How is this not chatfilter?

May 23, 2006 1:11 PM

"In light of the excellent responses generated by the "what is it like to be pregnant," I'd like to explore ejaculation and orgasm." The merits of the project aside, how is this not chatfilter?
posted by BackwardsCity to Etiquette/Policy at 1:11 PM (111 comments total)

They always include the phrase "I'll go first."

I think that pretty much answers your question right there.
posted by trevyn at 1:15 PM on May 23, 2006

Anyone have a link to the pregnancy question mentioned for a compare/contrast?
posted by rainbaby at 1:16 PM on May 23, 2006

OMG I'M A SIKIK SEER
posted by mr_crash_davis at 1:16 PM on May 23, 2006

Here's the pregnancy thread. That was probably chatfilter, too, though less obvious.

Without saying so, trevyn, he did go first.
posted by BackwardsCity at 1:18 PM on May 23, 2006

"I'll go first" is a good example of ChatFilter, not an absolute litmus test.
posted by cribcage at 1:20 PM on May 23, 2006

I dont think the pregnancy was chatfilter. I think this one was. The difference was clear to me:

1) In this one there is no problem to be solved. FFF, a male, is asking other males to share their experiences.

2) FFF even, in his first comment, does an "I'll go first!"

3) Everyone is invited to participate and share. You're a woman? No problem! You can share your orgasm experience too.

QED
posted by vacapinta at 1:22 PM on May 23, 2006

In this one there is no problem to be solved.

There was no "problem to be solved" in the pregnancy thread, no matter how many users or admins insist otherwise. Idle curiosity in the vein of "I was wondering what it's like to be pregnant/fat/leproscopic/a secret agent" does not equal "I've got a rat in my toilet." Both threads warrant deletion.
posted by cribcage at 1:27 PM on May 23, 2006

Yup, total chatfilter. The pregnancy one was iffy too, but a bit more best answerable, so to speak.

I tend to think that 'I just saw this other question, and it made me wonder...' is an indicator of chattiness too, a lot of the time.
posted by jack_mo at 1:28 PM on May 23, 2006

Indeed, clairvoyant mcd ftw!
posted by prostyle at 1:29 PM on May 23, 2006

Question is "what does X feel like, let's explore the issue" The poster already knows that X feels like. Chatfilter.
posted by rxrfrx at 1:30 PM on May 23, 2006

It couldn't be more chatfilter. I flagged it.

I only wish that you could flag posts without having to click through to the "more inside". That was like cleaning a gutter. You sit there for a minute poised above the muck before finally having the courage to plunge in. (Actually, that was as a good an answer to his question as anything in the thread!)
posted by MarkAnd at 1:33 PM on May 23, 2006

agreed on the chatfilter thing, I removed it.
posted by mathowie (staff) at 1:34 PM on May 23, 2006

Oh Matt. You're going to give the people who want strict rules an aneurysm.
posted by smackfu at 1:37 PM on May 23, 2006

fff seems to me to be possibly insincere either as posting a chatfilter question or a legitimate question. I disagree with others here about the pregnancy questionl; and I disagree with the contention that this ejaculation/orgasm question could not be presented in a way that makes it a legitimate AskMe question.

I continue to be bemused that a large number of people don't understand how a differently phrased question aiming at largely the same information could possibly be legitmate when the other is not. This whole idea about avoiding chatfilter is about why people are posting questions—not exactly what the question or the answers precisely are. We parse those question and think about hypothetical answers as a means to trying to determine is there a specific need here and is there a realistic possibily that need could be answered appropriate to AskMe? It's not so much that we're focused on clearly defined tests of utility, it's that if we didn't filter against chat, the chat would make up a large part of AskMe and reduce its overall utility and "spirit".

With that in mind, it makes perfect sense to me that someone could ask what it feels like to ejaculate and have that be a legitimate AskMe question when another person can ask essentially the same thing and it not be.

FFF's question seems insincere to me in every possible way and in that sense I think it fails the most important test of all. It's as if he took what he thought to be an obvious chatfilter question and added some verbiage to make it look like it was a real question that needed an answer. I think that if someone had a legitimate reason to want to ask what ejaculation is like, they could. Here's an example:

“My son has started puberty and we've discussed all the things that come with it. However, his friends have described to him things they claim that are 'coming' that don't seem like my own experience. I'm a mother, so I can't answer this question from direct experience. How can I explain to my son what to expect and how things can vary and related?”

Sure, I formulated that in terms that are very utility centric, but other possibilities I can come up with are not so blatent. A man and a woman may have been arguing/discussing about orgasms and how they experience them and decided they needed other people's input.

The common theme here is that chatfilter is just coming up with stuff to ask for the sake of coming up with stuff to ask. Legitimate questions serve less trivial purposes. Not just when they're asked and answered, but later as well. Chatfilter is a curiosity found elsewhere and in great quantities.
posted by Ethereal Bligh at 1:49 PM on May 23, 2006

smackfu, what's an aneurysm like?

If it's anything like ejaculation, I bet it first builds on the anticipation of the event, then as the aneurysm/petting builds you might feel a small amount of release, but the tension never fades. Finally, in a crescendo of love and/or blood clots, your ejaculation/aneurysm provides an enjoyable/deadly release and you fall ever so gently to sleep.
posted by mathowie (staff) at 1:50 PM on May 23, 2006

Um, I'm seriously confused. The pregnancy one should be deleted then too. It's the same sort of question to me.

If it wasn't betrayed that the pregnancy one started the thought process, would the ejaculation question have stood?

Why is it ok to ask for experiences about a uniquely female experience but not a uniquely male experience?
posted by agregoli at 1:54 PM on May 23, 2006

well, someone's point was just made. whose, though, is the question.
posted by shmegegge at 1:56 PM on May 23, 2006

I agree with what Ethereal Bligh has said - however, I don't get why the pregnancy thread was any better. It was still wondering and curiosity for the sake of it.
posted by agregoli at 1:59 PM on May 23, 2006

Why is it ok to ask for experiences about a uniquely female experience but not a uniquely male experience?

because we think the motherhood thing is beautiful and sweet, and gism is gross and icky. a lot of people will insist on lengthy, esoteric explanations for the difference, but let's be honest: the pregnancy thread was chatfilter, but we liked it anyway and let it stay. this one is chatfilter, but we don't like it so it goes. or rather, at least one of two particular people didn't like it.
posted by shmegegge at 2:00 PM on May 23, 2006

A man and a woman may have been arguing/discussing about orgasms and how they experience them and decided they needed other people's input.

So it's ok if it's external-chatfilter? What the hell? Surely the whole point of AxMe is to provide answers to questions, the asker of the question surely can't have much to do with it's legitimacy. Isn't that what the search facility is for? So you can find answers to questions you might have, no matter if they were chatfilter or not, and there are indeed an awful lot of chatfilter posts in the archives.

When answering questions which have no direct and obvious answer besides basically polling the populace to find out what you should conform/not conform to (e.g. wtf does a male orgasm feel like?!) I don't see how that is even vaguely relevant.
posted by public at 2:03 PM on May 23, 2006

I disagree with the contention that this ejaculation/orgasm question could not be presented in a way that makes it a legitimate AskMe question.

Who made that contention?

I think there was a kernel of a question there and it could have been re-phrased better but not as it stands now.

I continue to be bemused that a large number of people don't understand how a differently phrased question aiming at largely the same information could possibly be legitmate when the other is not.

Again, could you point to the object of your bemusement?
posted by vacapinta at 2:06 PM on May 23, 2006

because we think the motherhood thing is beautiful and sweet, and gism is gross and icky. a lot of people will insist on lengthy, esoteric explanations for the difference, but let's be honest: the pregnancy thread was chatfilter, but we liked it anyway and let it stay. this one is chatfilter, but we don't like it so it goes.

shmegegge, I wondered if that was it. Which offends me as a woman, because I find pregnancy just as disgusting as jizzum.
posted by agregoli at 2:06 PM on May 23, 2006

ok so I fail at communication. What I mean is that is the problem that the person who is asking the question doesn't have some pressing need to have the question answered, or that the question is far too open ended and not really answerable beyond just collection opinions on things?

We seem to do an awful lot of both around here so that seems a rather odd stance to take. We let video posts hang around on the blue and people whine about those as well...

posted by public at 2:08 PM on May 23, 2006

vacapinta, I'm interested in knowing what about this particular question was phrased so poorly that it merited deletion? was it merely the mention of the pregnancy thread? the question seems to me to be the very model of a well and judiciously phrased question. I say that in all sincerity.
posted by shmegegge at 2:09 PM on May 23, 2006

agregoli, it offends me as a man, as well. but that's because I find neither pregnancy nor ejaculate disgusting.
posted by shmegegge at 2:11 PM on May 23, 2006

To each their own - to disgust or not to disgust - that is the question.

Regardless, I fail to see the difference and I can see I'm not the only one who wants clarification.
posted by agregoli at 2:13 PM on May 23, 2006

My suggestion is to set a policy to delete a few threads at random each day, to keep people guessing. Then when people complain about a thread being deleted, you could just say "well, my d20 rolled a 1 so I had to delete it".

It would make life much simpler.
posted by smackfu at 2:15 PM on May 23, 2006 [1 favorite]

Regardless, I fail to see the difference

yeah, I meant that to imply that I'm on your side, here. sorry for the confusion.
posted by shmegegge at 2:17 PM on May 23, 2006

Oh no apologies, I get what you are about.
posted by agregoli at 2:19 PM on May 23, 2006

Always begin your chatfilter posts with the phrase "I'm writing a novel and I need to know..."
posted by LarryC at 2:21 PM on May 23, 2006

For fuck's fucking sakes. I hate when threads I like get closed due to chatfilter.

This wasn't chatfilter. There was a question involved. What does it feel like. Sure, there's an objective answer to it that's going to require discussion, but it was indeed a question. And it doesn't frigging matter who answers it.

This thread, and the aforementioned pregnancy thread, were awesome conversations. They were the kind of thing that's helped MeFi grow as a community, and they were useful to myself and others because this is exactly the kind of question that it's hard to ask in real life. I rarely disagree with Matt and Jess, but I'm starting to a lot more about closing threads in the green.
posted by SpecialK at 2:40 PM on May 23, 2006

"Again, could you point to the object of your bemusement?"

Aren't the comments immediately preceding yours examples? Public wrote: "Surely the whole point of AxMe is to provide answers to questions, the asker of the question surely can't have much to do with it's legitimacy." That is equivalent to saying that there's no way to "rephrase" the question that would make it legit...it's legit on the basis of what is asked, no more or less. Not how it's asked or what we can glean of the writer's intent.

Public, in my example, it wasn't "external chatfilter". The couple's discussion may have started as chatting, but by the time they (hypothetically) brought it to AskMe they almost had certain needs that they hoped would be met by asking the question. It's the same question, but the context in which it's asked is different and that's true about every AskMe question. It's what we can tell about the context of the question that provides us with the best test for chatfilterness.

On Preview: "Always begin your chatfilter posts with the phrase 'I'm writing a novel and I need to know...'"

I think you meant that ironically, but in my opinion you demonstrate my point. We accept the "writing a novel" qualification because we assume it's honest and therefore there's a genuine need to answer the question. Chatfilter isn't that no interesting answers could be provided, it's that it's an artificial creation of questions that, by virtue of they're whimsical genesis, are unlikely to be of much value, on average.

You could argue that my neighbor who comes over to borrow a cup of sugar is as deserving, or undeserving, of that cup whether he's lying to me that he needs it or not (and he's just getting sugar from me to annoy me). I'd argue that his honesty and real need for the sugar make all the difference in the world whether I should give it to him. Matt's antichatfilter policy isn't to deny people sugar, it's to deny and deter people from making bogus requests for sugar that waste everyone's time and leave less sugar for the folks who actually need it. What's wrong with chatfilter isn't what is chatted about, it's that it's chatted about.
posted by Ethereal Bligh at 2:42 PM on May 23, 2006

FFF obviously didn't need to know the answer to this question, he seemed to be posting it as some sort of community service. Questions posted for the benefit of the community are likely, as this one was, to be phrased so broadly as to be pretty useless (the "How do we prevent rape" one is the other one that jumps to mind).

I'm sure I could have posted the question simply as "I've always wondered whether male and female orgasms feel different. Guys, what does it feel like?" and it would have stood. But the second you feel you need to explicitly include everyone in the discussion -- actually, the second you feel like you need a discussion rather than an answer -- is when you've sent your question over to chatfilter.
posted by occhiblu at 2:43 PM on May 23, 2006

actually, the second you feel like you need a discussion rather than an answer

that's what the pregnancy question was asking for. any asker could call the colletion of answers they get a discussion for no other reason than the simple fact that that's what occurred to them to call it at the time. there's no reason to think that fff was asking for an elaborate back and forth, instead of a simple catalogue of answers to his question. and there CERTAINLY isn't any reason to think he was asking for any different of a collection of answers than the pregnancy one was asking for.
posted by shmegegge at 2:50 PM on May 23, 2006

My issue is *why* he was asking. He was asking because he thought that AskMe as a whole needed that question answered, not because he himself needed that question answered (as evidenced by the fact that he could answer it himself, and specifically said he wanted answers like his own).

The pregnancy question was asked in good faith, by someone who was seemingly hoping to understand an unfamiliar process.

I think by the discussion thing I meant that if your motivation for asking the question is "I would like to participate in a discussion about X," then you shouldn't be doing it in AskMe. If your motivation is "I would like others to explain X to me," then you're probably OK.
posted by occhiblu at 2:54 PM on May 23, 2006 [1 favorite]

He posted it to make a point.

EB is correct. If FFF had posted:

I'm writing my first foray into erotic fiction, and I'm having trouble describing the act of ejaculation. Can you help?

...Then the question would have been allowed to stand. Is that a low bar? Yes. Is it arbitrary? Yes. Maybe a bit silly, even. But it's better than nothing, and mostly it works.
posted by cribcage at 2:55 PM on May 23, 2006

An imperfect-but-still-useful test is that the pregnancy asker was asking something he couldn't answer while the ejaculator asker was asking something he could. That tells us something about why each asked the question.
posted by Ethereal Bligh at 2:57 PM on May 23, 2006

"I think by the discussion thing I meant that if your motivation for asking the question is 'I would like to participate in a discussion about X,' then you shouldn't be doing it in AskMe. If your motivation is 'I would like others to explain X to me,' then you're probably OK."

That is an oddly mysterious but very accurate litmus test, in my opinion. Good show.
posted by Ethereal Bligh at 2:59 PM on May 23, 2006

Because, as an example, aside from work-related questions, almost everything our beloved Miguel could possibily ask would be, almost by definition, chatfilter. Does Miguel want an answer? Not really. Does he want a discussion about the question? Certainly. And his own participation, too. (BTW, I miss Migs quite a bit.)
posted by Ethereal Bligh at 3:02 PM on May 23, 2006

"Sure, there's an objective answer to it that's going to require discussion, but it was indeed a question. And it doesn't frigging matter who answers it."

No, there's a subjective answer.

Generally, objective answers are good for AskMe— That joist can support 100 lbs., there were eight presidents with full beards, reboot and hold c, etc.
Questions that require objective answers are good.

Subjective answers often make for great reads, but the utility of AskMe is not for readers, it's for askers. That's what all of the chatfilter boils down to— questions designed for good reading, and for the enjoyment of the people answering, over the utility to the asker.

There are plenty of cases that toe the edge but still have a use. The pregnancy question is inherently different from the ejaculation question by a metric of utility. That being said, I still would have deleted the pregnancy question or sent it back to be rephrased (which might be a decent option for the mods— a kickback that tells users "Question too chatty. Do you have a reason for asking this? Reword").
posted by klangklangston at 3:19 PM on May 23, 2006

fivefreshfish has a history here of posting things to "make a point". He doesn't do it everyday, but it's a consistent pattern. Given that, I submit that Matt's action may have less to do with the content of the question and more to do with the motives.
posted by SeizeTheDay at 4:29 PM on May 23, 2006

Subjective answers often make for great reads, but the utility of AskMe is not for readers, it's for askers.

So there is no utility in simply wanting to know something? What about all those "What the hell is in the picture?" questions? They are basically chat filter with a specific objective answer at the end. Why is that sort of chat any more valuable?

Are we saying we should only answer subjective questions when the asker has some sort of special reason to be asking that sort of question which we empathise with? Like the recent one about wanting to stop smoking pot. And also, probably most anon questions.

That seems kind of silly in a way and I have no idea why we would want to exclude open ended questions from anyone else when they potentially provide the same sort of discussion and information. Although I can imagine that the emotional elements of open ended questions can be rather important and lead to substantially different conversations being had in the process of coming to a conclusion, or at least airing out the populaces feelings on the topic.
posted by public at 4:29 PM on May 23, 2006

The pregnancy question is inherently different from the ejaculation question by a metric of utility. no it's not. the pregnancy question asked what it's like for women to give birth, which the male asker couldn't know. fff's question asked what it's like for people beside himself to orgasm, which he couldn't know. specifically he asked if other users encountered a difference between ejaculatory and non-ejaculatory orgasms. neither question has any utility beyond the chatty "I kind of wonder" aspect.

fivefreshfish has a history here of posting things to "make a point".... Given that, I submit that Matt's action may have less to do with the content of the question and more to do with the motives.

this is an entirely valid point, and I find it more than a little curious that matt explained deleting fff's question in two places, and mentioned this in neither.
posted by shmegegge at 4:39 PM on May 23, 2006

I have learned the rules of AskMe, so it's been a long time since I've had a question removed. The whole "explain why" thing is an easy rule to follow, and I agree with those who say they don't get why people don't just follow it.

But I totally don't get the rule. To me, it's like someone said, your post will be deleted if you don't begin it by mentioning one of the names of Santa's Reindeers. Easy to follow but -- to me, at least -- totally arbitrary and irritatingly pointless. Now it's not my site, it's Matt's. And he has the right to make any rules he wants, whether or not they seem pointless to me. But some people DO have trouble following a rule -- or even keeping it in their heads -- if they can't understand it's utility.

Usually, when I bring this up, people accuse me of lying, but I honestly don't get the functional difference between "How does it feel to ejaculate?" and "I'm writing a novel and I need to know how it feels to ejaculate." Maybe it's an emotional thing???? Maybe many people just care more about a question if they know the reason why it's being asked. I don't share this emotion, so if that's the reason, I don't get it.

People talk about utility. Every question has utility. To fill a gap in the questioner's knowledge. To me -- and probably to many others -- this seems MUCH more important than "name that song."

I realize that some questions have specific answers and others are chatty because any answer is equally valid, but that's not what I'm talking about. I'm talking specifically about the "why do you need to know," and the site rule that "because I'm writing a novel" is somehow (why?) more important than "because I'm curious." I KNOW that this is just simply the case for some people. Some people don't place a great premium on curiosity for its own sake. But people like me (a minority?) see no difference between that goal and any other.

And what I really don't get is how it affects the answer. My answer to the ejaculation question will be identical no matter why the questioner is asking the question. (Yes, in some cases, knowing why might help -- "Oh, you're writing a novel? Well, though they may be true, you should avoid the using so and so's answer, because it will sound cliche in a novel", but I don't believe people are insisting on "why do you ask" because they simply want to be more helpful.)

Why are you asking the question? I don't care. I just care about the question and the answer. Disclaimer: you hit me on the head because you're mentally retarded? I don't care. I just care that you hit me on the head.
posted by grumblebee at 5:02 PM on May 23, 2006

Well ffs, I tried my best to make the question one that would result in as good as the pregnancy one was.

I wanted to find out how my experience differs from other men's, and (once that bit was settled) differs from women's.

I can not fathom why the meta-analysis ("Why did he ask why?") would have any relevency whatsoever. Is AskMe going to start second-guessing everyone's motive? That way lies madness.

I suppose my failure was in framing the question. Perhaps one of our virginal female users could ask it instead. Then it would be all hunky-dorey.

As for this

fivefreshfish has a history here of posting things to "make a point".

My AskMe questions are here. I'm afraid I do not see any that exist "to make a point." WTF are you talking about?
posted by five fresh fish at 5:24 PM on May 23, 2006

BTW, thanks to everyone who did answer. I'm disappointed that the thread was not allowed to continue; I was surprised by some of the answers, and intrigued by others. It coulda been a nice bit of normative-based knowledge, had it not been axed in its prime.
posted by five fresh fish at 5:28 PM on May 23, 2006

I suppose my failure was in framing the question. Perhaps one of our virginal female users could ask it instead. Then it would be all hunky-dorey.

I know you mean that semi-sarcastically but, to me, that really was a big source of the failure. EB expounds on this above to great lengths and I agree with him, mostly.

Usually, when I bring this up, people accuse me of lying, but I honestly don't get the functional difference between "How does it feel to ejaculate?" and "I'm writing a novel and I need to know how it feels to ejaculate." Maybe it's an emotional thing????

Yes. Its about what the asker perceives the function of Ask Metafilter to be. Its why people frown upon questions that begin "I have this homework assignment due tomorrow and I need someone to answer this question for me:..." whereas if they leave out that preface they may be in the clear. Is that so hard to understand?

How you phrase things is not a small thing - it is everything. In both Ask Metafilter and in in Life in general.
posted by vacapinta at 5:40 PM on May 23, 2006

How you phrase things is not a small thing - it is everything.

if you ask someone in a bar what it's like to be pregnant, the way it was asked in the question, some people will say it's an uncomfortable question and some will gladly answer. if you ask fff's question in a bar in the same way fff asked it, then you'll get precisely the same reactions. it's well and good to say "how you phrase things is everything," but no one has given an even remotely decent difference between fff's phrasing and the pregnancy phrasing. the only reasonable explanation for the deletion given so far has nothing to do with phrasing and everything to do with guessing fff's intentions based on exterior assumptions of his character.

so stuff the "phrasing is everything" nonsense. this site would be a lot better off if people, the admins not least among them, would admit that they make their decisions about these things based on gut reactions and worry about how it fits with the guidelines afterward.
posted by shmegegge at 5:48 PM on May 23, 2006

vacapinta, it's not clear because you didn't explain it -- you just restated it. Most people seem (to me -- I me be misunderstanding) to be saying it matter because it matters. And I'm not belittling that. Love matters to me because it matters. I can't explain it better than that, other than to say it feels good to me, which isn't really much of an explanation. If someone said, "I don't get why love matters," I'd have to admit that I can't help them understand (though I would feel sorry for them).

So I can accept that "the reason why" matters to many people here, and like an anthropologist in a foreign country, I am more than willing to follow the rules.

I can't help wishing I understood them, too.

By the way, I also don't understand why it matters if a question's wording shows what "the asker perceives the function of Ask Metafilter to be." To me, a question should sing or swim on its own merits. The question will be site-worthy or not, irregardless of the questioners understanding.
posted by grumblebee at 5:53 PM on May 23, 2006

Because, as an example, aside from work-related questions, almost everything our beloved Miguel could possibily ask would be, almost by definition, chatfilter. Does Miguel want an answer? Not really. Does he want a discussion about the question? Certainly. And his own participation, too. (BTW, I miss Migs quite a bit.)

This is brilliant and provides an excellent litmus test for those of us with a good memory of Miguel's inimitable style. Just ask yourself Would Migs Post This? If the answer is yes, just say no. (I miss Migs too.)

To me, a question should sing or swim on its own merits.

I want mine to sing!
posted by languagehat at 6:05 PM on May 23, 2006

poetry from the pregnancy thread -- enjambments my own, text is b33j's:

untitled (tentatively: the miracle of life)

giving birth
was seriously like

shitting
a bowling ball.

With everything going on and
feeling interconnected, the actual

delivery of the head felt
like it could be

out the anus.

posted by ori at 6:07 PM on May 23, 2006

You should title that

"The Camel Through The Eye Of The Needle"
posted by mr_crash_davis at 6:09 PM on May 23, 2006

ooh, i like that.
posted by ori at 6:21 PM on May 23, 2006

Migs is Miguel Cardoso, right? Were his chatty questions deleted? I just read through all his surviving questions, not many of them seem chatty to me. They seem like pretty typical askme questions, though he's very interested in American customs and word-usage. Which he asks non-chatty questions about.

I guess "What do New Yorkers think of New Jersey" could get chatty, but it is a question that has an answer, if we take it to mean "What's the general stereotype of NJ in NYC?"
posted by grumblebee at 6:22 PM on May 23, 2006

Were his chatty questions deleted?

Miguel's chatty threads were pre-AskMeFi. He often used MeTa as his personal living room. I used to dislike his abuse of the site, but given the way things have changed around here, I miss his wit, charm, and honesty.
posted by SeizeTheDay at 6:46 PM on May 23, 2006

"Some people don't place a great premium on curiosity for its own sake."

That's true, but it's certainly not true of everyone who doesn't agree with you about this, most certainly not me. I went to college to learn ptolemaic astronomy for crying out loud. I can see why you are attracted to this as an explanation for something you are having trouble understanding, but I don't think it is valid in this case, even generally.

I thought my sugar example answered yours and others' objections of this type very well. Maybe it was obscured in my verbiage. I want to know why someone wants a cup of suagr from—most especially when there's a very substantial possibility that they don't really need it and are mostly wasting my time. No matter what the motives, my practical situation in providing that specific bit of sugar is the same. But in some other important ways, they are very different from each other.

It is not "madness" to rely upon a supposition of motives in an important evaluation. It can be hard, yes; and in some senses it unknowable—but as a practical matter we operate on this basis every day in many social exchanges and that alone demonstrates that the futility of it is likely overestimated.

I'm not entirely happy with the formulation that if it's just about personal curiosity, then it's not kosher, because in the abstract I am certain the mere desire to know something without regard to utility is itself perfectly legitimate, as you and others are arguing. In practice, however, for exactly the same reasons that we may find ourselves pointedly asking a very persistent and curious child why they want to know something, we very well may wish to filter out most of the idle curiosity questions because otherwise we would be overwhelmed by them. At AskMe, with regard to this, while it seems like the "idle curiosity" criterion is utilized (because it is often stated), in fact it's revealing that we don't denigrate these questions as "CuriosityFilter", but that we do denigrate them as "ChatFilter". And that's an important clue. While it's arguable that trivial curiosity-of-the-moment questions might overwhelm AskMe, it's certain that AskMeAndChat would overwhelm AskMe, allowed unchecked.

Yes, ChatFilter would (sometimes) be interesting and (sometimes) be of utility to future readers; but for the most part that would be the exception and not the rule and the noise level of AskMe would go up quite a bit and have a real practical consequence for its usability. (Or intended, someday utility.)

I think there's some simple gut tests that can differentiate the pregnancy and the ejaculation questions. The first one, about the questioner's status as he asks the question, is somewhat self-evident, I think. If a small, mixed gender group was having a conversation and a man said something like, "All the changes to a woman's body as she experiences pregnancy are profound relative to most other experiences one can have with their own body...can the women who have experienced it communicate to me, a man, the most important and most common ways in which it's a deeply 'odd' or 'interesting' experience?", then the women present, and able, would likely be very interested in offering some answers to what is obviously an earnest and thoughtful question. When the same man later wonders, "What is it like to different men to ejaculate, and I wonder if we can explain this to women?", the question is obviously less pointed, less specifically inquisitive, has less intellectual utility than the previous question. Not the least because he already has his own answer to the question and thus whatever it is that he claims to be looking for is necessarily ambiguous with regard to his question, otherwise he'd be able to answer it simply.

Another example, similar, would be like a blind person asking some seeing people what the experience of seeing is "like". Compare that to a number of seeing people wondering about what it is like for a person to not be able to see in terms of how they understand the experience of "seeing". One of those is direct, the other the beginning of a question and not really a question in itself.

Grumblebee, in your comment was a bit of implied intellectual snobbery, well-intended I'm sure. But its presence frees me to retort with my own speculation that people that can't tell the difference between a chatty speculative question and a serious speculative question are people that have not really aquired the habit of serious intellectual discourse. The most productive discourse is not the result of stumbling upon the right or best answer—it's knowing and wielding the art of asking the right questions in the right ways. Our AskMe criteria are really nothing more than an attempt at a subset of this. There are better questions for our purposes and there are worse questions for our purposes. The criteria aim at some rough, and judiciously enforced rules that as a practical matter differentiate between the better and the worse questions.
posted by Ethereal Bligh at 6:52 PM on May 23, 2006

"What is it like to different men to ejaculate, and I wonder if we can explain this to women?", the question is obviously less pointed, less specifically inquisitive, has less intellectual utility than the previous question."

not only is this not what he asked, but you've given no reason to see this question as having less intellectual utility than the first one. but before you write another 4 pages regarding intellectual utility, please remember that the question asked was about how OTHER men besides fff experience ejaculatory orgasms as compared and contrasted with non-ejaculatory orgasms. there is, in the question he actually asked, rather than the one you invented above, a specific deliniation between the people being asked and the asker of the question. that he gave an answer from his own experience early in the thread was explained by fff as being an example of the kind of information and tone he was ideally hoping for.

is it chatty? yes. is it more so than the pregnancy question? not remotely. not only that, but virtually everything you've mentioned above doesn't even figure into the ultimate decision of anyone here to classify this question as chattier than the pregnancy one, except possibly yourself. I strongly suspect, however, that you came up with that tome of rationalization well after having decided it was chattier and having asked yourself, "now that I've decided it's chattier, let's see if I can explain why."
posted by shmegegge at 7:14 PM on May 23, 2006

Speaking of chatfilter...what's your favorite beer?
posted by SeizeTheDay at 7:14 PM on May 23, 2006

I note that the quality of the thread has not been considered.

In MeFi it is not infrequent that a completely crappy post turns out to generate an informative or otherwise excellent thread.

Indeed, the pregnancy thread is an excellent example, in my opinion and others'.

I think that especially in AskMe, the thread content should be as much basis for moderation decisions as the question itself, on the presumption that content is important more so than clumsy question-asking.
posted by five fresh fish at 7:34 PM on May 23, 2006

Speaking of chatfilter...what's your favorite beer?

Hey, they even went first!
posted by smackfu at 7:35 PM on May 23, 2006

Reread the actual question. "I wish to explore," "invited to join," "I foresee," "When we appear to have achieved," "I invite our female participants to describe"... it reads like a moderator's opening statement for a roundtable discussion. While there are questions there, they're presented as topics of discussion, not as requests to help FFF solve a (physical, mental, or emotional) problem.

Reread the pregnancy question. It's a pretty straightforward request for information so that the poster can understand something he doesn't currently understand.

Look at the titles, for heaven's sake: "What's it like to give birth?" versus "Exploration of male orgasm." If you're "inviting" people to "join" an "exploration" of a topic you yourself are completely capable of answering just as well as anyone else, it's chat. It might be interesting, but it's chat.
posted by occhiblu at 7:42 PM on May 23, 2006

What occhiblu said.

It's probably/hopefully the paranoia talking here, but that question seemed disengenuously tailor made for deletion, so as to provoke a reaction like agregoli's.

And SeizeTheDay; every time you point a finger, there's seven pointing back at you.

Six, if you're a high school wood shop teacher.
posted by Alvy Ampersand at 8:39 PM on May 23, 2006

It took an act of extreme willpower not to post the link to this article to the thread when it still existed.

Aside from that, sometimes threads just finish in an comparatively anti(pseudoanti?)climactic manner, and sometimes they go out with a bang. Similar discussions will be raring to go again after a short refractory period.
posted by Drastic at 8:49 PM on May 23, 2006

What occhiblu said. :-)

Thank you for a lucid critique. I am now in complete agreement and apologize for having posted it.
posted by five fresh fish at 8:59 PM on May 23, 2006

Haha, well it's deleted now.
posted by delmoi at 9:01 PM on May 23, 2006

The pregnancy one was good chatfilter, but this one was bad chatfilter.
posted by delmoi at 9:03 PM on May 23, 2006

fivefreshfish has a history here of posting things to "make a point". He doesn't do it everyday, but it's a consistent pattern.

The above is absolutely true; fff's defense ("Look at my AskMe posts!") deliberately ignores the rest of his history here. It is a pattern he's demonstrated before, and - to me, of course - it couldn't be more obvious that he posted his question solely to challenge the chatfilter guidelines, and that he lied when he tried to make us think otherwise.

I am now in complete agreement and apologize for having posted it.

*spits*

Yeah, whatever.
posted by mediareport at 10:12 PM on May 23, 2006

It's amazing, really. The question itself was masturbatory in form, and then fff answered it himself (mastrubation), and the content of the quasi-question was all about his own potency, or lack thereof.

Interesting that in this thread, he chose not to mention that he's on medication that causes ejaculatory impairment, that he thinks he's qualified to be a sex educator, that he can come from having his back scratched, or that he thinks that a female climax and orgasm are distinct events, all of which he's said before. The world waits breathlessly for more wisdom from the guru.
posted by bingo at 12:09 AM on May 24, 2006

if your motivation for asking the question is 'I would like to participate in a discussion about X,' then you shouldn't be doing it in AskMe. If your motivation is 'I would like others to explain X to me,' then you're probably OK."

[this is good]
posted by stavrosthewonderchicken at 1:24 AM on May 24, 2006

"no it's not. the pregnancy question asked what it's like for women to give birth, which the male asker couldn't know. fff's question asked what it's like for people beside himself to orgasm, which he couldn't know. specifically he asked if other users encountered a difference between ejaculatory and non-ejaculatory orgasms. neither question has any utility beyond the chatty "I kind of wonder" aspect."

Then delete them both.
posted by klangklangston at 5:56 AM on May 24, 2006

Ethereal Bligh, thank you for your reasoned response. You're going to think me very stubborn, but I honestly still don't get it. But first of all, something we're agreed upon: "soft", opinion-based questions have no place here and are clearly chatfilter. Example: "what's your favorite color?" This can't possibly be narrowed down to a correct answer. I think you know this isn't what I'm talking about, but I wanted to make it 100% clear that I understand why such questions are problematic.

I claimed that, perhaps, the reason many here want to know WHY certain questions are being asked is a due to a bias against curiosity for its own sake. You answered, "...it's certainly not true of everyone who doesn't agree with you about this, most certainly not me."

I am definitely not sure that my armchair psychology is right, but you confuse me by later saying, "I want to know why someone wants a cup of sugar ... especially when there's a very substantial possibility that they don't really need it and are mostly wasting my time."

I believe that you value curiosity for its own sake (your degree, etc.), but it SEEMS like -- from your response -- that's not true all the time.

You also say claim that, in practice, one must differentiate between "idle" curiosity (a phrase I dislike) and need-to-know stuff:

In practice, however, for exactly the same reasons that we may find ourselves pointedly asking a very persistent and curious child why they want to know something, we very well may wish to filter out most of the idle curiosity questions because otherwise we would be overwhelmed by them.

I have several problems with this example. First of all, I spent years working with children, and I always answered all their questions -- if I knew the answer -- without asking why they wanted to know. Why they want to know was irrelevant. Now I work as a teacher of adults. I teach very nuts-and-bolts stuff. Software. But again, any question is equally valid. The only rule is that questions must pertain to the topic of the class. I won't entertain botany questions in a Photoshop class. But I WILL entertain questions about, say, why the Adobe logo is red. Why does the student care? That's his business. What if it's just "idle curiosity"? That's fine. IT'S FINE BECAUSE IDLE CURIOSITY QUESTIONS ARE OF EQUAL IMPORTANCE -- TO ME -- TO UTILITY-BASED QUESTIONS.

I really mean that. It's not a life decision of mine. It's how my brain classifies things. In fact, I'm VERY uncomfortable using "utility based" as if it's the opposite of "idle curiosity." I don't think there's really a difference. The "utility" of an answer to an idle question is that it fills a blank in the brain.

Forgive me, I know you've claimed otherwise, but it SEEMS like -- from your writing here -- that you DO have a slight bias against what you call idle questions. If I misunderstood you, I'm sorry.

For me, questions can only be divided into two categories:

1. Emergency Questions: where's the fire extinguisher?
2. All other questions.

Though I mostly think you answered my question by -- in an elaborate way -- saying "that's just the way it is", you did bring up one important point:

we very well may wish to filter out most of the idle curiosity questions because otherwise we would be overwhelmed by them.

I simply disagree. On two counts. (1) I think it's great to be overwhelmed by questions, which is why I visit AskMe as often as I can. (2) But more important: I don't think idle questions would overwhelm AskMe. The danger to AskMe stems from NON-questions -- or rhetorical questions or round-robin discussion questions -- not "just because I want to know" questions.
posted by grumblebee at 6:41 AM on May 24, 2006

"Why they want to know was irrelevant. Now I work as a teacher of adults. I teach very nuts-and-bolts stuff. Software. But again, any question is equally valid. The only rule is that questions must pertain to the topic of the class. I won't entertain botany questions in a Photoshop class. But I WILL entertain questions about, say, why the Adobe logo is red. Why does the student care? That's his business. What if it's just "idle curiosity"? That's fine. IT'S FINE BECAUSE IDLE CURIOSITY QUESTIONS ARE OF EQUAL IMPORTANCE -- TO ME -- TO UTILITY-BASED QUESTIONS."

And you've never seen minute questions be disruptive in a classrom? If a student has his hand up after every sentence, do you call on him each time, or do you ask for him to see you after class to entertain the queries?
AskMe is a shared resource, and people who are asking chatty questions, especially questions that could be asked elsewhere, are decreasing the utility for the rest of the people using the resource. Just like someone who wanted to ask why the Adobe logo was red, and then why that red, and then why not blue, and then and then and then...

So, while I respect your general desire to be the touchy-feely fairy of friendliness, the central point is that adding more questions to the stream decreases the ability for people who have MORE PRESSING questions to get answered, much like how if someone is looking to know how to use layers, that question should be prioritized over someone who wants to know why the company is called Adobe anyway. If you don't agree, I can't imagine you being a very good teacher, no matter how nice you may be to your students.

Currently, the system of AskMe has two constraints for utility— the first is the weekly limit, the second is the general compliance with the guideline of Not Being Chatty. The first is a hard limit imposed structurally, the second is a soft limit that requires good faith from the participants. If every question is equally valid in your Candyland, then the necessity will arise to place a stricter hard limit to keep the general utility the same.

And as of now, "Why does Adobe have a red logo" would seem like a fine question, even if it's idle. "What are some logo colors" would seem like it was too broad. As with all soft limits, subjective decisions must be made, and keeping in mind the utility of AskMe for ALL OF US should be imperative.
posted by klangklangston at 7:30 AM on May 24, 2006

"(1) I think it's great to be overwhelmed by questions, which is why I visit AskMe as often as I can. (2) But more important: I don't think idle questions would overwhelm AskMe. The danger to AskMe stems from NON-questions -- or rhetorical questions or round-robin discussion questions -- not "just because I want to know" questions."

1) The utility SHOULD NOT BE FOR READERS. It should be FOR ASKERS. Whether or not you enjoy being overwhelmed is irrelevent to the guy who just wants to know how to get his foot out of the hardening concrete.
2) Idle questions should be constrained by soft limit, but are judgement call. They are fine sometimes, but with fewer of them around more resources are channelled into answering questions that need answers, instead of just idle curiousity.

Finally, there ARE OTHER SITES (including MeCha) where idle curiosities can often be satiated without decreasing the utility of AskMe. Believe it or not, there's a whole internet past MeFi.
posted by klangklangston at 7:34 AM on May 24, 2006

Then delete them both.

I couldn't agree more. Or leave them both. I just think drawing a line between these two is splitting far too fine of a hair then acting like they're as different as night and day.

I still can't believe that godawful favorite beer askme is still up.
posted by shmegegge at 7:43 AM on May 24, 2006

Grumblebee, as klangklangston hints at, most people responding to questions have limited time/energy/interest. If the front page of AskMe is filled mainly with questions that the asker doesn't have all that much investment in ("Why is this logo, that I didn't even know existed until five minutes ago, red?"), then the limited answering resources can get used up answering questions that the askers don't actually care all that much about, rather than digging farther down to the more pressing questions that may have now scrolled off the front page.

Those answers may one day be interesting to readers, but I think the issue is that the asker should be the one most invested in finding the answer.

(Which is also why people balk at questions that could be answered easily by Google -- if the guy asking the question doesn't care all that much about the answer, why should I spend my time and energy helping him figure it out?)

So we care about why someone's asking as a way of figuring out, to some extent, whether they actually care about our answers. It's like if a hostess at a restaurant greets you with "How are you?" your answer is likely to be different than if your doctor asks the same question. Most of us don't want to spend long periods of time composing our inner thoughts and personal experiences into helpful anecdots and advice if it turns out the questioner was just asking idly.
posted by occhiblu at 8:06 AM on May 24, 2006

I thank all of you who have taken the time to respond to me. I am scared that I'm growing tiresome to everyone here. If so, tell me to stop. But I'm going to continue to post until then, because this issue is important to me. I feel strong that the quest for knowledge shouldn't be constrained.

If the front page of AskMe is filled mainly with questions that the asker doesn't have all that much investment in ... then the limited answering resources can get used up answering questions that the askers don't actually care all that much about.

I couldn't agree more. Where we differ is on our criteria for deciding whether or not an asker cares deeply about his question. When I ask a question out of "idle curiosity" (boy, I really feel like we -- myself included -- are prejudicing this issue by using that phrase!), that doesn't mean I have a low investment in it. I may be atypical (if I am, I'm not unique), but the MORE idle a question is, the more I care about it.

When I took math classes, I loved the totally abstract stuff. But as-soon-as the math got tied to building bridges, I got bored. I've changed over the years. I now like practical stuff too, but I don't place it higher (or lower) than pure thirst-for-knowledge stuff. If my hard drive breaks, I may ask a question re: how to fix it. If I see a movie about Gorillas, I may ask some "idle" questions about them. To me, the need-to-know feels identical.

I keep pounding at this, because I feel like I'm not getting a clear answer to my question. People keep claiming that idle questions are bad because they are chatty. We all agree that chatty questions are bad. So that's like saying idle questions are bad because they are bad.

Or people say they are bad because they hog limited resources. ALL questions hog limited resources. So clearly it's more than that. Idle questions are an unfair hog of resources. Why? Because they are bad? Why are they bad?

(I'd also like to see the evidence that they ARE a hog of resources -- remember, I'm NOT talking about rhetorical or round-robin questions.)

People claim that they are bad because they're not need-to-know questions. Other than emergency questions (my foot is stuck in the cement), which I think we ALL agree should take priority, no questions are need-to-know any more than any other questions. If you disagree, explain. You may feel you need to know a cake recipe for your brother's birthday tomorrow, but you don't NEED to know it. You won't die if you don't know it. I may feel that I NEED to know about Gorillas, but I don't. I won't die if I'm ignorant about them. But I really WANT to know about them. It FEELS like a need. Just like your cake question feels like a need.

I still suspect that I'm dealing with an arbitrary -- but true -- difference in the way minds are organized. The plethora of "idle questions are bad because they are bad" responses makes me feel like this is just a feeling that many people have.

And I totally respect that. I totally respect, "Grumblebee, we can't explain it to you, but it's how many of us feel." On the other hand, I don't want to put those words in anyone's mouth. If there really is an logical reason, please share it. Or don't, if you're tired of this. I may not understand the rules, but I know how to follow them.
posted by grumblebee at 8:38 AM on May 24, 2006

I think maybe you're projecting your investment in pursuing random knowledge onto other people? Does that seem fair?

When I was growing up, any time there was a debate about a fact at the dinner table, my father would tell me to go look up the answer in our encyclopedia set. I still basically use that process -- Curious about something? Look it up! -- and that, to me, is like your gorilla example. It's an itchy need to know about something.

I think lots of valid, great AskMe questions are asked from that itchy need to know something, even if that "something" has nothing to do with the asker's own life.

I also think, however, that the majority of questions that most people ask over the course of their lives are *not* motivated by that same itchy need to *know*. They may be motivated by an itchy need to talk, or to connect, or to share their own experiences (like asking "How was your day?" just so that you can launch into a spiel about your own). Or as a means of expounding a personal theory without looking quite so pretentious -- "Here's what I think; do you agree?" Or because you're bored and feel like talking about something, so you drum up a conversational opener that happens to be a question.

I think for most of us, drawing that line between "This asker needs to know" and "This asker is using the question as an excuse to talk" is pretty easy. It's the same way I differentiate between the hostess being polite in asking me how I am and the doctor actually wanting to know. Or EB's neighbor actually needed sugar versus coming over to ask for sugar as an excuse for having a conversation (or complaining that EB's television is too loud, or asking if he's willing to split the cost of a fence, etc.).

People ask questions all the time in real life not in order to get them answered, necessarily, but just to connect with people in some way. Getting the answer might be a nice side benefit, but it's not the ultimate goal of those questions. It's like those ice-breaker exercises that a company might subject its employees to -- if you have to walk around and find the person with the same birthdate as you, it requires that you ask lots of people a question, but the ultimate goal is to get you to meet people and to have something to talk about, not to get your question answered.

To me, almost all chatfilter questions fall into that category. Someone's looking to talk, or share, and so they ask the question as an excuse to do so. That's what I mean about not being invested in the answers.
posted by occhiblu at 9:11 AM on May 24, 2006

That is, chatfilter-y posters seem to be not invested in the answers as much as in the process of discussing the question.
posted by occhiblu at 9:13 AM on May 24, 2006

"Or people say they are bad because they hog limited resources. ALL questions hog limited resources. So clearly it's more than that. Idle questions are an unfair hog of resources. Why? Because they are bad? Why are they bad?"

They are bad because they are idle musings that can be answered in other places at other times. I realize that you're having trouble with the tautology, but sometimes "idle curiosity" is just Snakes on a Plane. It is what it is what it is, and that's what makes it what it is.
posted by klangklangston at 9:19 AM on May 24, 2006

I think maybe you're projecting your investment in pursuing random knowledge onto other people? Does that seem fair?

No, I would never do that. I think assuming someone else's mindset is one of the foul things anyone can do. Which is why I've been very careful -- when I've proposed psychological theories here -- that I've interjected phrases like, "correct me if I'm wrong." I can only read my own mind. All I say is that, since I DO have my mindset, it is a POSSIBLE mindset. Other people MAY have it too. I've certainly met other people who claim to have it.

Your reasoning, occhiblu, is the clearest I've seen so far. Thank you. I understand that when you read "idle questions," you suspect that the asker is just trying to reach out and connect -- the question could be almost anything. While I think that's possible, I'd suggest that now YOU are projecting. You have no way of knowing someone's motives. Only they can know.

All the current "tell us why" rule does is prompt such people to come up with a bogus reason. If their need to connect is so strong that they post random question to AskMe -- questions they don't even care about -- then they may append a lie to their question in order to save it from being deleted.

To be honest, the thought has occurred to me. There had been some questions that overwhelmed me, begging me to find answers. Yet I knew they were "idle" and that was frowned on. I thought about posting them anyway, with a lie that I needed to know the answer for an essay I was writing or something, but I balked at the immorality of that.

I don't think it's your main point, and I don't want to derail, but I'm totally confused by your "look it up in the encyclopedia point." Sure, if people can answer a question themselves, it's a waste of space on AskMe. I agree totally. But that says nothing about whether it's a "need-to-know" question or an "idle" question. Whatever one's reason for asking a question, AskMe should only be used when one's personal resources fail.
posted by grumblebee at 9:27 AM on May 24, 2006

They are bad because they are idle musings that can be answered in other places at other times.

Wait. I'm not talking about musings, I'm talking about questions. Real questions that have real answers -- just not questions affect a physical object in someone's life. Questions that are nagging their brain.

If a question can be answered in other places, i.e. google, then it shouldn't be on AskMe. I don't get why people are equating "idle questions" with questions that one can easily answer oneself. They're not the same thing.

I realize that you're having trouble with the tautology, but sometimes "idle curiosity" is just Snakes on a Plane. It is what it is what it is, and that's what makes it what it is.

I know what "Snakes on a Plane" is, but I don't get your comparison. I do agree that "idle curiosity" is "idle curiosity."

And...?
posted by grumblebee at 9:32 AM on May 24, 2006

If I made the rules around here (which I will, as-soon-as I'm elected dictator of the world), they'd be very simple:

1) Only ask questions once you've exhausted online searches, dictionaries, encyclopedias and other, easily-available reference materials.

2) Only ask questions that can reasonably have clear, non-opinion-based answers -- i.e. answer that can be backed up by hard evidence or at least personal experience.

By the way, this would eliminate all the "What's a good sci-fi book that I should read," questions. To me, these are round-robin questions -- definitely chat filter. They are equal to "what's your favorite color?"

I wouldn't personally make the following rule:

3) Only ask questions that reasonably have a small number of correct answers,

but I think this is clearer than "Explain why you're asking the question," and might eliminate some of the "idle curiosity" questions that people dislike.

For instance, an early question of mine -- which was deleted and which I would never ask these days, now that I know the rules better -- was, "As an atheist, I have never experience God. What does experiencing God feel like?"

Note that this is similar to the pregnancy/ejaculation questions. Why did I need to know? Because I was passionately interested. I still am passionately interested -- so much so that on some days, I think about little else.

Note too that this question meets my first two criteria. I HAD researched it, but hadn't come across satisfactory answers (there probably ARE answers in theological writing, but I don't even know where to start looking). And my question DID have clear, non-opinion based answers. One's experience of God is one's experience -- not an opinion.

But each experience is different, so my question violated rule number three.
posted by grumblebee at 9:43 AM on May 24, 2006

The encyclopedia thing was just an attempt to show that I know where you're coming from with the "I need to know this, I want to find a way to answer it, gimme a resource that will answer my question" impulse. Looking it up --> asking AskMe. (And yes, sorry, I could have made that clearer.)

The "Tell us why" rule might make people come up with a bogus reason, but I guess I figure if someone's invested at least enough to concoct a reason, it's some sort of evidence that they do want their question answered. If it's not obvious why a question matters to the poster, and the poster can't even be bothered to invent a reason why it might matter, then those are probably good signs (not reasons, but signs) that the answers don't matter very much to the asker.

Certainly, I can't know anyone's motives for sure. But we always use the clues at our disposal to determine the motivations and sincerity of the people we're talking to. Online, those clues are obviously restricted, and so people may need to go a bit more out of their way than usual to indicate they're sincere. That's why well-written questions tend to matter so much -- not because any of us cares about writing ability, so much, just that the better written the question, the more (we think) we can trust that we understand the asker's motivations and that we're not just being taken for a ride.

Really, the more I write about this, the more I'm starting to suspect it's an issue of saving face -- we don't want to get "tricked" into spending time helping someone who doesn't really need it. (Which leads me to wonder if homeless people with the lengthy "AIDS victim, homeless vet" signs get more money than people who just ask for money without explanation.... we don't want to inadvertantly help someone who doesn't need it very much.)

Of course we're not always going to be right in reading those clues. But I don't think it's wrong or hypocritical or confusing to ask for them.
posted by occhiblu at 9:44 AM on May 24, 2006

(I think, also, that it's not wrong or hypocritical to judge those clues, either; we learn if our skills in reading those clues were good -- and we help improve those skills -- as we compare notes with others, and with the poster, in MeTa.)
posted by occhiblu at 9:48 AM on May 24, 2006

Interesting about saving face, occhiblu. That never would have occurred to me. To me, AskMe isn't personal. It's a clearinghouse for questions and answers. If someone asks a question and I know the answer, I answer it. If my time is limited, I don't answer it, even if I know the answer. I can't give all my life to AskMe. Or I answer it later when I DO have time.

If it's not obvious why a question matters to the poster, and the poster can't even be bothered to invent a reason why it might matter, then those are probably good signs (not reasons, but signs) that the answers don't matter very much to the asker.

Agreed. But what about: "because I really really really want to know the answer and not knowing is keeping me awake at night"? Why isn't that a valid reason?

Okay, I'm repeating myself. I'll sign off.
posted by grumblebee at 10:07 AM on May 24, 2006

"because I really really really want to know the answer and not knowing is keeping me awake at night"? Why isn't that a valid reason?

I suspect, though I can't be sure, that if the questioner wants to know that badly, that sincerity and forethought will come through in the question, and the question will most likely be considered valid. Almost all the chatfilter questions I've seen deleted sound like questions that first occured to the poster a grand total of 30 seconds before posting.
posted by occhiblu at 10:16 AM on May 24, 2006

I was totally unsurprised to see that the ejaculation question had been deleted. But I was disappointed, because for me that question had a genuine practical application. (I am quite private about my sex life, and generally shy here at Mefi, so I'm a bit agog to be involved in this discussion at all. But I did kinda start it, so here I go.)

Let us suppose that it had been stated in another way --- if I, a heterosexual female, had posted a question like:

How can I better understand the sexual experience of men and apply that knowledge to enhance our sex life? [more inside] As a woman, I have no real notion of what goes on in a man's mind and body in the moments around orgasm and how it compares to my own experience, but I feel confident that knowing what sensations, thoughts, and impulses arise would allow me to be a better sexual partner.

Can the men of Metafilter enlighten me? What happens to you if a partner intensifies his/her actions as you approach orgasm? If he/she backs off, and then brings you back up to the peak of arousal, does that intensify or diminish the experience? And (perhaps most elusively) what is it like to ejaculate?

Although my SO's description is useful, I wonder if he might unconsciously be hedging a bit to preserve my feelings, much as a guest would hesitate to tell a hostess at a dinner party what aspects of a menu she could improve. I'm wary of asking my male friends, as that would expose us to a greater intimacy than any of us want. As for looking online, well, the resources may exist, but googling returns millions of hits, most of them pr0n. I'm hoping for clear responses from an intelligent community of men, which I can only imagine finding here.

I'm sincerely wondering whether that question would have passed muster. If not, how is it substantially different from, say, this thread? Would the admins like to weigh in on that? This is in no way intended as a snark, but is a question in good faith.
posted by Elsa at 10:40 AM on May 24, 2006

Not an admin, but I wouldn't have had a problem with that, except that you probably don't have to explain that much. I'd have cut the last paragraph -- but then, I'm an editor, so cutting paragraphs is rather an ingrained habit.
posted by occhiblu at 10:50 AM on May 24, 2006

Also:
But I was disappointed, because for me that question had a genuine practical application.

Yes. Which is why you asking it seems fine. Someone else, for whom it does not serve a genuine practical purpose, asking it was the problem, IMO.
posted by occhiblu at 10:51 AM on May 24, 2006

occhiblu, yes, I agree that it's overkill. The last paragraph would probably do as a response in-thread to the inevitable "ask your partner" comments.
posted by Elsa at 10:52 AM on May 24, 2006

Pretty much everything occhiblu has said. She's really explaining this more clealry and succinctly than I am.

I do think that it's true that there's a "saving face" thing involved here, but I don't think it's true that there not something productive behind that impulse. If we set up a help booth at a fair to help people, but we get almost no one asking for help (eliminating the "scarcity of resources" aspect), but half the people that do ask for help are teenagers coming up with bogus questions just to mees with us...I think almost anyone wouldn't like that and they'd see it not just an abuse of their person, but of the institution, which has a specific purpose. That's to help people that need help, not help people that want to be amused.

Chat questions are not entirely without utility and they're (usually) not offered in bad-faith; but, even so, they're not a proper use of the site because, primarily Matt, but most of the rest of us can tell the differences between chatty questions and more serious questions and by fiat AskMe is intended for more serious questions. FFF's question was not very serious. Elsa's question was.

People are objecting to what seems like is a "because I say so" as to the difference here, klangklangston suspects me of ex post facto rationalization. Well, yes, that's exactly what I'm doing. Because the difference between a chat question and a serious question is a gestalt difference that is intuited as much as it is deduced. For most of us (I dare say), that gestalt conclusion is obvious, though ambiguous, and therefore if those who don't get it ask those of us who do, those of us who do have no alternative than to think very explicitly rationally about this and come up with some explanations after the fact. That this is the case is not some sort of automatic disqualification of the answers offered.

"Forgive me, I know you've claimed otherwise, but it SEEMS like -- from your writing here -- that you DO have a slight bias against what you call idle questions. If I misunderstood you, I'm sorry."

I think I do make a distinction that you don't. I am strongly curious and I am interested in pretty much everything. I cringe, like you do, when someone refuses to answer a question, especially in a classroom. But, ultimately, I am curious because I believe knowledge is useful. Even the sorts of things that most people don't think are useful. As I said, and you recognized, it's pretty darn weird to accuse a johnnie—especially one so strongly self-identified as a johnnie like I am—that he's interested only in practical knowledge.

But as a johnnie, especially as a johnnie, I'm extremely familiar with the fact that life is finite while knowledge is infinite. To get the most out of our limited time here (and "here" formerly for me was the limited time in college) we have to discriminate between more useful discussions and less useful discussions; and to do so involves the ability to form more useful questions. That's the only thing we do at St. John's—we read books and we talk about them. Seminars begin with an opening question; after freshman year, asked by one of the students. There is a difference between good questions and bad questions. Any philosopher, any scientist knows this. Both are professions built upon asking questions. Both require some rigor in questions. I can't say it more clearly than this. All questions are not equal.
posted by Ethereal Bligh at 11:22 AM on May 24, 2006

"As an atheist, I have never experienced God. What does experiencing God feel like?"

For what it's worth, I thought this was a fine question, quite distinct from (say) the what-beer-do-you-like kind.
posted by languagehat at 11:50 AM on May 24, 2006

Because the difference between a chat question and a serious question is a gestalt difference that is intuited as much as it is deduced.

Is it? I can't help but feel like it's a logical difference, one that could be categorized and decided on, with some margin for error. I feel like what was gestalt about the difference in this case was that one came from fff and was about gizm and the other was from a relative unknown with a cute question about mommies and babies. this is not to say that anyone was intentionally making that differentiation, but gut reactions are what they are.
posted by shmegegge at 12:09 PM on May 24, 2006

No, I've ignored your argument about a discrimination against jizm versus the beauty of pregnancy (I write ironically) because, speaking for myself, it never occured to me. Well, that's not an answer that will satisfy you; but if you look way back through my comment history you'll find that I'm perfectly comfortable with talking about jizm on metafilter. Seriously, my reaction when I read your first comment about it was that it never occured to me but that I can't rule out that it was a factor in someone else's sensibilities who objected to the post. But I'm at least one data point contrary to your hypothesis.
posted by Ethereal Bligh at 12:31 PM on May 24, 2006

Thanks for your post, EB. Very clear.

I do want to comment on one thing you say: For most of us (I dare say), that gestalt conclusion is obvious...

I have often said things like this, but I've learned to be wary when I hear them coming out of my mouth (or when I head them coming out of someone elses).

"I can't tell you why, but COME ON -- we all know that's a bad movie."

"Everyone KNOWS he's Gay."

"I can't prove it to you, but to most of us, it's obvious that God exists."

If by "it's obvious," you mean that "it feels so right," then I have no complaint. But if you mean, "I can't explain it or prove it, but I KNOW it's true", then I do have a problem. And I have even more of a problem if you go on to say, "I'm going to compel others to conform to this truth."

Am I saying that we should only act on truths that we can prove? No. Living like that would be impossible. But I AM suggesting that when we must act on a strong feeling (at least when that strong feeling affects other people, who may not have the same feeling), we should spend some time reflecting on our actions.

And we should be HONEST about what we're doing. We need to say, "Sorry, some of you are never going to understand why, but we are going to delete some of your posts for reasons we can't explain."

I sympathize. I'm in the middle of casting a play. I must make decisions about who to cast and who not to, based on my feelings alone (or if I'm working with producers, by group feeling). If I don't cast John, I can't prove to him that he's wrong for the part. All I can be is honest and say: I don't feel right about you in this part, and -- unfortunately for you -- I'm the one with the power in this situation.
posted by grumblebee at 12:31 PM on May 24, 2006

Well, that's not an answer that will satisfy you;

no, that's perfectly satisfactory. i can't, and don't intend to, try to establish a uniform reaction on behalf of every mefite. but you've given reason to doubt the post because it was made by fff and his use of the link to the pregnancy thread. that was the other gut reaction I mentioned. what causes me to reject other more intellect based explanations of the difference between the two is the very fact that people are reacting, in the gestalt manner you described, to something that seems to be an intellectual distinction. chat or not doesn't seem to reside in the gut to me, and I don't see anything that tells me otherwise. this is why I'm not clamoring for the deletion or acceptance of either, but rather a uniform response to both. that there isn't one leads me to believe that gut reactions are the only thing that decided one for the other. and those reactions really don't seem to be based on the chattiness of one versus the other, because there haven't been many compelling arguments regarding one's chattiness, specifically, over the other.
posted by shmegegge at 12:47 PM on May 24, 2006

Out of curiosity, what is wrong with the three rules I posted, above.
posted by grumblebee at 12:51 PM on May 24, 2006

2) Only ask questions that can reasonably have clear, non-opinion-based answers -- i.e. answer that can be backed up by hard evidence or at least personal experience.

I think almost all answers are, by their nature, "opinion-based." How do you recommend a course of action, or a solution, without giving your opinion? This just seems confusing to me.

The reasonably small number of answers thing also, to me, seems confusing. Mainly, probably, because I spend most of my time on the relationship threads, where there's not really a clear-cut response to most of the questions.

For me, it's more that questions need to:

1. Have an actual problem to solve. You should be able to distill your question into a single sentence that ends with a question mark, and that sentence should be the main focus of your post.

2. Not be easily solvable through google searches, etc., like you said.

3. Make your life better once people have responded to the question you've actually asked.

I'm not sure how to explain that, really, but it's the chatfilter distinction I'm trying to make. If I ask someone "What's your favorite beer?", and they tell me, does that make my life better? Probably not. If I ask someone "What's your recommendation for a beer I'd like, since I also like Guinness?", and they answer that, there's a good chance (and not just a random chance) it will actually make my life better. It is, of course, possible to ask the first question and get answers to the second question, but that's why the phrasing matters -- asking the second question encourages more relevent answers.

If I've been lying awake at night because some aspect of gorilla behavior has been bothering me, and I ask about it and get an answer, will it make my life better? Yes.

And for the record, your god question seems fine to me, and I would suspect that MeFi's general inability to discuss religion played a larger part in its deletion than its supposed chattiness.
posted by occhiblu at 1:22 PM on May 24, 2006

Maybe it's this: Can I ask my question to total (non-MeFi) strangers and care about their response? I like to know the favorite beer of people I'm friends with, because we go out drinking or I bring food and beer to their houses sometimes, and it's nice to know what they like. Do I care, really, what other people drink? Not so much.

If the only reason you care about the response is because you'd "like to have MeFi's opinion," whereas you wouldn't care what a random person on the street's take on the situation was, then it's probably too chatty.
posted by occhiblu at 1:29 PM on May 24, 2006

And for the record, your god question seems fine to me, and I would suspect that MeFi's general inability to discuss religion played a larger part in its deletion than its supposed chattiness.

Nope, the responses were reasoned and uncombative. The deletion was Matt's unilateral decision (before flagging).

After he deleted it, someone -- not me -- posted a Meta thread, complaining about the deletion. I eventually chimed in, saying that I accepted Matt's decision, but I was confused by his reasons (chatfilter). I was then attacked by several people who refused to believe that I honestly accepted Matt's decision and equated my confusion with an attack on Matt. I'm glad this thread did not turn out like that one. That one shut me up on the subject of chatfilter for a long time.

occhiblu, my favorite threads are also the relationship threads. People here -- including Matt and Jess, I guess -- seem to like them, so they stay, but I think many of them turn into chatfilter. I didn't think we were discussing stuff we like and stuff we don't like. (That sounds sarcastic. Sorry. I don't mean it as such, but I'm pointing out that you dislike one of my rules because it might eliminate questions you happen to enjoy.)

Perhaps there's a better way of saying, "no opinion-based questions." What I meant was, if someone asks a question, you should only give an answer if you have some sort of external source. I.e., according to the New York Times... or experimental data, i.e. I tried the coffee maker, and it broke after two weeks.

You dislike the rule against questions with multiple answers, but surely that contributes to round-robin, chatfilter questions more than anything else. THAT'S why Matt deleted my God question. Because everyone had a different answer.
posted by grumblebee at 1:50 PM on May 24, 2006

I mentioned the relationship questions because to some extent it seems like it's necessary to have slightly different rules for the personal questions. Partly, I think, because so many people are qualified to give an opinion -- we've almost all been in relationships, you know? And people could have wildly varying advice without it being a bad question, or even bad advice. And I don't really always need to have personal experience with the exact matter at hand to be be able to provide helpful advice, since it's more of a "I feel like I'm pretty good at dealing with humans" thing rather than "I've had a boyfriend/boss/friend/parent do exactly what you're asking about." And partly because there's rarely a "right" answer.

I think the chatfilter questions have multiple answers, but I'm not sure that all questions with mulitple answers are chatfilter, I guess is what I'm saying. And that may be especially true for the relationship questions.

Also, I guess, because I was trying to describe rules for the questions that do currently stand, not for what I'd like the site to be, necessarily. Maybe you were doing the latter and I misunderstood?

As for the God question... I dunno. It sounds like it was a while ago, when rules were still being hammered out, and I wonder if it would stand today? (I either didn't read or don't remember the question or the MeTa, so I don't know what the community standard du jour was at that point!)
posted by occhiblu at 2:38 PM on May 24, 2006

occhiblu, EB and others: thank you so much for your intelligent comments here. This is the first conversation about this topic in which I ever really learned something.
posted by grumblebee at 2:45 PM on May 24, 2006

good god. awesome discussion, guys.
posted by five fresh fish at 5:53 PM on May 24, 2006

Even after re-reading the last several dozen messages, in which you guys really discuss hell out of both rules that define "chat" (the brain part) and what leads us to perceive "chat" (the gut part), I still can not determine how the pregnancy-, atheist-, beer-AskMe's can honestly be said to differ in style of thread content from the ejac-AskMe. Functionally, they are all the same: reporting of the personal perception of an experience.

As far as I can determine the substantial difference in the actual questions is two-fold: one, I fucked up with clumsy wording because I was trying to guide the thread; and, two, it had my name attached to it.

Ce la vie, life goes on. Some day someone else will ask it in a good way.
posted by five fresh fish at 7:31 PM on May 24, 2006

"Functionally, they are all the same: reporting of the personal perception of an experience."

Some reports of someone's personal perceptions of an experience are more useful to other people than other reports are.

I'll agree that "what beers do you like" was a bad question; but I don't think that it is far from a good question such as:

"I drink beer casually, but don't know much about them. I'd like to start trying some more exotic beers. Those of you who know, could you tell me what it is you like in non-mainstream beers and then what beers exemplify those qualities?"

Again, it's going after the same information, but it's doing so in a more directed way and the information is quite obviously going to be of some use to the asker (assuming the asker gets good answers). In both cases, they're reports of a subjective experience.

In fact, I've bit my tongue about this in this thread, but I really, really don't like this "subjective experience" litmus test. Sure, there are a lot of things that can be answered unambiguously objectively, and AskMe is a great resource for getting those answers. But there's also a large number of subjective answers that certainly do have utility to other people. This idea that they have little or no utility at all is wrongheaded, in my opinion.
posted by Ethereal Bligh at 9:02 PM on May 24, 2006

Who's been advancing that? It seems just like grumblebee mentioned it, but not really as a rule, just as something he had thought about?
posted by occhiblu at 11:00 PM on May 24, 2006

Seems like it's come up, but hell if I'm going to reread the entire thread to find it. Might be my imagination.
posted by Ethereal Bligh at 11:03 PM on May 24, 2006

EB— What I said is that questions that require objective answers are always good (and I don't even mind them so much as idle curiosity). Questions that require subjective answers should be more carefully examined, and a large percentage of them are bad.
posted by klangklangston at 11:09 PM on May 24, 2006

Wow. I didn't realise the pregnancy thing had stirred up such a hornet's nest.

Well, I asked the question because I had a problem to be solved. I wanted to know what it was like to be pregnant. The problem was solved- I now have a good idea of what it is like to be pregnant. I asked because I'm fascinated by all the various experiences and events that happen in a life, and there are some that I (young, male) simply cannot know first hand at this point (or ever, with regards to pregnancy).

To all the posters who've labelled it as chatfilter- I understand where you're coming from. If anything that requires a discussion (rather than one definite answer) is chatfilter, then this question was. And if chatfilter has no place on ask mefi, then this should have been deleted along with the ejaculation question. What makes me think that this shouldn't be deleted is that it provided the poster (myself) with a good answer. An even greater reason to leave it, I believe, is that it is of value to other readers as well (just as a question about how to fix a laptop may be of value to other people with a similar model).

Ask mefi seems like an incredible resource with which to find out things about particular experiences and life events. For me, it isn't idle curiosity or simply wanting to start a discussion. The discussion was of real value to me. Isn't that he point of ask mefi?
posted by twirlypen at 7:02 AM on May 25, 2006

i wouldn't fret about it too much twirlypen. at the heart of this matter, i think the argument is about whether the standards are changing, and what should be done about it. it's really a lot less about your post than about guidelines in general.
posted by shmegegge at 7:33 AM on May 25, 2006

I'm with Locke. Let's stop pressing the button and see what happens.
posted by bluesky43 at 2:47 PM on May 25, 2006