N/A

August 16, 2012 1:08 PM

Perhaps the AskMetafilter question form should point out that the title of the post does not appear on the front page?

Lately I've been noticing posts that make no sense until you click through. Then again, perhaps that's a clever strategy to get people to read the entire thing. At any rate, this post prompted me to look at the form, and even though the title is way below the post and the "more inside", people seem to expect it to be the first thing someone reads.

Anyway, it's clearly not a huge deal, but perhaps people would appreciate the heads up while formatting their question.

posted by oneirodynia to Feature Requests at 1:08 PM (45 comments total)

I agree. This could be easily accomplished by adding one more sentence to the text underneath the title field.

More radical solution: Put the titles on the front page.
posted by John Cohen at 1:22 PM on August 16, 2012

Thanks for making this post. It's something that has always bugged me, as someone used to the way posts are constructed on the Blue. When I try to Ask a question, I always get a little confused, because the posting pages are different between MeFi and AskMe.

I'd love to see the fields on the posting pages standardized across the site.
posted by zarq at 1:23 PM on August 16, 2012 [2 favorites]

I flag title problems as HTML/display error. For both the green and the blue, the title is basically vestigial- I use it for jokey subtitles.
posted by zamboni at 1:28 PM on August 16, 2012 [5 favorites]

The title's the message you see!
Which of these sd cards is for me?
To metatalk with a yelp,
but instructions won't help,
if bothered to pay attention you can't be.
posted by Phredward at 1:29 PM on August 16, 2012 [1 favorite]

RSS readers show the title.
posted by royalsong at 1:34 PM on August 16, 2012

First off, the forms are different for a good reason, as each subsite handles each field in different ways and for different reasons. When you make a post to Projects, the title is shown on the front page and it is used to describe your project. We de-emphasize titles in Ask MetaFilter posting pages specifically to limit the problems of the past of people putting their question in the first field they would find. We even go to the lengths of not only showing the title field last on the posting page, but we also don't show the titles on the preview page to drive the point home that no one will see your title in the front page view.

I mention this because the problem used to be much worse and I think it's pretty rare these days. Also feel free to flag stuff as having HTML errors and we will fix them, as I did the post referenced here.
posted by mathowie (staff) at 1:36 PM on August 16, 2012 [2 favorites]

RSS readers show the title.

That's good for the relatively few people who use RSS readers.
posted by John Cohen at 1:40 PM on August 16, 2012

Here is another example of a good question that's a little cryptic on the front page.

Maybe on the new question/post page, the part of the question/post could be in a box that tells them that "THIS IS WHAT WILL APPEAR ON THE FRONT PAGE, EVERYTHING ELSE BILL BE BELOW THE FOLD." Of course, people being people, there many foul ups.
posted by Daddy-O at 2:11 PM on August 16, 2012 [1 favorite]

There *will be* many foul ups.
posted by Daddy-O at 2:12 PM on August 16, 2012 [1 favorite]

Also feel free to flag stuff as having HTML errors and we will fix them, as I did the post referenced here.

Or as Taz did today, five separate times, to fix one tiny 48-word FPP where I spelled five of those words incorrectly. RECORD!

Thanks mods. You're the best!

An edit window would relegate you to 2nd best.
posted by DarlingBri at 2:32 PM on August 16, 2012 [1 favorite]

Wait...so I'm a fossil for using RSS now?
posted by DU at 2:37 PM on August 16, 2012

Well, not just...
posted by griphus at 2:39 PM on August 16, 2012 [2 favorites]

The posting page is a wall of text that very few people are going to read. If it's at the point where you have to put dancing santas or pumpkins to make people actually read a notice, adding some more small print will not help much.

I vastly prefer Stack Overflow's Ask a Question form. Information important to a field shows up only while your focus is actually on that field. Searching for related questions happens in real-time. It's really a fantastic bit of user experience design, and I wish AskMe worked a bit more like it.
posted by grouse at 2:39 PM on August 16, 2012

Wait...so I'm a fossil for using RSS now? -- get with the program, grampa. Flipboard is the answer.
posted by crunchland at 3:41 PM on August 16, 2012

Wait...so I'm a fossil for using RSS now?

Was RSS ever popular outside outside of tech-type circles? I remember Firefox a few versions ago demoted the RSS from the main menu bar to the bookmarks menu, citing some very small percentage of FF users ever using the function.

Disclaimer: I use RSS.
posted by 6550 at 4:08 PM on August 16, 2012

Wait...so how do people read blogs, if they're not using RSS? Do they go to every single blog every day to check if there's new stuff, and then if there is, try to page down to the last thing they've read so they can read newer entries in chronological order? What about irregularly updated blogs? Or is there some other cool tech that people are using, that I'm totally unaware of?
posted by Bugbread at 5:20 PM on August 16, 2012

Wait...so I'm a fossil for using RSS now?

I believe it stands for Reptile Set in Stone...

Disclaimer: I use RSS in Firefox
posted by TwoWordReview at 5:21 PM on August 16, 2012

Some people give only just enough of a shit to come back every day, not enough to care if they're up to date.
posted by LogicalDash at 6:11 PM on August 16, 2012 [1 favorite]

I'm decidedly non-techy, but I love my RSS reader. I don't use it for MeFi, though, because of how frequently MeFi updates. I use it primarily for webcomics and cooking blogs, or things that I collect to read a few of when I need a little laugh (like Not Always Right).
posted by Night_owl at 7:41 PM on August 16, 2012 [1 favorite]

RSS is the shit.
posted by cashman at 8:15 PM on August 16, 2012 [1 favorite]

Bugbread, it’s a convenience thing. When I’ve tried to explain the utility of RSS to people, mostly what I hear is “But when people update their blogs they pretty much always say so on Facebook or Twitter. Why would I bother using separate RSS software if I’m already on Facebook? I’ll just follow the bloggers there.”
posted by the latin mouse at 3:01 AM on August 17, 2012

Wait...so how do people read blogs, if they're not using RSS? Do they go to every single blog every day to check if there's new stuff, and then if there is, try to page down to the last thing they've read so they can read newer entries in chronological order?

Er, yes? I have about a dozen blogs that I check pretty regularly--some every day, but some just when I feel like seeing if there's anything interesting on this one or that one. An RSS reader, when I've tried to use one, has the tinge of "read everything that comes out, as soon as it comes out, context and formatting be damned." It feels more like a to-do list than an enjoyable find.
posted by psoas at 6:03 AM on August 17, 2012 [5 favorites]

I subscribe to 280 RSS feeds according to Google Reader: blogs, news sites, Twitter feeds, web sites which offer RSS-based update notifications. Facebook's display and notification system is so painfully inconsistent that I can't count on it to show me more than 40% of people or Pages I follow. Also, most of the things I follow via RSS don't have a (significant) Facebook presence at all: muslc and sound blogs, lots of African and Middle Eastern news and culture sites, travel guide updates, Economist sub-blogs, etc. MetaFilter is, I think, the only site which offers RSS that I visit by direct access every day. I sincerely don't know how information-omnivorous people stay abreast of things without RSS or some equivalent thereof.
posted by mykescipark at 6:03 AM on August 17, 2012 [2 favorites]

(And I don't mind that it feels like a to-do list: I can simply go through and "star" the items I'm interested in, mark the rest as Read, and go back and simmer in the useful bits as long as I like. To me it's also a total feature that it strips so many annoying Tumblrs of their pretentious hyper-formatting.)
posted by mykescipark at 6:07 AM on August 17, 2012

I subscribe to 280 RSS feeds according to Google Reader ... I sincerely don't know how information-omnivorous people stay abreast of things without RSS or some equivalent thereof.

That makes me feel so, so tired just thinking about it. I feel like I have a different internet.
posted by psoas at 6:09 AM on August 17, 2012

Wow, I must be a dinosaur. I was working in IT when RSS came out and there were a clusterfluck of somewhat-compatible versions to support and a handful of clients which supported them. I tried to get into it but it didn't take. I just type my blogs in and go. After a short while, I only have to type a few characters and it fills in the rest.

For me RSS just looked like email. Every single blog looked the same and came in the same way and was just text. It was hard to remember where I'd seen something.

And it felt like work. If I happen to be away from the computer for a weekend and I don't visit my favorite blogs & sites, the world keeps turning and there's new news to read when I do. Maybe I missed something, but I'll live. I miss things all the time. With RSS, I'd have a thousand unread things in a queue and it felt like I wasn't doing them justice.

Something like flipboard looks like it would solve the second part, and maybe that's kind of standard for rss anymore, to just give you whatever content is fresh and not worry about the old stuff, but I feel like it still wouldn't help with the first. Design and color are information that helps me remember things, the same way that where I am, physically, in the book helps me to find that part of the book again, sometimes even years later. These are different kinds of knowledge and memory, and they augment one another. I don't see this as a redundancy to be overcome by more efficient technology. I see it as a feature of the world I inhabit.
posted by gauche at 6:14 AM on August 17, 2012 [1 favorite]

I sincerely don't know how information-omnivorous people stay abreast of things without RSS or some equivalent thereof.

This. RSS is like a microwave. For day to day use, so incredibly helpful and time-saving. Of course you still use the oven by going to some of the websites for the pretty baked up content from time to time, but most of the time you just use the microwave and consume the content even if it doesn't come out with perfect crust pot pie hot dog teaspoons of egg whites sausage oh god I've gone too far with this metaphor.
posted by cashman at 6:25 AM on August 17, 2012 [1 favorite]

Wait...so how do people read blogs, if they're not using RSS?

Click through from my own blogroll. simple.
posted by MartinWisse at 6:50 AM on August 17, 2012

> Click through from my own blogroll. simple.

Don't you ever get annoyed by clicking on a blog day after day and it never updates and then you stop clicking because it's a waste of time and then you try again and there are a bunch of new posts and now you have to read them all? I resisted using a feed for years, but now that I use Google Reader it's simplified my life tremendously. Those blogs that don't update for weeks or months? I just ignore them, and when they do update, Google Reader shows me. It's wonderful.
posted by languagehat at 7:14 AM on August 17, 2012 [2 favorites]

That Flipboard thing sounds like it could be just the thing I've been waiting for for years. Too bad they only make it for phones and iPads and not, y'know, computers. Am I some kind of retrogrouch these days for wanting to do most of my browsing on a desktop or laptop? Are keyboards passé at this point? Touchscreens are great for situations where a keyboard & mouse combo just isn't practical due to other considerations, but they're not *nearly* as efficient, flexible, or powerful as a keyboard & mouse can be in situations where there is enough space to have them. This must be how the command-line geeks felt when point-and-click started to become the standard.
posted by Scientist at 7:58 AM on August 17, 2012 [2 favorites]

Click through from my own blogroll.

You still maintain a blogroll? How ossified. RSS is the way to go... suck those feeds right into your cognitive information eschewer directly and spit out the punctuation, every day, on the dot.


K, jokes apart, what everyone else already said about RSS being so cool.
posted by infini at 8:45 AM on August 17, 2012

With RSS, I'd have a thousand unread things in a queue and it felt like I wasn't doing them justice.

Mark all as read. Do it without guilt or forethought.

I hardly ever do that anymore, though. The Google Reader app for Android is so fantastic that it's easy to get down to the bottom of my queue. Just swipe to the right to go to the next article, and I so often find myself with a phone and nothing better to do.
posted by grouse at 8:49 AM on August 17, 2012

I'm another no-RSS person. Not ideologically, it's just there's maybe a dozen sites that are absolute daily must-visits, between blogs and news sites and comics, and then a lot of stuff that I will wander to during time-filling lulls. I've never had trouble managing to fill time (Metafilter's a pretty useful fallback there, both for on-site reading and for links all over the place), and I can easily remember my core dozen, so it's a non-problem for me.

I did try RSS a couple times and found it annoying in an info-overload, presentation-blanding sort of way like other folks have mentioned. Lots of sites I have a passing interest in are not sites I want to see every update from or to have to manage the visibility of that unwanted stuff, and I like that web sites look different from each other. And I don't like reading stuff in two place, and I like being able to use sense memory to remember where I left off on my daily reads. So it just doesn't work very well for me.
posted by cortex (staff) at 9:07 AM on August 17, 2012 [2 favorites]

Et Tu, Corte?
posted by cashman at 9:13 AM on August 17, 2012 [1 favorite]

I also use RSS (though not for Metafilter). I dunno how I'd get to everything I want to read every day without it.
posted by patheral at 10:07 AM on August 17, 2012

cortex: "Lots of sites I have a passing interest in are not sites I want to see every update from or to have to manage the visibility of that unwanted stuff, and I like that web sites look different from each other. "

This. I've tried Google Reader, but the aesthetics of certain blogs appeal to me, not just the posts. Sometimes the posts work best on their own site because it sets the tone for the writing.

Ironically, the sites I go to every day, like Metafilter, are best suited to RSS because the formatting is really secondary to the conversation, but they move too fast for an RSS reader to be of much use.

Also, from day to day I shift from being in the mood for a little 15th anniversary chicken action, to incisive political commentary or a comical parody of the latest game or movie release. Sliding all the blogs I like together doesn't work for me.

I'm weird that way, though, when it comes to my mood affecting what I read or watch. Once, for maybe an entire year, I was so severely depressed that I couldn't bear to read anything more serious than basically Calvin and Hobbes and The Far Side. Forget anything as intense as Schindler's List (which I think was in the theatres at the time). It killed me, as a voracious reader and cinephile, to ignore the better material I knew was out there, but my brain was so muddied and my worldview so bleak that I couldn't handle more at the time without breaking down.

Someone needs to make an RSS reader--"There's an app for that!"-- that allows you not only to sort blogs by subject area, but to assign a header and formatting option for each area of interest, so that when you are checking out your gaming blogs, you've got Pacman wokking around the edges of your screen, or zombies trying to attack the words as you read them. When you want your political blogs , you'd have The Daily Show videos cross-referenced for content, with an independent fact-checker on the sidebar. Mommy blogs...

Well, I have a problem with "Mommy blogs", because I've written one myself, and it really depends on the kids' ages what you want to take in. If you have a baby and you're still overwhelmed by oxytocin (and sleep deprivation), baby pics, cute kittens and parenting tips are the order of the day, while as the kids get older you desperately want intelligent debate and some adult-themed, snarky humor to remind you that you are not JUST a SAHM, but an adult with a brain, too. Middle school and high school has you tuning in to all the popular memes your kids are into and the music they like, so that you are on the same page, and of course you want to make sure you are helping them make responsible choices about self-image and sexuality and all the rest. Later still, when they are headed off to college, you start getting nostalgic for those baby days again, and miss feeling needed while also enjoying a rediscovered independence and couple time with your spouse.

So, I don't know how an RSS could handle that, thematically, but someone smarter than I could surely come up with some ideas.
posted by misha at 10:50 AM on August 17, 2012

How are you people finding out how many feeds you're subscribed to in Google Reader? However many it is, it's enough I don't want to count them.

Metafilter is also one of the few things I check often by visiting directly. (I think because I actually like to read the comments here, which is rare.)
posted by RobotHero at 11:10 AM on August 17, 2012

How are you people finding out how many feeds you're subscribed to in Google Reader?

On the sidebar, go to Subscriptions > Manage Subscriptions. On the first line under the tab it says "Select: All __ subscriptions."
posted by mykescipark at 11:59 AM on August 17, 2012

Oh my ears and whiskers, that's me/mine. Ouch.
I thought I knew what I was doing
I was wrong

First, thanks to mathowie (et.al.?) for cleaning up my first Askme so quickly (& by implication, those who helpfully pointed out my misconception) -- it reads so much better now, almost as if I knew what I was doing..

Second, thanks for making this Meta -- I had reasonably Good Intentions of (a) memailing thanks expressed above; (b) making a similar Meta asking for clarification. So, cool -- my countably infinite list of Good Intentions has been decremented by 2..

Third -- and sorry this is a bit long, but I do have a point to make -- Here's my perspective, as a relatively light & inexperienced poster:

We even go to the lengths of not only showing the title field last on the posting page,

Unfortunately, this did not register with me as intended. To the extent it did register, it was more as, "Now that you've read the directions and FAQ, checked for related questions, edited and reviewed your question, your close-to-the-last-step is to pick a good title." Had I thought there was strong intentionality to the placement of the title field as last, I'd have interpreted it as "We've put this step last, so that you can focus on making a good title" (I can recall some really excellent titles noticed by others, as well as some appalling title choices (like a seemingly standard relationship question with a super-NSFW title. (which I didn't even notice, but my co-workers sure did!)))

but we also don't show the titles on the preview page to drive the point home that no one will see your title in the front page view.

I did notice that the title wasn't displayed in the preview, but there were so many plausible explanations that it would have taken me several passes/cuts of Occam's Razor before this interpretation would emerge as the most parsimonious. Which is to say, that didn't drive any point home to me -- I was so overly-focused on verifying links, trimming extraneous information, minimizing the above-fold material (with the obvious exception of the thankfully deleted McLuhan-ish self-reference), etc. that I didn't even realize that the form itself was the message (ah, irony!).

The thing that would definitely drive the point home to me? First comment:
...adding one more sentence to the text underneath the title field.

Honestly, I appreciate all the effort and guidance and cautions and attention to details of form design and such, but thinking that the form design makes something obvious strikes me as similar to an Askme Relationship question of the type: "I showered and was wearing my favorite shirt -- the same one I wore 555 days ago when we had this awesome date -- why didn't my partner notice the obvious and take me to the same restaurant, etc.etc?"

I'm almost certain a single sentence underneath the title field would have a cost/benefit ratio far surpassing the edit window feature -- near zero cost, and I can't imagine it having a negative effect.

To put it another way, can I we have this tiny tiny pony? It's only a sentence long, it won't take much fodder or fight with the other ponies..
posted by Tuesday After Lunch at 12:30 PM on August 17, 2012 [3 favorites]

On the first line under the tab it says "Select: All __ subscriptions."

127
posted by RobotHero at 10:12 PM on August 17, 2012

128 in Google reader for me, but many of them are aggregators in and of themselves. I don't use RSS to read Metafilter.
posted by the man of twists and turns at 3:28 AM on August 18, 2012

Newspapers are dying, RSS replaced newspapers for me many years ago. I find another new interesting source, I add it.

I can read it when I like, either on the web or on my device. It doesn't require me to check on sites daily to see if they've updated. I can subscribe to sources of quality information that don't update frequently and never miss a thing.

It's peculiar to see so many people seeing it as a negative. Great tools and interesting sites are built atop of it.

And frankly, there's no better way to camp craigslist classifieds for something you're looking for (a custom search in rentals for a pricerange has been very useful to me in the past).
posted by artlung at 4:49 PM on August 19, 2012

Oh, I forgot to address the Meta - it seems like the AskMe form submission is pretty good. For the record, as a heavy user of AskMe I could do without the jokey titles, I prefer useful ones that will help people find questions later. I know when I search for something on google and see an AskMe is prominent that's usually because the title was useful. But I understand people like to be funny, and that's important too.
posted by artlung at 4:51 PM on August 19, 2012

I can't attest to how useful this would be. Anecdata point: after reading for a while I pretty much figured out that there is a title! That's not on the front page! And it is often funny. I guess that's maybe a kind of concession, because AskMe doesn't really allow for humour, if you use it in the 'here's my info, here's my question' way.
posted by undue influence at 8:47 AM on August 20, 2012

Google Reader: Top left: All items - Trends: From your 1,525 subscriptions, over the last 30 days you read 8,369 items
Many of those subscriptions are in tags I don't read very often, but they remain available for seaching. A good RSS reader in combination with a service like page2rss also enables you to monitor changes in static webpages (and compare these changes).
posted by Akeem at 5:34 AM on August 22, 2012