AskMe Fantastic Posts

April 18, 2006 8:45 AM

My wife and I adopted a black, infant girl. It's not specific to iPods. There is no shrinkage.

The "fantastic answers" section of the Recent Fantastic Posts page of AskMeFi is confusing without context.... could the actual question (the short version) be printed, small, above each fantastic answer?
posted by Robot Johnny to Feature Requests at 8:45 AM (24 comments total)

The short versions aren't all that short, so the page would be too long, and anyway, the answers are truncated at a couple hundred characters (only the first sentence or two is shown).

I think of it more like a pointer page. I can't reproduce the entire answer, and I can't reproduce the entire question, so you just click on the links to see the excerpt of the answer in context. I don't think reproducing the entire question and answer would make for a readable, scanable page.
posted by mathowie (staff) at 8:51 AM on April 18, 2006

I adopted a black iPod
posted by matteo at 9:02 AM on April 18, 2006 [1 favorite]

By the way, with the CATS answer (the second one on the Fantastic Posts page right now) the "Read More" link is broken.
posted by daninnj at 9:11 AM on April 18, 2006

ditto the dirac one.
posted by andrew cooke at 9:20 AM on April 18, 2006

Could the title of the question be put under (or above) each answer, so there's at least visible connection (assuming the asker made the title relevant to the question, of course)?
posted by Godbert at 9:23 AM on April 18, 2006

daninnj: "By the way, with the CATS answer (the second one on the Fantastic Posts page right now) the "Read More" link is broken."

I think the "make a short version" logic goes this way:
1) Truncate to n characters, where n is something around 100.
2) Remove HTML.

It should be the other way around. The CATS answer truncates right in the middle of an A tag, so step 2 doesn't recognize it as valid HTML, so it doesn't get removed. And then it confuses the browser.
posted by Plutor at 9:31 AM on April 18, 2006

Girls don't know about shrinkage.
posted by keijo at 9:35 AM on April 18, 2006

Sure ya do. Just from a different perspective.
posted by mystyk at 9:41 AM on April 18, 2006

Good catch Plutor, I'm working on that now.
posted by mathowie (staff) at 9:51 AM on April 18, 2006

mystyk. I'm not a girl (AFAIK). But watch Seinfeld. Get back to me.
posted by keijo at 10:00 AM on April 18, 2006

keijo, you should be a little more specific, or it's going to take him a while to get back to you. Especially since the episode you allude to is at the end of season five.
posted by Plutor at 10:48 AM on April 18, 2006

I think Plutor's fix may also help a bug that sometimes appears in My Comments.
posted by If I Had An Anus at 10:54 AM on April 18, 2006

I adopted some pod people.
posted by jonmc at 11:09 AM on April 18, 2006

*slurp*
posted by Captaintripps at 11:20 AM on April 18, 2006

Honey, I shrunk our adopted black infant pod person.
posted by Pollomacho at 11:23 AM on April 18, 2006 [1 favorite]

Could the title of the question be put under (or above) each answer

Yeah, that's what I meant by "short version"... I don't see how adding them would make the page too long -- are they ever longer than a one-liner?
posted by Robot Johnny at 11:44 AM on April 18, 2006

Naaah, Plutor. Everybody should watch them from season one onwards.

"I think that you think that a certain something is not all that it could be, when, in fact, it is all that it should be... And more!"
"I'm sure it is."
"Look, you don't understand. There was shrinkage."
- George and Jane, in "The Hamptons"
posted by keijo at 12:13 PM on April 18, 2006

(and that's what I mean by "short version".
posted by keijo at 12:14 PM on April 18, 2006

keijo: "mystyk. I'm not a girl (AFAIK). But watch Seinfeld. Get back to me."

Oops. Responded to the comment, not the name.

Besides, you can always say "I was in the pool! I was in the pool!"
posted by mystyk at 1:26 PM on April 18, 2006

I've never seen Seinfeld.
posted by Captaintripps at 3:24 PM on April 18, 2006

How about if the hover for the "read more" link shows the question?
posted by O9scar at 3:43 PM on April 18, 2006

Use one of the improved nicetitle solutions to throw the fulltext up into a hover-balloon like I did in my mockups. Easy like pie. I favour qTip.
posted by stavrosthewonderchicken at 4:21 PM on April 18, 2006

ie, what O9scar said.
posted by stavrosthewonderchicken at 4:21 PM on April 18, 2006

qTip is pretty slick!
posted by Robot Johnny at 4:32 PM on April 18, 2006