Comments on: For want of effort.

For want of effort.

edgeways — Tue, 10 Apr 2007 20:38:12 -0800

Is it worth flagging AskMe questions that seem to have been asked without any attempt by the user to answer the question? They may contain a "legitimate" question, but the user has clearly failed to make the effort prior to posting. I'm asking not in reaction to a specific post, although there was one recently, but just to know if it's worth the effort, and would such questions be likely to be removed?

By: jessamyn

jessamyn — Tue, 10 Apr 2007 20:49:58 -0800

If the question is easily Googleable, shows no signs of the OP having tried, and is a dead simple question, we might remove it. However we've seen a lot of questions where people seem truly stumped by what to a lot of us might seem like basic Google functions [put a phrase into quotes in order to search the words in order] so I tread lightly here.

The general rule is that you're not bugging us if you flag things except under a few circumstances

- You flag more than a few comments in a thread. If the whole thread is shite, we'll be there checking it out, nineteen flags all from you doesn't do any more good than three.
- You're flagging stuff in an old closed AskMe thread. There are only a few cases I can think of where this might be appropriate. Generally once something is closed it's archived and we're not going to be removing comments from it, or fixing typos.
- You always flag a specific user. We see you doing that. Unlss we've previously communicated about the user and you're poining out something specific, this sort of thing is often better taken care of in an email
- You think things break the guidelines when they don't. It's fine to flag posts that you don't like for whatever reason but when I see a "breaks the guidelines flag" I usually think "goatse!" or "big gaping HTML" or something.

So, other than that, and it's really a short list, just heavily qualified, feel free to flag away.

By: ThePinkSuperhero

ThePinkSuperhero — Tue, 10 Apr 2007 21:05:32 -0800

::takes notes::

By: dobbs

dobbs — Tue, 10 Apr 2007 21:08:15 -0800

::peers over TPS's shoulder::

By: Steven C. Den Beste

Steven C. Den Beste — Tue, 10 Apr 2007 21:11:31 -0800

What flag choice should I use for "chatfilter"? Is that "noise" or "violates the guidelines"?

By: jessamyn

jessamyn — Tue, 10 Apr 2007 21:16:22 -0800

Either one. Swearing does not break the guidelines, and we see that more frequently than I'd suspect. We also see a lot of noise flags in MetaTalk and since MeTa is barely moderated at all, these always surprise me.

By: niles

niles — Tue, 10 Apr 2007 21:16:49 -0800

So does "big gaping HTML" cancel out the old closed thread rule? Cause there's a nasty HTML issue on 9/9/01. Breaks the whole first week on the archive, that one.

eh, I'll flag it.

By: Mr. President Dr. Steve Elvis America

Mr. President Dr. Steve Elvis America — Tue, 10 Apr 2007 21:18:00 -0800

Flagging noise in MetaTalk is a good way to let off steam.

By: jessamyn

jessamyn — Tue, 10 Apr 2007 21:24:23 -0800

That was really weird niles, that post had, besides a missing </small> a weird little hidden tag that said



what is that?

By: necessitas

necessitas — Tue, 10 Apr 2007 21:39:44 -0800

What flag choice should I use for "chatfilter"? Is that "noise" or "violates the guidelines"?

I wondered the same thing. I can never decide on noise, other or breaks the guidelines. Though the latter seems like it should be used to indicate spam or self-linking. My philosophy is: flag it with whatever seems to make sense and jessamyn/matt/cortex will be able to discern whether or not it is questionable and for which reason (sorry, mods, if this somehow creates more work for you).

By: Rock Steady

Rock Steady — Tue, 10 Apr 2007 21:52:30 -0800

< !-- 3918 the enthusiastic counter -->

Oh god she's found it.

Cabal: Execute code A39 Zebra immediately. All restrictions lifted. Danger level ESCHATON.

By: niles

niles — Tue, 10 Apr 2007 21:58:19 -0800

I, for one, welcome our enthusiastically counting overlords.

By: blue_beetle

blue_beetle — Tue, 10 Apr 2007 22:03:41 -0800

By: lester

lester — Tue, 10 Apr 2007 22:22:09 -0800

ya mean you can have noise in metatalk? wow!

By: loquacious

loquacious — Tue, 10 Apr 2007 23:14:42 -0800

Oh sweet holiest of shits!

Cabal^Cabal!! Activate Emergency Counter-Contingency Plan Atlas Seven Delta Mk. 5436, vector codes, SNARK, ALIAS and STONEBURNER. You have insertion, window and all-clear for MAX Q, MAX V and DELTA V. This is not a drill.

Your Authorization Override Triad Code is PANCAKE, BUNNY and QUONSAR. Repeat: NOT A DRILL. All tacnet subsystems network-wide are ARMED, alive and lively. Keep your fingers off those molly-guards, they're hot. This one's for real.

By: Floydd

Floydd — Tue, 10 Apr 2007 23:19:34 -0800

*wraps fingers 'round molly-guards*

By: flabdablet

flabdablet — Wed, 11 Apr 2007 00:16:39 -0800

I hate these drills.

By: Manjusri

Manjusri — Wed, 11 Apr 2007 01:32:44 -0800

What's the appropriate flag for "Not FPP Worthy" in the blue? I've been using "breaks guidelines" every now and then when I'm feeling judgemental.

By: drezdn

drezdn — Wed, 11 Apr 2007 02:50:29 -0800

As more n00bs show up up askme, it's entirely possible that more and more people won't even know to check google. So if a question just requires a simple google search, just politely explain how you found it (I've found myself explaining google to several people lately IRL, and for people who did know how to use google, I've sometimes had to explain how to do things like site search).

By: Dave Faris

Dave Faris — Wed, 11 Apr 2007 04:19:51 -0800

What's the appropriate flag for "Not FPP Worthy" in the blue?

I use "other" a lot.

And until now, I never imagined that flagging stuff would ever "bother" the admins.

By: quonsar

quonsar — Wed, 11 Apr 2007 04:21:17 -0800

*begins blaring SMOCK SMOCK SMOCK like a klaxon*

By: mr_crash_davis

mr_crash_davis — Wed, 11 Apr 2007 06:19:00 -0800

*begins blaring KLAXON KLAXON KLAXON like a smock*

By: Robert Angelo

Robert Angelo — Wed, 11 Apr 2007 06:35:24 -0800

I was going to flag the Fair Trade Coffee question, but then I thought, "oh, what the hell..." Then someone rephrased it in their answer.

By: cortex

cortex — Wed, 11 Apr 2007 06:43:21 -0800

So does "big gaping HTML" cancel out the old closed thread rule? Cause there's a nasty HTML issue on 9/9/01. Breaks the whole first week on the archive, that one.

eh, I'll flag it.

I'm not sure how much Matt and Jess care about long-past HTML fixes, but I'm a nut for that sort of thing and so say, heck yeah, flag it 'other' and drop me an email.

In addition to you talking about that post on the ninth, there's another, this, from the 2nd. It had an unclosed <tt> in the post text that rendered the whole thread (or, in archive view, the whole rest of the page) in fixed-width. Whee!

By: cortex

cortex — Wed, 11 Apr 2007 06:47:13 -0800

What's the appropriate flag for "Not FPP Worthy" in the blue?

"noise" and "it breaks the guidelines" make the most sense as an FPP complaint, to me, and that seems somewhat consistent with how people use them, but when it comes down to it we're going to notice a spike in flags on a given post/comment more than whether it was one or the other or the next.

Though it's not universal usage, I mostly associate "other" with more value-neutral problems: broken html, "there's [more inside]" cuteness, giant text dumps on the front page, that sort of thing.

By: kmennie

kmennie — Wed, 11 Apr 2007 07:39:16 -0800

problems..."there's [more inside]" cuteness

Speaking of cuteness problems, I'd like to see a FilterFilter.

By: edgeways

edgeways — Wed, 11 Apr 2007 07:58:29 -0800

thanks for the clarification

So sounds like the answer/s seem to be, No and No.

Now, gotta find me some of those magic glasses that filter out stupidity, course I'm guessing that means I'd end up living in a world of pitch black solitude with pin pricks of blinding starlight every once in awhile.

By: boo_radley

boo_radley — Wed, 11 Apr 2007 08:32:05 -0800

new flag suggestion: "vibrates the guidelines".
Flagging should be collapsed to "this is very good" and "this is very bad". Maybe "this needs cleanup" in line with cortex's comment above.

By: cortex

cortex — Wed, 11 Apr 2007 08:42:38 -0800

Yeah, an "admin please hope me" flag was suggested a month back or so, and seems like it'd be a good'n. Matt's mentioned working on the flag interface, so that might already be pipelined.

By: drezdn

drezdn — Wed, 11 Apr 2007 08:56:38 -0800

In a perfect world, we could select other and it would bring up a little box where we could explain exactly what got our underwear in a bunch.

By: smackfu

smackfu — Wed, 11 Apr 2007 10:17:46 -0800

The "breaks the guidelines" one is tough. Looks like jessamyn sees it as "breaks the hard and fast rules", while I think people use it as "doesn't follow the general community guidelines".

By: phearlez

phearlez — Wed, 11 Apr 2007 10:19:43 -0800

You think things break the guidelines when they don't. It's fine to flag posts that you don't like for whatever reason but when I see a "breaks the guidelines flag" I usually think "goatse!" or "big gaping HTML" or something.

I seem to recall either you or Matt saying in the past that an ask metafilter response that didn't address the question was accurately described as "breaks the guidelines." Has that stand changed?

By: found missing

found missing — Wed, 11 Apr 2007 10:20:34 -0800

In a perfect world, we would be wearing no underwear.

By: edgeways

edgeways — Wed, 11 Apr 2007 10:22:36 -0800

you are?

By: jessamyn

jessamyn — Wed, 11 Apr 2007 11:04:02 -0800

My point is just that I think of "breaks the guidelines" flags like a self-link to the blue or some sort of "fuck off you fat cow" comment in AskMe, but really I was just sort of free associating. Breaks the guidelines flags get looked at more quickly than "noise" flags, at least by me, but I didn't mean to make people overthink this too much.

By: found missing

found missing — Wed, 11 Apr 2007 11:07:14 -0800

...I didn't mean to make people overthink this too much.

Haven't we established that that is unpossible?

By: cortex

cortex — Wed, 11 Apr 2007 11:08:14 -0800

flagged as "plate of beans"

By: Kwine

Kwine — Wed, 11 Apr 2007 14:49:51 -0800

klaxon klaxon klaxon

By: loquacious

loquacious — Wed, 11 Apr 2007 19:14:23 -0800

MetaTalk: Fuck off klaxon you klaxon smock fat cow fuck klaxon SMOCK SMOCK SMOCK