travel laziness

August 1, 2007 10:52 PM

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)
posted by vacapinta to Feature Requests at 10:52 PM (25 comments total)

At the moment, I'm referring to this thread asking what to do and see and eat in Boston.

My first suggestion is to look at all the Boston questions that have been asked before. Then, if they have specific questions after doing that ... then go ahead and ask. It doesn't seem to be too much to ask to try to help themselves a bit before they ask help from others/

I can't speak for Bostonians, but as a San Franciscan I've run out of steam in writing up the same stuff for a "I'm going to San Francisco. What's the 'cant-miss' stuff?" My first suggestion would be to go read a travel guide or some online equivalent.

It seems like an extreme waste of resources to tap a community of residents with deep knowledge of their city and ask such a broad question as

"...I need suggestions for everything I need need to see, do, eat, drink and hear on my temporary stay. Ready...GO!"
posted by vacapinta at 10:53 PM on August 1, 2007

I feel the same way about people asking about Amsterdam.
posted by Meatbomb at 10:58 PM on August 1, 2007 [1 favorite]

Yeah, it gets a little tiresome to see questions about cities that have been covered many times before... But, maybe I'm just jealous because I never go anywhere or do anything exciting... In any case, vacapinta's suggestion is a good one.
posted by amyms at 12:07 AM on August 2, 2007

Sounds like a good suggestion to me, vacapinta.

But hey, what's this about an upcoming travel site? WHY WASN'T I INFORMED?
posted by flapjax at midnite at 12:21 AM on August 2, 2007

I wish I could flag this post as "PUT THIS POST'S CONTENT IN A BOLD 72 PT FONT ON THE ASK.METAFILTER.COM POST PAGE RIGHT NOW PLEASE" because christ do those questions get tiresome to see all the time.

But hey, what's this about an upcoming travel site? WHY WASN'T I INFORMED?

I don't know what's "upcoming" about it (other than people not really knowing it's there).
posted by cmonkey at 12:54 AM on August 2, 2007

mathowie said we weren't supposed to talk about this.
posted by dhammond at 1:21 AM on August 2, 2007 [2 favorites]

Well gaht-damn, as I live and breathe, there it is, plain as day, TravelFilter. Sheeeeee-it! If it'd been a snake it woulda bit me!
posted by flapjax at midnite at 1:27 AM on August 2, 2007

mathowie said we weren't supposed to talk about this.

He forgot to tell his friends that.
posted by timeistight at 1:41 AM on August 2, 2007

Travel laziness.
MetaTalk laziness.
AskMe laziness.

If only people would

read the guidelines
read the wiki
read the archives

things might be

fitter
happier
more productive.
posted by carsonb at 5:10 AM on August 2, 2007

I think this is a good point to add to the AskMe posting page in some way or another. The downside is that people don't always read the posting page anyways.
posted by jessamyn (staff) at 5:34 AM on August 2, 2007

What if on the forced preview the first thing the asker sees is a big list of the tags they chose and a suggestion that they click each tag to search for related threads? It would have the bonus advantage of quietly encouraging useful tagging of questions.
posted by carsonb at 5:45 AM on August 2, 2007

(mark me as another clueless one who was anxiously awaiting the big splashy announcement for the Travel site + had no idea it was already live)

On the topic, I always feel it's a show of good faith when the poster closes with, "...and I already did look at these other threads, 1, 2, 3, 4, but they didn't answer my question for Reason X."

Otherwise, admittedly, I'm inclined to skip a travel-recommendation request. Because I know someone else has likely already done the work (esp in the case of major destinations, NYC, SF, Boston, London, etc), and I shouldn't waste my time if the poster was lazy.

I am not really a flagger but I would make hearty use of an AskMe flag for "Poster clearly didn't Google or search AskMe prior to posting."
posted by pineapple at 6:09 AM on August 2, 2007

Well, Travel is live but it's not really finished. I think we'll have some sort of announcement when it's closer to 1.0 or so.
posted by cortex (staff) at 6:45 AM on August 2, 2007

This is a huge problem we face on Chowhound--people visiting new cities and asking the same questions repeatedly, with no information. We *encourage* people to search first, so as not to annoy the locals, but as a matter of policy we don't remove them. The general idea is that asking the same questions engages new answerers each time, as well as capturing the every-changing restaurant scene at a point in time, so they're worth the repetition. Also, we figure locals who really are tired of the same question over and over will just stop answering them thus reinforcing the idea that the questions suck.
posted by jacquilynne at 7:11 AM on August 2, 2007 [2 favorites]

It seems like an extreme waste of resources to tap a community of residents with deep knowledge of their city and ask such a broad question as ....


On first read, I agreed with you 100%. I said yes, he's totally correct.

Then I thought about how MetaFilter works. It doesn't have some pool of resources. It's a bunch of people voluntarily reading, and voluntarily responding if they so choose. Therefore, you really can't "waste" the resources.

Is it a waste of space on the site to have such questions? Arguably yes, we don't want MeFi, AskMe and soon TravFi? (TraFi? T-Filt? T-Filtefish?) to become a haven for people too lazy to do a google search.

However, certainly it'd be good to make it way easier/more intuitive than it currently is to find/view stuff on your particular destination of choice.

I'd suggest that maybe the main page of the site should be some sort of navigation to areas that've already been posted about first -- so that to even get to where you post a question, you must first see what questions have been asked about your destination.
posted by twiggy at 7:59 AM on August 2, 2007

TravFi? (TraFi? T-Filt? T-Filtefish?)

MeTrav
posted by robocop is bleeding at 9:37 AM on August 2, 2007

This MeTrav, it vibrates?

Is there a beta floating around?




TravMe? MetalTrav?
posted by craven_morhead at 10:02 AM on August 2, 2007

I always feel it's a show of good faith when the poster closes with, "...and I already did look at these other threads, 1, 2, 3, 4, but they didn't answer my question for Reason X."


Not only is it a welcome show of good faith, but it helps future searchers by aggregating previous links on the subject in one place.
posted by CunningLinguist at 10:31 AM on August 2, 2007

I think a good way to deal with this is to add a Google Maps interface that puts little data points corresponding to the posts. You can color-code them depending on the type of post (e.g. trip reports vs "where do I go" questions). That way, you can scroll over to the part you're interested in and see what everyone has to say about it.
posted by spiderskull at 10:59 AM on August 2, 2007

Also, we figure locals who really are tired of the same question over and over will just stop answering them thus reinforcing the idea that the questions suck.

Already have. It's only a matter of time before we get malicious and start sweetly suggesting to potential NYC visitors that they should spend hours in the Starbucks at Penn Station, as it's a reliable place to spot oodles of celebrities. Ooo, and be sure to buy your cigarettes from the thugs muttering "Smoke? Smoke?" in Washington Square Park!
posted by hermitosis at 12:01 PM on August 2, 2007

I think the trip reports part of TravelFilter have great potential.

This very recent post by stuart_s on a food-centric trip to NYC is perhaps a glimpse into just how many layers a City can contain in terms of the variety of experiences, depending on your inclinations.
posted by vacapinta at 12:44 PM on August 2, 2007

Meanwhile...
posted by monju_bosatsu at 12:46 PM on August 2, 2007

Can Fandangomatt please add it to the comic? Then even I would read it.
posted by misha at 1:07 PM on August 2, 2007

Gosh, I am LOVING travelfilter! And methinks the very-well-traveled vacapinta could surely contribute some great posts, right?

(Tell 'em about the time you almost had a meetup with MiguelCardosa - they'll love it!)
posted by Lynsey at 3:28 PM on August 2, 2007

TravelFilter pony request for the future: a Flickr gizmo that would pick up our specially tagged travel photos.
posted by pineapple at 4:12 PM on August 2, 2007