MetaTalk

I can recall a few times in recent history where a thread that failed to meet the guidelines of AskMetafilter stayed around for a while because no one happened to be around to nip it in the bud -- and then the thread accumulated so many interesting answers that people had gotten attached to it and Matt was reluctant to delete it. I sympathize with this reluctance but also feel that appropriate deletions are good for preventing the mission of AskMe from drifting too far afield. Would the ability to close AskMe threads be a good compromise solution for these cases?
posted by redfoxtail on Mar 6, 2005 - 42 comments

meta-meta-question -
I nearly hit "post" a few minutes ago here, but I stopped myself because I was asking follow up questions, only slightly off-topic. Good ones I think (and the simple thread is nearly worn out). I can't post another question for another 6.5 days. Shouldn't I just ask the questions in the thread while it's a fresh topic instead of posting a new question in a week? Or should I just suck it up and wait?
posted by hellbient on Feb 22, 2005 - 7 comments

YA plea for editorial discretion/benevolent neglect. [greater within]
posted by kenko on Feb 19, 2005 - 87 comments

The best answer feature used in this AskMeFi question seems a little disconcerting to me. For a question that's so subjective, is it really appropriate? I find it off putting.
posted by sophie on Feb 14, 2005 - 82 comments

In this post about music downloading the subject of ask.metafilter questions being used for illegal means [+MI]
posted by filmgeek on Feb 11, 2005 - 26 comments

Is it befitting to compliment a response in Ask Metafilter?
posted by Mean Mr. Bucket on Feb 11, 2005 - 10 comments

Matt, should we use MetaTalk to follow-up our AskMe questions? Or should we use AskMe? Or neither?
posted by Pretty_Generic on Feb 3, 2005 - 19 comments

Multi-questioned AskMe post. It's a particularly (IMHO) obnoxious kind of transgression, in that there's no way to claim it's anything other than an attempt to circumvent policy that's in place for good reason. Can the post page make the "one question per post" point more clearly?
posted by mkultra on Jan 17, 2005 - 22 comments

I just wanted to take this opportunity to thank Matt for deleting the Invisibility/Flight thread in Ask.Me
posted by esch on Jan 14, 2005 - 134 comments

Could we maybe dispense with the cliffhangers in Ask.MetaFilter?
posted by Space Coyote on Jan 4, 2005 - 35 comments

Legitimately unsure if the following is an acceptable use of AskMe: (more inside)
posted by John Kenneth Fisher on Jan 1, 2005 - 22 comments

I just skimmed the past two months of MeTalk looking for this thread and didn't find it, so excuse me if it's a DP, but: When I went to post an AskMe question today, I got this: You've asked a question in the past week. There is a limit of one question per week, which you've used up. Make them count, because you'll only get one a week. [+]
posted by blueshammer on Dec 18, 2004 - 52 comments

There's been a lot of hand-wringing in re: askme lately, so, have we considered the idea of the temporary ban? I submit for your consideration this post. In my mind, that warrants, say, a 2-week ban from askme. Second offense is a 4-week ban and third offense is a permant ban. All from askme, mind you, I'm not talking about a mefi-wide ban.

Of course, this is all more administrative overhead for Matt and god knows I wouldn't bother were I in his shoes. It just sort of seems like a definitive "this sort of uselessness is not desired here" response would be nice.
posted by kavasa on Dec 18, 2004 - 88 comments

Have anonymous posts made AskMetafilter better?
posted by Hildago on Dec 12, 2004 - 54 comments

How does one post a question regarding their homepage (that definately requires a link) in askmeta without getting people complaining about self promotion on metatalk?
posted by ralawrence on Dec 6, 2004 - 12 comments

Gratuitous self-link, or a legitemate part of the question?

It's not quite as bad as this one, since in this case the self-link has at least a theoretical connection to the question being asked, but it still feels to me more like bwerdmuller is hoping that "the best way to find new business fast" is to post a link to his own work on a popular forum and see if anyone bites.

Am I just being grumpy? Where should we draw the line on self-promotion within AskMe?
posted by ook on Dec 5, 2004 - 26 comments

I've just read the worst ask.me of all time and the risk of devaluing the site is irritating me to hell. I seem to remember a suggestion that maybe I should make use of google - does that sound like a reasonable soultion?
posted by dash_slot- on Nov 26, 2004 - 81 comments

The AskMe thread on faking one's death seems to skirt the same grey area as several of the deleted warez-related inquiries. Not to be a prude, of course -it's ust that curiousity like this could be bad for our ponies.
posted by Smart Dalek on Nov 23, 2004 - 35 comments

question asking limits on ask mefi?
posted by GleepGlop on Nov 19, 2004 - 25 comments

has 111 been banned ?
posted by sgt.serenity on Jul 9, 2004 - 98 comments

AskMefi threads asking for critiques in design probably should be discouraged.
posted by crunchland on May 15, 2004 - 30 comments

Some AskMetafilter standards? Debated posting this because conformity is like, so something the MAN wants you to do. But when I was looking through the AskMetafilter archives I noticed a few things, like "more inside" and [filter][/filter] stuff that breaks the formatting.
posted by geoff. on May 11, 2004 - 19 comments

How do you decide if you askmefi question is too stupid? [more inside]
posted by drezdn on Apr 16, 2004 - 63 comments

Without getting specific, does it not seem unethical to use Ask Metafilter to answer your employer's questions?
Is this acceptable, or what is the limit? (or maybe we need to implement some sort of "I'll answer for a percentage"
scheme - since you are getting paid to know the answer)
posted by milovoo on Mar 24, 2004 - 22 comments

Dear No. 1: Maybe it's time for a little policy action. I think of AskMe much more in terms of archival value than I do MeFi, mostly because a great deal of the information shared there is anecdotal and experience-related, and as such is not wholly dependent on web links that may change or disappear. It seems that this is going to be a resource that will be referred to quite often in results for common searches, and in this way far less ephemeral than MeFi or MeTa. Therefore, I'm thinking that inline comments about the suitability or presentation of a posted question are especially unwelcome.

I understand that it will be overbearing and ridiculous to bring every single question of this sort to MeTa, but still, I think that in the long run it will be strange and distracting to have these asides remaining in the threads that survive to see another day, especially because they tend to drift off into discussions involving the complaint, and because the person complaining may have just been suffering from wrong-side-of-the-bed syndrome, the effects of which usually fade rapidly into obscurity on the blue and gray pages (and the inclusion of which is explicitly or implicitly more "built into" their more conversational structure), but which I suspect will end up being more "sticky", as well as oddly jarring, in the green. I also think that it will probably become impossible for you to monitor everything and delete all bad posts/comments one by one. [More, believe it or not...]
posted by taz on Mar 24, 2004 - 27 comments

Update to the thread detailing my friend getting busted by the cops: He made a plea bargain with his court appointed lawyer and had his sentencing dropped to 3 years probation with Alcohol Rehabilitation classes. He doesn't get drunk anymore.
posted by Keyser Soze on Mar 20, 2004 - 54 comments

Would some "wisecracks" liven Ask Meta up a bit ?
We've all behaved very well so far.
posted by johnny7 on Mar 14, 2004 - 59 comments

Banned from MeFi? Are there any hard and fast rules? Why does lazy-ville get banned for weeks, others only a week, and others forever? If I ever happen to step on someone's toes while on a bender or something, I just want to know what the results might be. Also, is there any page for information regarding who's been banned in the past?
posted by angry modem on Mar 8, 2004 - 115 comments

Can we please make it stop? It's bad enough that we really want a 100+ post thread about same sex marriage every day. Do we have to drag it into AskMe?
posted by y6y6y6 on Feb 27, 2004 - 17 comments

Could we at least try to summarize the actual question in the front-page post on AskMe? 1 2 3
posted by DevilsAdvocate on Feb 9, 2004 - 19 comments

AskMe threads are disappearing off the front page at high speed as floods of new questions come in. It seems to me that a good many questions could have been answered had the question-asker put a bit more effort into googling. What are we to do?
posted by five fresh fish on Jan 15, 2004 - 105 comments

Are self links okay in AskMe? This question appears to appropriate AskMe for a commercial purpose.
posted by timeistight on Jan 13, 2004 - 34 comments

AskMe policy proposal: "Please answer the actual question, not what you think should have been the question".

For instance here, crunchland seems to think the question is "what's a good approach to picking colors", whereas namespan is saying "fireworks used to have a feature, now it doesn't, what can I do". This happens all the time. People ask how to fix something on a computer running System A, and the answer is switch to System B. People ask about Anti-virus apps, and are told not to use them and just practice safe-computing. It's a small peeve, but the added noise is not appreciated, especially when you actually care about the answers.
posted by signal on Jan 8, 2004 - 39 comments

Matt doesn't want it but it seems a bit harmless to me. Is it illegal to post information here that would enable someone else to do something illegal? Bearing in mind that any possible crime in this case would take place in Portugal. What could happen to Matt+MeFi if we put up enabling information here? Any lawyers?
posted by bonaldi on Jan 4, 2004 - 32 comments

This question about the posited decline and fall of aliens in film might be worth addressing here...
posted by namespan on Dec 30, 2003 - 24 comments

For curiosity's sake, when does a post like this become something to be shifted to Ask Metafilter? [more inside]
posted by FunkyHelix on Dec 22, 2003 - 12 comments

I nominate this thread as the point in AskMe's development cycle where we start giving in to to one-liners, boy-zone silliness, and the usual MetaFilter noise. We've been very good in Ask MetaFilter so far. - On topic. Helpful rather than chatty. Signal rather than noise. Do we want to allow this sort of thing? If so, how can we put limits on it? The question asked sort of invites grade school antics. Do we blame the poster, or the users who gave in to temptation?

If AskMe goes the way of MetaFilter, there isn't much point in having two sites.
posted by y6y6y6 on Dec 18, 2003 - 52 comments

We seem to be in the midst of another "what's your favorite X" mini-epidemic: a link which varies from interesting to trivial, followed by an invitation to opine. This time it's sandwiches, beverages, newspapers, snacks, arcade games, amusing childhood beliefs. I won't bother to criticize--we've covered that ground many times here already. But I think it's interesting how when these things happen, it only takes one precipitating post to generate several others, seemingly on a "yeah! And hey, what about this?" principle. What's your favorite favorite-X question?
posted by rodii on May 2, 2002 - 39 comments

"I like this band. What band do you like?" Oy... Should there maybe be a specific no-favorite-bands admonishment in the link guidelines?
posted by nicwolff on Jan 14, 2002 - 80 comments