Formal AskMe Followup Posts? June 24, 2010 9:59 AM   Subscribe

Formal AskMe Followup Posts?

I've really gotten into AskMe. I think it's really well done, and I've gotten great answers every time I've used it. There appear to be 3757 pages of AskMes, with the first one being 2003. I know some questions get followed up on informally, but with the volume of questions, I'm wondering is if there is or could be a process of having the original questioners follow up at some interval (a year? two? more? at intervals?) and update their questions with how their situation worked out, what they tried, what else they learned. Some questions don't warrant followup over long time, sure, but I suspect something interesting would come of asking them for a followup. Thoughts? Are there other ways to bring to the surface interesting old AskMe's people learned from?
posted by artlung to Feature Requests at 9:59 AM (58 comments total) 5 users marked this as a favorite

I know y'all have been on the edges of your seats waiting for an update from me. Don't worry, I fixed the headliner, but we ended up selling the Dodge Shadow anyway.
posted by Think_Long at 10:02 AM on June 24, 2010


We send out an automated email 30 days after you ask a question asking for a followup, and we explain the "resolved" tag that can be added to it.

You should follow the resolved tag, it's pretty cool and sometimes stuff that is a year or two old pop up in the feed. Check out the Answered tab of Ask MeFi's front page, and in the sidebar are all the recently resolved questions and a link to a feed for it.

Oh, and I unlinked the page 3757 link since it grinds the server.
posted by mathowie (staff) at 10:07 AM on June 24, 2010


Are there other ways to bring to the surface interesting old AskMe's people learned from?

Yes.

I don't think there's ever going to be a formal feature beyond the "resolved" tag. As long as you're posting in MetaTalk, the more efficient thing would be to do what that old post did and just straightforwardly ask people to tell how they're question turned out.
posted by Jaltcoh at 10:15 AM on June 24, 2010


You guys never helped with my Ginger Ale problem or that Art of Noise song, but on the plus side, I won't drown now! Ya'll were a buzz kill about living on guacamole though.
posted by Brandon Blatcher at 10:16 AM on June 24, 2010


My most recent question had a surprise happy ending! I gave my sister an x-ray of a lizard instead. I sort of love these wrap-up MeTa posts personally. One year later and I'm finally at the point where I start taking advice in this question.
posted by jessamyn (staff) at 10:19 AM on June 24, 2010


*rss feed of resolved added* - thanks for that. yeah, I know about the 30 days thing, glad to hear sometimes old ones show up. I like AskMe followups a lot.

Also, sorry for grinding the server while seeking how many pages there were!
posted by artlung at 10:21 AM on June 24, 2010


You weren't really considering eating just guacamole, were you?
posted by Jaltcoh at 10:33 AM on June 24, 2010


My battery-powered blender is now a standard, wall-powered one; I used it in my work in progress apartment to make a smoothie which fueled my ability to score two goals in my first-ever soccer match. The excitement of scoring goals led me to stream soccer via CBC and helped me forget the sorrow of F's showing up on my unofficial transcript.
posted by Hiker at 10:36 AM on June 24, 2010


It was a great batch of guacamole, I would have fucking married it and started a family with it.

It sparked the thought of how long one could live on just that though, hence the question.
posted by Brandon Blatcher at 10:37 AM on June 24, 2010


I never got my Tightrope shoes. And the friend who swore he'd rented an identical pair for his prom years ago finally turned up a photo of them -- and they weren't the same. Boo.

I've moved on, am currently trying to track down these Mothra-inspired Pumas from last year's limited edition run.
posted by hermitosis at 10:39 AM on June 24, 2010


(Size 11. Name your price!)
posted by hermitosis at 10:39 AM on June 24, 2010


I keep checking to see if sunnichka is okay...
posted by Wuggie Norple at 10:51 AM on June 24, 2010 [1 favorite]


I've moved on, am currently trying to track down these Mothra-inspired Pumas from last year's limited edition run.

If you track down a reseller, I promise I will never wear them to a meetup we are both attending.
posted by griphus at 10:58 AM on June 24, 2010


Mods, griphus has my shoes and won't give them back. Hope me!!
posted by hermitosis at 11:00 AM on June 24, 2010


I got stoned and felt much, much better. In case you were still wondering.
posted by heyho at 11:01 AM on June 24, 2010


Mods, griphus has my shoes and won't give them back. Hope me!!

No, I meant a reseller with more than one pair. The other pair preferably in a size 9.5 or 10.
posted by griphus at 11:02 AM on June 24, 2010


Oh thank goodness! I was about to go door-to-door through Brooklyn so I could chop off your feet.
posted by hermitosis at 11:06 AM on June 24, 2010


Oh thank goodness! I was about to go door-to-door through Brooklyn so I could chop off your feet.

I try to steal your shoes and you try to steal my Saturday-night plans? For shame!
posted by griphus at 11:09 AM on June 24, 2010


My wife loves her Theremin.
posted by bondcliff at 11:09 AM on June 24, 2010 [3 favorites]




I still can't find a shrink that'll talk to me.
posted by Karmakaze at 11:23 AM on June 24, 2010


Can this be the thread where talk about how hard we cried durring Toy Story 3?
posted by mccarty.tim at 11:24 AM on June 24, 2010


We haven't seen it yet tim. A bit presumptuous, no?
posted by Think_Long at 11:37 AM on June 24, 2010


Can this be the thread where talk about how hard we cried durring Toy Story 3?

But what about the Lost Finale?!
posted by Brandon Blatcher at 11:39 AM on June 24, 2010


I would have fucking married it and started a family with it.

Dude, you would marry anything.
posted by desjardins at 11:42 AM on June 24, 2010 [5 favorites]


But ... but ... he told me I was the only one! Brandon, did that special night in Vegas mean nothing to you?

*runs out of thread*
posted by Mrs. Guacamole Blatcher at 11:57 AM on June 24, 2010 [3 favorites]


In the end, I confronted my boss about what I had seen on his screen. It turns out what I thought were hard core taters weren't even soft core tators--they were pictures of cute little Sphynx cats. I was totally embarrassed.

Thanks for all the great advice!
posted by Admiral Haddock at 12:00 PM on June 24, 2010 [2 favorites]


sorry guacamole, it seems i'm his latest ;p

*rolls thread around fingers into ball*
posted by infini at 12:13 PM on June 24, 2010


I just added the stumped tag to my t-shirt archive question in case any of you geniuses has any late brainstorms.

Pipe nipples lol
posted by Devils Rancher at 12:31 PM on June 24, 2010


Still wondering about Chrome.
posted by JohnnyGunn at 12:32 PM on June 24, 2010


You want follow-ups?

A little over five years ago, I asked for nice ways to be romantic toward my long-distance girlfriend.

Since those suggestions worked so nicely, she came out to Boston and we got an apartment together. It had bedbugs. After eight weeks of hell, we found another place and toughed it out for a while, but things were strained, and she gave up and fled back to Colorado a few months later. After being maudlin about it for a while, I followed her back to Colorado. I won her back, we went to Santa Fe so she could finish her degree, and a few months later I proposed, and we got engaged. In celebration, we decided to take a trip to Spain. Spain was the experience of a lifetime, really, but was severely complicated when my financial irresponsibility led to the confiscation of all our travel funds by the IRS - while we were in mid-trip. But we both made it back, intact and in one piece, and began contemplating when we'd get married – and thinking about various potential entanglements. The wedding the next June was better than either of us had any right to hope it'd be, and we finally settled in together as a married couple. Sadly, we were always a pretty contentious pair, and after two pretty good (but exhaustingly argumentative) years, we filed for divorce [etc, etc]. I didn't deal with it too well at first – lost my job, bummed around for a while, and gradually got to the point where I could be healthy again. I moved out of the house we'd lived in when we were married and found a great place with some people who were willing to let me do some housework (though I didn't always know what I was doing) in exchange for rent in tough months. And three months ago I actually got a real, live job, so now I'm paying my own way.

So my follow-up to my question five years ago about romantic gestures for people in long-distance relationships is: you people didn't see all this shit coming? Thanks a lot, assholes.*

_________________________________________________________
*Okay, not really. Seriously, I love you all, and I never would've made it without you.
posted by koeselitz at 12:37 PM on June 24, 2010 [15 favorites]


Never found a US source for those nuts, but continue to have the in-common-laws bring them back from China.

Found a nice overpriced Chelsea apartment through Mark David, but then found out that we could have gotten it without the broker. Such noobs! But we're still living there, so I guess it worked out?

Bought the plain canvas totes, and didn't even bother decorating them. Also discovered that my fashion vocabulary is incredibly stunted, since it never occurred to me to search "totes" instead of "bags."
posted by twoporedomain at 12:53 PM on June 24, 2010




this thread is already getting interesting...

*sits back to enjoy the evening*
posted by infini at 12:57 PM on June 24, 2010


I'm still looking for the name of the Land's End model!
posted by ThePinkSuperhero at 1:15 PM on June 24, 2010


posted by Mrs. Guacamole Blatcher

Gotta stop playing with the internet, 'cause it's always willing to go THERE.
posted by Brandon Blatcher at 1:19 PM on June 24, 2010


Mine are quite boring, but I really appreciated the answers I received when my furry little money pit was sick. Despite yet another bout, he did not require the surgery, and is now about to celebrate his fifteenth birthday in good health.
posted by notquitemaryann at 1:38 PM on June 24, 2010 [1 favorite]


Ooooh, perfect timing. Now I get to point out that I found the seed packet for the mystery vegetables in this question from yesterday and I don't have to wait a week to ask for a translation! Right?

In other news, the poem was by Franz Wright; the new vet diagnosed a yeast problem and he's much better now; voronoi was right and that is possibly the best thing you ever put in your mouth and this company is legit - they bought my mysterious mineral rights and the money came at an extremely good time: right after I got laid off.
posted by mygothlaundry at 2:15 PM on June 24, 2010




Because of AskMe, I bought clothes in Olympia instead of Austin, took the family to Fremont, imported a tab-delimited file that had tabs in it, read some fantastic books about the Brits in Afghanistan, and bought a pair of Plantronic Voyager 510s. (the mr. didn't like his, and I accidentally tossed mine into some shrubbery. still haven't found new ones that we like.) I also got an awesome haircut, which remains one of the biggest referrers to my flickr account.

I asked anonymously about wearing makeup to a job interview...I got the job.

I never bothered to: synchronize bookmarks across multiple Thunderbird installs or buy an iPod reference book. My sister neither bought a car nor learned to drive stick. (Loooong story.)

I got great advice that I haven't used (yet) on mailing stuff to a hotel, picking a membership database, buying a perpetual calendar, getting data off of an ancient Macbook, writing about bindweed, and explaining some web stuff to my boss.

I gave up on the lost cat. I still miss her. :( I also gave up on my old phone. This I am less sad about.

It's called a 'yard hydrant.' The damn kids first had to get off the lawn maybe sometime in the 1910s. (That one made the podcast!)

Now I'm trying to figure out what to do with my diaries.
posted by epersonae at 4:45 PM on June 24, 2010 [1 favorite]


Holy crap, now I notice that I appear to have actually linked to fucking Sayyid Qutb (!!) in the first "romantic gestures" link of my long "follow-up" comment up there. (Honestly, our relationship wasn't healthy, but it wasn't that bad.) Meant to link here. Er... mods? Hope me?
posted by koeselitz at 6:19 PM on June 24, 2010


Fixed it.
posted by jessamyn (staff) at 6:21 PM on June 24, 2010


Thanks!
posted by koeselitz at 6:23 PM on June 24, 2010


The party was awesome.
posted by Eyebrows McGee at 6:39 PM on June 24, 2010


It turned out the call was coming from inside the house.
posted by cortex (staff) at 11:04 PM on June 24, 2010 [2 favorites]


My USB drive is still working, I had surgery and now sleep better than I have in years, we didn't lose our cat, or end up living in Norway, we had a wonderful wedding night, the party ruled, I had an awesome weekend in Hamburg and we did end up moving back to Edinburgh.

The rest of my comment history is a mix of technical minutae and dead-end personal projects and interests - suffice to say I'm not a carpenter, radio producer or outdoor educator, although part of the reason for moving back to Scotland is to eventually pursue the latter.

Re-reading your own AskMe history is kind of weird, like old diaries almost.
posted by Happy Dave at 1:23 AM on June 25, 2010


It turned out the call was coming from inside the house.

I properly disposed of the body and have been posting from as both mod and new user for some time now.
posted by Hiker at 6:22 AM on June 25, 2010


This is fun!

I got out of the lease when a friend of a friend turned out to be looking for a place. I believe he is living there happily ever after.

I haven't been published yet, but I'm not trying very hard.

The creepy dude hasn't been a repeat creeper, but it could just be because he ran out of terrible pick up lines. Though it's nice to think the situation was resolved with the help of my boss.

I used Google Sites for a long time, but quit a few weeks ago. I don't think I want to find something else right now.

We had the best time in Amsterdam, and we fit in really well. Although everyone spoke English extremely well, we were almost entirely greeted in Dutch in restaurants/stores (which I'm told means people couldn't tell we were American. Score!). It was fun, and we'd love to go back.

I stopped using products with SLS on and around my face, including SLS toothpaste, and my ridiculous cycle of chin acne went away! I still get my normal level of acne, which was always completely manageable. This is by far the best result of any of my questions. Much love, hive mind.

I started taking Yummi Bears gummi vitamins, both the veggie multivitamins, and the omega 3-6-9 (even though they aren't veggie.) I really love them, but the adult dose is 6 gummi bears a day for just the multivitamin. Good thing they are really delicious and not too sugary.

The general consensus was that this guy was crazy and I should avoid contacting him, so I had my fiancé inform him via email to stop contacting me and send me a list of the books he thinks I have. He's sent two emails since then, and he insulted me in only one of them! He's stopped following me around, too.

I love this idea. We need to get more people posting here!
posted by Lizsterr at 7:28 AM on June 25, 2010


Oops, missed a link:

I started taking Yummi Bears gummi vitamins, both the veggie multivitamins, and the omega 3-6-9 (even though they aren't veggie.) I really love them, but the adult dose is 6 gummi bears a day for just the multivitamin. Good thing they are really delicious and not too sugary.
posted by Lizsterr at 7:32 AM on June 25, 2010


koeselitz: That is one crazy story.
posted by Lizsterr at 7:35 AM on June 25, 2010


I ended up getting a blue Volvo C30. Although these were really interesting answers, I'd forgotten I'd ever asked this question or wanted to have the setting of a story be Joshua Tree. My mom took one of the Excel classes in Santa Monica and had a good time, although she hasn't felt any desire to go back. I decided not to move forward with that job at Apple, so I didn't need to find a suitable Bay Area neighborhood after all.

So apparently, asking one of my questions is a big potential waste of your time. Sorry.
posted by tyrantkitty at 7:40 AM on June 25, 2010


OHBOY.

My mom didn't like ANY of your biographies of Napoleon. No worries. She's hard to please.
She didn't learn anything about France either.
I reformatted the iPod
Still no idea why THIS happens. (NSFW)
Motherboard was fucked. Was fixed by professional professionals.
My kitten came home to a damned awesome litterbox.
Turns out, you serve milk with pretzels and juice with everything else because pretzels are non-fat. Juice with cookies is still gross.
No idea why she never got my msgs.
My preschool class had an effin' AWESOME dance party.
I never did add more memory, but at least I figured out that I needed it.
We put the toilet paper in the medicine cabinet. Difficult to explain to guests, but solved the problem.
My bowels eventually moved. I was totally repressing those memories.
In which it is infamously revealed that the problem lies in the fact that my cat is kind of a dick.
The customer was probably wrong and I learned a lot about brushing my teeth.
We broke the lease and it turns out, our landlords were actually crazier than we thought. Nothing particularly awful ensued.
No matter what I did, the toilet smelled like old man pee. Cat lived.
My parents bought the rugs from me in return for helping me pay some bills in some dire straits that at the time of this question, I couldn't have seen coming.
Did not qualify for aid - I paid for my meds with a damned credit card. Still paying it off.
Went to the courthouse. Got forms. Got divorce.
[WOW. The jump in questions here, in terms of my life, is pretty WEIRD.]
Still haven't learned Portuguese. Problem is that all of the resources I've found are Brazilian. BAH.
It wasn't one of MeFi's suggestions, but I found her a dollhouse kitchen and she really liked it.
I totally wipe my cat's butt with baby wipes.
Rubbing alcohol didn't help. Had to retire the watch due to stench.
Went to James Joseph, got awesome haircut.
Refrigerator was ultimately busted and it took the landlord two months to replace it.
I never sit behind the driver and don't feel any shame about using my headphones. <> The Mountains of Tibet.
Flow Natural by Tito "El Bambino" featuring Beanie Man.
No, I can't take pictures there.
He was a sniper.
Wishful thinking.
Can't remember the hacks I learned long enough to use them. Have made my peace with being totally braindead. Turning my pill bottles upside down so they made noise when I opened them did help a lot in remembering if I had taken my meds yet or not.
Turns out, there WAS a reason why I had to pee.
MeFi had great suggestions, but I didn't end up going with an agency.
Nor did I end up going to Montréal (though I wish I had!).
They're smallpox vaccine scars.
I bought insurance privately through my state's one company that offers a high-risk pool. It costs a zillion dollars, doesn't cover much, and generally SUCKS - but it's better than no insurance and I wouldn't have found it without AskMe.
In which I convinced a four year old to drink prune juice.
A lot of my questions involve poop.
We eventually managed to get her to eat half a tortilla chip, push the pill into her mouth, and make her swallow. Yes, the cat loves tortilla chips.
The question. THE ANSWER.
No idea why THAT happens either. (NSFW)
I got her some stuff that was suggested, but she was already reading Fullmetal Alchemist.
Safety precaution.
Got a W2. Cost my employers some money, but there was no other way.
Reading the books that were suggested. Still working on it.
posted by grapefruitmoon at 1:43 PM on June 25, 2010 [1 favorite]


Read the sniper question, and now I'm wondering how you liked the rest of West Wing. :)
posted by epersonae at 2:19 PM on June 25, 2010


I loved the West Wing and am still waiting for Josh Lyman to call me so I can marry him and have ten thousand of his babies.
posted by grapefruitmoon at 2:35 PM on June 25, 2010


I keep checking to see if sunnichka is okay...

I'm okay now!! I can't believe I thought that temporary paralysis wasn't an ER worthy event. Metafilter to the rescue.
posted by sunnichka at 4:22 PM on June 25, 2010


Also, Grapefruitmoon, regarding your NSFW unresolved question, i seem to remember that you have epilepsy? I'm not any kind of doctor or scientist, and I can't seem to find any articles on it right now, but I feel like I've read something about this. Something like, epileptic activity can make the brain send out 'ouch pain!' instead of "oooooooooooooooooo." Perhaps I stumbled across it in V.S. Ramachandran's Phantoms In the Brain.
I wish ikkyu2 were here to tell me that what I've just said doesn't make any sense, and that even if it did, it's wrong.
posted by sunnichka at 4:25 PM on June 25, 2010


Okay, let's see...
I just steer clear of Larouchies, though I haven's seen many since the 2008 election.
I ruined my starter, and am learning to be a better listener.
The Edith Grossman translation was magnificent. What an amazing book.
My mom still thinks she can't put any more music on her computer because it only has 512 MB of memory.
I took my cash which was way below any imagined threshold, BTW, and opened a savings account at University Federal Credit Union, where I have most of my daughter's first year's-worth of tuition, now accruing some modicum of interest.
500 T-shirts are still mouldering in my store room.

I'm not a really prolific asker, really. I guess I think I already fucking know everything, amirite.
posted by Devils Rancher at 5:35 PM on June 25, 2010


>I'm okay now!!

Yay! I missed that thread -- glad it turned out okay. The (pronounced "Ah-yah-nod") IANAD Squad to the rescue!
posted by Devils Rancher at 5:53 PM on June 25, 2010 [1 favorite]


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