AskMe / TellMe?

March 2, 2010 5:37 PM

Follow-up results to very personal AskMeFi questions: I've searched for questions like this one, but, while some are akin to mine, they're not exactly like mine. Possible Pony?

Oftentimes, an AskMeFi questioner is looking for advice about a very serious personal situation or problem. When I read that kind of question, I'm often curious/worried as to how things went--if they took anyone's advice and it went well (or poorly), if everything is all right, etc. The thing is, most of those situations likely won't be resolved until weeks or months later. Is there any way for a questioner to let people know how things turned out? Sure, they can post in the original thread, but again, that could be months from the posting date, and we wouldn't know to look anyway. I'd look if I were notified.... Does this exist, and I'm just not finding it?

posted by tzikeh to MetaFilter-Related at 5:37 PM (6 comments total)

Really, it's mostly an issue of the asker choosing to update their own thread if they like. It's actually easy to keep an eye out for such updates. There's not really any formal notification system that we're interested in implementing.

However, it's not hard to keep an eye out. For a specific thread you're interested in:

- if you answered it it'll show up in Recent Activity (see the link up top if you're not familiar with it, it is the bees knees);

- if you did not answer it, but would like to keep track, favorite it; then check the My Favorites tab on Recent Activity periodically to look for updates that will appear there.

You can also keep an eye on the "Answered" tab on the front page of AskMe; the sidebar of that page lists questions that have recently been tagged "resolved", which are often older questions that the poster has come back to to update.
posted by cortex (staff) at 5:48 PM on March 2, 2010

:nod: I understand about the "answered" bit, but usually that means that the poster has seen a few pieces of information that he or she thinks will be useful. The others make sense, but I guess maybe a part of my question should have been "Do MeFites think about letting us know how things went, because many of us are concerned when we see serious real-life problems being discussed?"

There's probably no way to spread the idea around, other than to post "Please let us know how it goes" in the thread itself, but as far as I know, Ask questioners aren't notified of answers posted to their questions, are they? When I've asked a question, I've just checked back on the thread every few hours. Maybe I'm missing a key element in my preferences about "please email me when responses come in?"
posted by tzikeh at 6:00 PM on March 2, 2010

If it isn't anon, you can memail the person. It could hardly be an intrusion when they've posted it on the Internet and having someone take a personal, "private" interest may make them feel better.
posted by DU at 6:06 PM on March 2, 2010

One to add to cortex's list: add the post's RSS feed to Google Reader or what-have-you.
posted by We had a deal, Kyle at 6:08 PM on March 2, 2010

It really sounds like you haven't discovered the joy of Recent Activity yet because it solves both issues that you raise: both asker and commenters in a thread will see it show up in RA if someone comes along after 3 months and posts another comment.
posted by Rhomboid at 6:51 PM on March 2, 2010

Okay, I've looked at "recent activity" and I'm familiarizing myself with it. So, it doesn't go by most recent post, but by most recent comment to a post? I'll keep futzing around. Thanks for the answers, guys.
posted by tzikeh at 7:32 PM on March 2, 2010