Comments on 12736

Which comments went unanswered: useful for keeping the discussion on track and maximizing the number of questions answered. I also don't think it's only useful for me: many if not most of the questions would be of interest to anyone moving to London, or even to those who've lived here for a while but don't know all the ins and outs of the city.

Furthermore, once I'm getting close to having a complete set of answers to these questions (and to many others I didn't ask), I'll synthesize them into a more useable form (i.e. another website) and post its URL back to the thread (and maybe to projects) so that it becomes a truly useful "how to move to London" document.
posted by louigi at 8:44 AM on September 22, 2006

And in terms of asking 30 questions at once: would it be better to ask these questions 1-at-a-time? And, while group attention is focussed on this thread, would re-posting the unanswered questions at another time of day, a week or two from now, to try to capture a different demographic of London-savvy MeFites and elicit answers to those questions that had maybe been overlooked on the first pass, be unacceptably rule-bending or gauche? What say we all?
posted by louigi at 8:46 AM on September 22, 2006

Also, in response to lemur: many of the questions have been answered perfectly already, and my understanding is that it's perfectly acceptable to ask a question whose answer is only useful to the asker. Questions of the "what is this weird growth on my left buttock; here's a picture for your reference?" variety have passed without comment many-a-time.
posted by louigi at 8:48 AM on September 22, 2006

Don't worry, louigi, I've got your back.
posted by c:\awesome at 8:49 AM on September 22, 2006

I dunno -- I see what you're saying, louigi, but I didn't like the post, it seemed to be abusive of the ethic here. As others have said, I certainly wouldn't want every MeFi member who moves to another city to do this, nor would I want every MeFi member who did anything that could have an applicable question-set asked do this ("I just bought a new house, and have the following questions: what color should I paint my living room? My dining room? What stone should I use for my patio? My sidewalk? What brand mailbox do you all like? Roof shingles? Windows?")

Gah, I'd hate that.
posted by delfuego at 8:50 AM on September 22, 2006

It's a manipulation on a scale that makes the holocaust seem like a papercut. It's quite possibly the worst thing to ever happen in the history of existence. It may in fact be even worse than that!.... Oh wait, sorry, I had my snark-level set to 11, let me dial it down to 1...

It wasn't a bad post, but I think questions should be limited to a couple of sentances. Any askMe that fills my screen with text immediately causes my eyes to glaze over, and my helper-instinct to shut down.

[Now resuming normal snark-level]
posted by blue_beetle at 8:51 AM on September 22, 2006 [1 favorite]

I like the post, and I don't think it's just useful to louigi. If I were moving to London, I would add that post to my favorites. Louigi's clever numbering scheme would allow me to do easy searches on the page for answers.

To me, the post is acceptable, because all of the numbered items are part of a grand category re: living in London. Such a system could be abused as follows:

I have some questions:

1. Where can I get cheap shoes in NYC?
2. Which "Star Trek" episode should I watch first?
3. How do you tie a necktie?

But I think such abuses will be obvious.
posted by grumblebee at 8:54 AM on September 22, 2006

How could anyone think that this was an appropriate AskMeFi question? You're allowed ONE question (or at most 2 or 3 given a very, very close relationship). This type of abuse shows a complete lack of understanding of this site and its mores. And it takes advantage of the goodwill of the members here.
posted by SeizeTheDay at 8:54 AM on September 22, 2006

I certainly wouldn't want every MeFi member who moves to another city to do this...

If EVERY member did it, it WOULD be an an abuse, because most of those posts would be double. But if there were just one thread like this for each major city, I think it would be a great resource.
posted by grumblebee at 8:55 AM on September 22, 2006

Perhaps if you'd asked a broader question "I'm moving to this area of London, please suggest any particularly hidden gems" or some such, with a "more inside" link that pointed really granular users to this other website you're compiling. It's not like a move to China or anything.
posted by DenOfSizer at 8:56 AM on September 22, 2006

hugsnkisses, these are the sorts of questions I would normally ask a friend, not a semi-anonymous mass of people. Unfortunately, we don't know anyone in London. This is a large, somewhat overwhelming city, and I don't want to spend the first year of my time here feeling like a fish out of water. So I'm trusting the benevolence of strangers to help me get my sea legs.
posted by louigi at 8:57 AM on September 22, 2006

It's out there on the border of rude/polyquestioning. Better in this situation is to simply state you've moved, had a bit of a look around, provide the map and ask for general guidance for the coolest places in relation to a modest list. The way it it's phrased seems overregimented and like you're giving orders or homework....the ethic thing delfuego mentions. But it's not like you posted goatse in AskMe louigi; this isn't to say you're a bastard, it just come over as a bit lame.
posted by peacay at 8:58 AM on September 22, 2006

That said, your organization method was useful in answering.

Also, moving is weirdly personal - if you're moving from Billings, MO, to London, it's gonna be a way bigger shock than moving from NYC to London, but if you're moving from Cranckled Knee, Alaska to Bagsu Nag, Himachel Pradesh, it's gonna be easier than moving from NYC to Bagsu Nag. See? A truly useful guide is going to take into account all sorts of contextualisms.
posted by DenOfSizer at 8:59 AM on September 22, 2006

I like the post, and I don't think it's just useful to louigi. If I were moving to London, I would add that post to my favorites. Louigi's clever numbering scheme would allow me to do easy searches on the page for answers.

Someone with a bit of inclination could set up a simple sight called, say, "30 Questions", which would feature this sort of template, to be answered for any given visitor's place of residence. And then post it on Projects.
posted by cortex at 9:02 AM on September 22, 2006

simple ~~sight~~ site
posted by cortex at 9:03 AM on September 22, 2006

Point taken that it may have come off as overly regimented or controlling. I guess that may be one thing that increases the thread's utility specifically for me, at its expense as a general resource. If anyone has useful tips for life in London that I didn't ask about but that may be useful for me or others, please feel free to post them as well.
posted by louigi at 9:04 AM on September 22, 2006

Abuse of good will indeed. It was annoying to read, then even more annoying to see him keep updating the thread with all the remaining unanswered questions, as if cracking a whip against the toiling beast of AskMe...
posted by lovejones at 9:06 AM on September 22, 2006

while I admire his organizational acumen, I think asking 30 questions at once is really sort of pushing the limits of AskMe, though perhaps other folks disagree.

heh.

Unanswered: B 1,2,3, S 4,5,6,9, F 1,2,3,4,7,9, M 1,2,3,4,6.
posted by louigiPoster at 4:31 PM CET on September 22

this is ridiculous. "pushing the limits", to say the least. I was under the impression we had to be careful with multiple questions.
posted by matteo at 9:08 AM on September 22, 2006

I thought it was a well structured question... however, when I saw all those questions, my brain shut down and I skipped to the next one pretty quick-like. The fact that lots of people provided helpful answers shows that It clearly didn't affect everyone this way. I don't particularly have a problem with the "multiple questions in one post" post, as long as they're all on the same subject, but it is, indeed, starting to push things a bit and I can see why some people would get their knickers in a twist about it.
posted by antifuse at 9:12 AM on September 22, 2006

Meh. I'm not against multiple related questions, but each subcategory should have been posted separately. Which would be more helpful for everyone. Perhaps like this:

Miscellaneous moving to London questions.
Remember me? London food questions.
[Insert neighborhood names here] shops and services recs.

And Louigi's overmoderation (that "unanswered so far post!") of his own thread clinches it. Eck. Sorry.
posted by desuetude at 9:31 AM on September 22, 2006

I really like the list format too. I can't wait to use it. (Don't worry, not on metafilter, for other stuff).

The way I was thinking about it was that people like to answer questions about their neck of the woods so this polyquestion was sort of doing those folks a favor by giving all Londoners a chance to answer in their area of expertise.

This doesn't take up much space on the front page of green. Asking one per week would be worse because it would take up more green space, according to me.

Cluttering the front green page with questions that don't need to be asked are much more annoying than this. Not to say that something isn't annoying just because it isn't the most annoying...I better take a nap.
posted by Aghast. at 9:33 AM on September 22, 2006

I have to agree that the "unanswered" element is a little pushy. Relying on the benevolence of strangers is one thing, but poking them while they're at it is quite another.

Also, "wandering aloud" about things such as water hardness and the availability of weather-proof clothing is naive at best, lazy at worst.

But, it's a useful question and the responses will be added to my "things in London I should really know but don't" bookmark.
posted by ajp at 9:35 AM on September 22, 2006

and should be a model for future questions of this nature.

I'd hate to encourage more posts like that.
posted by crunchland at 9:43 AM on September 22, 2006

I like the format and would have happily responded to a similar question in askme about Washington, DC.

Perhaps fewer, broader questions, though.

Because of the rapid churn of posts in ask me, I question its usefulness, though. This is the kind of question that would benefit from weeks of attention, not from the one day (at best) attention it will get on the front page as it works now.

Perhaps there should be a way to seperate askme into multiple tracks (you know, like a trouble-ticket system might work)

Quick and simple/Urgent -- Hypothetical/chatfilter (perhaps with some moderation to keep interesting ones going longer) -- involved/complex/take-your-time/reference

Also, there really should be a way of marking particularly good/thorough askme's as reference for particular types of questions. Like an askme Hall of Fame or something.
posted by empath at 9:46 AM on September 22, 2006

I can't stand that format. You have to check the first post just to understand what people are answering.
posted by smackfu at 9:47 AM on September 22, 2006

B2

M15

R9

F3

D7

BINGO!
posted by briank at 9:50 AM on September 22, 2006

I don't think this was a good idea, and I'd be disappointed to see more posts like that.
posted by majick at 9:56 AM on September 22, 2006

By the way, vis-a-vis the repeated "unanswered" lists: what I really wanted was a way to highlight the unanswered questions at the top of the thread, but I couldn't think of a good way to do that. I could have put a link to a remote jpeg which contained the questions, then changed the jpeg to reflect which questions had been answered, but that seemed complicated and not very good for the future useability of the thread. Can anyone think of a better way to accomplish this?
posted by louigi at 10:02 AM on September 22, 2006

Just woke up from a coma. Questions: . . .
posted by yerfatma at 10:04 AM on September 22, 2006

louigi writes "Can anyone think of a better way to accomplish this?"

I think the majority here are saying (and you seem to have at least partly conceded) that your original question(s) should have been rephrased and been a bit more general; in which case, the annoying schoolmasterly trait of informing people about unanswered sections would be redundant.
posted by peacay at 10:09 AM on September 22, 2006

Can anyone think of a better way to accomplish this?

Yeah, don't do it. This is what happens when you ask about twenty questions when the format is only intended for one.
posted by lovejones at 10:09 AM on September 22, 2006

I've seen much worse abuses of AskMe, and I think louigi's intent was not in bad faith, but still, a bit much.
posted by lemur at 10:15 AM on September 22, 2006

I'll synthesize them into a more useable form (i.e. another website) and post its URL back to the thread (and maybe to projects) so that it becomes a truly useful "how to move to London" document.

You're using askme to generate content for another website?

Can anyone think of a better way to accomplish this?

Of course, do some original research, check your new world out yourself and blog about it as you go along, whatever. That'd make for a much more generally interesting website. There will be very few people around the world indeed who care about a factoid like whether the water five blocks west of the Shepherd's Bush H&C tube stop is hard or soft, but they might be interested in your personal experience of exploring your new home.

Re the format, no, it's not superb in this context. As mentioned above, you have to keep moving up and down the web page to see what the tags refer to, really quite awkward. Almost as bad as the lazy "what xyz said" where you have to go back to see which of a hundred comments you just read belong to xyz.
posted by scheptech at 10:30 AM on September 22, 2006

How did we ever survive moving to new cities before the Internet came along?
posted by JanetLand at 10:42 AM on September 22, 2006

By the way, vis-a-vis the repeated "unanswered" lists: what I really wanted was a way to highlight the unanswered questions at the top of the thread, but I couldn't think of a good way to do that. I could have put a link to a remote jpeg which contained the questions, then changed the jpeg to reflect which questions had been answered, but that seemed complicated and not very good for the future useability of the thread. Can anyone think of a better way to accomplish this?

Uhhh, are we still talking about AskMe, here? There's no better way to accomplish what you wish to accomplish because this is not how AskMe is set up. Or what it's for.
posted by desuetude at 10:50 AM on September 22, 2006

I'd far rather this posting than 101 other seperate posts from different people asking exactly the same thing (how many times do people ask the "what can I do/see in nyc/san francisco?").

Also I like the unanswered lists because come Monday when I get a better net connection (I'm on a pda), I can go back to that list and see if I can answer the ones that are left.
posted by mr_silver at 10:54 AM on September 22, 2006

All of this could be solved by allowing IFRAMES in comments.

.
posted by blue_beetle at 11:01 AM on September 22, 2006

It isn't very different from "I'm moving to London, what should I know", and I can see how it has benefits. As an answerer, I might rebel against the regimentation. Overall though, the tight focus on a particular subject makes it pretty harmless.

It shouldn't be a model, but it doesn't seem like something that we need to be particularly worried about.

If only we could forget that this Meta ever happened..
posted by Chuckles at 11:04 AM on September 22, 2006

I agree with DenOfSizer and peacay in that it would have been better to ask for the cool places in a given neighborhood. Granted, the poster wouldn't have received all the specific information he needed, but he might have come across some serendipitous finds he hadn't even thought of.

I'll give louigi this much though, he's very thorough, not to mention generous with awarding "best answers". Hope you and the Mrs enjoy your new surroundings, louigi.
posted by Devils Slide at 12:54 PM on September 22, 2006

I want my goddamn mythbusting AskMe thread back, you scurrilous pedants.
posted by loquacious at 1:29 PM on September 22, 2006

Oh hi loquacious, I was hoping you'd show up here. I'll make the FAQ a little more specific that AskMe really should be more more or less one question at a time.
posted by jessamyn at 1:46 PM on September 22, 2006

Damn and blast!
posted by loquacious at 1:53 PM on September 22, 2006

As an aside to everyone who said it should be more open ended, the last item of my list (M8) was there to encourage anyone who knew about anything cool that I didn't think of asking.
posted by louigi at 1:58 PM on September 22, 2006

delfuego writes "As others have said, I certainly wouldn't want every MeFi member who moves to another city to do this"

With 40K IDs and several thousand active users I'd bet we have someone moving at least every day.

smackfu writes "I can't stand that format. You have to check the first post just to understand what people are answering."

Agree.

louigi writes "By the way, vis-a-vis the repeated 'unanswered' lists: what I really wanted was a way to highlight the unanswered questions at the top of the thread, but I couldn't think of a good way to do that."

This a design feature of Metafilter, don't try to work around it.
posted by Mitheral at 2:03 PM on September 22, 2006

As an aside to everyone who said it should be more open ended, the last item of my list (M8) was there to encourage anyone who knew about anything cool that I didn't think of asking.

That's sort of the definition of chatfilter, and it's another thing AskMe isn't really for.
posted by jessamyn at 2:05 PM on September 22, 2006

That's sort of the definition of chatfilter, and it's another thing AskMe isn't really for.

Well, hush my mouth and fuck me running*.

*Stolen from scarabic.
posted by Devils Slide at 2:20 PM on September 22, 2006

I don't want to fan any flames here, but I'd like to say that I really did appreciate the level to which Louigi presented the question. In fact, I was thinking of creating this exact MeTa thread earlier, but C:/awesome beat me to it.

However, after reading some of the negative comments, I can see that it might have crossed the line. But I really do think you can look at it from a slightly different angle.

Instead of 30 questions all relating to the same topic, he could have easily given a list of his and his wife's interests. Instead of all the Food and Drink related questions, he could have said.

*******************
"We like cheap supermarkets with easy access to a quality bakery. Also, we love going to the farmer's market on saturdays. She's a cheese junkie and we both love to buy in bulk, so a nice cheese shop and bukl food store would be convenient as well. In addition, we have some specific food tastes, like quality fresh spice, rice paper, coarse ground oatmeal, and organic flour. So tips relating to these interests would be very appreciative.

We love to eat plenty of Thai, Indian, W. Indian, Italian, Vegetarian, and Chinese foods as well, so keep that in mind.

etc...
***********************

basically, the questions fill in details so that anyone with relevant knowledge can see if their advice is useful. It's basically biographical information to help clarify the OP's interests to facillitate and maximize the replies, and it's not in a long drawn out paragraph that a lot of people would skip, but rather a succinct bulleted and numbered list.

I think it's a really efficient way to ask a question that can be rather intimidating to ask/answer... but I can see how this could lead to abuses later.

I don't think in this case the spirit of AskMe was violated and in fact, I think the answers will be a very useful addition to the hive mind. I would have loved a question like this in the archives for when I moved to Seattle last year, rather than having to piece together a ton of small topics with very little useful information for what I was looking for.

But that's why we have admins, right? and I'm happy to see that the thread is still alive.
posted by johnstein at 2:32 PM on September 22, 2006

jessamyn, there's something I don't understand. What harm do posts like this do? Wouldn't it maybe make sense to recognize that in certain cases, multiple-question posts are a very logical thing? AskMe is the best at what it does on the whole web. Where else could I turn to have these questions answered in a way that didn't take 30 weeks (more than 1/4 of my whole time in London)?

At any rate, thanks to everyone for your comments, both in this thread and in the other one. In four-and-a-half hours, more than 85 percent of my questions were answered. Most of the answers will be useful for both me and for others, I hope. And sorry if I came across as overbearing or controlling, or if you just didn't like the post ... really wasn't trying to offend anyone.
posted by louigi at 2:44 PM on September 22, 2006

jessamyn, there's something I don't understand. What harm do posts like this do?

The harm that it does is that AskMetafilter isn't just for the original asker of the question, but to help develop Ask into a repository of searchable questions. So the argument goes that a multi-point question doesn't foster that searchability.

My counter-argument is that in it's current time-sensitive linear form, Ask isn't going to be that repository. It's a cumbersome and ill-fit kludge for such a repository "for the ages".

Prodded by a similar comment about the linearity of Ask, MetaMonkey pointed out this Link Explorer system (via email) he's working on, which is close to what I'd love to see happen for Ask - something between the tangenting ability of E2 and the catagories of a Wiki.

But I tilt at windmills.

Quote from his email:

You can have a look at the existing system at http://linkexplorer.net, but it’s a fairly ugly prototype, which should improve variously for the alpha. At the moment the system is a wiki/collaborative tagging system (i.e. everyone can add tags and change descriptions for anything), but with the added bonus of a wiki tag structure, so that anyone can define relationships between tags – like ‘dog is a child of animal’, ‘brain is similar to mind’ etc. The goal being to have a system with the flexibility of tagging, but that can also be resolved into a nicely browseable heirarchy. There’s some more info on the site if you are curious, at http://linkexplorer.net/tags/about.php

With a bit of luck, the system should then prove useful for structuring and browsing existing archives of un- or semi-structured data (e.g. AskMe), and any other links. If you’re interested, let me know and I’ll email you when it’s ready to roll.
posted by loquacious at 3:08 PM on September 22, 2006

I like louigi's awesome listing power although he appears to have some (F5) cheese in his (F5) spice, rice paper, coarse meal and flour.
posted by maggieb at 3:26 PM on September 22, 2006

Hmm, okay I'd point out a couple of things:

1. MF is meant to be one question at a time.
2. "Best answers" should be reserved for just that.

Neither of these seem to have been applied in this post... but this is all starting to feel a little like a witch-hunt.
posted by ajp at 6:09 PM on September 22, 2006

What harm do posts like this do?

Louigi, I hate to be blunt, but people have answered this about fifty times in this very thread. Are you just saying that you don't agree with anyone who has explained their issue with your multiquestion post, or saying that you didn't read them? In any event, I'm being 100% honest when I say that if AskMe turns into people asking questions like this regularly, in all the subject areas such a question could be composed (see my earlier example), I'd stop coming here forever; that's a hell of an example of noise overtaking signal.

Put another way: think about why Matt decided on the one-question-per-week limit -- and think about what AskMe would be like if everyone got 30 or 40 questions per week. It'd be awful, it'd be unusable, it'd be Yahoo! Answers combined with MySpace with a little bit of Slashdot sprinkled on top.
posted by delfuego at 6:40 PM on September 22, 2006

IMO, AskMe questions are valid in as much as they provide a resource for readers beyond the asker. That's the deal, that's why responses are not given by email and why askers are expected to tag and categorise them helpfully.

(It's doubtful that even the most obscure buttock growth will turn out to be entirely unique.)

For me, the problem with this question was the combination of 'many questions in one' and 'near my house'. Thus, a nice way to split it (since even with the great organisation it was still uncomfortably long) into questions titled 'Local Services in Shepherd's Bush' (haircuts, baker, hard water) and 'Best in London' (cheap computer parts, bagels, folk clubs) .

I know it's hard to know which questions are local and which are not ("what if I live a street away from London's best bagel shop?"), but that seems to me the best way to make the questions useful to future readers and also allow busy answerers to focus on a single shorter question.
posted by Busy Old Fool at 8:01 PM on September 22, 2006

Here's another unanswered question -- is louigi yet another aspergery AskMe user?

He's posted on this thread eight times without so much of a hint of apology. Not that I necessarily think he needs to apologise, I hasten to add, but surely at this point, in the normal run of human interaction, it's nice to give just a token "sorry if people think this is too much".

All he does is keep explaining why there isn't a problem. And clearly there is, at least in the community sense.

The original question has its supporters and its defenders but surely nobody's defending the "unanswered" thing. That's just plain rude.

I'm a big fan of johnstein's rewrite. It seems to get louigi to nearly the same place but wouldn't ruffle feathers at all.
posted by AmbroseChapel at 2:53 AM on September 23, 2006

AmbroseChapel he did in fact apologise, and as someone married to an Aspie it definately reminds me of something my S.O would do. I actually liked it and was about to answer the hairdresser one but his further interventions I found intimidating, the Salon I was about to recommend suddenly seemed too far away from his neighbourhood!
posted by Wilder at 5:24 AM on September 23, 2006

I am a bit obsessive about lists, but as far as I know I don't have Aspbergers. In face-to-face social interactions, I actually think I'm about the opposite of how I may have come off here (in terms of being conscientious of other people and aware of social cues). I also think there's a big difference between arguing your point of view and being insensitive to those of other people.

But I did apologize, and I was sincere in my apology. And Wilder: I'd love hear your hair salon tip. I don't have my hair cut every day; across town is no big deal.
posted by louigi at 8:54 AM on September 24, 2006

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September 22, 2006
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