Comments on: Two weeks are better than one (in this case)

Two weeks are better than one (in this case)

jbickers — Sat, 29 Mar 2008 17:20:28 -0800

Man, the green has been busy lately - so much so that it's really hard to keep up. How about going back to the 14-day wait between questions?

By: StrikeTheViol

StrikeTheViol — Sat, 29 Mar 2008 17:24:57 -0800

In the name of all that is good and holy, no.

By: StrikeTheViol

StrikeTheViol — Sat, 29 Mar 2008 17:27:26 -0800

To be more specific, I know I've had multiple time-sensitive AskMes, and I've seen quite a few. This is my anti-pony.

By: katillathehun

katillathehun — Sat, 29 Mar 2008 17:27:56 -0800

Just takin' a peek, here, but you haven't always waited 14 days between your own questions. You sure you want this?

By: mathowie

mathowie — Sat, 29 Mar 2008 17:29:15 -0800

I think we've tried both 1 week and 2 weeks, and it was a lot less mental baggage to allow one per week. A vast majority of people seem fine with being limited to doing something once a week, but once every two weeks drove people (even including me) batty because it was kind of beyond a normal attention span. I would constantly forget that I asked something 11 days ago and forget when I could ask again.

We're working on a new feature to look at the last three days worth of questions (a number in the 200-300 range) that comes up with those that match somewhat closely with the things you have answered in the past (it scores the categories and tags on things you've both asked and answered as well as the things you marked as a favorite). We should have something to show next week on that.

By: meeshell

meeshell — Sat, 29 Mar 2008 17:30:13 -0800

I rather like that it has been busy. Of course I suffer from an unconfirmed case of metaphelia. I am not the common metapheliac because I tend to lurk more than participate.

damned social anxiety...

By: dawson

dawson — Sat, 29 Mar 2008 17:31:05 -0800

please no, my own questions tend to come in spurts so to speak. not that I even ask them all.

By: Effigy2000

Effigy2000 — Sat, 29 Mar 2008 17:33:38 -0800

Matt is correct. Changing it back to two weeks would just mean that MeTa would get busier again with dozens of "I can't wait two weeks between questions, please change it back to 1 week" threads.

One suggestion is that you could modify your browsing techniques on AskMe, such as subscribing to the individual RSS feeds only for questions tagged with topics you like reading about or helping out on. It'll make things easier for you, the mods and those precious little flowers who simply must ask a question every week lest their lives fall into ruin.

mathowie: "We're working on a new feature to look at the last three days worth of questions (a number in the 200-300 range) that comes up with those that match somewhat closely with the things you have answered in the past (it scores the categories and tags on things you've both asked and answered as well as the things you marked as a favorite). We should have something to show next week on that."

Cool!

By: shelleycat

shelleycat — Sat, 29 Mar 2008 17:41:20 -0800

Didn't the one week trial a while ago make very little difference in volume anyway? So no point changing things, it annoys people without even solving the perceived problem.

By: Fuzzy Skinner

Fuzzy Skinner — Sat, 29 Mar 2008 17:55:07 -0800

People are too needy to wait two weeks.

By: mediareport

mediareport — Sat, 29 Mar 2008 18:06:14 -0800

Yeah, what shelleycat said. Isn't it only a very small percentage of askers who ask more than once a week? If so, limiting to two weeks isn't going to do anything useful. Besides, the long slow increase in the number of questions posted isn't going away; it's almost certainly going to keep increasing as long as the site's around. *shrug* Get used to it now.

I still find it pretty easy to make time to browse back to the last question I saw, even if it's been 2-4 days since I checked the site. But I stopped reading all the questions long ago; I just skim the first few words and move on if it doesn't grab me.

I don't think I'll use the upcoming "match categories/tags" feature very much (although it seems worth implementing); one of the things I like best about AskMe is the surprises I find and new subjects I learn about. Just browsing questions that match my previous answers' categories or tags isn't going to give me the same experience. I'll just have to skim faster or accept that I'll miss lots of questions. Life goes on.

By: kittens for breakfast

kittens for breakfast — Sat, 29 Mar 2008 18:21:07 -0800

I think this is only a problem if you feel compelled to read every thread. I'm interested in one in ten questions on a good day, so it's a non-issue to me. I'm guessing one-in-ten is about average for most of us, though (one would hope) it's not the same one in ten for everybody. I'd even go so far as to say one question a week is an unnecessary limitation re: the readability of AskMe, though it's probably a quite necessary limitation re: allowing jessamyn to have a life.

By: smackfu

smackfu — Sat, 29 Mar 2008 18:22:36 -0800

The solution is to read faster.

By: disclaimer

disclaimer — Sat, 29 Mar 2008 18:22:38 -0800

I would like the abililty to expand the number of questions I see from the current number that appear now, to 25 on a page, to 50 on a page. This would be enough to blow my mind and isn't that what everyone needs now and then, a good mind-blowing?

The idea of doing a bunch of meta-search stuff is appealing, too, but I would like the ability to list a whole long spool of relationshipfilter to my browser window.

Thank you.

By: puke & cry

puke & cry — Sat, 29 Mar 2008 18:33:19 -0800

Short answer. No.

By: ssg

ssg — Sat, 29 Mar 2008 18:45:20 -0800

This seems akin to asking your local library to buy fewer new books*. You don't have to read them all.

*Except that books cost money

By: mimo

mimo — Sat, 29 Mar 2008 18:54:57 -0800

Stop trying to control things in your life that don't really matter and focus on things that will truly make you happier.

By: jbickers

jbickers — Sat, 29 Mar 2008 19:16:29 -0800

We're working on a new feature to look at the last three days worth of questions (a number in the 200-300 range) that comes up with those that match somewhat closely with the things you have answered in the past (it scores the categories and tags on things you've both asked and answered as well as the things you marked as a favorite). We should have something to show next week on that.

That sounds awesome. Thanks, Matt!

By: Fuzzy Skinner

Fuzzy Skinner — Sat, 29 Mar 2008 19:21:49 -0800

Alternative solution. Just read it once every two weeks.

By: mr_crash_davis

mr_crash_davis — Sat, 29 Mar 2008 19:38:37 -0800

You can always ask your question over at Yahoo! Answers if you have something that just can't wait.

By: Eideteker

Eideteker — Sat, 29 Mar 2008 20:14:20 -0800

Once a month, or three times a quarter.

By: LiveLurker

LiveLurker — Sat, 29 Mar 2008 20:15:39 -0800

"We're working on a new feature to look at the last three days worth of questions (a number in the 200-300 range) that comes up with those that match somewhat closely with the things you have answered in the past (it scores the categories and tags on things you've both asked and answered as well as the things you marked as a favorite). We should have something to show next week on that."

OK, so mathowie said it, and at least two of you are excited about it, but I personally have no clue what this means and how it might be better for me or better for other than the three mentioned above? I really would rather not wait 7 days, let alone 14 days to find out anything, let alone the answer to my question above.

By: jason's_planet

jason's_planet — Sat, 29 Mar 2008 20:19:12 -0800

One suggestion is that you could modify your browsing techniques on AskMe, such as subscribing to the individual RSS feeds only for questions tagged with topics you like reading about or helping out on.

This is how I read AskMe and it works pretty well for me.

And if you cut out the Computers/Internet feed, you've already reduced the volume by half, which should make it manageable.

By: not_on_display

not_on_display — Sat, 29 Mar 2008 20:36:56 -0800

Wait... there's an "Ask MetaFilter" thingie? I'll be right back.

By: cortex

cortex — Sat, 29 Mar 2008 20:55:34 -0800

OK, so mathowie said it, and at least two of you are excited about it, but I personally have no clue what this means and how it might be better for me or better for other than the three mentioned above? I really would rather not wait 7 days, let alone 14 days to find out anything, let alone the answer to my question above.

It's an extra way to check for content on the site, aimed specifically at the idea (which came up a week or so ago, I think) that catchup up on AskMe after a week or two away is daunting for the completist reader. It's better for you than the current state of not having the feature if and only if you're interested in having a recommendation-engine style index of stuff that seems to match your existing Askme commenting/favoriting interests. If that doesn't sound appealing to you, don't worry about it and nothing has changed. It has nothing to do with a 7 vs. 14 day question limit.

By: SPrintF

SPrintF — Sat, 29 Mar 2008 20:56:46 -0800

I've had to wean myself off of reading every question in AskMe. I feel bad about that, since there's a chance I could miss the opportunity to help someone. Worse, I might miss the opportunity to learn something.

By: HotPatatta

HotPatatta — Sat, 29 Mar 2008 20:59:08 -0800

I find AskMe easy to keep up with because of all the questions posted in a day, maybe 2-5 actually interest me. I can scroll through everything else quite quickly.

By: Artw

Artw — Sat, 29 Mar 2008 21:08:14 -0800

Are there peopel who ask questions every 7 days on the dot? That seems... odd.

By: Happy Dave

Happy Dave — Sat, 29 Mar 2008 21:10:40 -0800

By: Joseph Gurl

Joseph Gurl — Sat, 29 Mar 2008 21:41:37 -0800

Wait, social anxiety extends to the Internet, even?

Oh, and I'm for limiting AskMe to once a month.

By: vacapinta

vacapinta — Sat, 29 Mar 2008 22:08:22 -0800

As others have hinted above, this is not the solution. It frustrates people who have an occasional need without significantly affecting the overall traffic.

Annoying everybody while doing little to solve the actual problem reminds me of how bad security policies are implemented.

There are two reasons why one might want less traffic on ask metafilter:

1) You enjoy reading it and feel overwhelmed.
This is not Ask Metafilter's problem, though. This is yours. Its like saying: There's too many interesting weblogs out there and I can't keep up on my RSS reader. The answer is not: Let's cut down on the amount of interesting content.

2) With an overwhelming amount of questions, the people best able to answer a specific type of question may not see it.
This is valid. But I'm guessing thats the type of feature Matt is hinting at above. He's not trying to limit the breadth of your ask metafilter experience but rather make sure that the types of questions you are good at answering get highlighted for you.

By: Durn Bronzefist

Durn Bronzefist — Sat, 29 Mar 2008 22:10:45 -0800

Wait... there's an "Ask MetaFilter" thingie? I'll be right back.

Ditto.

By: LarryC

LarryC — Sat, 29 Mar 2008 22:13:17 -0800

One question a month. One additional question for $5. A third question for $10. No fourth question. Or not. In truth I don't think this is fixable.

By: !Jim

!Jim — Sat, 29 Mar 2008 22:51:54 -0800

Wait... there's an "Ask MetaFilter" thingie? I'll be right back.

Oh WOW! You're such a hardcore, dedicated, old-school MeFite that you don't read AskMe, I'm so impressed, please let me be more like you!!!!

Ahem.

Strongly oppose reintroduction of the two-week time limit. The only people in support of it seem to be the "people need to get a life" crowd, which to me doesn't seem like a good reason to make policy decisions.

By: Chuckles

Chuckles — Sat, 29 Mar 2008 22:52:05 -0800

I think we've tried both 1 week and 2 weeks, and it was a lot less mental baggage to allow one per week. A vast majority of people seem fine with being limited to doing something once a week, but once every two weeks drove people (even including me) batty because it was kind of beyond a normal attention span.

I think the best way to manage questions is to give people a fixed number per year (like 12?). Yes, there are some issues, but all of them can be easily worked around (1 per week/month/whatever in your first year, your yearly allotment renews on your sign up date). Of course we've been over that territory before, so... :P

By: Blazecock Pileon

Blazecock Pileon — Sun, 30 Mar 2008 00:44:47 -0800

One way to fix this is to only let me ask questions, and everyone else can answer them. I've got tons of great questions, but I promise to stretch them out.

By: jouke

jouke — Sun, 30 Mar 2008 00:51:34 -0800

I'd really like the option to filter geographically based on my location so I wouldn't see the "find me a lawyer in chicago" posts.
That would reduce desinformation clutter quite a bit.

By: Brandon Blatcher

Brandon Blatcher — Sun, 30 Mar 2008 05:16:08 -0800

I'd really like the option to filter geographically based on my location so I wouldn't see the "find me a lawyer in chicago" posts.

Understandable, but limiting. What if you use to live in Chicago? What if you don't live there, but your best friend, a paralegal does? To limit by geographic area sounds nice, but IMHO, goes against the idea of the web being geographically free.

By: languagehat

languagehat — Sun, 30 Mar 2008 05:36:50 -0800

I find AskMe easy to keep up with because of all the questions posted in a day, maybe 2-5 actually interest me. I can scroll through everything else quite quickly.

Yup. Why would anyone want to read every single question?

By: Marie Mon Dieu

Marie Mon Dieu — Sun, 30 Mar 2008 05:43:02 -0800

I agree with Brandon Blatcher. I used to live in Chicago. I recently answered a question about blues players. And I like to see questions from other geographic regions because I might travel there someday.

I was thinking the other day that there aren't enough questions on AskMe, because like many people, I only read the ones that interest me and skip over the others.

By: breezeway

breezeway — Sun, 30 Mar 2008 06:51:21 -0800

Once every week or two? No way.

Once in a lifetime. Same as it ever was!

By: BigSky

BigSky — Sun, 30 Mar 2008 07:03:58 -0800

I think the best way to manage questions is to give people a fixed number per year (like 12?). Yes, there are some issues, but all of them can be easily worked around (1 per week/month/whatever in your first year, your yearly allotment renews on your sign up date).

This is a pretty good idea. There's something to be said for having less content. When there is less to browse, I mull over individual items a little more, I might return a day or two later. If there's a lot of data coming in, the tempo gets too fast to bother with. It's like a drum beating, now, now, now, now (but quicker). Also, all of us have accumulated information outside our areas of expertise, but if we only read questions in a couple of topics because of lack of time, then we don't notice the odd question that we do know the answer to.

Can't imagine it will ever happen, but I think it would be an improvement.

By: maudlin

maudlin — Sun, 30 Mar 2008 07:10:31 -0800

How many members have posted to AskMe 52 times in the past year, or even 26 times in the past year? My suspicion is that this is a pretty small number. Don't we have the data available to check this? I'm OK with being proven wrong, but I'm pretty sure I won't be. :-)

If the flood of AskMe questions is due to some 60k people asking an average of, say, 6 questions each a year, reducing the number of times any member can ask a question isn't going to do much at all to reduce total volume. You're putting a choke on the wrong part of the system.

Some central changes to help make the site more sortable and readable, like the pending recommendation pony Matt describes, and the use of whatever Greasemonkey scripts people can put together, would probably do more to make the reading and answering process smoother. And let people choose to filter geographically or not. They might miss something they could answer occasionally, but on the other hand, they may be less likely to get burnt out by AskMe volume. They'd answer even fewer questions if they went away, right?

By: jbickers

jbickers — Sun, 30 Mar 2008 08:11:37 -0800

The only people in support of it seem to be the "people need to get a life" crowd, which to me doesn't seem like a good reason to make policy decisions.

Simply not true. The greater the volume of questions on the green, the greater the chance that someone who has the perfect answer to a question will not see said question. But again, sounds like Matt's project-in-the-works alleviates that. Rock on.

By: mediareport

mediareport — Sun, 30 Mar 2008 08:31:50 -0800

How many members have posted to AskMe 52 times in the past year, or even 26 times in the past year?

Someone crunched those numbers in one of the many previous threads on this subject. It'd be cool to see them currently (and even the one-a-month numbers), if anyone's in a data-mining mood.

By: jouke

jouke — Sun, 30 Mar 2008 08:57:01 -0800

Brandon Blatcher Understandable, but limiting. What if you use to live in Chicago? What if you don't live there, but your best friend, a paralegal does? To limit by geographic area sounds nice, but IMHO, goes against the idea of the web being geographically free.

People could choose preferences: no geographical filtering, filtering by these (plural) locations. Your own location being one.
We're talking about a filtering view on one website. That's comparable to searching on the internet. Both are by definition limiting, optional and customisable. Google offers preferences to search by language and by country. So I think your argument by "the idea of the web being geographically free" does not hold water.

By: LeeJay

LeeJay — Sun, 30 Mar 2008 08:57:53 -0800

I am consistently surprised and amazed at just how many quality answers end up being given even to really obscure questions and I'm pretty convinced that the quantity of questions is not a problem. I happily anticipate Matt's new project which will make things even better, I think.

By: Mitheral

Mitheral — Sun, 30 Mar 2008 09:16:12 -0800

!Jim writes "Oh WOW! You're such a hardcore, dedicated, old-school MeFite that you don't read AskMe, I'm so impressed, please let me be more like you!!!! "

Both those guys have 60K+ userIDs.

languagehat writes "Why would anyone want to read every single question?"

Isn't there a little Kibo in all of us?

By: iconomy

iconomy — Sun, 30 Mar 2008 10:35:29 -0800

Yup. Why would anyone want to read every single question?

I read every question. How else could I know if my google super powers with added flying karate chop action are needed?

By: bonaldi

bonaldi — Sun, 30 Mar 2008 11:06:42 -0800

Wait... there's an "Ask MetaFilter" thingie? I'll be right back.
Ditto

Uh ... both of you have asked questions.

By: Afroblanco

Afroblanco — Sun, 30 Mar 2008 11:06:46 -0800

NO! no no no no no.

NO!

We tried it, didn't work.

AskMe became a very boring place, with everybody's "How do I fix my Ipod?" question sitting on the front page all day, and no new questions coming in to replace it.

It was so boring and slow-moving that I actually stopped checking AskMe. Not because I was protesting or anything like that, but because it was so damn boring and moved so slowly that I eventually just forgot to check the site.

By: klangklangston

klangklangston — Sun, 30 Mar 2008 11:15:42 -0800

"I agree with Brandon Blatcher. I used to live in Chicago. I recently answered a question about blues players. And I like to see questions from other geographic regions because I might travel there someday."

Dude, the filtering isn't mandatory. They're not going to make Chicago questions a dead-zone for everyone but current Chicago residents. Jesus.

This isn't Shadowrun, third edition.

By: mediareport

mediareport — Sun, 30 Mar 2008 11:37:44 -0800

!

From the bottom of my heart, I thank you, klang, for apparently starting to italicize your quoting of other members. Now if we can just get bhouston onboard and get the mods to start ruthlessly deleting that godawful "@user" crap, I'll be one blissed-out Mefite.

By: Blazecock Pileon

Blazecock Pileon — Sun, 30 Mar 2008 11:43:22 -0800

Now if we can just get threaded discussions going, as well as the AskMe-questions-by-Blazcock-only policy, we'll be all set.

By: cortex

cortex — Sun, 30 Mar 2008 11:48:09 -0800

Uh ... both of you have asked questions.

not_on_display was clearly kidding. Durn, on the other hand, has asked exactly one question, timestamped 13 minutes after his "Ditto" comment. So, mixed bag there.

I guess we could interrogate Durn to figure out if he was dittoing not_on_display out of the belief that not_on_display had not in fact known about it; or if rather he made himself familiar with not_on_display's asking history as soon as he discovered askme and then uttered "Ditto" out of a mix of agreement with the superficial substance of not_on_display's comment and ironic acknowledgment of the sarcastic subtext thereof; or, even, if Durn was well aware of askme before this thread, and seized the opportunity to offer a wholly disingenous "Ditto" before finally asking his perhaps long-planned first question and pull one over on us.

I kind of think it's that first thing, though.

By: cortex

cortex — Sun, 30 Mar 2008 11:51:40 -0800

Now if we can just get threaded discussions going, as well as the AskMe-questions-by-Blazcock-only policy, we'll be all set.

Re: re: re: re: mefi going down hill
I can't believe the mods actually did that. I swear to christ, I'm going to Fark and I'm never coming back. Also, check out my band we're way tight http://myspace.com/prettyflowers xoxoxo

By: maudlin

maudlin — Sun, 30 Mar 2008 12:00:02 -0800

cortex is making my brain hurt. Make him stop.

Crap. That's recursive. I'm doomed.

By: ijoshua

ijoshua — Sun, 30 Mar 2008 12:40:42 -0800

I am really interested in the feature to see new questions filtered on my previous answers/faves, because I see only a few questions on the Ask FP that I want to read or even think about answering.

Also, since this seems like a relatively active thread, and it’s not worth a new post, I have a few invites to a newish beta site called twine.com. Memail your email address if you want one.

By: languagehat

languagehat — Sun, 30 Mar 2008 17:56:30 -0800

From the bottom of my heart, I thank you, klang, for apparently starting to italicize your quoting of other members.

I too, from the bottom of mine!

By: cortex

cortex — Sun, 30 Mar 2008 18:14:43 -0800

I too, from the bottom of mine!

Yeah, what he said.

By: Abiezer

Abiezer — Sun, 30 Mar 2008 20:17:49 -0800

It's dark as a dungeon way down in the mine.

By: cortex

cortex — Sun, 30 Mar 2008 21:01:18 -0800

Yes it's dark as a dungeon
More damp than the blue
Where the callouts are many
And the favorites are few
Where the newbs never go
And the old-timers squawk
Yes it's dark as a dungeon
Down in Metatalk

By: jouke

jouke — Sun, 30 Mar 2008 23:58:10 -0800

Now that grey colour takes on a whole new sinister meaning...

By: Joseph Gurl

Joseph Gurl — Mon, 31 Mar 2008 04:46:55 -0800

Um, anyone know if this dead canary is compostable or not?

By: Plutor

Plutor — Mon, 31 Mar 2008 05:50:50 -0800

shelleycat: "Didn't the one week trial a while ago make very little difference in volume anyway? So no point changing things, it annoys people without even solving the perceived problem."

mediareport: "Isn't it only a very small percentage of askers who ask more than once a week? If so, limiting to two weeks isn't going to do anything useful."

How about numbers? The fraction of posts that could not have been posted when they were posted if the waiting period was 14 days (not counting AnonyMe posts):

2008-02-10: 23.8% (15 of 63) 2008-02-11: 24.2% (22 of 91) 2008-02-12: 19.6% (20 of 102) 2008-02-13: 11.5% (9 of 78) 2008-02-14: 24.4% (20 of 82) 2008-02-15: 26.4% (19 of 72) 2008-02-16: 8.6% (5 of 58) 2008-02-17: 14.1% (10 of 71) 2008-02-18: 27.3% (24 of 88) 2008-02-19: 19.3% (17 of 88) 2008-02-20: 27.7% (23 of 83) 2008-02-21: 16.7% (15 of 90) 2008-02-22: 18.0% (16 of 89) 2008-02-23: 20.3% (13 of 64)

Definitive!

By: not_on_display

not_on_display — Mon, 31 Mar 2008 06:36:04 -0800

Cortex... you forgot to factor in that my original comment may have been rhetorical, to which Durn was absurdistly providing an answer. Notice how neither of us came "right back."

B-but this--yeah, I'm back, but... this doesn't count. Do-over!

I think, out of the oceans of throwaway wise-ass comments I've ever made, that that was one of the more innocuous for someone to have chosen to jump upon (the "Oh, you're so old school and whatever" one). I'm so not old-skool (except for the I-got-nothing-better-to-do-than-comment-on-MeFi aspect), but I do tend to hover in the blue and gray and I only visit green on occasion and when I want to summon the hivemind. I think AskMe is one of the most needed things on the web, though, something to wipe the birdshit off the windshield with. So: lesson learned that, no matter what I say, no matter how dumb, smart, dumbass, smartass my comment is, chances are that nobody understands me, and I am alone in this cold, cold universe...

...and I can't believe I just shat away 6 minutes typing this.

What I meant to say was, why not make the wait time five days instead of seven? Would that cause a revolt amongst the green regulars, or would that actually give them more stuff to answer? Or would you risk scads more doubles? If there's one thing I like about the MeFiSphere, it's that you can shop for just about anything here, but the shelves aren't glutted with the low-end or the froo-froo product. It's all good, healthy food.

From our tabletop, to your brain. Metafilter. A Gulf+Western Company

Also: Blah blah blah.

By: cabingirl

cabingirl — Mon, 31 Mar 2008 08:33:52 -0800

Dude, the filtering isn't mandatory. They're not going to make Chicago questions a dead-zone for everyone but current Chicago residents. Jesus.

But wait, maybe I want that. No, really what I want is to never see a Chicago question again. Please?

By: vacapinta

vacapinta — Mon, 31 Mar 2008 08:46:15 -0800

How about numbers? The fraction of posts that could not have been posted when they were posted if the waiting period was 14 days (not counting AnonyMe posts):

Something doesn't feel quite right about those statistics.

Let's say someone waited 7 days and then posted on 2-10. You're now counting them as excess since they wouldn't have been able to post with a 14-day rule. Ok, fine.

Now, that same person posts again on 2-17. You are again counting them as excess I believe, since they just posted a week ago. HOWEVER, if the had a 14-day period they would have legitimately been able to post on 2-17 (but not 2-10)! Thus they would not have been part of the excess.

Taken to the extreme, if everyone always posted a question every 7 days, your method would say that 100% of all questions that day could have been avoided with a 14-day period, which is obviously nonsense.

By: quin

quin — Mon, 31 Mar 2008 08:54:06 -0800

I've been so looking forward to the smart-filtering thing that Matt was alluding to a couple of weeks ago and then again earlier here. I've more or less stopped using AskMe because I just don't feel qualified to answer the vast majority of the questions. I hope this will point me to the one or two a week/ month that are within my sphere of understanding.

By: cortex

cortex — Mon, 31 Mar 2008 09:28:48 -0800

Our experiments so far have been fairly promising. It's imperfect, like any recommendation system, and we're basically winging it (though pb has been nerdishly acquiring literature on the subject), so far I'd say it does a pretty good job of pointing me to a higher percentage of things that I'd be interested in reading or be able to answer than a straight read down the front page would.

One of the things we're accounting for is a comparison of tags on a given candidate and the tags that have been used on all the previous question you've answered or favorited; we're weighting that against the commonness of a tag, so if you've answered ten questions tagged with "music" and ten questions tagged with "cartography", we'll consider the fact that a new candidate post has "cartography" as a tag as much more influential than that some other new candidate post has "music" as a tag.

That should help things that are uncommon bubble up—there's a good chance that if you answered some question with a rare tag, you're one of the people who will want to see (and who might be in a position to answer) a new question that eventually comes along which uses the same rare tag. If it's a very common tag, there's less value in highlighting it based solely on you having brushed up against it a couple times (and common tags are a great thing to subscribe to RSS tag feeds, regardless, which doesn't work so well with once-in-a-blue-moon tags).

In my case, it's more that I've answered a buttload of "music"-tagged posts, so that while music is a common tag and doesn't have a lot of weight by itself, I get small value * large volume of tags = good rank for "music" questions, which is actually pretty on the money as my interests go, though I do end up getting a lot of those damned mix tape questions in my suggested list.

By: klangklangston

klangklangston — Mon, 31 Mar 2008 10:18:29 -0800

"as well as the AskMe-questions-by-Blazcock-only policy, we'll be all set."

Who is this "Blazcock"?

And yeah, I'm trying to remember to italicize my quotes, though I'm not perfect.

By: cortex

cortex — Mon, 31 Mar 2008 10:41:55 -0800

He's the guy who invented the pylon. Geez, learn to wikipedia.

By: cortex

cortex — Mon, 31 Mar 2008 10:43:19 -0800

And yes, it's really awesome that you're making the effort, man. As someone who hates to have the momentum of his spittle-strewn arguments with you undercut by parsing double-takes, I thank you a thousand times for this.

By: shelleycat

shelleycat — Mon, 31 Mar 2008 22:56:56 -0800

The number of questions being posted in less than 14 days is higher than I expected. But how many of those posters do this habitually? If I only post two questions a year but do them a week apart that's not going to have a noticeable effect compared to posting the same two a fortnight apart or more. Numbers of how many people post more than 48 per year might give a better idea of how much we would actually cut down the flow.

But really what we need to see is number of questions posted immediately before, during and immediately after the one week test period that happened a while back (was it last year sometime?). I can't remember how long it was, two months or something? So compare numbers posted during with with numbers for two months before and two months after to see if there was a really obvious dip in overall number of questions posted. I know there's the infodump and stuff now so it can probably be done, but I don't know how to use it and don't have time to figure it out.

I do remember that cortex ran some numbers that showed that questions were getting about the same number of answers (probably because of more people reading as well as more people posting), so they're not being ignored.

By: Plutor

Plutor — Tue, 01 Apr 2008 04:58:03 -0800

vacapinta: "Taken to the extreme, if everyone always posted a question every 7 days, your method would say that 100% of all questions that day could have been avoided with a 14-day period, which is obviously nonsense."

I re-ran this with your idea and came up with about 50% lower numbers. I pasted them and then I analyzed one day of data. Then I realized it was overkill. So.

A chart! (We all know what the early 07 drop-off is, but what happened at the end of 2004?)

By: cortex

cortex — Tue, 01 Apr 2008 05:06:35 -0800

In mid-December, 2004, Matt put the 7-day limit into effect.

By: cortex

cortex — Tue, 01 Apr 2008 05:21:17 -0800

Then, almost exactly two years later, the 14-day experiment commences.

By: cortex

cortex — Tue, 01 Apr 2008 05:32:01 -0800

April 6th, 2007: back to one week.

By: cortex

cortex — Tue, 01 Apr 2008 06:19:44 -0800

I've updated the wiki with those three items. Other highlights that aren't really Timeline-worthy:

- 12/12/03: Matt contemplates limits.
- 11/19/04: Matt gets serious about limit. This is about a month before it went into place.
- 1/8/07: Matt recaps history of posting limits, contextualizing recent 14-day change.

He makes reference, in that last one, to an early 1-day askme limit before the 7-day limit came along, but I can't actually find any evidence of that plumbing through the Metatalk archives. If anyone can help, that'd be awesome, though four years later I can't fault Matt if it's just a hazy misremembering. As best as I could tell, there was more of a general agreement on (most) folks' part to just try and keep it to one or two a week tops.

By: Mitheral

Mitheral — Tue, 01 Apr 2008 17:29:24 -0800

Probably Askme stole a bunch of code from the front page and the 1 day limit has been in place there for quite a while.

By: Plutor

Plutor — Wed, 02 Apr 2008 06:01:28 -0800

It's strange that in the original AskMe announcement, Matt mentions absolutely no limit at all. Some people tell him to add a one, and he seems to think that it'd be pointless. Also telling is the quote "Obviously those of a technical nature are going to meet with the most success". Oh, how naïve we once were.

By: Plutor

Plutor — Wed, 02 Apr 2008 06:07:42 -0800

Since "one a day" is kind of MetaFilter's baseline, maybe it wasn't worth anyone mentioning.

By: cortex

cortex — Wed, 02 Apr 2008 07:03:50 -0800

Yeah, that could be. What was the Metatalk timeout at the time, do we know? AskMe did start as bastard offspring of the grey, so it'd be just as likely that the code was forked from Metatalk as from Metafilter (though I don't know if that's actually what happened in practice).