AskMe data May 26, 2008 9:44 PM Subscribe
Is there any data on AskMe responses? This post generated a remarkable 115 (and counting) replies. What's the record?
I thought that I've seen over 300, but I can't actually find one now. It'd be cool if there were a way to find by number of responses (absolute) in addition to just favorites.
Also, it would be interesting to look at how favorites and number of comments track each other, and what were some of the posts that created the greatest deviation from the norm (most favorites with least comments and vice versa). I'm not sure what kind of post would lean dramatically one way or the other...
posted by Kadin2048 at 10:06 PM on May 26, 2008
Also, it would be interesting to look at how favorites and number of comments track each other, and what were some of the posts that created the greatest deviation from the norm (most favorites with least comments and vice versa). I'm not sure what kind of post would lean dramatically one way or the other...
posted by Kadin2048 at 10:06 PM on May 26, 2008
Sorry to derail, but that shoe thread led me to a whole new world. There are people who wear shoes inside their houses... or consider this an Asian custom/affectation? I have lived and worked on three continents, I didn't realize this was case...
posted by Deep Dish at 10:21 PM on May 26, 2008
posted by Deep Dish at 10:21 PM on May 26, 2008
I'm glad that thread salvia posted generated so much activity. It's how I first came across this site!
posted by Rhaomi at 10:44 PM on May 26, 2008
posted by Rhaomi at 10:44 PM on May 26, 2008
Wait, what, Deep Dish? There are people who considering wearing shoes inside a house to be an Asian custom?
posted by jacalata at 1:10 AM on May 27, 2008
posted by jacalata at 1:10 AM on May 27, 2008
I think Deep Dish was surprised that there are people who wear shoes inside their house or consider the practice of not wearing shoes indoors to be an Asian custom/affectation.
Sometimes I wish there was an option to edit your AskMe question, since so many people are trying to answer "Do you wear your shoes indoors? Do you feel that it is polite to wear shoes in other peoples homes or request them to do so in your own home?" when the question is really entirely different. Oh well, that's AskMe for you, I guess.
posted by pravit at 1:16 AM on May 27, 2008
Sometimes I wish there was an option to edit your AskMe question, since so many people are trying to answer "Do you wear your shoes indoors? Do you feel that it is polite to wear shoes in other peoples homes or request them to do so in your own home?" when the question is really entirely different. Oh well, that's AskMe for you, I guess.
posted by pravit at 1:16 AM on May 27, 2008
Shoot...I just read that entire thread posted by Salvia. Am now terrified by the combined geek-power of mefites with a grudge and/or vague interest. I swear to never enact a poorly constructed viral ad campaign but to instead spend my time making cupcakes. Who doesn't like cupcakes? Pleaseletmekeepmyidentity.
posted by Bibliogeek at 2:18 AM on May 27, 2008
posted by Bibliogeek at 2:18 AM on May 27, 2008
Don't stress it, pravit. That thread you started is an amazing cultural exchange. BTW I have now taken off my boots and am wearing slippers. YMMV.
posted by Jimbob at 2:57 AM on May 27, 2008
posted by Jimbob at 2:57 AM on May 27, 2008
I'm sorry, pravit, I commented in your thread knowing full well I wasn't really answering your question. But it was a subject I've always been curious about, too, and some of the responses were really interesting. I thought that by tossing in an explanation for "taking off shoes inside home" in one culture might highlight some of the reasons or "not taking off shoes inside home." The dirt floor reason someone gave and the scorpion one really made sense to me.
It also really never occured to me that to some people, taking off shoes=taking off pants! Wow.
posted by misozaki at 4:30 AM on May 27, 2008
It also really never occured to me that to some people, taking off shoes=taking off pants! Wow.
posted by misozaki at 4:30 AM on May 27, 2008
You gotta wear thick soled industrial boots in my house, otherwise your feet ooze into the carpet thing.
posted by mattoxic at 6:11 AM on May 27, 2008 [1 favorite]
posted by mattoxic at 6:11 AM on May 27, 2008 [1 favorite]
Pure chatfilter.
So asking about cross-cultural experiences is now chatfilter? Puh-lease. It could have gone in that direction, sure, and some answers are more chatty than others, but the folks involved did a great job of steering it towards something useful.
posted by mediareport at 6:25 AM on May 27, 2008
So asking about cross-cultural experiences is now chatfilter? Puh-lease. It could have gone in that direction, sure, and some answers are more chatty than others, but the folks involved did a great job of steering it towards something useful.
posted by mediareport at 6:25 AM on May 27, 2008
I swear to never enact a poorly constructed viral ad campaign but to instead spend my time making cupcakes.
Unfortunately, cupcake baking is the gateway drug for astroturfing. And we all know what that leads to...
(Seriously, I moderate the boards at Chowhound.com and we get so many obvious shills from new cupcake bakeries that it's a running joke with the moderators.)
posted by jacquilynne at 7:49 AM on May 27, 2008
Unfortunately, cupcake baking is the gateway drug for astroturfing. And we all know what that leads to...
(Seriously, I moderate the boards at Chowhound.com and we get so many obvious shills from new cupcake bakeries that it's a running joke with the moderators.)
posted by jacquilynne at 7:49 AM on May 27, 2008
Pure chatfilter.
No, I don't think it is. pravit was very clear what his reason for asking was and was polite and respectful in the thread. "I don't understand the motivation behind X, can someone explain it to me" seems like a decent question to me. I had the opposite reaction to DeepDish "There are places where wearing shoes inside the house is just not done?" I've always assumed it was just a personal preference thing -- as it has always seemed to me in the US -- and while I know there are places where there is a custom of indoor/outdoor shoes, I just never really knew how that worked in a large-scale everyone-does-it situation.
I'm sure sidebarring it did boost the numbers some.
posted by jessamyn (staff) at 8:32 AM on May 27, 2008
No, I don't think it is. pravit was very clear what his reason for asking was and was polite and respectful in the thread. "I don't understand the motivation behind X, can someone explain it to me" seems like a decent question to me. I had the opposite reaction to DeepDish "There are places where wearing shoes inside the house is just not done?" I've always assumed it was just a personal preference thing -- as it has always seemed to me in the US -- and while I know there are places where there is a custom of indoor/outdoor shoes, I just never really knew how that worked in a large-scale everyone-does-it situation.
I'm sure sidebarring it did boost the numbers some.
posted by jessamyn (staff) at 8:32 AM on May 27, 2008
From Cortex's second link, enter the following:
Select * from askme_posts where comments > 300
Select * from askme_posts where comments > 300
post_id user_id date time comm favorites7812 14200 2004-06-08 21:12:53 402 027155 27799 2005-11-13 12:11:29 303 6447757 36205 2006-10-02 18:20:16 752 172posted by Ryvar at 10:16 AM on May 27, 2008
Those of you who don't know SQL should be able to modify my query above to formulate your own, btw.
"askme_posts" is the table being queried (tables are the words in bold in the bottom section of the page)
"comments" is the variable within askme_posts that is being compared to 300. Member variables for each table are the words listed under the bold text.
posted by Ryvar at 10:24 AM on May 27, 2008
"askme_posts" is the table being queried (tables are the words in bold in the bottom section of the page)
"comments" is the variable within askme_posts that is being compared to 300. Member variables for each table are the words listed under the bold text.
posted by Ryvar at 10:24 AM on May 27, 2008
I think Deep Dish was surprised that there are people who wear shoes inside their house or consider the practice of not wearing shoes indoors to be an Asian custom/affectation.
yup. I am still thinking about it even; in part because this phenomeon had escaped me for so long. I was at a houseparty with maybe 20 people this weekend, and there were 20 pairs of shoes at the door; in good and dry weather. I could also never figure out why those closet organizing devices always had so much room for shoes; I keep mine on a rack at the door and that had always struck me as the most rational place to organize shoes.
There is a Seinfeld or Larry David episode in this somewhere...
posted by Deep Dish at 10:39 AM on May 27, 2008
yup. I am still thinking about it even; in part because this phenomeon had escaped me for so long. I was at a houseparty with maybe 20 people this weekend, and there were 20 pairs of shoes at the door; in good and dry weather. I could also never figure out why those closet organizing devices always had so much room for shoes; I keep mine on a rack at the door and that had always struck me as the most rational place to organize shoes.
There is a Seinfeld or Larry David episode in this somewhere...
posted by Deep Dish at 10:39 AM on May 27, 2008
Pure chatfilter. Sidebarred.
And I thought I had to dump a wall of text relating a touching personal story before I would ever get sidebarred!
I had a hunch that AskMe would turn out the way it did; people are more interested in talking about their own particular shoe-wearing habits than why they do it, though I guess it's a bit much to ask people to analyze something in their own culture that they're unaware of.
The sidebar's language doesn't exactly help in that regard ("yes or no"), but it's already been 100+ comments, so I guess it's pretty descriptive of the discussion that actually took place.
Still, I got a lot of really insightful comments that helped me to understand the cultural background behind "shoes are part of your outfit"; the stories about older generation relatives were gems, and so many people mentioned that they felt embarrassed or unclothed when they took off their shoes.
Don't stress it, pravit. That thread you started is an amazing cultural exchange. BTW I have now taken off my boots and am wearing slippers. YMMV.
But what about the sharks?
posted by pravit at 11:53 AM on May 27, 2008
And I thought I had to dump a wall of text relating a touching personal story before I would ever get sidebarred!
I had a hunch that AskMe would turn out the way it did; people are more interested in talking about their own particular shoe-wearing habits than why they do it, though I guess it's a bit much to ask people to analyze something in their own culture that they're unaware of.
The sidebar's language doesn't exactly help in that regard ("yes or no"), but it's already been 100+ comments, so I guess it's pretty descriptive of the discussion that actually took place.
Still, I got a lot of really insightful comments that helped me to understand the cultural background behind "shoes are part of your outfit"; the stories about older generation relatives were gems, and so many people mentioned that they felt embarrassed or unclothed when they took off their shoes.
Don't stress it, pravit. That thread you started is an amazing cultural exchange. BTW I have now taken off my boots and am wearing slippers. YMMV.
But what about the sharks?
posted by pravit at 11:53 AM on May 27, 2008
I think you would have gotten and enthusiastic participation in response to, "Why do you like cereal for breakfast? Myself, I don't like cereal very much. But some people do. I'm wondering if there might be a cultural reason. I don't mean this to be chatfilter, I'm really curious."
And you would likely have gotten some heartwarming anecdotes about fondly-remembered cereals from childhood and everybody would get to contribute their special opinion on whether they do or do not like to eat cereal for breakfast and probably some people would turn up some genuinely quite interesting facts about breakfast cereal industries in different countries and their history, and generational preferences, and so on. BIG WIN! Eye-opening cross-cultural experience!
posted by Wolfdog at 1:33 PM on May 27, 2008
And you would likely have gotten some heartwarming anecdotes about fondly-remembered cereals from childhood and everybody would get to contribute their special opinion on whether they do or do not like to eat cereal for breakfast and probably some people would turn up some genuinely quite interesting facts about breakfast cereal industries in different countries and their history, and generational preferences, and so on. BIG WIN! Eye-opening cross-cultural experience!
posted by Wolfdog at 1:33 PM on May 27, 2008
I think you would have gotten and enthusiastic participation in response to, "Why do you like cereal for breakfast..."
And to me that's the crux of the difference. Asking why you like something or something else is usally a pretty thin-ice question for AskMe, preference is totally subjective. Asking why you DO or DON'T DO something is a little different. Some people have better answers than others, some can explain motivations, some can't. You've clearly decided that you think the question is chatfilter and that's fine, but I'm sort of trying to outline why I don't think it is. So it's maybe like
- Why do people like Journey? I've always thought they sucked...
- Why do so many guitarists like Journey? I've always thought they sucked but people who seem to know how to play guitar like them a lot.
So one's just a blah preference thing and one is "can people with some specific understanding of this issue help me understand it?" Maybe I'm just after-the-fact rationalizing but to me they seem really different.
posted by jessamyn (staff) at 2:37 PM on May 27, 2008
And to me that's the crux of the difference. Asking why you like something or something else is usally a pretty thin-ice question for AskMe, preference is totally subjective. Asking why you DO or DON'T DO something is a little different. Some people have better answers than others, some can explain motivations, some can't. You've clearly decided that you think the question is chatfilter and that's fine, but I'm sort of trying to outline why I don't think it is. So it's maybe like
- Why do people like Journey? I've always thought they sucked...
- Why do so many guitarists like Journey? I've always thought they sucked but people who seem to know how to play guitar like them a lot.
So one's just a blah preference thing and one is "can people with some specific understanding of this issue help me understand it?" Maybe I'm just after-the-fact rationalizing but to me they seem really different.
posted by jessamyn (staff) at 2:37 PM on May 27, 2008
Hm, if you're saying there's some substantial and important difference between your Journey questions then - sorry, we don't even speak the same language. No skin off my back whether the thing stays or goes, though, and I'd hardly begrudge anyone their warm-fuzzy fun. The more the merrier, yeah!
posted by Wolfdog at 2:56 PM on May 27, 2008
posted by Wolfdog at 2:56 PM on May 27, 2008
(That sounds maybe sarcastic, but not meant that way, really.)
posted by Wolfdog at 2:58 PM on May 27, 2008
posted by Wolfdog at 2:58 PM on May 27, 2008
Hmm. I'd consider my question more like asking, "I just got to Japan and everyone is asking me to take my shoes off in the house. Where did this practice come from?" Which is a legitimate AskMe question as far as I'm concerned.
posted by pravit at 3:07 PM on May 27, 2008
posted by pravit at 3:07 PM on May 27, 2008
It's the post salvia linked to, but the dump says 152.
one hundred, seven hundred, who's counting?
Wow, that is interesting. what I did was click on the link and read the part where it says:
"posted by sportbucket to grab bag (749 comments total) [add to favorites] [!] 174 users marked this as a favorite"
posted by salvia at 9:13 PM on May 27, 2008
one hundred, seven hundred, who's counting?
Wow, that is interesting. what I did was click on the link and read the part where it says:
"posted by sportbucket to grab bag (749 comments total) [add to favorites] [!] 174 users marked this as a favorite"
posted by salvia at 9:13 PM on May 27, 2008
The SQL interface isn't up to date. I'm working on some scripts that will synchronize the data automagically.
posted by null terminated at 11:51 PM on May 27, 2008
posted by null terminated at 11:51 PM on May 27, 2008
It's the post salvia linked to, but the dump says 152.
It doesn't for me (it says 752) and the data hasn't been changed recently.
posted by null terminated at 11:53 PM on May 27, 2008
It doesn't for me (it says 752) and the data hasn't been changed recently.
posted by null terminated at 11:53 PM on May 27, 2008
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posted by lilkeith07 at 9:54 PM on May 26, 2008