What makes a questions "unsuitable" for Fluther?
Asked by
hitomi (
1142
)
March 14th, 2009
I know someone who posted a general question on Fluther about how people like to spend their snow days and she got a message saying that it wasn’t an appropriate Fluther question and would be better suited to a chat room.
After seeing several other questions on Fluther of a similar nature she was rather turned off of Fluther because she was aggravated that HER question was deemed not good enough.
Do you ever find questions that you thing shouldn’t be on here? Have you had a question taken off for any reason?
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33 Answers
I haven’t had any taken off but.. I have seen gajillions of questions too lame to be on fluther…
I had a question removed when I first started, simply because it was meant to be silly – not serious at all. I was disappointed because I thought it would be fun, but they prefer genuine questions, so I dealt with it.
I think sometimes, when certain questions get removed and others don’t, a lot of it has to with whether or not the mods are aware of them. If someone doesn’t flag a question, it would probably be easy for certain things to slip by their radar because there are so many questions.
Their rules seemed a little harsh to me, at first, but I can see why they are the way they are. It wouldn’t take long for this site to be overrun with questions posted by people who never ask serious ones, so the mods are just trying to keep the integrity of the site up.
Sometimes they take one off for…spelling.
Well, if it’s just something like “What’s your favorite color?” it’s not really thought-provoking. They like questions that are thought provoking.
I heard they don’t allow questions that are about religion because it often leads to inane bickering… :D
Removed By Fluther Moderators.
I had a question, “Do your smileys have noses?” and it was taken off because it had txt-speak in it. :-)
I had a question spoofing badly spelled and worded questions taken off last week.
[mod says:]
-We remove questions with typos and txtspeak.
-We remove questions that are vague, that don’t have a clear question in the title, or that use bad tags.
-We remove questions that are of low quality. These are the types of questions that belong in the chat room. (Example: Favorite color? What should I have for dinner? Do you like this song?)
-We remove anything that is spam or self-promotional.
-We remove anything that is asked in bad taste like blatantly rude questions or comments.
-We remove duplicate questions. (At least we try to.)
-We remove anything against the guidelines.
There is a chat room. If you want the link, PM any mod.
Keep in mind that mods aren’t always checking out Fluther all of the time. Sometimes several of us are around, sometimes none of us are. If you have questions about anything you can always PM one of us. Flagging is important. We get an e-mail each time a question or quip is flagged. Flagging is how you work with us to weed out the bad or inappropriate questions/answers.
I tried to congratulate Dave for hitting 10k, but I was a week too late.
No big deal.
I tried the porn name question and it was removed. One week later someone else asked it and it stayed. It does get frustrating when you have a question removed, then you see a completely absurd question get by.
Like Allie said, mods aren’t always around. I like fluther too much to not come back just because I had a question removed.
This is unsuitable for Fluther.
Or, if it’s been removed, the question was
“I just took a crap.I would like you to guess the color of it?”
I find a majority of the questions are more on the lines of non-nonsensical or lack depth, but are fun to respond to.
Yeah, after looking at that today, I think they should amend the guidelines to say that they may remove the nonsensical.
@mangeons: Yup. That did happen. Took longer than i thought for it to be removed, too.
[mod confirms] Allie is right. We aren’t always here, 24/7. For example, I worked 10 hours today (Saturday), and just got online. I found almost 30 email flags in my mailbox to go through. Perhaps today was a slow day for the mods, and some silliness slipped through. We aren’t perfect, but we try really hard to be fair and unbiased.
[Mod adds] Apparently, none of us were around when the ‘crap’ question was asked. Since it was flagged, we did get emails about it and when Shilolo logged on, it was removed. If it hadn’t been flagged, we might never have been aware of it.
Oh. No nothing against the mods, i think you guys do a good job. It just surprises me when something like that sneaks in.
Mods are the best! They keep fluther from becomeing like youtubes comments section. To express my love for the mods, I have written a song. Add any tune you wish.
Mods, they are people too.
They have lives, just like me and you.
Let’s give a shout!
When one of your questions gets removed,
(like asking about the color of poo)
Don’t you pout!
Cause we love mods!
Oh yeees weeeee doooooo!
I think this was an interesting question because I asked once “Snow Day – What do you do during a snow day?” and it was refused but I have seen equally “fluffy” questions make it through… so that answers the why for me!
This morning (Thursday) is a great example of mods not being available. Several questions have been asked that should have immediately been removed according to the fluther guidelines, yet some 30 minutes later they are still here.
A while back I asked “What is your favorite line from a classic tv show?” and it was removed immediately. This morning, the most popular question seems to be “What is your favorite theme song from a television show?”. I don’t see any difference between the two questions other than one is still here and the other never got a chance. This isn’t even the question that concerns me this morning, just an example.
Venus anyone?
Darn it! I knew I should have not slept last night. ~
In no way am I attacking the mods here. I am just giving an example of the mods not always being available. I apologize if it came across that way.
@jonsblond, I think the point is that it’s true, the mods aren’t always available, and we apologize for that, but we all have other commitments in our lives and unfortunately cannot dedicate every waking moment to censoring things. Things slip through our grasp when we’re not here, but that’s no reason for us to let other questions go through while we are here.
Even questions wondering about the symbolic figurehead Bin Laden.
@Allie Not true at all. You remove questions by some random, un determined process. I have seen questions which were good thought provoking questions and were having much constructive input from users yoinked from the site while people were still responding to it. If the idea is to spark lively debate, why snatch a question that is doing just that? There was no trolling going on, there wasn’t any flaming, just talk. But you guys just randomly yoinked it. yet you allow crap like this to remain.
@FreeThinker Fluther has guidelines, which we adhere to. Your derogatory comments about other peoples’ questions don’t really help your cause. The question regarding softball is a perfectly legitimate question. It seeks specific answers about how to play a game.
@shilolo if a question is crap, I will call it crap. How to play softball can be easily found here Yes fluther has guidelines, but they are not uniformly enforced. There is clear favoritism in play here.
@FreeThinker You obviously don’t really know what Fluther’s purpose is then, do you? Nikipedia received a lot of direct advice from other people (like, ask to play right field), that you wouldn’t get from a rule book or simple explanation site.
Sorry, wrong link. Here is where you learn to play softball.
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