Way to email other users?

November 7, 2005 4:58 PM

Would it be appropriate it use askmefi as a way of finding other people who have knowledge about a specific topic and would be willing to share it via e-mail? If not, is there another forum with this purpose?

For example, would it be appropriate to post the following (note that I'd be most interested in the last sentence:
I am interested in learning more about X-- specifically, I am wondering if XYZ. Anyone out there care to share insight specific to my question about XYZ? Know of good leads to learn more about X and XYZ? Anyone one up for a more in-depth e-mail correspondence regarding you experience and opinions?
posted by lalalana to Etiquette/Policy at 4:58 PM (8 comments total)

Some people will email you on their own or offer; some people who answer you, you might want to email them based on their profile and ask more questions. But ask.me is meant to be a community resource, and asking for non ask.me replies dilutes that resource. In that sense, it seems a little bit rude, ya know?
posted by jacquilynne at 5:16 PM on November 7, 2005

If you want to learn more about a specific topic and can formulate a question about that topic, feel free to go ahead. You can use the assembled respondents as a possible go-to list for more discussion about the topic, but general calls for off-site discussion are not really what AskMe is for.
posted by jessamyn at 5:35 PM on November 7, 2005

Please do not use Ask as a penpal service. Thanks.
posted by majick at 6:40 PM on November 7, 2005

There are lots of email lists about all sorts of topics. Have you tried checking out groups.yahoo.com?
posted by mathowie (staff) at 7:14 PM on November 7, 2005

I second jacquilynne! Just take the liberty of getting in contact with people.

In general, I'm kind of disappointed that AskMe questions don't continue a little longer (or a lot longer). I mean, there are often opportunities for detailed discussion around certain questions, but questions rarely go very far. In that way, I would be tempted to bring further questions on the same topic back into the open forum of the original AskMe question when appropriate. Now that questions are open for a full year this seems even more feasible, although I'm not sure exactly how it would relate to the intended purpose of the site...
posted by Chuckles at 7:17 PM on November 7, 2005

So I have a question, how many times can I say "question" in one paragraph about questions? The answer to the question about questions apears to be six instances of "question" in one paragraph about questions.

Oh, I just beat my record!
posted by Chuckles at 8:19 PM on November 7, 2005

Someone did this, nominally "to me," a while ago. I had no problem just answering right there in the thread, though, which it doesn't sound like you're talking about.

Anyway, that particular instance didn't seem too terribly inappropriate, especially since I got to show off.
posted by ikkyu2 at 8:36 PM on November 7, 2005

One of the writing forums I used to hang out on maintained a list of "experts" who were willing to answer questions on various topics. Perhaps someone should set up a page like that on the MetaFilter Wiki.
posted by kindall at 1:03 AM on November 8, 2005