High turnover on AskMe

May 30, 2006 12:04 PM

I've noticed that AskMefi has a high turnover rate these days, and some questions don't get answered because they age too quickly.

Suggestion: how bout we have two columns of questions instead of one? So that older questions show up next to the newest one - and have a longer life?
posted by mammary16 to feature requests at 12:04 PM (155 comments total)

On a wee laptop screen like mine, that wouldn't work well unless the sidebar was removed. And surely it would make more sense to have two columns, with question one beside question two, etc., not the confusing system you suggest with posts going down one column from question one then up the other to the oldest question on the front page?

Maybe a 'recent unanswered questions' spot in the sidebar would be better - say, questions from the last month with no answers (unless that would be a huge number of questions, I dunno).
posted by jack_mo at 12:14 PM on May 30, 2006

How about a way to mark a thread "answered" which would then remove it from the front page? Not like you've gotten some great answers that you want to acknowledge, but you would love more input; but that your question has been fundamentally answered, and there is nothing left to say. What songs were on the Freedom Rocks Compilation? These songs. Thanks. Mark it as "answered", and it drops off the front page. That leaves more room for unanswered questions and questions that there is more left to say about.
posted by ND¢ at 12:17 PM on May 30, 2006

I think the more user friendly thing, if this was to be fixed would just be to make a timed queue. Questions will be posted in real time but if there are more than x questions in y minutes, they are queued until enough time has passed.

Whether or not it's really a problem is another thing.
posted by chrisroberts at 12:29 PM on May 30, 2006

the once a week thing was precisely to slow down the question queue, but x per hour as a hard limit would be the next step.

Stuff marked with a best answer doesn't always mean the question is final and answered. Often others with new, just as good advice pop in to also answer the question.
posted by mathowie at 12:37 PM on May 30, 2006

I never look at the sidebar. Ever. So an option to remove that and allow two columns would be a great idea.
posted by SeizeTheDay at 12:45 PM on May 30, 2006

Mark it as "answered", and it drops off the front page. That leaves more room for unanswered questions and questions that there is more left to say about.

Which raises the schizophrenia at the heart of Ask Metafilter: is it more about the poster getting an answer, or about people reading it for curiosity and trivial pursuit? If answers start dropping off then perhaps it will affect the latter, and fewer eyeballs on the page reduces the overall utility of the site, since casual browsers may have that perfect answer.

I know nothing about this, how much would it increase bandwidth to increase the number of questions shown? Does a 50% increase in visible questions correlate to a 50% increase in bandwidth? Does that translate into a lot of money? Could that be overcome by showing ads (or, an ad) even to members, say? Or is there hidden bandwidth juju that makes it really punishing past a threshold?? Showing more questions seems to be the obvious answer to this problem.
posted by Rumple at 12:47 PM on May 30, 2006

SeizeTheDay: "I never look at the sidebar. Ever. So an option to remove that and allow two columns would be a great idea."

I smell a Greasemonkey script.
Whoops, no, that's just my car leaking coolant again. My mistake.
posted by Plutor at 12:50 PM on May 30, 2006

Stuff marked with a best answer doesn't always mean the question is final and answered. Often others with new, just as good advice pop in to also answer the question.

Absolutely, I see this happen all the time, and those are usually my favourite threads.

Personally, I can't keep with AskMe anymore, and aside from perusing the front page whenever I have the time / feel like it I get most of my most interesting threads from the tag-based RSS feeds.
posted by goodnewsfortheinsane at 12:52 PM on May 30, 2006

Rumple: "I know nothing about this, how much would it increase bandwidth to increase the number of questions shown? Does a 50% increase in visible questions correlate to a 50% increase in bandwidth? Does that translate into a lot of money? Could that be overcome by showing ads (or, an ad) even to members, say? Or is there hidden bandwidth juju that makes it really punishing past a threshold?? Showing more questions seems to be the obvious answer to this problem."

I think it's less about the bandwidth and more about the utility of a page that's hugely gigantic. I rarely have the patience to scroll all the way down the front page of AskMe as it is. If it was half-again as long, I don't think it would increase the number of eyeballs on those oldest couple dozen of questions enough to be worth it.

AskMe's design is simply a victim of AskMe's success. The only solutions are to live with the high turnover (and perhaps a better FAQ or Wiki with tips on asking a good question would be nice) or break up the front page a bit the way that Google Answers and Ask Yahoo are designed. The front page of each has zero and one questions, respectively. You have to drill into a section to see the questions. I'm just pointing those out. Whether that's the right model for AskMe is up for discussion (or rather, up to Matt to decide).
posted by Plutor at 12:56 PM on May 30, 2006

can't keep up with AskMe
posted by goodnewsfortheinsane at 12:57 PM on May 30, 2006

BTW, another option that makes sense to me is to have questions processed through a group-reviewed queue. Basically, an alternate page houses all the questions asked and each question must receive three (5, 7, whatever) positive votes to make the front page.

I would make all questions appear anonymous until they hit the front page to avoid any sort of bullying or favoritism. This way the really assinine questions are never seen on the front page (and there are more than a handful of these).
posted by SeizeTheDay at 1:02 PM on May 30, 2006

I like the idea that askers could officially "close" their questions to get them off the front page. But then again, the people who would be responsible enough to use this feature would probably also be responsible enough to write short questions with [more inside], so it may not have any practical value.
posted by Faint of Butt at 1:10 PM on May 30, 2006

Faint of Butt, the asker may be satisfied by an answer, but it doesn't mean that the answer is correct.

I'd like to see how the hourly limit goes. If it means that a question is held at each position on the page say for a similar amount of time then it would be an improvement at least. If it's not too hard to implement Matt do you want to do it? Downsides?
posted by peacay at 1:27 PM on May 30, 2006

Are asinine questions really the problem here? Is adding more questions to the page going to "solve" the issue or will it just be harder to keep up with 100 threads instead of 50 per page?

I agree there are a lot of questions, perhaps too many, but all the solutions presented here would skew the results towards something specific ("no more dumb questions") and I'd rather take a blanket approach of limiting say questions to once every 10 or 14 days instead of 7. Then perhaps the question load would decrease and people would think twice before posting something a google search could solve.
posted by mathowie at 1:29 PM on May 30, 2006

My greatest irritation these days is the "fire and forget" questions. It should be obvious that asking a question implies some sort of responsibility to monitor the thread and give some feedback on answers... but apparently not.
posted by Galvatron at 1:29 PM on May 30, 2006

I would be in favour of anything which kept questions on the front page of Ask MetaFilter for a lengthier period of time. Whether that's an hourly throttle or an extension of the wait between questions doesn't really concern me as far as things go. I also like the idea of sidebaring unanswered questions.
posted by Captaintripps at 1:41 PM on May 30, 2006

I'd rather take a blanket approach of limiting say questions to once every 10 or 14 days instead of 7.

I think that's a better idea than "X per hour."
posted by cribcage at 1:44 PM on May 30, 2006

I also wouldn't mind 10 or 14 days between questions but I bet that will piss some people off...not that that is any reason not to do it.

The other thing about questions without best answers marked being sidebarred (beyond the often occurring fact that the marked answer is wrong &c) is that all those questions that have a philosophical bent, are not clearcut, are based on personal accounts --- these will dominate the list I reckon.
posted by peacay at 1:45 PM on May 30, 2006

I'd rather take a blanket approach of limiting say questions to once every 10 or 14 days instead of 7. Then perhaps the question load would decrease and people would think twice before posting something a google search could solve.

I don't know if you have the time to do this, but if you do an analysis of how often people ask questions, you'd get a very specific answer to the question, "Are there a a group of people here who ask questions too often, or is it that the size of the community has grown beyond the limited format of AskMeFi?"

IMHO, I think it's the latter. This site has too many members asking too many questions given the site's kind of format. Again, which leads to the conclusion that the format needs to evolve to fit the needs of a growing community.

I think the time-limited option would only discourage people from posting questions and quality questions would never be asked because the asker doesn't feel like timing their question just right to fit the window.

I don't have a lot of solutions to this problem. I'm just suggesting that the MetaFilter format of "everything on the front page in a flat, scrolling format" is no longer appropriate for such a large community.
posted by SeizeTheDay at 1:47 PM on May 30, 2006

Based on no concrete evidence this would work, I would:

1. Limit questions to once every two weeks (or even once a month).

2. Impose a participation *and* time requirement before new members can ask questions.

I've been seeing more and more questions from people who haven't participated in the site at all, and while that's great that we're such a resource for strangers, we still seem pretty committed to the idea of "community" so I don't think it's unfair to encourage that.
posted by occhiblu at 1:55 PM on May 30, 2006

Anyone that finds that questions are scrolling off the front page too fast should really consider using RSS and a good reader. I read all of metafilter that way, and I never actually view the site through the front page. In my RSS reader I tell it how many items to store and it keeps track of which items I've read. At the moment this means I have about two weeks of AskMe questions.
posted by Rhomboid at 1:56 PM on May 30, 2006

That is to say, you must have been a member for X amount of time and made X number of comments (anywhere on the site) before you're allowed to post AskMe questions. The amount of time should be at least as long as the time-between-questions period (that is, if you have to wait two weeks between questions, you should have to be a member for at least two weeks to ask a question).
posted by occhiblu at 1:57 PM on May 30, 2006

I'd rather take a blanket approach of limiting say questions to once every 10 or 14 days

I'd be in favor of this. It's very rare that we see people (in MeTa or over email) who really need to ask two questions in a seven day period, and we clearly have some people who seem to use a lot of their "available" questions. It would be fun to crunch some numbers of course (how many people ask how many questions over how much time) to see how much this would put a dent in things, but I'd be in favor of finding some way to slow things down a bit without making unfair "this many questions per day, period" limits which will impact people in different timezones differently.
posted by jessamyn at 1:59 PM on May 30, 2006

Limiting the number of questions per hour sounds like a good idea at first, but it would eliminate most of the questions that require an immediate response and sometimes those are the best questions (both as a utility to the asker and as an AskMe spectator).

I agree with SeizeTheDay--the format of AskMe is probably not scalable. But I'd much rather take drastic measures to reduce the volume of questions than risk screwing up the good thing we have going. Maybe combine a longer time span between questions along with some requirements to become part of the community (e.g., having to wait a month or two or having to provide a few dozen good* answers before asking your first question).

*And by good, I just mean answers that aren't deleted.
posted by mullacc at 2:01 PM on May 30, 2006

I think the time-limited option would only discourage people from posting questions and quality questions would never be asked...

I don't follow. I would think the questions we'd lose would be those more trivial and less likely to prove helpful to a wider audience (e.g., "How do I get this rat out of my toilet," or "Will I get a parking street on Linwood Street this morning") — and often, those are the questions that solve themselves without the Internet, anyway.
posted by cribcage at 2:02 PM on May 30, 2006

I agree with #1, here. The reason for this is that it's hard to even keep up with my rss of askme, which doesn't take the number per page into account. how many are on the page wouldn't seem to me to help, but lowering how many overall questions get asked would.
posted by shmegegge at 2:03 PM on May 30, 2006

2. Impose a participation *and* time requirement before new members can ask questions.

This seems like the most obvious solution to me.
posted by gsteff at 2:09 PM on May 30, 2006

Few things:

First: Along with "show questions marked answered" and "show questions marked fantastic", it might be nice to have a page for neglected/unanswered questions, that only has questions with no marked best answer(s) and fewer than x number of replies.

Second: I just counted amongst the questions on the front page of AskMe the following:

19 questions by members who have either never asked a question before, or had asked a question more then a month ago.

11 questions by members who have asked a question with the last 2 to 4 weeks (but not sooner)

10 questions by members who asked a question with the last 1 to 2 weeks.

1 question anonymously posted.

Upping the time out to 2 weeks would theoretically cut the rate of questions by about 25%, and to 4 weeks by 50%.

Third: Is it possible to auto-generate a google query based on the proposed question? Pull out a few keywords and link to google, with instructions to check there for an answer before posting the question?
posted by voidcontext at 2:11 PM on May 30, 2006

The "X per hour" thing wouldn't work at all. You'd just get a bunch of people rushing in to post their questions on the hour, and people who didn't do that wouldn't be able to post.

---

There are a lot of questions that can be answered immediately, and a lot of questions that can't be. If it were up to me, I'd split the two into groups. "Fast" questions in one column, and "slow" questions in the other. You'd get to ask 4 fast questions a month, and one slow question. And if you don't get your question answered in the quick column, you can 'upgrade' it to the slow column.
posted by delmoi at 2:12 PM on May 30, 2006

Reading these MetaTalk threads is always a lesson in how most people can't design anything. It's all "what we need to solve this problem is shiny widgets!! more options!! lots of columns!! complex algebra!!" and so on.
posted by reklaw at 2:17 PM on May 30, 2006

Another option would be to post only the most recent two or three questions per category on the front page, and let people click through the categories they're interested in.

I feel like this has been proposed before and shot down, but I don't remember why, so I'm putting it out there again.
posted by occhiblu at 2:22 PM on May 30, 2006

Plutor said '"I never look at the sidebar. Ever. So an option to remove that and allow two columns would be a great idea."

'I smell a Greasemonkey script.'

I never look at the sidebar either. This Greasemonkey script removes it on both MetaFilter and Ask MetaFilter, but is quite probably not the best way to do it (never made a Greasemonkey script, or indeed any kind of javascript before, just had a bit of a Google around to see how it's done, and this works for me on Firefox 1.5.)
posted by jack_mo at 2:26 PM on May 30, 2006

Also, two more suggestions

1. waiting period before your first AskMe question (a week? a month?)
2. no more mixtape questions
posted by jessamyn at 2:28 PM on May 30, 2006

Yeah, actually enforcing the chatfilter rule on the music questions would help (I don't mean that as a swipe on Matt and Jess; I know we've historically let them go and it's a community-standards thing at this point, but it would help with some of the borderline chatfilter confusion, too).
posted by occhiblu at 2:30 PM on May 30, 2006

participation minimums is a good idea, and something I've been meaning to implement for ages.
posted by mathowie at 2:35 PM on May 30, 2006

...watch out though because it can lead to a lot of lame "I agree." type posts as people try to make enough comments to be able to post to the front page (or AskMe)
posted by jessamyn at 2:39 PM on May 30, 2006

Another option would be to post only the most recent two or three questions per category on the front page, and let people click through the categories they're interested in.

Any solution that obscures questions will result in less answers and more completely unanswered questions. The voting for the front page on a question thing? That means that loads would never be seen by anyone.

I don't think obscuring questions is the solution to the too-many-questions problem. I think forcing a longer wait time than one week and requiring that they answer something before they get to ask questions should help raise the bar (there is a danger that people will post random nonsense answers to get to post a question but we're pretty good about removing noise).
posted by mathowie at 2:40 PM on May 30, 2006

I still think a longer page would be good. It is determined by number of questions, not length of questions, isn't it? People using

RSS - more power to you, but as noted, it might just displace the problem. If you can't scroll down a few pages (right now, for me, it is 4 "page-downs" which is not really excessive) then maybe an attention-span therapist is called for.

I do like the idea of, say, you must have posted at least three answers and must have belonged for a week before you can ask a question. Not really very onerous.

Could the "more inside" be made to limit questions to one line, forcing people to be more pithy in what shows on the front page?
posted by Rumple at 2:40 PM on May 30, 2006

2. no more mixtape questions

i just felt this needed a hearty "hear!hear!"
posted by crush-onastick at 2:42 PM on May 30, 2006

I do like the idea of, say, you must have posted at least three answers and must have belonged for a week before you can ask a question. Not really very onerous.

I'm all for waiting periods but I'm a bit skeptical of forcing people to answer questions when they may not have the expertise to answer them. This will only hurt the "noise" problem.
posted by vacapinta at 2:45 PM on May 30, 2006

Which is why a longer waiting period might make sense.
posted by occhiblu at 2:47 PM on May 30, 2006

I think the problem is all the best questions have already been asked.
posted by knave at 2:50 PM on May 30, 2006

Just to clear some stuff up: there is already a 7 day waiting period to ask a question, but no minimum participation.

As to making the page longer by showing more entries -- I've made the page longer three times now, and it just leads to more questions.

The problem reminds me of freeway traffic. People often ask for new lanes to be added to any crowded freeway thinking it will alleviate and solve the traffic problem, but in practice, studies show that traffic will be lighter for an average of three weeks, at which time more people begin taking the new route and the freeway is again at the same capacity, with no improvement in travel time.

I've gone from 20 to 30 to 50 questions on the front page, and making it say, 75 or 100 wouldn't slow down the torrent of questions, it would actually encourage more not less.
posted by mathowie at 2:55 PM on May 30, 2006

I agree with vacapinta about the noise increase.
I'm also feeling Galvatron's pain: it's not even about gratitude, it's about closure. Maybe people don't ever get to post to AxMe again until they've responded in thread to their last post. Anonymous posts obviously excluded from this requirement.

A 10-14 day wait period between questions seems perfectly reasonable.
posted by oneirodynia at 2:59 PM on May 30, 2006

(there is a danger that people will post random nonsense answers to get to post a question but we're pretty good about removing noise)

Questions deleted as noise wouln't count towards the participation total, right?
posted by Zozo at 3:01 PM on May 30, 2006

"1. Limit questions to once every two weeks (or even once a month)."

I really don't like this, and I am surprised to see so many people supporting it. It's like solving people's problems finding books to read in the library by reducing the number of books the library buys! :) I never post questions to AskMefi -- why? Because I always think "If I post this, I won't be able to post another one for a week, and what if I need to post one before then?" So I never post any at all. (Yes, I know it's silly. sigh It's the way my brain works.) I don't see that people posting one question per week is unreasonable. Another solution would be far better.

"2. Impose a participation *and* time requirement before new members can ask questions."

I do, however, think this is a good idea. It's a community resource, and people need to become part of the community before they jump in and ask questions.

"Anyone that finds that questions are scrolling off the front page too fast should really consider using RSS and a good reader."

The problem is that if the questions are scrolling too fast, they might not get answered. Expecting people to use RSS to see all the questions is going to cut back on the answers since more casual viewers don't bother.

Having said that, my strongly preferred solution does cut down on question visibility slightly, because I think that's the only way to deal with the issue at this point -- we have to get the question list off the main page, because it's gotten too unwieldy. We need question categories. Period. The main page should be a list of categories, perhaps with rotating recent sample questions from each category. Then you go into the category and you see a list of questions from that category, looking much like the current AskMeFi page, only category-specific.

This would be great for those who aren't interested in particular areas but don't want to miss a single question in others, and don't use RSS to read the site. And even random readers would still be able to easily find questions to read and answer.
posted by litlnemo at 3:14 PM on May 30, 2006

You wouldn't even have to post noise, you just have to paraphrase a previous poster's response. I really don't think that that requirement would slow down the number of questions. A longer waiting period might cause people to be more discriminating about the questions they choose to post.

On preview:
"1. Limit questions to once every two weeks (or even once a month)."

I really don't like this, and I am surprised to see so many people supporting it. It's like solving people's problems finding books to read in the library by reducing the number of books the library buys!

It's actually more like limiting the hours the library is open. The resources are still there, you just can't take advantage of them as often.
posted by oneirodynia at 3:17 PM on May 30, 2006

"It's actually more like limiting the hours the library is open. The resources are still there, you just can't take advantage of them as often."

You say that like it's a good thing. :(
posted by litlnemo at 3:25 PM on May 30, 2006

i kind of agree with ltlnemo about the idea of limiting how often you get to ask a question. i feel like the problem is that there are often new question askers, or a lot of infrequent askers, rather than a lot of 1/week chronic askers.

however, i think a waiting period of at least a month of membership before being allowed to ask your first question sounds just dandy, and wouldn't really need to have any "answer [x] number of questions, first" policy.
posted by shmegegge at 3:26 PM on May 30, 2006

I am all for increasing the waiting time (and banning mix tape questions -- hell yes!) I disagree that it's like a library buying fewer books, it's more like only loaning them out for, say, 6 weeks instead of 8 weeks. If you change the timeout to 10 or 14 days people will be more careful about the kinds of things they ask, and hopefully be less likely to post the borderline chatfilter stuff that's just gumming up the works now.
posted by Rhomboid at 3:27 PM on May 30, 2006

oh yeah. please ban the mix tape questions. please please please. i'm not bothered by them as a matter of principle, but in the short time i've actively followed askme, i've noticed a disproportionate number of mix tape questions, which is troubling.
posted by shmegegge at 3:31 PM on May 30, 2006

I read AskMe enough that I don't have a problem with the current system. I wish there were more questions sometimes.
posted by smackfu at 3:46 PM on May 30, 2006

Heh. I agree with smackfu. I would like more questions, not fewer. They just need to be more well-organized, because the problem of questions not being answered because they scroll still exists.
posted by litlnemo at 3:52 PM on May 30, 2006

"It's actually more like limiting the hours the library is open. The resources are still there, you just can't take advantage of them as often."

You say that like it's a good thing. :(

No, I say it like it's a better analogy. ;)

I'm well known in my household for complaining mightily about the limited hours our local library is open; it means I have to plan my trips carefully rather than just wander in whenever I want and browse. It sucks, but I realize my city has limited resources, and I rather they restrict the hours it's open than close libraries in other parts of the city. This way more people get access, but less often. If people can use AskMe only on a less frequent basis, it's posible that they would use their time to ask better questions, and that those questions would stay on the front page longer, due to fewer questions being asked overall. More time on the front page means more people getting to see the post, and therefore the chance of getting answers increases. Better questions and more good (hopefully) answers make AskMe a better resource as an archive as well.

Personally, I have no problem with the number of questions. But I don't think imposing a set number of answers that people must make in order to ask a question improves the utility of AskMe or limits the number of questions posted to the front page.
posted by oneirodynia at 3:58 PM on May 30, 2006

I wish it were set up so that you could only ask one question a week, and only ten questions total. That would help end the "I had a fish taco for lunch, what songs go with that?" chatfilter questions. Everytime I see "and 29 questions and 1452 answers to Ask MetaFilter" the questions are 90% space-fillers.
posted by MarkAnd at 4:02 PM on May 30, 2006

What are you top ten favorite suggestions of all time for how to improve AskMe?
posted by Megafly at 4:08 PM on May 30, 2006

I think it's more like limiting the number of people who can stand at the reference desk asking for help at any given time. Otherwise, the library analogy doesn't work. In a library, the person wanting the answers goes and looks for them. In AskMe, the person wanting the answers states the question, and then other people volunteer answers that they (usually) already had.
posted by bingo at 4:08 PM on May 30, 2006

Frontpage part of question can only be x letters long/one line long, the rest must go in [more inside].
posted by fondle at 4:20 PM on May 30, 2006

I want a page with all the questions that are more than a day old and that have zero answers. We can call it the "stumped" page.
posted by smackfu at 4:21 PM on May 30, 2006

I ask askme almost every week and there hasn't been a question of mine that hasn't been sufficiently answered within 24 hours.

I don't know if it helps much but I'm more than willing to flag as "answered" and having my question removed from the front page.

Also, is it possible to have unanswered questions keep their top spot until they have some activity?

I've always tried to post during evening hours when there is less activity and it works.
posted by snsranch at 4:48 PM on May 30, 2006

I want a page with all the questions that are more than a day old and that have zero answers. We can call it the "stumped" page.

I love this idea, or have a stumped tag automatically added if these conditions are met. The tag could be removed by the OP or by mathowie or I.
posted by jessamyn at 5:11 PM on May 30, 2006

The stumped page is a good idea, but some unanswered questions still have posts... for example, the first responder gives an incorrect answer, or just asks for more information on the question. How can those be dealt with?
posted by litlnemo at 5:18 PM on May 30, 2006

If the problem to be solved is that too many questions stop some questions getting answers. I think filters is the way to go - allow users to flag answers as 'answered', and then have (combinable) filters for,

1. questions with few (less than x) answers
2. question flagged as stumped
3. [not] questions flagged as answered

Assuming questioners do flag their questions as answered, this would make it very easy for willing answerers to get at the unanswered questions.

Filters would also improve browseability, and should scale fairly well, so assuming active user numbers (and therefore questions asked) continute to increase, would be a good long-term solution.
posted by MetaMonkey at 5:31 PM on May 30, 2006

"Because I always think 'If I post this, I won't be able to post another one for a week, and what if I need to post one before then?' So I never post any at all."

I have this exact hangup. So many questions can be avoided simply by telling yourself "Yeah, but what if I need AskMe later this week?"

Maybe this should be added to the Post a Question page. Some sort of 'Keep in mind that you can only ask one question a week. Is this question important enough to fill that slot?'

That'll probably be as successful as the 'help maintain a healthy discussion' line, but it's worth a shot.
posted by graventy at 6:01 PM on May 30, 2006

The 'stumped' page would really have to change the way the questions are answered. I mean, it's not usually just a single answer that makes a question 'answered'.

The real problem is figuring out a way to get questions seen by people most likely to have an answer, until the question is well answered.
posted by delmoi at 6:03 PM on May 30, 2006

How can those be dealt with?

Gusto?

Seriously though, count me in favour of limiting questions to once every two weeks / month and also imposing a longer wait time for new members.

Beyond that, I'm not really sure. Impose probationary periods to those who routinely post "bad" questions? That wouldn't really work because any questions deemed "bad" would be purged anyway.

How about a MefiTravel where we can stuff all the what to do / where to eat / what to see in city X? That seems like a fairly big Ask Category in addition to the mix tape one.
posted by ODiV at 6:15 PM on May 30, 2006

The real problem is figuring out a way to get questions seen by people most likely to have an answer, until the question is well answered.

I agree.

For me, at least, the issue is not "get questions off the front page and filed away." The issue is "reduce the number of questions so that people can concentrate better on the questions asked."
posted by occhiblu at 6:23 PM on May 30, 2006

snsranch: I ask askme almost every week

Actually, you're averaging about 2.8 per month this year. About 2.2 per month if you count all of your questions during the last 14 months. As long as you're not on an upward trend, keeping it to two a month shouldn't be *that* much of a problem.

I think two questions a month is about right for folks at the upper end of AskMe use, and keeping it to one a month or less is ideal - a nice way of balancing your needs with the needs of the community.
posted by mediareport at 6:31 PM on May 30, 2006

The *growing* community, I should add.
posted by mediareport at 6:32 PM on May 30, 2006

See, that's just it... if there are categories, people with an interest in/specialized knowledge about a certain category can monitor that category, and questions in that category will stay around longer. Sounds like a positive to me.

Having everything accessible on one page is only good if everything = a relatively small value. Once you go beyond that having it all on one page becomes a negative.

But I don't see that reducing the number of questions is necessarily a positive thing. Sure, perhaps some of us want less frivolous questions... but some don't, and for that matter, one man's frivolous mix tape question is another's life-changing introduction to a new musical artist, isn't it? (Yup, I lean toward the inclusive side. I also lean toward the descriptivist side in linguistics. This may be a pattern...) At any rate, the amount of mixtape questions is only a problem if they are pushing other questions off the page too quickly. Categorize everything and that problem goes away, and those who enjoy that kind of question can still enjoy them.

At any rate, I don't see reducing the number of questions people can post as a scalable solution in the long run. As the community gets bigger, the number of questions will still keep growing. Are you going to make it one question per year eventually? I think organization is a better solution.
posted by litlnemo at 6:34 PM on May 30, 2006

I'm still basically a newbie here, but I'm a massive fan of Askme.

I joined about two weeks ago (ish) and posted my first ask me question a week ago. I didn't join with the intention of asking that question, and waiting until my time was up, but, a week after I joined, the issue came up and I thought askme would be a fantastic resource to find more information.

As a newbie, (but one who wants to participate in the mefi community, not just lurk or ask chatfilter questions) I don't see anything wrong with having to answer a certain amount of questions first. I think it would discourage people from random questions, but not discourage proper discussion. I think on the whole people will be quite good about giving proper answers, although there will be some who just try to get their posts up.

I guess, just because someone is new is no reason that their question is less worthwhile, but enforcing a participation limit encourages people to participate more instead of lurking, and that is a good thing.
posted by jonathanstrange at 6:44 PM on May 30, 2006

Does anyone (hi, Matt?) have ready stats about the number of questions posted per day or per month, over the last 6 months? Actual data would probably help in understanding this.
posted by mediareport at 6:45 PM on May 30, 2006

I like keeping it all on one page, not filtering it too much or spreading across other pages. The community benefits if it isn't too fragmented, and askmefi is an important enabler of the community feel, especially as it is typically very friendly and snarkfree.... E.B. posted once about the importance of the flat format of mefi and how the very way the site looks is an important part of why the community is strong. I can't find the post, of course .... there're a lot to choose from *cough*
posted by Rumple at 7:02 PM on May 30, 2006

galvatron writes: My greatest irritation these days is the "fire and forget" questions. It should be obvious that asking a question implies some sort of responsibility to monitor the thread and give some feedback on answers... but apparently not.

I thought this was worth repeating. I sometimes get the impression that some people ask questions they're not very invested in, just because they can and it's fun, and they really don't care about the answer, which means they're wasting peoples' time. What if, in addition to anything else proposed above, you don't get to ask another question until you've responded to the people who've answered you with a "best answer" or some kind of comment indicating whether the answers were useful?
posted by George_Spiggott at 7:28 PM on May 30, 2006

April Stumps
• How can I learn as much as possible about the Spanish market for vacation homes: construction, project development, brokering sales, etc.?
• A short while back, Levi's stopped making the 516 jeans, and the only ones that I can find in the UK are via eBay at around £70 a throw. Are there any UK-available jeans that are in the same style as the original 516's? Are they available online?
• Is there a web-based program for collaborative statistical analysis (preferably with pretty pictures)?
• Looking for a driver to use two finger scrolling under Windows XP on the MacBook Pro.
• Help me catalog and organize our graphic files! I'm trying to catalog thousands of graphic files, mainly Illustrator and EPS files. That part's not too hard. The problem I'm running into is, how do I have the catalog accessible to everyone in our company, preferably on our intranet?
• I need suggestions for tech-related training or conferences that I could attend sometime this summer or fall, in the continental US, preferably on the West Coast.
• I am looking into returning to New York from Texas after 25 years. Have visited a couple of times and would be interested in the following information: It may be difficult to get New York licensing for Massage Therapy (long story, nothing illegal) Does anyone have experience with unlicensed massage therapy in New York?
posted by tellurian at 7:32 PM on May 30, 2006

MetaMix. A site just for compiling mixtapes. In fact, you could just post song titles and tag them and then other users could search "breakup" or "obsession" or "mustard" and see all of the songs that go with the theme. I like it.
posted by Biblio at 7:45 PM on May 30, 2006

Count me among the numbers here who would like to see a category view added. Also, the Stumped section would rule! i love trolling through the past couple of weeks trying to find an empty thread that i and only i will know the answer to.

It hasn't happened yet, but anything that would make my search easier would be appreciated.

Also, wouldn't cutting down on the number of people who get MeFi accounts just to post a question also cut down on the money that Matt gets from the site? i'm not saying that waiting periods or participation minimums are a bad thing, i just don't want to mess with our fearless leader's livelihood.
posted by quin at 7:45 PM on May 30, 2006

you don't get to ask another question until you've responded to the people who've answered you with a "best answer" or some kind of comment indicating whether the answers were useful?

More rules won't make people care.
posted by smackfu at 7:45 PM on May 30, 2006

I posted a simple question to Yahoo! Answers just as a test recently, and, shockingly, it went completely unanswered. Sometimes the answers are few on AskMe but I don't see that many completely untouched questions.

Stuff marked with a best answer doesn't always mean the question is final and answered.

Yeah, I kind of wonder what, in fact, it is supposed to mean. Multiple "best" answers is grammatically offensive, and no number of them indicates a final answer... so what's the point? It's like a button that says "stroke this answerer's genitals gently for a moment." What else does that feature do?

Of course, savvy users will never mark their question "answered" if that meant it dropped off the front page. They'd wait for newer answers to contradict older ones, or for additional information, or they'd just extend their little moment in the sun. Really, who among us is going to put a lid on their question's potential just to save front page real estate? Such a feature would appeal only to people whose threads have become train wrecks, and who want to bury them (there is a certain benefit there...).
posted by scarabic at 8:04 PM on May 30, 2006

I think it's pretty straight-forward that the harder it is to ask a question, the more valuable it is. So if you have to wait a month to ask your first question, and can only ask 12 a year (one a month), you will be less likely to ask the, "should I get soup or salad" question.

scarabic, puh-leeze mark my answer best.
posted by popechunk at 8:20 PM on May 30, 2006

Faint of Butt writes "I like the idea that askers could officially 'close' their questions to get them off the front page."

Sometimes the first "Best Answer" is dangerously wrong. If the asker doesn't have an email listed and the thread is closed you have no way of conveying that to them. For that reason I'd vote against closing threads. Besides, closed threads are really annoying in Meta I can't imagine that not being the case in the green.

scarabic writes "Sometimes the answers are few on AskMe but I don't see that many completely untouched questions. "

Cripes, I've had two out of seventeen.
posted by Mitheral at 8:49 PM on May 30, 2006

Previous "stumped" discussion: here. I remember because I started it ;-)

I think I have more posts and responses in AskMe than the front page. Any week I don't post a question I feel like is a week wasted, but if you review my questions none of them have been "throwaways" either. Only 12 questions a year would be too parsimonious.
posted by MasonDixon at 8:50 PM on May 30, 2006

I know this solution falls into the "pony, please" column*, but how about some sort of solution along the lines of slashdot's karma system or urbaniacs "props" system**? Next to a user name there could be an option to praise them for a post. Praise adds up, and given enough praise, the user earns the right to post to askme. This is better than a pure post quota, in that it discourages noise, and I would think any contributive community member would (should?) quickly earn enough praise to be able to post a query. The question then is if it should be simply a threshold, or if praise "capital" should be spent on each question asked.


* n.b. I am not a proponent of adding additional columns.

** okay, I'm a pathetic nerd, but I'm kind of infatuated with urbaniacs.com. If your curious and feel like being a mensch, you can go register using my referrer ID.

Oh, and Scarabic, what do you have against stroking genitals?
posted by TonyRobots at 8:53 PM on May 30, 2006

Cripes, I've had two out of seventeen.\

I don't deny your anecdotal evidence, I merely label it useless, while I wait for actual data from Matt which will never come.
posted by scarabic at 9:16 PM on May 30, 2006

More rules won't make people care.

If they can't ask another question when they haven't acknowledged the answers to their previous question, that will cut down on the throwaway noise questions. It's sad when people take a question seriously enough to think about and research an answer, and the asker didn't really give a damn. Having to actually respond to the people who were kind enough to answer your question might encourage people to take the service more seriously.
posted by George_Spiggott at 9:19 PM on May 30, 2006

Admin remix said: participation minimums... lead to a lot of lame "I agree." type posts.

In general, does the community want to encourage commenting for the comment's sake? It's tough enough to wade through really fascinating 200-count threads without having to mentally forgive all the extra snark generated by folks trying to reach their quota.

Tony Robots mentioned: an option to praise them for a post

I find this option strangely attractive. However, this would create a system in which those-who-know can ask questions while those-who-don't know can't get enough karma/props to get their questions posted, and therefor remain ignorant. "The smart get smarter"?
posted by anotherpanacea at 9:25 PM on May 30, 2006

People who can't be bothered to spellcheck, like myself, apparently, should also be karmically debited.
posted by anotherpanacea at 9:28 PM on May 30, 2006

As should I, for using "your" in place of "you're." Thank goodness that pony isn't yet in the stable.

But panacea, I think the threshold should be pretty low -- just enough for someone to establish themselves as a contributing community member. It's just a slightly more discerning method than the post quota system, which IMHO encourages noise.
posted by TonyRobots at 9:34 PM on May 30, 2006

Participation requirements just add noise.

StumpFilter is a cool idea, however, as well as a character limit for the first line of the AskMe. 14 days between AskMes is a fine suggestion as well, and benefits all the community more than it inconveniences members.

Also, would there be some way to up the membership donation for people who clicked the Join link on the AskMe page from $5 to $10? It would cut down on people who just wanted to use the community without actually participating in it.
Or would that lead to, you know, unpleasantness?

A hardcore, no-holds barred, scorched earth deletion policy is always nice, too. :)
posted by Alvy Ampersand at 10:38 PM on May 30, 2006

How about limiting the front page part of the post to one line only. (assuming no one else has mentioned that) People post way more than is needed on the front page.
posted by 517 at 11:27 PM on May 30, 2006 [1 favorite]

Biblio said 'MetaMix. A site just for compiling mixtapes. In fact, you could just post song titles and tag them and then other users could search "breakup" or "obsession" or "mustard" and see all of the songs that go with the theme. I like it.'

This is a great idea, just the thing for a spin-off site.

TonyRobots said 'I know this solution falls into the "pony, please" column*, but how about some sort of solution along the lines of slashdot's karma system or urbaniacs "props" system**?'

I think the elegant simplicity of MetaFilter is a big part of what makes the site work well - I know I have never had much patience with discussion sites encumbered with all that karmic gubbins (though I'm with you on those systems being quite fascinating, TonyRobots).
posted by jack_mo at 3:24 AM on May 31, 2006

I think having categories as seperate pages would be a good thing - if you know that you will never be interested in or able to answer a question about "computers and internet" or whatever, you just don't look at that category. It'd make the whole thing tidier to read - you'd only be reading the stuff that you wanted to, rather than having to scroll past loads of questions that just aren't relevent to you. Of course if you wanted to read all of them, you could!
posted by Lotto at 5:25 AM on May 31, 2006

MetaMix. A site just for compiling mixtapes

I think Art of the Mix already has this covered, they even have a public forum Get help with a mix.

Perhaps a page that displays, before you post a question, listing other resources first like art of the mix for mixtapes, the Mozilla forums for firefox technical problems, etc.

I've no problem with increasing the gap between questions to a couple of weeks or even a month. It might also help to encourage potential questioners to look for alternate resources and stop askmefi being the first stop people make.
posted by drill_here_fore_seismics at 5:26 AM on May 31, 2006

- Increased waiting period for new members? YES

- Increased waiting period between questions? YES

- Sorted by category? YES

- A pull-down menu like we have in the blue (my questions, most answers, fewest answers, recent answers, today's questions, show category list)? YES

The first two seem quite reasonable to me and would have an immediate and desired effect on the overall number of questions ask in any given period (as proven by all the math given earlier).

The third suggestion just seems like a logical feature for something like AskMe... while the fourth is something I've always thought we should have for ALL of the Mefi pages, as a standard tool for using the site.

The third and fourth ideas would allow individual readers to decrease the number of questions shown on one page (or, in the case of categories, at least whittle the list down to something more purposefully specific), which is what this whole thread is really about.

All of the suggestions are doable, fit within the known Mefi format, aren't drastic at all, directly address the problem, and don't require Matt or Jess to increase how much they have to monitor the site (and any idea that requires that just seems silly to me). Voting, in any form, is a bad idea in my opinion.
posted by Witty at 5:33 AM on May 31, 2006

scarabic writes "I don't deny your anecdotal evidence, I merely label it useless, while I wait for actual data from Matt which will never come."

Sorry scarabic, I wasn't arguing that there are more unanswered questions than you think, mearly lamenting the fact that I'm running better than 10%

Requiring people to post isn't the answer, it'll just force people to make crap posts. And with AskMe posts being live for a year there is a lot of room for pollution.

Splitting into categories might be best as long as we can still get the everything flat format we have now. I hate sites (phpBB) that make you click all over the place to get content.
posted by Mitheral at 6:05 AM on May 31, 2006

voidcontext's math is a bit optimistic:

Give these numbers:
19/41 new questions
11/41 return questions from last 2 to 4 weeks (but not sooner)
10/41 return questions the last 1 to 2 weeks.
1/41 question anonymously posted.

void context says the effect will be:
Upping the time out to 2 weeks would theoretically cut the rate of questions by about 25%, and to 4 weeks by 50%.

The distribution effect of these rules could be half what he suggests based on this rule: a two week limit could reduce questions by as little as 12.5% (5 fewer questions) and a 4 week limit could be 25% (10.5 fewer questions.) This assumes that people who ask weekly questions would save those questions unti the two week mark, and the same for the the less freqent questioners. The two-week limit would push some of the weekly questioners into the next bracket, rather than eliminating them entirely. So instead of 11/41 and 10/41, it'd be 16/41 and 0/41.

In this example, a two week limit could only reduce the front page by 5 questions. Seems like a big structural change for a small result. Askme posts are -more- precious than regular FPPs? I don't think so.
posted by anotherpanacea at 7:11 AM on May 31, 2006

Seems like a big structural change for a small result.

A "big structural change"? It's probably nothing more than changing one value in a piece of code somewhere.

In this example, a two week limit could only reduce the front page by 5 questions.

But in other examples, it could be more in other examples. Obvious, drastic results aren't necessary and may only serve to shake things up so much as to cause people to get upset. Scaled and timely changes that have results like those listed above seem far more desirable.
posted by Witty at 7:24 AM on May 31, 2006

shoot
posted by Witty at 7:25 AM on May 31, 2006

Witty writes "- Sorted by category? YES"

Don't we already have this?

Computers & Internet, Health, Travel & Transportation, etc.

Having these options is fine, but the uncategorized front-page is sacrosanct.
posted by mullacc at 7:54 AM on May 31, 2006

"- Increased waiting period for new members? YES

- Increased waiting period between questions? NO

- Sorted by category? NO

- A pull-down menu like we have in the blue (my questions, most answers, fewest answers, recent answers, today's questions, show category list)? YES"

So, Witty and I are 50/50. I disagree with the two-week/ten-day limit. It punishes the people that already are careful with the community resource and will encourage sockpuppets for AskMe. I disagree with sorting by category, as I like the flat jumble. I do agree that there should be a longer waiting period for new members, and do agree that many, many, many of the mixtape/travel questions should be axed.
I would like to see a stumped page, and I thought Delmoi had some elegant solutions upthread.
posted by klangklangston at 7:54 AM on May 31, 2006

Adding categories to the front page wouldn't necessarily have to hide all the questions. I'm thinking of it like the bottom of the CNN site, with the top headlines organized into categories, and the option to "see more" of any particular category. Grabbing random examples:

***
MEDIA & ARTS

Name that tune: It serves as the soundtrack to the HBO Documentary Films commercial that currently plays before movies at Landmark Theaters. It's beautiful. [more inside]

Who are good uptempo Brazilian musicians, people similar to Tania Maria?


HOME & GARDEN

FloridaInsuranceFilter: So I need to get insurance in the Sunshine State... [more inside]

Bugs making it in through the screen door. Help! [more inside]


COMPUTERS & INTERNET

How can I watch what is being written to my hard-drive? [more inside]

I need some very basic groupware. It has to have file-sharing, calendar and discussion-board. It should be able to run on a java or php enabled server. Open source or free solutions are preferred. [more inside]

My hard drive recently started sparking, then smoking and burning. I quickly turned off the computer, but now I need to recover my data. I can see the spot on the hard drive that is black, so I know where the problem is. Is it safe for me to spend thirty minutes or so backing data off of this damaged drive? Alternatively, is it possible to repair the drive, at least enough to backup my data? Or have I lost everything? [more inside]


PETS & ANIMALS

Do these animals require a lot of care? Will it stink up my house or her room? Does it have to be potty trained? How big will it get? When we go on trips do we take it with us or is there a ferret kennel? What will it do during the day when no one is at home? What do they eat? I dunno if letting her get one is a good idea.

Suggest ways I can get rabbit pee out of white carpet. [more inside]


SCIENCE & NATURE

Is there any evidence that physical laws have changed, or could possibly change over time? For example, has the speed of light - since the beginning of the universe - been the same, and will it always remain the same into the future? [more inside]

***
There are 20 categories, so you could show the five most recent questions in each category. Or you could still show the most recent 75 or 100 questions, just organized by category.

It would make the page easier to scan, which I think would increase the chance that a person with a useful answer would see a question that he or she could answer. Which I think is the problem we're trying to solve, not just necessarily generating fewer questions.
posted by occhiblu at 8:25 AM on May 31, 2006

I disagree with sorting by category, as I like the flat jumble.

Yea, I wasn't very clear on what I meant there. I guess what I envisioned was selecting "sort by category" from the pull-down menu, which would throw up and page with the various cateogories and the first few questions of each category under each... or something like that. But, as mullacc pointed out, we already have that to some extent. But I was thinking more in terms of a category list that also worked in conjunction with the same timetable as the front page. So if the "sexual fetishes" category hasn't had a new question posted within a few days or whatever, it would show up on the "sorted by category" page as "empty" (even though clicking on the category would actually display past questions), whereas "computers & technology", being more popular, would show the first few most recent questions under that category heading... the same recent questions you would see on the front page without sorting it by category.

I disagree with the two-week/ten-day limit. It punishes the people that already are careful with the community resource and will encourage sockpuppets for AskMe.

People sockpuppet no matter what. Enforcing any kind of restriction or limits always "punishes" certain people. I can hardly mow the grass on the back hill because the damn thing was designed with a built-in kill switch that kicks in when the slope is deemed too steep. Well, it wasn't me that caused such an implementation, but I suffer nonetheless.

That being said, one reason I'm for a longer waiting period between questions is because I simply believe that if you just HAVE to ask THIS community of people a question more often than every 10-14 days, then something is wrong.

I actually think a yearly limit of 10 questions is even better. You could shoot your load and ask all 10 tomorrow, then wait 364 more days to ask another. Or you could space them out... or ask one now and one tomorrow, then wait 6 months to ask another, and so on. But this apparent dependancy and NEED for AskMe for some people, I find disturbing.
posted by Witty at 8:32 AM on May 31, 2006

I agree that there needs to be effective categorization. I think the best solution would be an ability to filter the front page to display the categories of one's choosing. If I'm an expert in computers and cooking, I should be able to filter the page to see those questions and not have to wade through all of the travel or music or relationship questions to which I won't be able to add anything useful.

For me, at least, the issue is not "get questions off the front page and filed away." The issue is "reduce the number of questions so that people can concentrate better on the questions asked."

But there's no point in concentrating better on questions about an area in which a user has no expertise. I can spend all day concentrating on a question about what to do in Prague and I'm not going to come up with an answer.
posted by ludwig_van at 8:58 AM on May 31, 2006

If you want to make a mix tape and don't have the time, inspiration, or music collection to compile it yourself, then as far as I'm concerned it's not worth very much anyway. Sort of cheapens the whole concept to just ask a bunch of people with more knowledge or taste or and pass it off as your own. These AskMe questions bug me to no end.
posted by hermitosis at 9:13 AM on May 31, 2006

I think the best solution would be an ability to filter the front page to display the categories of one's choosing. If I'm an expert in computers and cooking, I should be able to filter the page to see those questions and not have to wade through all of the travel or music or relationship questions to which I won't be able to add anything useful.

As mullac said, as long as you have the sidebar open, you can already do this by clicking on the categories there.
posted by Witty at 9:17 AM on May 31, 2006

I haven't looked at this thread since yesterday, but let me pop in to restate that I think the solutions being presented solve the wrong problems, and don't give us the preferred result.

I think it's worth restating what exactly the problem is (too many questions, less (and sometimes none) answered) and evaluate solutions based on that.

Category view as the index page of ask.metafilter.com

The current index of ask mefi is showing all questions, from every category. This is a great way to see everything that is going on and to make sure you don't miss anything. No one wants to miss anything or let stuff go unanswered, so this is a great way to do things until there are too many questions.

Moving to a category list, with say, the last 3-5 questions in each of the dozen categories would mean all the categories would be scrolling questions "off" the front page view in a matter of a couple hours, and for the technology-related ones, it would be much faster.

The bigger problem is that maybe I would never jump to the relationships category page, because I might not want to read a ton of them, and I wouldn't answer any. With the current show-all view, I see them all stream by and drop answers or anecdotes when I can.

I think having a category view of the front page with the last x questions in each is a bad idea and will lead to many more unanswered questions as a result of obscuring questions more quickly than we are currently. Also, every post on Ask Mefi has a category link to the category page and I don't think people use it very much, so I don't think imposing a new way of viewing the site (forcing a view by category) is going to be successful, due to it being largely unused today.

A stumped page

I love the idea of a stumped page, but look at this sampling of unanswered questions. These questions are almost all too specific for Ask MetaFilter. A page of stumped questions would essentially be a Hall of Fame for bad uses of Ask MeFi. I don't want a question about relocating massage therapists that might need a new license and what's it like to practice unlicensed and is that illegal or not being at the top of a stumped page for a month. While that might lead to answers, the majority of stuff I see go unanswered should be unanswered because it was usually a way too specific question that only a handful of people on earth could answer. There are good unanswered questions and there are bad unanswered questions. Looking at the recent unanswered stuff, a stumped page would be 75% bad questions that shouldn't have been asked here. Now I know the first thing someone will say is "why not just delete them?" and my answer to that is it would increase mine and jessamyn's workload to cut the lame unanswered questions and tell people to try something else.

Why not just shorten the text on the front page of Ask MeFi?

Let's say I doubled the number of questions on the front page of Ask MeFi and I cut the length to an average of a half. I believe this would result in less answers per question for a couple reasons. One is that there would simply be more questions to see, and visitors would be overwhelmed. I've seen it happen as I upped the limits to what we currently have. The second major problem is sometimes people can't boil their questions down to a single line with a question mark and as a result we'll be looking at more confused or obscure introductions to their more inside. The result of this would be less questions getting read and answered because I would pass over the confusing or wandering ones.
posted by mathowie at 9:21 AM on May 31, 2006

In honor of this thread I have just posted a fairly useless ask me question of a rather personal nature. LONG LIVE THE SCROLL BAR!
posted by blue_beetle at 9:29 AM on May 31, 2006

Matt, what about a categorized front page, but with categories only showing for the last 75 (or whatever the current limit is) questions? So there may be 25 computer questions and no pets questions, for example.

I'm pushing the category view because I think right now the flat page makes it look like there are too many questions for an answerer to parse. Grouping them in some way makes it seem like a more manageable number of questions.

It's just like adding headers and photos to a print layout. They may not make you read any less text, but it suddenly seems less onerous to read the text that's there. The current huge mass of undifferentiated questions often means I skip over things because my eye just can't process that big a block of text.
posted by occhiblu at 9:34 AM on May 31, 2006

I think it's worth restating what exactly the problem is (too many questions, less (and sometimes none) answered) and evaluate solutions based on that.

Understood. So what IS the answer then? You/We simply can't ask people to post less questions. You have to force them to post less. The only way I can see that being possible is by either increasing the amount of time between questions or by limiting the total number of questions a member can ask over a given period of time (like my yearly quota suggestion mentioned above).
posted by Witty at 9:37 AM on May 31, 2006

Agreed occhiblu. In general, being able to sort the front page of AskMe, like we can in the blue, in a variety of ways (like the pull-down menu in the blue) allows for any individual to manipulate the content in a way that's best for that member giving that member the ideal opportunity to get more involved in answering questions (at least reading them).
posted by Witty at 9:41 AM on May 31, 2006

So what IS the answer then?

There IS no perfect answer, but it's something I've been thinking about for the last two years since Ask MeFi went online. I've thought about every option presented here and declined on most of them for the reasons I stated. I just wanted to re-iterate that solutions should be directed at the problem without introducing new problems. Most solutions presented in this thread create more problems than they solve.

The only way I can see that being possible is by either increasing the amount of time between questions or by limiting the total number of questions a member can ask over a given period of time (like my yearly quota suggestion mentioned above).

And if you read my responses here, I agreed with you. I will do something about it, as I stated.
posted by mathowie at 9:48 AM on May 31, 2006

Matt, what about a categorized front page, but with categories only showing for the last 75 (or whatever the current limit is) questions? So there may be 25 computer questions and no pets questions, for example.

There already are categories shown in the tiny footers of every post.

Grouping by category on the front page would mean I'd have to list posts by category instead of by most recent first. This means that I have to answer the question of "which category goes on the top?" and if you say "why, the one with the most questions, of course" I'd say that a front page like that would keep popular categories popular, and make less popular ones even less popular. If 25 questions about ipods and networking were at the top of the page every morning, we would tend to get more questions about that, and having the one relationship question at the bottom would mean it would quite likely be missed.

What other option is there, random category grouping so it changes on every page view? Should category headers be determined by the most recent asked questions?

I'm not seeing how this is better than what we have now.
posted by mathowie at 9:52 AM on May 31, 2006

the two-week/ten-day limit...punishes the people that already are careful with the community resource and will encourage sockpuppets for AskMe.

Define "careful with the community resource." The first people I'd disqualify would be those who posted too often — and if you're regularly scraping the hard deck, that's probably "too often." Posting weekly questions might not be "abusive" per se, but I wouldn't describe it as "careful" behavior.

And I doubt increasing the wait from 7 to 14 days would precipitate a marked increase in sockpuppets (although limiting people to 10 questions per year probably would). It's not a significant increase (at least, it shouldn't be — and I agree with Witty about people who need to poll AskMe every hour, on the hour). If you're willing to blow $5 on a sockpuppet to speed your urgent Name-That-Tune through the queue, then you probably weren't waiting 7 days to begin with.

I think the best comment came from reklaw: "Reading these MetaTalk threads is always a lesson in how most people can't design anything." This thread is filled with creative suggestions that climb onto lots of limbs; but I think the most practical, effective, and efficient solution is to simply raise the bar on who can post questions: Make new users wait, and make everybody else wait longer.
posted by cribcage at 9:55 AM on May 31, 2006

...but I think the most practical, effective, and efficient solution is to simply raise the bar on who can post questions: Make new users wait, and make everybody else wait longer.

Word.
posted by Witty at 10:02 AM on May 31, 2006

I'm not seeing how this is better than what we have now.

It's a psychological thing. Big headers, with information organized underneath them, makes large chunks of info easier to understand. That's why newspapers or textbooks, even online, don't look like MeFi -- they have sections, and headlines, and subheads.

I can look at the New York Times in the morning (online or off) and get a general sense of what news there is without having to read every single word on the page. I can pursue things that catch my eye, even if I wouldn't normally read about that topic. I can gain a bit of info about pretty much everything just by looking at the headlines.

I can't do that on AskMe. I have to read almost every single word on the page to determine what's going on. Little tiny category links don't help my eye scan and organize info when I'm looking at the page; they're one more thing that I have read.

People already intuitively try to give their posts headlines: that's basically what all the "BlankFilter" intros are. Ways to help readers get a sense of what's to follow, so they can pick up the reading clues more easily and quickly.

I agree that determining what categories would go first is a problem. Salon seems to alternate by day, or maybe every few hours. I'm not sure I'd do it on every refresh; on the other hand, the page basically changes on every refresh now, since there are almost always new questions getting posted.
posted by occhiblu at 10:16 AM on May 31, 2006 [1 favorite]

As mullac said, as long as you have the sidebar open, you can already do this by clicking on the categories there.

I can click on a category and see only the posts in that category. What I want is to be able to make the front page display all of the posts that fall under all of the categories I'm interested in, chronologically.
posted by ludwig_van at 10:19 AM on May 31, 2006

Looking back at the MetaTalk front page, I thought of something else: On MeTa and MeFi, there are few enough posts that the date headers function like the headers I'm talking about. Whenever I'm looking for a post, or even randomly perusing, I use the big date headers to get a sense of where I am on the page. AskMe, because there are so many questions each day, doesn't even have that visual break.
posted by occhiblu at 10:20 AM on May 31, 2006

There's a tipping point, somewhere, when the infrequency of possible posts will force people to adopt a different relationship to the site. It may not be 10-14 days, but maybe it would be. I'll bet a 21-28 day period, or a low limit like 5-10 posts a year, would turn Askme into a comparative ghost town... or worse, into a morass of obvious sockpuppets. At $5 per, that might be lucrative... but I wonder if the problem is really so bad as all that.

The real goal here is to prune the garbage, no? There can't be too many -good- questions, can there? Excessive goodness is rarely reason for complaint. If bad questions really make up a large proportion of the asks... perhaps it's time to prune or otherwise limit memberships rather than posts.
posted by anotherpanacea at 10:22 AM on May 31, 2006

2nd cribcage..

-Increase time from joining to post a question +/- required pre-question contribution to the site

-Increase time for all between questions to 2 weeks (or whatever)

+/- ban musicmixers/nyc-travelfilter/others?
posted by peacay at 10:27 AM on May 31, 2006

occhiblu writes "AskMe, because there are so many questions each day, doesn't even have that visual break."

Maybe just add Day, Swing and Graveyard divisions to the Askme page.

Dividing the main AskMe page into categories is a pain because when you reload and scoll down you'll end up alternating between read and unread posts.
posted by Mitheral at 10:28 AM on May 31, 2006

anotherpanacea writes "There can't be too many -good- questions, can there? Excessive goodness is rarely reason for complaint. "

Sure there can, we're experiencing a mini version of the evolution of UseNet. People used to read the entire news feed and it used to take them less than an hour a week. Then an hour a day. Nowadays some individual groups could outlast all your waking hours.
posted by Mitheral at 10:38 AM on May 31, 2006

I've been following this with interest for the past two days... I don't think AskMe has totally gotten out of hand, yet.

These are all the opinions of someone who has watched / participated in Mefi-related stuff since 2001 -

1) To address it the way Matt suggests (too many questions, not enough answers), I would reiterate that there are too many questions using this resource when there are other (maybe even better) resources available. I think two of those have been covered (music and travel recommendations) and I want to suggest two others : computers and relationships. The computers questions especially could likely be answered more thoroughly via the hardware/software documentation or some forum dedicated to same. The relationship questions always rehash the same principles ("Have you tried communication?" "Run! He/she's crazy!").

As someone who works with computers and the internet, I understand the desire to use a forum like this wherein answers seem to be more polite and less tech-heavy, but I think they contribute quite a bit to the "weight" of the front page and don't offer much return.

As with the recent question on phone-bugging, I think the relationship questions generally test the limits of what this kind of structure (a Web forum) can do. It sounds like, Matt, you are thinking about that sort of thing these days.

I think if you lopped off media recommendations (movies, music, comics, whathaveyou), travel recommendations, computer problems and relationship problems you'd remove a tremendous amount of questions. Those questions could have their own pages, in fact, and everything else can stay in the original AskMefi. The original would be the one I'd visit, anyway...

2) I like the flat structure. I like being a bit of a generalist in reading other interesting questions and attempting at times to give a serious answer to something other than my profession.
posted by Slothrop at 10:49 AM on May 31, 2006

"Define "careful with the community resource." The first people I'd disqualify would be those who posted too often — and if you're regularly scraping the hard deck, that's probably "too often." Posting weekly questions might not be "abusive" per se, but I wouldn't describe it as "careful" behavior."

I mean people who rarely use all of their AskMe questions, but occassionally have a need to get a couple things answered quickly. I come up against the limit once or twice a year, but there are a fair number of people like me (who I am egotistically defining as ideal AskMe users), and it does punish them for the poor behavior of others.

Frankly, a lot of the problem would be solved by active moderation, but Matt's been vocally against that for quite a while. But farbeit from me to suggest that maybe a user base of 30k needs more than two people to moderate it, especially if those two people are going to have lives outside of the site.
posted by klangklangston at 10:54 AM on May 31, 2006

klangklangston, think of it as community building. If you're itching to post another question then...reach out. Email someone. Share it around.
posted by peacay at 11:18 AM on May 31, 2006

Frankly, a lot of the problem would be solved by active moderation, but Matt's been vocally against that for quite a while.

To me, that only results in more bitching (in the gray) about what should and what shouldn't be deleted... where to draw the line, who decides and so forth. Adding "active moderation" (more than it already is) is just unconstitutional, if you will, and goes against what separates Mefi from similar sites, making it no better or different from a run-of-the-mill vBulletin forum community.
posted by Witty at 11:29 AM on May 31, 2006

I quite agree with Matt about the danger of category view and was worried to see it advocated by so many as I scrolled through this thread. I think part of the brilliance of the flat front page is the serendipity that it fosters. There are many categories I might never read which might contain a question that I'm somehow suited to answering. I also tend to read many more questions and the resulting threads than I can answer (which is as it should be), but I might miss really good questions I didn't even know I was interested in if they were behind categories.
posted by OmieWise at 12:47 PM on May 31, 2006

The real answer: click on the "older questions" link at the bottom.
posted by Rumple at 12:51 PM on May 31, 2006

Or, what if the "second page" was "older questions still active and/or marked needing answers or unanswered". One might click on page two more if it was more filtered and not just more of the same.
posted by Rumple at 1:01 PM on May 31, 2006

I mean people who rarely use all of their AskMe questions, but occassionally have a need to get a couple things answered quickly. I come up against the limit once or twice a year, but there are a fair number of people like me (who I am egotistically defining as ideal AskMe users), and it does punish them for the poor behavior of others.

How about a set number of "bonus questions" per year? In addition to the one question every two weeks (or whatever), each user would get a couple of freebies each year to use at any time, even if the user has already used up their current question. This would address klangklangston's concern without adding much traffic.
posted by brain_drain at 1:22 PM on May 31, 2006

Micropayments! A $1 a question.
posted by smackfu at 1:25 PM on May 31, 2006

No more than one question per user every two weeks sounds like the best solution to me.
posted by Roger Dodger at 1:40 PM on May 31, 2006

"How about a set number of 'bonus questions' per year? In addition to the one question every two weeks (or whatever), each user would get a couple of freebies each year to use at any time, even if the user has already used up their current question. This would address klangklangston's concern without adding much traffic."

That addresses some of my concerns with it as well. (As I mentioned, I don't usually post in AskMeFi because I'm afraid that if I use the resource now, it won't be available should I really need it later. I've obviously not been abusing AskMeFi as a questioner, and I probably would continue to not post many questions, but knowing there is a safety valve of sorts would make me more comfortable with these proposed limits. And my suggestion -- the lower your user number, the more bonus questions you get! ha ha! OK, I'm joking about that last bit... mostly.)

"I'll bet a 21-28 day period, or a low limit like 5-10 posts a year, would turn Askme into a comparative ghost town... or worse, into a morass of obvious sockpuppets. At $5 per, that might be lucrative... but I wonder if the problem is really so bad as all that. "

Yes. I think that reducing the number of posts will reduce the number of eyes looking at the site, eventually. Which will reduce the number of answers. Which eventually makes people not bother to come to the site at all, perhaps. I frequent AskMe mostly because I enjoy reading the variety of questions (I'm one of those who WOULD look in every category, probably), and the fewer questions there are, the unhappier I am.

FWIW, I don't want to see the mixtape questions, the travel questions, etc. go away at all. The variety of questions and the amazing job the community here does at answering them is a strength, not a weakness. We need to manage the questions, not eliminate them. It saddens me that so many people want to cut back.

"There already are categories shown in the tiny footers of every post."

As occhiblu has mentioned, those aren't don't work in the same way category headings would.

"What other option is there, random category grouping so it changes on every page view? Should category headers be determined by the most recent asked questions?"

I could live with either of those, truthfully. I still think that the fundamental problem here is seen differently by many of us. For some of us, the problem is one of organization, not quantity. For others, it's the other way around. I don't know that it's possible to come to agreement if there is that fundamental philosophical difference about how the site works. I just hope that whatever happens doesn't negatively impact it, because AskMe is really a great thing.
posted by litlnemo at 3:08 PM on May 31, 2006

"those aren't don't work"

As usual I see the error in the preview panel just as I'm clicking Post Comment.... *sigh*
posted by litlnemo at 3:10 PM on May 31, 2006

I remember Matt commenting a while back that he was trying to think up some extra features for members who wanted to donate monthly; what if askme questions were more restricted (1 a month, or whatever seems appropriate), but people who wished to sign up to pay a monthly fee could retain the 1 question a week privilege?

Sorry if this has already been suggested, I'm still new to wrangling 100+ comment threads.
posted by supercrayon at 3:17 PM on May 31, 2006

I'm still new to wrangling 100+ comment threads.

Ha! I see the next metatalk thread forming on the horizon....
posted by anotherpanacea at 3:29 PM on May 31, 2006

Excellent answer, Brain_drain. If that's how it gets implimented, I won't complain.
posted by klangklangston at 3:30 PM on May 31, 2006

--the fewer questions there are, the unhappier I am.

I suppose mathowie could always reprogram AskMe to be exactly like Yahoo! Answers. But since Yahoo! Answers already exists, why bother?

Seriously, if you want lots of questions, people are posting questions to Yahoo! Answers less than two seconds apart.

The quality of questions and answers posted to Yahoo! Answers is considerably lower than on AskMe. I suspect there's a tradeoff between volume and quality: if you know that nobody's going to pay much attention to your question, because it's only one of a flood of questions, you're not going to spend much time on it. Same for answers.
posted by russilwvong at 5:09 PM on May 31, 2006

There is also a filtered view of this page showing just questions with "best" marked answers and another page of fantastic questions and answers suggested by members and another page of questions that have not had many answers.

Seriously, man. How fucking hard would that be?
posted by Civil_Disobedient at 5:53 PM on May 31, 2006

I think if you lopped off media recommendations (movies, music, comics, whathaveyou), travel recommendations, computer problems and relationship problems you'd remove a tremendous amount of questions. Those questions could have their own pages, in fact, and everything else can stay in the original AskMefi. The original would be the one I'd visit, anyway...

I think the thing that makes AskMefi great is that all those sections *are* included. I for one would find AskMefi incredibly boring if all the relationship questions, media recommendations and so forth were removed. I don't think these questions are any less valuable than the ones that are remaining.
posted by jonathanstrange at 6:14 PM on May 31, 2006

As I mentioned, I don't usually post in AskMeFi because I'm afraid that if I use the resource now, it won't be available should I really need it later.

I gotta say, this just seems rather pathetic to me. If you're having that much anxiety about posting a question to AskMe, then maybe you should post a question about having so much anxiety prior to posting a question.

Really, if you're continually second guessing yourself, whether to post or not, then maybe your question isn't worthy for AskMe to being with. I don't feel your pain here, sorry. One question every 7 days, is more than plenty. Not posting a question now because you might need to for something "more important" within the next 7 days... well, that just sounds ridiculous.
posted by Witty at 4:58 AM on June 1, 2006

"Really, if you're continually second guessing yourself, whether to post or not, then maybe your question isn't worthy for AskMe to being with."

Duh. Way to miss the point, Witty.
posted by klangklangston at 7:05 AM on June 1, 2006

No, I got the point klangklangston... which is ultimately, "don't increase the wait time because I have a hard enough time dealing with the 7-day waiting period, so much so, that it often prevents me from posting questions at all because I get scared that I might need to REALLY post a life-or-death question later in the week".

That's retarded and not a good argument against the increase... yes, retarded. Thanks for choosing to miss my point (as usual) klangklangston.
posted by Witty at 7:22 AM on June 1, 2006

I gotta say, this just seems rather pathetic to me.

It doesn't seem pathetic at all to me. It just indicates that the site is working the way it's supposed to: litlnemo won't post a question unless it's really important.
posted by russilwvong at 8:45 AM on June 1, 2006

I'd like to toss my 2 cents into the pot for the best solutions put forward so far:
- Increasing the ease of Navigation on the front page (I could go for a drop down menu, and yes I know it's in the sidebar)
- Forcing people to wait 1 month after sign-up before they post a question and 2 weeks between each one (although I think I lurked for years, then got an account to ask a question)
- The TravelFilter spin-off would be wicked. I know it would give matt and jessamyn a whole new bunch of crap to deal with, but I think it would be a hugely useful site. There would be so much gathered knowledge in one place that searching by tags (hotel+toronto) would almost eliminate the need to ask. Also, most travel questions are useless to 99% of the Askme population at the actual time they're posted.

Also, all the talk in this thread about Askers not going back to respond to their answers caused me to go back and finish off one of my questions. Maybe all we need is more threads like this to save the green ;)
posted by dripdripdrop at 10:03 AM on June 1, 2006

It often prevents me from posting questions without a direct need. Isn't that how it's supposed to work? I think, "Yeah, I'm kinda curious, but is it worth wasting this week's question on?"
Noting that you don't ask a question every week, you're either an incurious person or someone who also has an internal calculation about whether certain questions should be asked here.

And while you may never have had two questions that you'd like answered quickly come up within the same week, that doesn't mean that your experience is universal.

So, no, you didn't get the point, Witty. But feel free to mischaracterize this response too.
posted by klangklangston at 10:05 AM on June 1, 2006

The quality of questions and answers posted to Yahoo! Answers is considerably lower than on AskMe.

I hold the quality of the users solely responsible for that one.
posted by smackfu at 10:29 AM on June 1, 2006

I get it... and have since the beginning despite what you choose to believe. The point is klangklangston, as an arguement against increasing the waiting period between postings, it just seems silly to me to use your own personal anxiety over whether or not to "waste" a question in favor of saving if for something really REALLY important.

What is really REALLY important? What is so important that only AskMe can support? What is so important that, since you've already posted your one question for the week and now can't post another for 4 days, "damn it, I shouldn't have posted my rose garden question the other day 'cause now my leg is broken. What am I gonna do"?

Where does the cycle end? It's AskMe, not a direct line to God. It's not a genie in a bottle ready to grant wishes. I guess for me, it a matter of a lack of sympathy for those who "need" AskMe (potentially) more than once every 7 days.

It often prevents me from posting questions without a direct need. Isn't that how it's supposed to work?

Yes, that's how it's supposed to work. But it doesn't work any less by extending the waiting period to 10 or 14 days. When a question comes up, I don't think of AskMe first. In fact, it's probably one of the last resouces I choose for no other reason than I know it's usually nothing more than a shot in the dark... good for some things, not so good for others. The time of day a question is posted affects the responses, and so on.

If your question isn't worthy of AskMe, it's not because of how long you have to wait between postings. It's because it isn't worthy. Even if the waiting period were 7 hours instead of 7 days, questions would still need to be of the same certain standard, no?

Noting that you don't ask a question every week, you're either an incurious person or someone who also has an internal calculation about whether certain questions should be asked here.

Or it could me that my curiosity doesn't revolve around AskMetafilter.
posted by Witty at 12:10 PM on June 1, 2006

Questions with dative properties:
http://ask.metafilter.com/mefi/39322
http://ask.metafilter.com/mefi/39308
http://ask.metafilter.com/mefi/39306
http://ask.metafilter.com/mefi/39292
http://ask.metafilter.com/mefi/39276
http://ask.metafilter.com/mefi/39254

And that's just with a quick scan without looking inside the rest of the questions. Sometimes people do have a question that AskMe is good at answering that has a sense of urgency. Because you don't is no reason to further restrict people that do.

"But it doesn't work any less by extending the waiting period to 10 or 14 days."

Yes, it does. That would be the point of extending the waiting period, Witty. That fewer questions would be asked, making it work less. The question is whether that's a good way of reducing overall utility. I tend to believe that most people use AskMe in a pretty responsible manner, but that there are some questions that could be axed in order to make it work better for everyone. Your solution is to make it work less for everyone in order to... what, make it work better for a few individuals?

"When a question comes up, I don't think of AskMe first. In fact, it's probably one of the last resouces I choose for no other reason than I know it's usually nothing more than a shot in the dark... good for some things, not so good for others. The time of day a question is posted affects the responses, and so on."

Good for you. That doesn't mean that everyone uses AskMe like that or should.

"The point is klangklangston, as an arguement against increasing the waiting period between postings, it just seems silly to me to use your own personal anxiety over whether or not to "waste" a question in favor of saving if for something really REALLY important."

I realize that, and it seems asinine to take someone who clearly doesn't use the resource for much aside from finding new prog bands as the proper model for the system.
posted by klangklangston at 12:29 PM on June 1, 2006

"I gotta say, this just seems rather pathetic to me. If you're having that much anxiety about posting a question to AskMe, then maybe you should post a question about having so much anxiety prior to posting a question."

Hey, I know it's silly, it's just how I am. But it's not "anxiety". That would be odd. Don't paint it as something pathological when it isn't.

"That's retarded and not a good argument against the increase... yes, retarded."

Charming.

"It doesn't seem pathetic at all to me. It just indicates that the site is working the way it's supposed to: litlnemo won't post a question unless it's really important."

Well, maybe. I wouldn't say the only question I ever posted was life-changing or anything like that. And I have sort of resolved to post more in AskMe anyway, because obviously every time I've avoided posting so far I didn't need to use the site within a week anyway.

I think the point I was trying to make was that longer delays between posts might prevent people from posting more than you expect it will (would a two-week wait make more people's posting behavior like mine?) -- and the thing is, I like reading AskMe and don't want to see the number of questions posted go down. I read AskMe before I read MeFi these days. I'm fine with the message volume. It's the organization of the volume that is the problem, because people just don't read and answer posts that aren't on the front page. That is the issue as I see it.

But as I mentioned above, this is perhaps a fundamental difference in basic philosophy about AskMe (and MetaFilter itself, really.)

"And while you may never have had two questions that you'd like answered quickly come up within the same week, that doesn't mean that your experience is universal."

When you need to know "what was that weird SF book I read in 7th grade called?" you need to know NOW! Heh. (The funny thing is that whenever I start thinking "hey, I should ask if anyone knows the name of such and such book/tv show/movie I loved as a kid" someone here always seems to beat me to it. AskMe is great that way -- lots of time my questions get posted by someone else before I can even bother asking them. That's another reason I don't want to see anything that would cut down on post volume.) I frequently search AskMe's archives for answers to certain kinds of questions before doing a Google search, because AskMe has so many areas covered well, and with much less garbage. (For example, some topics will only get you a plethora of sales pages if you do a Google search, while an AskMe search will get you useful info -- or at least stuff that isn't sales and associate pages.)

"Yes, it does. That would be the point of extending the waiting period, Witty. That fewer questions would be asked, making it work less. The question is whether that's a good way of reducing overall utility. I tend to believe that most people use AskMe in a pretty responsible manner, but that there are some questions that could be axed in order to make it work better for everyone. Your solution is to make it work less for everyone in order to... what, make it work better for a few individuals?"

This is basically my issue in a nutshell. Having fewer questions is a negative AFAIC. But it's obvious that not everyone here is in the inclusionist camp.

"I realize that, and it seems asinine to take someone who clearly doesn't use the resource for much aside from finding new prog bands as the proper model for the system."

To be fair, I don't think this is how Witty has been using AskMe.
posted by litlnemo at 2:37 PM on June 1, 2006

- Increased waiting period for new members? YES
- Increased waiting period between questions? YES
- brain_drain's bonus question idea? YES

Also: how about changing the colour of a user's name to reflect how "good" a member of the community they are? Keep everything as normal but for those who:
• have a question:answer ratio > 1, or
• have asked more than 3 questions in the past 30 days, or
• have given less than 10 answers...

... turn their username a different colour? This way, the site would carry on as normal and those who want to answer the question can do so, but I'm getting bored of the all-take-and-no-give users. It would be good to be able to spot them from a distance. May also help to discourage AskMe sockpuppet accounts.
posted by blag at 3:31 PM on June 1, 2006

blag: "Also: how about changing the colour of a user's name to reflect how "good" a member of the community they are?"

I really don't think that's going to go over very well on a community that has steadfastly avoided such things as avatars, sigs, and other such "poster adornments".

Do I get a prize when I hit 1000 AskMe answers and 0 questions?
posted by Rhomboid at 4:00 PM on June 1, 2006

Do I get a prize when I hit 1000 AskMe answers and 0 questions?

No, but you get a gold watch when you crest 2,000. Not really, though.
posted by Civil_Disobedient at 5:16 PM on June 1, 2006

I like the Stumped page idea, myself.

Allow askers to also flag a question as 'answered to my satisfaction' . Items without the flag after X days appear randomly on the stumped page, where users can flag them as 'pretty much answered' or 'unsuitable for ask mefi on account of level of neurosurgical skill required' or 'unanswerable cosmic wank'. Enough of the latter flags and they no longer appear on the stumped page.

It's simple - and the random aspect would make it fiendishly addictive, I suspect. Any post in a stumped page question can be flagged as 'Miss Congeniality award answer' if you really want to add a little egoboo to the occasion - as the poster is unlikely to still be around if they haven't set a best answer yet.
posted by Sparx at 3:08 AM on June 2, 2006

d'uh. *asker* is unlikely to be around. Apologies for overuse of 'post' and derived words of same.
posted by Sparx at 3:10 AM on June 2, 2006

You're confusing or interpreting differently what we mean by "working less"

You said: "It often prevents me from posting questions without a direct need. Isn't that how it's supposed to work?"

I said: "Yes, that's how it's supposed to work. But it doesn't work any less by extending the waiting period to 10 or 14 days."
retarded
Obviously the end result is less questions, which is the goal many of the people in this thread. To me, that's working "more". So it's a matter of semantics I guess. I agree with the need to decrease the overall number of daily questions, which would or could increase the quality of questions. For me, that's means AskMe is working "more". Sorry.

On preview: I don't know what I think anymore. I mean, I would rather see more questions that would have lasting long-term value and less questions about the immediate, covering really unique circumstances, whose value to the community erodes so quickly that it just becomes wasted space.

{and now the rest of my post}

I can understand that some people think they might need AskMe for something "right now". But those needs, really, aren't THAT important, like the "what was that weird SF book I read in 7th grade called" example provided by litlnemo above. While that may be important to litlnemo, it will never be important to anyone that might come across that question in the future (only to someone who just happens to not remember the name of that exact book also and actually manages to search AskMe in just the right way as to pull the question). I don't think those types of questions are good for AskMe.

So if that's the kind of stuff you'd like to protect by keeping the waiting time short, fine. I wouldn't miss them by increasing the time to 14 days (and really, it wouldn't prevent anyone from asking them, but just to think a little harder whether or not to).

Charming.

OK, OK... retarded was a poor choice. But my point still stands. Whatever it is that's getting your way and preventing you from posting a question... well, it's not AskMe or how it works that's responsible, no matter how much you'd like to say it is. You've been a member of Metafilter for over 6 years... you've posted one question. I posted my first question over 2 years ago. If you could only manage to muster the courage to post one question EVER, you're just not a good candidate for arguing against the increase. It's you, not the site. I appreciate your defense of the 7-day waiting period, but just find that it lacks credibility, that's all. I don't necessarily think my questions are the greatest or most valuable or whatever, but I think most of them could at least be helpful to someone looking for answers to similar questions in the future (just as your one question might).
posted by Witty at 6:25 AM on June 2, 2006