How does Fluther decide what questions to send you as a "question for you"?

Obviously Fluther assumes I want to know everything about the unrequited love of teenagers as my inbox fills up with these questions daily.

@Captain_Fantasy But why does it think that? How can it know something about me that I don’t even know about myself? What did I say that make it think that?

@Captain_Fantasy—Are you a counselor???? good!!!! There is this one guy in my class. he doesn’t talk to me and he avoids me! he passes me in the hall and ignores me! my crush has turned to love! Help!!!!!!!!!!????

It’s based on keywords in your profile. Read the guidelines.

It’s a computer, so the matching will never be perfect. Secondly, I’m pretty sure the system ties your QFY with question tags and your topics of interest and expertise. I noticed that you don’t have any entered, @lillycoyote, so maybe you confuzzled the system? Try entering some interests and fields of expertise and see if that helps.

I asked a similar question, and it received many great answers, one was by Dog:

Dog said: As @augustlan mentions answering the questions you are interested in will help Fluther learn what you are an expert in but topic (tags) are the key.
It seems like quite a few users do not understand how to best get their questions seen by experts.
When writing a question adding correct TOPICS are vital to getting your question the best possible responses. Topic keywords will bring your question to the attention of those best qualified to give you a great response.
Topics are the last thing you add to a question and must be keywords separated by a comma. They need to be related to your subject matter and as descriptive as possible.
As an example if I wanted to know why a simple distraction could immediately shut down sexual intimacy then I would not just put a tag of “sex.”
I would get much better results by adding “sex, intimacy, psychology, intercourse”
If I wanted to know why my car steering wheel was shaking when I drove over 70mph I would not just put the keyword “car”
I would expand and use “car, steering, mechanic, auto, auto repair, tires”
Resist the temptation to add topics that do not belong. Topic keyword spamming or off-topic keywords makes the system less effective and can get your question sent back to you to edit

Ain’t Automation wonderful?

@MissAnthrope I’ve confuzzled the system? Yay me! My work here is done! :)

Confuzzled? :P

@MissAnthrope BTW, confuzzled is absolutely my new favorite word. :)

@lillycoyote – Ha.. I aim to please. :)

@MissAnthrope I’m always on the lookout for words that accurately describe my normal state of being. Thanks.

Doesn’t Flutherbot send questions to you that aren’t in your field of expertise as well, based on the sent questions that you respond to?

Yes, I believe that they initially send questions to you based on your identified areas of interest and expertise. Then, as you begin to answer questions, there is an algorithm that will add more topics for you based on the questions you answer. At this point in my Fluther-life, I am getting nearly every question that’s asked because I’ve answered so many different types of questions. It really is helpful if you fill out your profile fully initially.

It is one of life’s little mysteries. Apparently fluther thinks I can totally help people with low self esteem.

You all are correct. The matching system is also due for an overhaul soon—we’ve been running some very interesting tests on new algorithms which look to be promising.

@lazydaisy And you can’t totally help people with low esteem? Or is it just that you won’t? :)

@andrew I guess that means I will have to ramp up the overhauling and testing of my new confuzzling algorithms pretty soon too then.

They ask your friends.

@lillycoyote I just won’t. I can’t let everybody in on the secret. :)