Metaphysics is a slippery topic to pin down. The linked article to Stanford's Encyclopedia of Philosophy is a fantastic breakdown of the fields of study and research that goes into the existing body of work.

I however am interested in having a conversation on what makes something META enough to be self-referential (specifically in regards to this subreddit).

I posit that simply referencing a conversation, or commenting on a field of study is not intrinsically self-referential. Rather, my fundamental metric to gauge 'meta' is a) consideration of impact, b) reasoning, and c) directionality.

A) For me to define something as meta, it must be evaluating and considering the breadth of the existing conversation and discussion - and avoid defining terms and analysis in a single perspective. A proper evaluation considers that concepts can have many perspectives arriving at different stances, and that defining any single facet with an overly broad brush (not to be confused with a precise definition that intentionally acknowledges and excludes facets) loses the detail being discussed.

B) Under my posited metric, reasoning is the employment of perceiving and considering the different perspectives, and the consideration of what the new addition will be adding to the whole. In multiplayer videogame terms, a meta is the builds/characters/balance currently dominating high-level play. A skilled buildcrafter can take this meta, and build off it - designing targeted counters, new patterns to aim for blind-spots, and the like.

C) Directionality, synonymous with intent, is a way of evaluating how the new addition will add to the larger whole - and how the self-referential addition builds to provide a larger conversation then the previous one. If the intent is to simply add noise, I don't consider that 'Meta' - rather slop is a more accurate term.

What do you feel. Is this an overly limiting benchmark? Do you have a better one? Discuss!