Treaty of Westphalia

References to the Treaty of Westphalia are an in-joke on Metafilter that started in 2006 by sourwookie (warning: very long, browser-killing thread) & continued in the fall of 2006 with user Meatbomb posting the entire text of the treaty to threads destined for deletion or eventual failure. Even so, the text is so lengthy that it was viewed as noise and these original comments were all deleted by the Moderators, earning Meatbomb a time-out. Meatbomb eventually created a stunt post FPP about several of his 'favorite' treaties and this was also deleted as well along with a second time-out.

Users still reference the Treaty of Westphalia, often as an example the Metafilter's own version of Lorem Ipsum or any long generic placeholder text.