December 13, 2008 - permalink - back to questions

JavaScript is required to add favorites. So make sure you have JavaScript enabled in your browser, and make sure that any browser extension that can block JavaScript such as NoScript or AdBlock Pro is currently not blocking JavaScript from MetaFilter domains. Because MetaFilter relies on the Google AJAX Library API and Amazon CloudFront to host code related to favorites, you'll also need to make sure that the domains googleapis.com and cloudfront.net are allowed in any script-blocking extensions.

Also note there is a per-day limit on the number of favorites you can add, which is 240. If you have been very active favoriting things today, it's possible you have hit your favorites limit for the day.
(tags: favorites javascript ) February 17, 2009 - permalink - back to questions

You can use the site search to look for your post to see who has been recently linking to it. cortex discusses how to do this in this thread. There is also a Greasemonkey script, "MetaFilter Why Favorited", that will help facilitate this, or you can search for the link in Google using this syntax: link:http://www.metafilter.com/######/Rest-of-URL
(tags: favorites ) September 6, 2012 - permalink - back to questions

See here for several possible answers.
(tags: favorites javascript ) December 10, 2012 - permalink - back to questions

Yes. The Popular page displays the posts and comments with the most favorites over the past 7 days -- note that, because members have requested it, this page doesn't show comments from the USPolitics megathreads. The Favorites tab on both Metafilter and Ask Metafilter's front pages will show you the most popular posts. See here for more details. Bear in mind the "all time" list is limited by when the favorites feature was introduced.
(tags: favorites stats ) December 10, 2012 - permalink - back to questions

The My Favorites tab shows recent comment activity in threads you have favorited. If you favorite selectively, this is a way to monitor threads you are interested in, without commenting and adding them to your Recent Activity.
(tags: favorites customviews ) December 10, 2012 - permalink - back to questions

Any thread you comment in will automatically show up in your Recent Activity, linked in the header bar. If you'd like to add a thread to Recent Activity without commenting in it, you can use the "Add to Activity" link in the post (more info in this MetaTalk thread).

You can also review and manage the threads currently visible in your Recent Activity. See this FAQ entry for more details.

(tags: customviews favorites recentactivity addtoactivity ) December 10, 2012 - permalink - back to questions

Yes. You can change how favorites are displayed to you, throughout the site, by changing a setting in your Preferences.

The options are:
- Default: shows a number indicating how many favorites a comment has
- "Has Favorites": only indicates if a comment has favorites or not, does not show a number. If you want to see the number for a given comment, you can reveal it by mousing-over the phrase "has favorites".
- "Hide Favorites": does not display favorites to you at all (however, you can still use the Favorite feature)
(tags: favorites preferences ) December 11, 2012 - permalink - back to questions

Yes. Click on the number after "Favorites:" from your profile and you will be taken to a page that includes a search window you can use. Type the word(s) you would like to find into the search window and then click "Search." The first returns will be from your favorited posts, and if you then click on the "Comments" tab on that results page, you'll see search returns for comments.
(tags: favorites search ) April 14, 2014 - permalink - back to questions

There is an upper limit of 240 favorites per day (that you can add), to keep people from abusing the favorites system. There's no limit on the number of favorites your contributions can receive in a day.
(tags: favorites ) February 18, 2009 - permalink - back to questions