AskMe Etiquette

December 4, 2004 4:31 PM

Callout to take care in your AskMeFi posts:
"parking meters and nyc" question. Ummm... did you mean Fire hydrant?
"is there a well-known phrasing of the concept that 'the three (or bough, or branch)" Uhh... did you mean tree?
People seem to take extra care with spelling, phrasing and clarity in the blue and this is great but it seems like a poster should take even more care in the green because rather than offering information you are asking for it to be given to you. Just sayin'.
posted by tinamonster to etiquette/policy at 4:31 PM (28 comments total)

Thanks. I'll keep all this in mind.
posted by The God Complex at 4:33 PM on December 4, 2004

Glad to know I have God on my side.
posted by tinamonster at 4:37 PM on December 4, 2004

Irony makes the baby jesus smile.
posted by stavrosthewonderchicken at 4:39 PM on December 4, 2004

Shouldn't 'jesus' be capitalized, stavros?
posted by dobbs at 4:42 PM on December 4, 2004

Not in my world.
posted by stavrosthewonderchicken at 4:47 PM on December 4, 2004

Look what my bout of bitchiness hath wrought! Three of my favorites. Hellooo boys!
posted by tinamonster at 4:47 PM on December 4, 2004

It's actually much more amusing that every response just mentally converted it to "fire hydrants". I think you could have brought that up in that question, since it is confusing as asked.

OTOH, you can't do anything about a three for tree typo. It will happen regardless.
posted by smackfu at 5:21 PM on December 4, 2004

i think i'll post me a callout on calling out callouts.
posted by quonsar at 5:21 PM on December 4, 2004

never mind. stavros would call me out on it.
posted by quonsar at 5:22 PM on December 4, 2004

Speaking as a newbie, and as someone who very deliberately posted a recent one-line AskMe question, I can tell you that my intentions were to give the relevant facts about the nature of my question, while taking up as little front-page space as possible, so that others may play, too. Until the questions linger a little longer on AskMe, I thought this was the most polite thing to do.

I mean, criminy.
posted by Dr. Wu at 5:41 PM on December 4, 2004

smackfu: did you notice that it was "three" inside as well? Once is a typo...twice is a puzzle. A maddening puzzle.

Dr. Wu: yep. yep. yep.
posted by tinamonster at 5:48 PM on December 4, 2004

Yup, that's pretty weird that it was three inside as well.
posted by smackfu at 5:55 PM on December 4, 2004

Dr. Wu, just FYI, the length of your post (on the front page) doesn't affect how long the questions below you linger. Putting the more inside is just the polite thing to do so people who don't have an answer for you can just go to the next question.

The # of questions on the front page is exactly that: a fixed number. Length ain't got nothing to do with it.
posted by dobbs at 6:05 PM on December 4, 2004

I once had a sister-in-law named Tina, and she was indeed a monster.

Just sayin'.
posted by mr_crash_davis at 6:15 PM on December 4, 2004

tinamonster, you have fallen prey to one of the Immutable Laws of The Internet--every post which critiques other posters' spelling, grammar, or punctuation skills must iself contain at least one solecism in one of those areas.

But I found the "three" thing rather odd, myself, largely because it said "three" both places where "tree" was indicated. Once may be regarded as a misfortune; twice looks like carelessness.
posted by Sidhedevil at 6:58 PM on December 4, 2004

Carelessness? The same typo twice?

I was going to ask if the poster had a thpeech impediment.
posted by rafter at 7:13 PM on December 4, 2004

MetaTalk: Length ain't got nothing to do with it.
posted by Ufez Jones at 7:20 PM on December 4, 2004

Reading back, I realize my comment was a bit off-topic. Sorry if I took a tangent and ran with it. But I took your general point, tinamonster, to be "pay attention to your AskMe posts," which, honest, I try to do.

Anyway. Right. Nothing to see here.
posted by Dr. Wu at 8:04 PM on December 4, 2004

OMG, I swear I proofread that!

In any case, it said 'three' inside because I copy-pasted and just put speechmarks around what I'd posted without reading that phrase again.
posted by Firas at 11:45 PM on December 4, 2004

But now that I look at it, it's spelt 'three' twice in the post itself. Wow. I think I typed "the the" then backspaced over the 'e' without getting the 'h', or something.. I do remember that my preview showed a pretty egregious error.

Sorry! I had even looked up the definition of attributable to make sure it meant what I thought it meant.

*And* I'd gone back to the main askme page one last time to make sure that starting a question by appending 'filter' to a condensed version of the topic was being done in the way I did it.
posted by Firas at 11:51 PM on December 4, 2004

Firas, relax. That the English was so fractured in the original post of this thread -- a thread created to take others to task for their use of the language -- makes the whole thing a Komedy Klusterfuck.

Thus the baby jesus smiling quietly to himself, kinda like he farted or something.

I'd gone back to the main askme page one last time to make sure that starting a question by appending 'filter' to a condensed version of the topic

This, however, annoys the horripilating fuck out of me (and a few other cranky pedants as well, apparently).
posted by stavrosthewonderchicken at 2:07 AM on December 5, 2004

Don't worry Firas. Threse thrings happen. I constantly catch myself typing "their" for "there" (or vice versa) for some ungodly reason, and I have to wonder how many of those slip through. Anyway, I liked it... And do you know why? Because I think that I shall never see a poem as lovely as a three.

Their, their, now. Feel better?
posted by taz at 2:19 AM on December 5, 2004

Thus the baby jesus smiling quietly to himself

That's what I was actually keeping in mind.


Don't worry Firas. Threse thrings happen. I constantly catch myself typing "their" for "there" (or vice versa) for some ungodly reason, and I have to wonder how many of those slip through. Anyway, I liked it... And do you know why? Because I think that I shall never see a poem as lovely as a three.

Likewise. My spelling here is often atrocious, since I never use the spell checker. Oops. I guess I bet not ask anyone for help ;)
posted by The God Complex at 3:33 AM on December 5, 2004

Is that that that that that Ask Metafilter post contained?
posted by nthdegx at 6:40 AM on December 5, 2004

thanks tinamaster for your post, I'll be more carefull in the future. do not mind what stavrosthesuperchicken and the other nuysayers say.

MetaTalk: Length ain't got nothing to do with it.

look who, of all people, is talking about, ahem, "length" here. I can imagine those big Oklahoma farmboy hands hitting the keyboard with brute force and... and...
*faints*
posted by matteo at 6:54 AM on December 5, 2004

"Likewise. My spelling here is often atrocious, since I never use the spell checker."

I used to, but then stopped when it wasn't working. Haven't gotten back into the habit. I just keep trying to improve my spelling. It was horrible when I was a kid, even though I was a very early reader (seems like other early readers I know are typically lifelong good spellers and claim a relationship). These days, I'm better than most...which represents a few decades of cumulative improvement. :)
posted by Ethereal Bligh at 9:27 AM on December 5, 2004

wonder, damn it! matteooooooo!

*shakes operatic mock-Shatnerian fist at the sky*
posted by stavrosthewonderchicken at 12:31 PM on December 5, 2004

Shouldn't that be a mock-chicken leg?
posted by SteveInMaine at 1:02 PM on December 5, 2004