Sometimes we need to know 'neigh'...

July 5, 2009 11:31 AM

PonyRequest : When we have an AnonAsk refused, could we have a reason sent to the asker as a matter of course, so that the asker could (a) know that it's been refused and can use their weekly on something else and (b) have some idea of what they did wrong and consider if/how they should rewrite it?

I know that someone (Jess?) implied that there is no obvious link on the admin screen between questions and askers, so I thought that if it's done automatically as part of the rejection process without the admin ever needing to know who the user was.

For a lot of stuff, I'd guess a detailed rejection reason isn't needed, so something like our flagging could work for stuff like "no illegal questions", "don't use anon to ask what to call your new puppy" or "use google godamnit!"..

posted by twine42 to feature requests at 11:31 AM (24 comments total)

I think what you're asking is similar to the 'pick a reason to flag' dropdown menu. that's all nice and well but is there really a benefit in saying RTFM?
posted by krautland at 11:58 AM on July 5, 2009

Emailing the admins usually results in an explanation email within minutes.

As always, we'll have to point to the potential workload of not only having to prepare balanced explanations that won't hurt any feelings, we'd also be opening up dozens of new email threads for the mods every week. In our experience looking at just deleted questions and mefi threads, about a quarter of them end up in our inbox, asking for explanations beyond the stated reason, which turn into disagreements and sometimes prolonged arguments that can quickly take up the better part of an entire day as people appeal their case.

It's not really an option that everyone that gets a comment deleted, project declined, or anonymous question declined will get an email. We just don't have the manpower for that kind of hand-holding.
posted by mathowie at 12:17 PM on July 5, 2009 [3 favorites]

Not quite... I assume there are lots of reasons things get refused Anon. It would be good if the author knew what the reason was. I just also thought there would be some common ones that could be done from a checkbox so that it wasn't a huge increase in work for the admins.
posted by twine42 at 12:17 PM on July 5, 2009

sorry mat, should have used preview...
posted by twine42 at 12:18 PM on July 5, 2009

What about personal Mefi Mail on your birthday, could ya throw us a bone?!

and a hug.
posted by Brandon Blatcher at 12:38 PM on July 5, 2009

Manpower - maybe it's time for some volunteer admins, Perhaps the site is getting too big and complicated to be sustainable on the small number of admins it has now? Or, perhaps the site is not at this state but may be there soon as it continues to scale up?
posted by By The Grace of God at 12:46 PM on July 5, 2009

maybe it's time for some volunteer admins

I was going to post a sarcastic bit about how a dozen other voices as admins would lead to even worse problems, but I'll just say this could turn into a management nightmare very quickly.
posted by mathowie at 12:49 PM on July 5, 2009 [3 favorites]

Perhaps the site is getting too big and complicated to be sustainable on the small number of admins it has now?

I don't think saying "we don't want to do this because it would be more work" necessarily means what we need are more admins.

We're really lucky now in that we all communicate well together, get along well, and share a pretty similar vision for how the site should be working. Part of this is also trusting the community to be able to either understand why we do what we do, refer to the FAQ, or get ahold of us if they have questions either via the contact form or MetaTalk. There's really a two-part answer, in my mind, why this isn't a feature we have

1. it would require a big uptick in the amount of work we'd have to do [not just notification but also the back and forth emails that happen a lot with other notification-type stuff we do already]
2. we're not that sold on this idea of a feature to implement it, given #1

We could definitely add something to the FAQ explaining why most of the AnonyMe questions that don't get approved [a pretty small fraction] generally don't get approved which might be a helpful thing to add.
posted by jessamyn at 12:51 PM on July 5, 2009 [4 favorites]

Well, they wouldn't be any volunteer, would they? Probably a very small cadre picked by you. I wouldn't dream of volunteering myself, for instance.

Overstressed bolt is coming - how will the allowances be made to prevent the bolt from snapping? Some should be made by users and some by management. The question is, projecting one, two, five years in future, which management headache one would rather have.
posted by By The Grace of God at 12:54 PM on July 5, 2009

Also, many thanks for your answers both and I ask with all humility (seriously) and if your wish to respond with sarcasm was because I irritated you with my question, I sincerely apologise. The site management does an excellent job, for reals.
posted by By The Grace of God at 12:55 PM on July 5, 2009

if your wish to respond with sarcasm was because I irritated you with my question, I sincerely apologise. The site management does an excellent job, for reals.

I think the bigger issue is it's just been a slightly crazy weekend what with all the Sarah Palin stuff going on and us all trying to have decent holidays. We're not really looking, at this point, to having volunteer moderators for a whole heap of reasons. It would be a whole new way to run the site, for one thing, and not really mandated by anything that I can see.

While it's clear that some people are concerned about how the site will scale, not having this particular feature doesn't seem like a great example of the site not scaling well (as opposed to something like, say, how fast AskMe questions go off the main page which is also something we think about). We're concerned with scale in a general sense and it's something we think about but we're not really "how do you envision yourself five years from now" sorts of people when it comes to figuring out how to run the website. I may not be speaking for everyone here, but that's definitely how I look at it.
posted by jessamyn at 1:05 PM on July 5, 2009 [1 favorite]

ok, thanks for this and I am sorry for asking on such a busy weekend. I'm really glad everyone is thinking about scale.
posted by By The Grace of God at 1:13 PM on July 5, 2009

Dear nonymous,

Asking anonymous questions is a privilege that is limited to those who need it the most. We've rejected your request for the following reason.

[] Don't waste your time asking that here, just go see a doctor, especially given that its your private parts
[] You know what everyone is going to say so why bother. Just DTMFA and destroy that digital camera before its too late.
[] That's just not freaky enough, use your real name
[x] Mittens
[] Pretty sure that's neither a pimple nor a boil but a gummy bear.
Love,
Mods
posted by allen.spaulding at 1:27 PM on July 5, 2009 [2 favorites]

You left off one allen.spaulding

[] Your attempt to disguise your situation so that no-one will recognise you at meet-up as that chick with the issues has resulted in a total GIGO that will just cause everyone to demand more (or less) information from anon, and result in flammatory comments.
posted by b33j at 2:34 PM on July 5, 2009

On an Ask Metafilter feature request note (sorry for piggybacking!), is there a way to get e-mails when someone replies to your Ask Metafilter question? I was just looking over my Recent Activity, and I noticed that someone had just posted a (really good) new response maybe a week after most of the answers, and I feel like I would have missed it if I hadn't found it by accident.

(I realise I could start using a feed reader, which I don't, or I could get an RSS to email gateway, which I'm too lazy to set up on a very periodic basis.)

Somewhat related: is there a reason why profiles include "Favorited by Others" but not "Best Answers"? I would understand if the reason was so that things didn't turn into a game like Yahoo! Answers, but I'm curious if this was a conscious decision.
posted by pbh at 3:16 PM on July 5, 2009

I think something in the FAQ would be helpful. I had an anonymous question rejected because it wasn't clear why it needed to be anon - I was a fairly new member at the time and wasn't sure whether I had failed to submit it or what. In the end I emailed to enquire and jessamyn helpfully explained, I explained back and it was posted (it was a job-related thing and my manager at the time read AskMe).

Alternatively, an automated email when an anonymous question is submitted, explaining common reasons why anon questions are rejected?
posted by paduasoy at 4:21 PM on July 5, 2009

if your wish to respond with sarcasm was because I irritated you with my question, I sincerely apologise

Naw, I mentioned it because I often find myself responding to requests with humor at the expense of the person making the suggestion and wanted to make it clear I hear you and understand your concerns and we take them seriously and respect everyone who makes these kinds of feature requests, but it would cause more problems than it would solve.
posted by mathowie at 4:24 PM on July 5, 2009

MetaTalk: We just don't have the manpower for that kind of hand-holding.
posted by heeeraldo at 5:45 PM on July 5, 2009 [1 favorite]

What about personal Mefi Mail on your birthday, could ya throw us a bone?!

and a hug.

Once a hug has bone, it's more of a cuddle...
posted by pompomtom at 6:31 PM on July 5, 2009

The reason I think this is a valid request is that people might just be waiting and wondering when their (rejected) question would eventually be posted. "Oh, bummer, my question wasn't posted with this set of anonymous questions. I wonder how long the waiting list is. Maybe they'll post it tomorrow..."

Would it not be possible to auto-generate an email notifying people their question was rejected? "Your anonymous question was not approved, sorry. Check the FAQ for the common reasons that questions don't get approved."
posted by salvia at 7:39 PM on July 5, 2009

Yes, it is infected, and no; you should not eat it.
posted by blue_beetle at 11:21 PM on July 5, 2009

is there a way to get e-mails when someone replies to your Ask Metafilter question?

Just the standard RSS-to-email things. If you're too lazy to do something like that, you might want to try reading the site either via Recent Activity [for threads you have commented in] or whichever the one is that tracks comments in the threads you've started. Late in a MeTa thread about something totally different is not really a great time to add on other feature requests.

And yeah, we have talked about why best answers aren't tracked on the profile pages though I'm having trouble digging up the thread.
posted by jessamyn at 5:52 AM on July 6, 2009

Here's the most recent discussion about including best answers on profile pages.
posted by pb at 11:45 AM on July 6, 2009

Ah, thanks, clarified. Sorry for the distraction.
posted by pbh at 1:41 AM on July 7, 2009