Best way to search archives?

December 20, 2016 3:22 PM

After excellent success using ask.me to get a gift idea, I don't want to spam metafilter with questions about all my friends and relations- but how best to search the archives?

Clicking on 'new question' in ask metafilter at this time of year shows you delightful dancing Santas and links to:
The wiki gift ideas, and the gift and Christmas tags.

However, I'm having trouble figuring out if there is a more efficient method than just reading all the linked 'gift' threads or skimming, trying to find one that works for my particular relation, and not being very successful. Does someone have a groovy google search? A widget? or some other tool to help sift through the hivemind's past advice?

Secret Quonsar is also a gifty thing- is there anything (article etc) about picking a good gift related to SQ?

Signed, yep, I've left gift shopping to the last minute again.

posted by freethefeet to MetaFilter-Related at 3:22 PM (9 comments total)

Google.

"site:ask.metafilter.com thing"
posted by Going To Maine at 3:48 PM on December 20, 2016 [5 favorites]

People should do some more work on that Gift Ideas wiki, I had totally forgotten about it. For something straightforward you can use the gift+something tag formation where something is the thing you are looking for. So like here are three posts on socks as gifts. Otherwise yeah Google does a pretty decent job.
posted by jessamyn (retired) at 5:44 PM on December 20, 2016 [3 favorites]

someone somewhere (I wish I could credit them but I just don't remember) had the fantabulous idea of checking the Secret Quonsar Thank You thread if you are looking for gift inspiration

Maybe this comment by billiebee from last week. At least, that's the one that caused me to look over the thanks thread for ideas.
posted by Wobbuffet at 6:46 PM on December 20, 2016

SQ thread has so far provided inspiration for one gift (fancy tea and a nice mug!) and modifying jessamyn's link (swapping 'socks' for 'dad') is proving promising.

Yeah, site:ask.metafilter.com is a good resource, but jessamyn's search, in returning fewer results, feels more useful.

It could be that I'm a bit thick but I had trouble getting the same results using the site search, hence my question. Yay for the quonsar thread, it's really great reading.
posted by freethefeet at 12:30 AM on December 21, 2016

Is there a wiki page that collects gift questions like
Gifts for my...
Dad
[AskMe link]
[AskMe link]
Brother
[AskMe link]
[AskMe link]

Gifts for people who like...
Food
[AskMe link]
[AskMe link]
Wine
[AskMe link]
Cycling
[AskMe link]

Gifts that cost...
Less than $10
[AskMe link]
$10-$50
[AskMe link]
posted by EndsOfInvention at 4:29 AM on December 21, 2016

Not to the best of my knowledge, it's something that would be good to have.
posted by jessamyn (retired) at 7:31 AM on December 21, 2016

Hmm, tried to reset my password and got
Error sending mail: Unknown error in PHP's mail() function.
Who runs the wiki nowadays?
posted by EndsOfInvention at 7:46 AM on December 21, 2016

Who runs the wiki nowadays?

It continues to be hosted by that paragon of grace and generosity, pronoiac.
posted by zamboni at 8:12 AM on December 21, 2016

In cases like this I also suggest to use the metafilter infodumpster. You can set up queries to find the posts and comments along various parameters, and filter by time, tags used, and specify sections of ask metafilter.

For example, here's a the most commented asks that are tagged gifts since 2012. With your results, search now for christmas or holiday in your browser (control+f to bring up your browser's search).
posted by fizzix at 11:38 AM on December 21, 2016