I prefer AskMe

April 18, 2005 9:59 AM

Ask and ye shall receive - Another forum in which to ask questions. It appears to operate somewhat like Ask Metafilter. I think I'll stick with AskMe, but perhaps I will try some of my questions that never really got answered over at Wondir. (via Boing Boing)
posted by caddis (26 comments total)

Uh, yeah, so what? It's just a public forum whose focus is x, where x in this case is answering questions. AskMe is pretty great, but the concept itself wasn't (and still isn't) groundbreaking.
posted by Plutor at 10:22 AM on April 18, 2005

Had to smile on spotting a question and tongue in cheek reply in a section headed Education, Homework & Reference.

Q: how do you delete teacher
A: You have to go to the teachers page, and then click on the link that says "Report an error with this teacher" then it will send it to a moderator.

In the main, questions across the board seem to originate from young people, at least I sincerely hope so.
posted by Schroder at 10:23 AM on April 18, 2005

Q. Why would I want to visit www.wondir.com ?

A. ______________________underscoreunderscoreunderscore___
posted by devbrain at 10:28 AM on April 18, 2005

With questions like "Who has the biggest man sausage?" "How big are my testicles?" and "Why should i ask a question here?" I think I'll pass. BTW, the single answer provided to the third question was "Cause your a retard." Exactly.
posted by terrier319 at 10:34 AM on April 18, 2005

Talk about a cesspool...
posted by mervin_shnegwood at 10:37 AM on April 18, 2005

del.ic.ous>BoingBoing>one-link-post in the blue. zzz
posted by prostyle at 10:41 AM on April 18, 2005

The questions in the music category were along the lines of "Who sings Baby One More Time?" and "Who is Metallica?"

Why would anyone want to waste their time with that?
posted by sveskemus at 10:42 AM on April 18, 2005

Some questions from the Literature section:


18 Apr '05, 13:33 (LIT) who is the best poetry auther
18 Apr '05, 13:26 (LIT) can you help me find a book report on a book for free
18 Apr '05, 12:10 (LIT) Where does Tawnee Stone live?
18 Apr '05, 10:00 (LIT) name all the planets in order
18 Apr '05, 06:00 (LIT) What Othello character said, "To be or not to be, that is the question?
18 Apr '05, 04:45 (LIT) WHAT IS MOHAMMED ALI FAMOUS FOR ?
18 Apr '05, 04:42 (LIT) WHAT WAS MOHAMMED ALI
18 Apr '05, 04:34 (LIT) WHO WAS MOHAMMED ALI ?
18 Apr '05, 04:30 (LIT) WHO WAS MALCOLM X?
18 Apr '05, 04:18 (LIT) WHO WAS JESSE OWEN ?
18 Apr '05, 04:11 (LIT) where enric trillas works

'Nuff said.
posted by languagehat at 10:42 AM on April 18, 2005

There was a service actually called AskMe that used to do this that was fairly professional. I think they just do corporate support databases now.
posted by abcde at 10:45 AM on April 18, 2005

Yeah, this forum seems to be predominantly patronized by eleven-year-olds who apparently have never heard of Google.

I'll pass.
posted by Specklet at 10:50 AM on April 18, 2005

There was a great Q&A community called KnowPost which closed back in 2001. Sadly, it got lost in the bursting bubble...

KnowPost was close to raising a bunch of money, when, the guy handling the deal at the VC firm we were talking to died unexpectedly on the day we were to sign. We then began working on a new deal, but it too bombed out the day that the nasdaq crashed. We then began working on selling KP, but that deal fell through when all employees, save myself and Tara, resigned just before the deal was signed. So KnowPost is now sitting, and waiting. We've run out of cash, and are actually a bit in the red.
posted by VulcanMike at 11:28 AM on April 18, 2005

Yeah, this forum seems to be predominantly patronized by eleven-year-olds who apparently have never heard of Google.

Actually, at least one of them has now hard of google. This questions from the "Society Section":

WGuest6928811 on 06:21:11 2005-04-18 asked:
What is the website for google search engine?
posted by duck at 12:36 PM on April 18, 2005

ouch.
posted by raedyn at 12:53 PM on April 18, 2005

Considering the quantity of pregnancy related questions I saw on my first glance, I hope they aren't ALL 11 yr olds.
posted by raedyn at 12:55 PM on April 18, 2005

Considering the demonstrated command of standard written English, they either are all 11 or have attained only a 6th-grade reading level.
posted by scratch at 1:14 PM on April 18, 2005

*stabs out eyes*
posted by Baby_Balrog at 2:10 PM on April 18, 2005

Jesus, this is shocking. Can you imagine someone asking this on AskMe:
Why do I seem to attract crazy fat girls?

And some of them don't seem to get the concept:
- Is this weird ot what but my sis went into labor sun.
- who likes the Divine Comedy?!!!

Like others I initially thought all these posters were about 11 but now I'm not so sure:
- i have been separated from my wife for 1 year. she recently got an inharidince, am i entitled to half?
- How can I get my wife to let me orgasm on her face? I have asked her a few times, and she tells me it degrades her.......
posted by dodgygeezer at 2:35 PM on April 18, 2005

Heh heh. This stuff is comedy gold:
can people teenagers go to hell for making out in church?

What is an LDAP?

I'll stop now.
posted by dodgygeezer at 2:42 PM on April 18, 2005

Q: are u gay?
A (by WGuest412872 ): WTF Wtf WTF WTF WTF WTF WTF WTF WTF WTF!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!... More ...
posted by fire&wings at 3:08 PM on April 18, 2005

This sort of attitude towards Red Staters is exactly why the Democrats lost the last election.
posted by fleacircus at 5:15 PM on April 18, 2005

How can you make a dog eat your poop?

Alas, the 3 answers have been deleted.

(Strange how they'll make a "question no longer available", yet you can still view it on the main board. All the questions I looked up were "no longer available".)

Not happy, Jan.
posted by uncanny hengeman at 8:35 PM on April 18, 2005

This sort of attitude towards Red Staters is exactly why the Democrats lost the last election.

Thank you for that, fleacircus. I'm laughing my ass off.
posted by mr_roboto at 10:17 PM on April 18, 2005

Wondir: Like AskMe, but with more suckitude.
posted by grouse at 1:35 AM on April 19, 2005

Wow, this is classic.
posted by delmoi at 9:05 AM on April 19, 2005

I understand where you guys are coming from, but hopefully you can keep in mind that we're building a platform (simple, open, live, free Q&A for everyone), and we understand there may be a little immaturity there for a while -- but we find as people spend more time on the site that the community culture -- of being respectful and helpful -- does start to take hold.

Of course, we've gotten hammered with new traffic the last couple days, as many as ten or twenty questions and answers per minute at peak times, so it's been rough on our moderators, but it should settle down soon and look a lot cleaner. So if you like the concept, maybe you can just pop in now and then and provide a useful answer to someone, or help us moderate the site. We're in our infancy, and adding checks and balances, self-policing measures and moderators and automatic filters all the time, to make it better, but realize we have a long way to go. Feel free to let us know your thoughts on any new directions we should go.

Btw, we don't see AskMe as a competitor, but complementary, as we're doing a very different thing w/ our wide-open platform, and certainly have a lot of respect for the quality of the posts of the AskMe community here.


Allen Searls
VP Community
Wondir.com

Wondiring blog
posted by asearls at 3:20 PM on April 20, 2005

Allen,

Thanks for your response.

Would encourage you to look into KnowPost, mentioned above, as they successfully built a Q&A community similar to what you're attempting back in 2000.

I wonder if the online atmosphere and revenue streams have matured enough since then to finally support such a site. I believe there were also one or two well-funded KnowPost competitors back then, but I can't remember their names, and I don't think any of them survived.
posted by VulcanMike at 8:17 PM on May 9, 2005