MetaTalk posts tagged with questions

What is the accepted etiquette for asking multi-part questions to AskMe?

jonesor — Thu, 24 Dec 2009 05:04:15 -0800

I'm pretty sure that this has been asked before, but I can't find the post. So, what is the accepted etiquette for asking multi-part questions to AskMe? I'm moving to a different country soon, so understandably I have a heap of questions about how to get things done there. These questions range from things like, "how do i get the internet installed at my new home?", "how do I set up a bank account?", and "how do I buy and register a car?", to the more trivial, "is there a NetFlix equivalent?", and "what's good to eat in my new homeland?" with several others in between. Clearly I could ask these as separate questions, but it would be more efficient to ask in a single post, especially given my timeframe. Advice please.

All's well that ends well?

bigmusic — Wed, 02 Dec 2009 11:56:43 -0800

Many ask.metafilter questions don't have an "end" to the story. Which questions are you most curious about how they ended?

Me asking AskMes

cmoj — Sat, 28 Nov 2009 15:03:41 -0800

What makes an AskMe question get a lot of answers? Several times I've posted (or seen) human relations, tech or nerdy questions of the kind that I thought would have gotten lots of answers but didn't. So, basically, what makes a good (as in prompts response) AskMe question?

Asking better questions.

brenton — Sat, 15 Aug 2009 16:05:19 -0800

How can I ask better questions? This is my first MetaTalk post, so just let me know if this is the wrong place or if it's somehow out of line. I love Ask MetaFilter because the quality of answers is so high. I used to use things like Yahoo Answers, but the answers were just about completely useless, as a rule. However, I still have a recurring problem on MetaFilter where I ask a question, and get tons of answers answering a different question than what I asked. Then I try to clarify, but I feel bad like I'm insulting the very helpful and nice people who answered so far. Which usually isn't much use anyway since people read the original question and either don't read my clarifications or they already have the answer set in their minds. So for the example: my recent tea question . I mostly wanted to know about water to tea ratio. I know a lot about tea and I didn't want to get tons of answers saying "make sure you steep 3-5 minutes!" etc... so I tried to overview with some specifics of what I already know. So I got many wonderful answers, but most of the answers still focused on tea making tips that had nothing to do with my original question of water / tea ratio.

Pony Request: MyAskMefi to Track Anonymous Questions (or Track Users' Questions?)

WCityMike — Tue, 09 Jun 2009 13:21:55 -0800

Pony request: can following all anonymous posts (or maybe, more widely, following a specific user) be integrated into MyAskMefi? I find anonymous questions are usually interesting regardless of subject, so I keep an eye on that RSS feed. But, since MyAskMefi's purpose is to aggregate, I wonder if that could be expanded to follow anonymous posts. A "quick hack" to do this might be to autotag any anonymous post with "anonymous" -- then all you'd do is add 'anonymous' to your tags to follow. A larger-scale method might be to allow MyAskMefi to let you follow certain users. It'd not be a new ability, as people already have AskMefi post RSS feeds.

Why so many Penis Questions?

gryftir — Fri, 06 Mar 2009 03:07:56 -0800

I've just been noticing a recent pattern in Ask, which got me thinking about patterns in ask. Possibly NSFW. Guys with penis problems. Two of those were from yesterday, one from Tuesday, and one from a week ago Sunday. Anyway I guess the specific pattern isn't really what interests me... It's just that previous asks don't seem to provide an answer for posters even when they seem, to me, relevant. I see this with other topics too, like people who haven't had much sexual/dating experience or depression, though I guess those make more sense to me. Anyway I apologize in advance if this is either chatfilter or should be in ask itself. I'm not really looking for an answer though, just a considered discussion on what this happens with some topics.

People need to chill out on this AskMe Poster

Ironmouth — Thu, 26 Feb 2009 13:53:40 -0800

People need to chill out on the poster of this AskMe Question The poster in this question is asking how to break up with an SO. People are being very judgmental, and also making assumptions about the sex of the individuals which aren't warrented. Some of these comments go farther than not answering the question, they actually attack the poster, who is here to get help. A great example of an answer to how to break up was: You suck and she deserves better. Good luck. This stuff doesn't belong here.

Help me give more helpful answers on AskMefi

giggleknickers — Tue, 03 Feb 2009 15:54:24 -0800

How can I answer Mefi questions more helpfully? It seems to me that there tend to be a lot of unhelpful answers on Mefi. Not to complain, because there are loads of wonderful, helpful people here, and because I know I'm guilty myself. I would simply like to think about how I could be more helpful and not clutter up threads with unnecessary or annoying answers. The guidelines mostly cover how to ask questions, not how to answer them. I'm trying to look at all the things that make an answer annoying and unhelpful, so I can avoid it myself (and I know I've been guilty in the past and probably will again once in a while in the future despite my efforts). For instance, if someone asks: I'm on the Snoogily Donglewonk Diet and I heard it's good to do low intensity exercise when you're on this kind of diet. Is there any data on how much I should exercise? I don't have time to do more than an hour a day. I imagine some of the answers will be as follows: 1) Unsolicited advice (by far the most annoying and also the most common annoyance). My brother's cousin's aunt's friend's chiropracter's goldfish didn't have success on this diet. Don't do that diet! I know there are some instances where this might be appropriate, for instance if someone is going to unknowingly do something dangerous or illegal, but most of the time it is just annoying and derailing. I understand the urge, though! 2) Haven't read the whole question. Try doing two hours a day. 3) Not even trying to help. If you didn't want to get fat, you shouldn't have eaten so many cupcakes LOL! 4) Guesses from those who have no more information than the asker (when the asker was seeking information rather than ideas or opinions). I never heard of the Snoogily Donglewonk Diet, but half an hour a day, I guess? 5) Claims that the question is not valid. Why are you worrying about your weight? Just accept it. So those are the kind of responses I am going to make every effort not to make myself, which I can also use in situations outside Mefi. What other kinds of responses should I avoid making? Please don't link to examples or mention usernames. No naming and shaming, please! Please!

New Fontarama

awenner — Mon, 26 Jan 2009 15:32:08 -0800

Are these new fonts? I haven't seen anyone discuss it (and MetaSearch is down) so I'll just ask: did we get new fonts during the downtime?

First They Came for the AskMe Questions About Rectal Porn...

davidstandaford — Tue, 13 Jan 2009 13:35:21 -0800

People who choose to complain about a question instead of trying to answer it are bad enough as is, but it was so excessive for this question about porn that the question itself got deleted and I think that's really inappropriate. What was especially egregious about this example was the question was an anonymous question, which means a moderator had already approved it for Ask MetaFilter. But instead of letting well intentioned people try to help the question asker, people came in to complain about the question itself and ruined it. If you don't have a helpful answer for the question, then don't answer it. If you must, flag it, email a mod, or post to metatalk. Because of the nature of metafilter, it only takes a small number of people shitting in a thread to ruin it for everyone. And while metafilter isn't a democracy (and rightly so), this is an especially annoying example because it only takes a tiny tiny minority of people to ruin a question. There are lots of questions that a small number of people might object to for some reason and they could easily ruin all of them if they wanted (or at least require a ton more work by the moderators) and I think with examples such as this we should discourage that type of behavior and chastise those people who engage in it. [I realize that it's possible that this question also accumulated a ton of flags and it was deleted solely for that reason. It's hard to tell from the deletion reason whether jessamyn is referring to the answers posted or flags that might be used on the question, but even if it was massively flagged, that doesn't excuse poor behavior by the people who answered the question. And even if it was flagged, I still think it was a fine question and people who don't like the question can skip it and answer something else.]

Question queue?

trinity8-director — Mon, 10 Nov 2008 13:06:02 -0800

How about a question queue? Apparently I'm a pretty curious person. I get ideas for questions that I'd ~~love die for enjoy~~ find at least midly amusing to put on AskMe but then the moment passes while I wait for the timeout period to lapse. During this latest episode (counselors are standing by) I found myself wishing for a queue of questions that I could build up, order, and have the magic of AskMe throw out there when the timeout period is over. Like NetFlix for AskMe! But that's probably just me. Or is it? note: yes there are ways of handling this on my own, so that's not my point, k?

Everything here is chatty

troybob — Thu, 03 Jul 2008 11:46:34 -0800

The question on the page is not always the question that is really being asked. Often on AskMeFi the correct answer is one that illustrates that the original question was the wrong thing to ask--an insight often offered by people who have asked themselves that same wrong question before. This kind of approach is part of the value of this site. It was deleted as unanswerable, but it's pretty crummy that it was done after a bunch of people took the time to come up with thoughtful answers to it. It would be nice to keep in mind that with deletions you are not only screwing over the one who make the original post, but the ones who take it seriously enough to put good-faith effort into making a meaningful response--24 such responses in this case. If you're not going to pre-screen questions, at least accept some threshold of community response (and in this case, quality response) that would prove it a valid thread of discourse.

Queuing questions.

zouhair — Sun, 16 Mar 2008 23:23:51 -0800

From time to time, after asking a question in AskMefi, I get a great question but forget about it because of the waiting period. I'm not questioning this rule, but it would be nice to have the possibility to create a certain number of questions in advance, and put them in some sort of queue, so one will not forgot to ask some good question.

Podcast call-in

mathowie — Thu, 06 Sep 2007 18:51:30 -0800

We're podcasting tomorrow and would love to get some questions beforehand. As always, call Call +1 (503) 487-0014 and leave a message. We'll play back the good ones on the show and answer them.

Reach out and touch an admin

mathowie — Thu, 16 Aug 2007 18:58:17 -0800

Viewer Mail time! For tomorrow's podcast, we're gonna take questions from members and answer them during the show. Call +1 (503) 487-0014 and record your question. We'll answer and play back the best questions we get for the next podcast.

travel laziness

vacapinta — Wed, 01 Aug 2007 22:52:46 -0800

This might be a better suggestion for the upcoming Travel site, but is it appropriate to suggest to people before they post looking for things to do in a new city, that they: A) Tell us as much about themselves as possible, B) Have perused all the previous threads relating to that city? (more inside)

Bears, baby. All the way, bears.

allkindsoftime — Mon, 02 Jul 2007 17:01:06 -0800

This is a great freakin question. I'd just like to use it to once more point out that we really should be able to reopen this discussion for a more full, rounded finalization.

Rollover questions? $5 per question? Pony?

jbickers — Wed, 27 Jun 2007 17:00:17 -0800

God help me, but I'm starting a thread on getting additional AskMe questions. There are weeks that go by with no need to ask anything ... but then there are times when a second question would be a life-saver. Whatabout either (a) "rollover questions," a la Cingular's rollover minutes, say, up to a maximum of 2-3 in the bank at any time; or (b) a fee to ask a second question in one week? I can think of several times when I would have ponied up an additional $5 to ask, say, a work-related question where I knew AskMe's community would have the best answer.

Song and artist???

Macboy — Sat, 07 Apr 2007 12:06:03 -0800

I need help with a popular song for the late 80s / early 90s. A chanting song, with monks in the background and a woman repeating latin sayings. Can you help? I tried Chant, but that's not the right album.

When is the best time to ask?

rbs — Fri, 30 Mar 2007 23:10:01 -0800

Do we have any data about what the best time of day is to ask an AskMe? Maybe even sliced and diced by tag or geography of respondant? Like, say I had a question about American law, when would be the best time of day (perhaps through some proxy measure like more responses is better, but maybe it could be smarter and be based on favorites or checked answers) to post it? Posts made around 1am Central might not be ideal cause they may slide off the page by mid morning, right? And they may be less interesting to Euros or Asians who are reading. (Sorry, but I don't know how to do a more inside)

Ability to post questions in one's profile?

sperose — Sat, 06 Jan 2007 01:15:45 -0800

I have an idea that popped into my head while I was reading this.

Sometimes it comes up that people need/want to ask more than one question that warrants the use of AskMefi within the 2 week period. How about something in your profile where you could post semi-smallish questions + tags? These wouldn't be posted to the main page, but if someone had a similar question that they want to ask, these other smallish questions could come up in a tag search. Then, when the second searcher asks their question, maybe have something that pops up in the first person's profile next to their smallish question to alert them that a somewhat related question has been asked.

Note: I have no idea if this is one of those things that seems absolutely stupid or if it is too difficult to code or whatever. (I hope that "feature requests" was a good place to put this, even though it is probably nonexistant on anyone else's radar screen.)

The two-week waiting period

knave — Tue, 02 Jan 2007 21:59:05 -0800

In which I posit that the two-week waiting period has had no impact on the volume of questions.

Are these an acceptable use of Ask.me or not?

bigmusic — Tue, 19 Dec 2006 07:23:26 -0800

I'd love to help you name your cat, and I'd love to help you name your baked goods. BUT - Please avoid "help me name my kitten/computer/website" and "help me make a mix CD" questions. Why do we want to avoid these kind of questions? Are these an acceptable use of Ask.me or not?

AskMe questions popping up on The Vine.

Bugbread — Thu, 14 Dec 2006 00:01:11 -0800

Looks like our answers to anonymous just don't hack it: The second question on "The Vine", seems remarkably similar to this question, on AskMe.

Though, I have to wonder: I understand the desire for a second opinion, or maybe a third, possibly even a fourth, but what makes you think "Yeah, sure, I got 75 answers the last time I asked this, but I think I need to get a 76th opinion."

Note: There's no permalink on The Vine, so I have no idea when the question will scroll off into the archive, replaced by a new second question that renders this post incomprehensible. Sorry.

Note: this is not a callout or complaint, just something I found interesting and MetaFilter related

Too many gift questions in askme

judith — Tue, 21 Nov 2006 13:49:25 -0800

At the risk of being a scrooge, is there any way at all to curtail xmas gift askme? I know everyone needs special unique gifts for all the special unique snowflakes in their lives, none of whom resemble in any way the recipients other people need to buy gifts for, but it doesn't add a great deal of value to the site as a whole and we've got another month or so of questions like this ahead of us...