Relationship Hacks 2012? (i.e. Okay to make a sequel?)

January 6, 2013 3:20 PM

The question located at http://ask.metafilter.com/137148/What-clever-relationship-hacks-have-you-come-up-with is one of the most favorited posts of all time, created in 2009. I've found some of the advice in there immensely useful in my own relationships and have referred back to it often.

Since then the community has grown and diversified, and I was thinking about making a post on the green looking for new hacks, but I thought I'd ask here first.

What is the community's stance overall on open-ended posts that were answered a while back getting new posts about them?

Interesting or redundant?

Different since its now 4 years old?

posted by softlord to Etiquette/Policy at 3:20 PM (12 comments total)

From a mod perspective, we have no particular rule on the green about doubles, so a question looking for new and updated ideas would be fine. It would make sense to refer to the old one in your question, just so people have the baseline.
posted by restless_nomad (staff) at 3:22 PM on January 6 [2 favorites]

I'm asking this not to be snarky, but because I'm genuinely curious: why is the 'relationship hacks' post not considered chatfilter but strategies for making a big change in your life is?
posted by capricorn at 3:35 PM on January 6

I think the difference is that the 'relationship hacks' post is looking for a specific area of difficulty to handle, including an example, whereas 'strategies' post is pretty general and not actually giving a problem that needs solving.
posted by DoubleLune at 3:41 PM on January 6

capricorn: "A big change" is pretty broad, plus four years of chatfilter-tuning.
posted by mendel at 3:43 PM on January 6

Yeah, the change question was just impossibly broad. The relationship hacks one was also definitely on the chatfilter spectrum, but it was specific enough and framed well enough that people were able to give good, solid answers that were all obviously answering the same question.

People love chatfilter, honestly, and a lot of the super-popular threads tend towards chattiness - probably because everyone feels like they can participate, for the same reasons that make the question chatty in the first place. But every now and then we get a question that just works really well - the "how do you identify an amateur in your field?" question springs to mind - and it ends up being broad enough that it gets a ton of answers, but specific enough that the thread reads like AskMe and not like a general discussion topic. It's a fine line sometimes.
posted by restless_nomad (staff) at 4:10 PM on January 6

One of my favorite relationship hacks is to create a GUI interface using Visual Basic to see if I can track an IP address.
posted by SpiffyRob at 4:11 PM on January 6 [8 favorites]

One of my favorite relationship hacks is to create a GUI interface using Visual Basic to see if I can track an IP address.

After the 'Bambi' episode of The Young Ones, that's the best thing that's ever been on television.
posted by mintcake! at 4:16 PM on January 6 [5 favorites]

Thanks, everyone.
posted by capricorn at 4:27 PM on January 6

One relationship hack I would absolutely not recommend involves a machete and at least a full decade on the lam.
posted by item at 7:29 PM on January 6 [1 favorite]

the "how do you identify an amateur in your field?" question springs to mind

I just caught up with that thread, and it is spectacularly interesting, but man there is way more discussion of pipette technique than I could possibly have predicted.

Also, props to Blasdelb for still keeping up with the best-answering several months on.
posted by Horace Rumpole at 7:40 PM on January 6 [1 favorite]

I'd never seen that thread and it's so good I linked to it on my Facebook page.
posted by orange swan at 7:47 AM on January 7

Pipette technique is easy to feel strongly about.
posted by Blasdelb at 9:16 AM on January 8