My first ever poll!

[chironian]

linnyb and I were discussing how to improve the Unofficial Christopher Meloni Forum's interaction with the Ask Chris process on Brian's site. I've made a little poll below (my first one!) and would like your thoughts. How can we make the Ask Chris process a little sweeter?

Poll Improving UCMF and Ask Chris

Comments

[slip_f18]

I wish when Brian posted "There are new questions answered," that he'd provide a direct link to the page with answers.

[chironian]

Me too! I'll make a note and suggest it to Brian.

[linnyb]

I think I mentioned this last night, one of the big things Barry and I talked about was offering help to those that can't or have a difficult time speaking/writing English. I think it would not only cut down on the work for us and Chris having read them, but it'd give them the chance to express exactly what they want to say. And I think it would be fairly easy, as there are plenty of Melonians that speak 2 or 3 languages that would be willing to help.

I don't think anyone really wants to start judging the questions on merit, there's no fun in that. But I think cutting down on the automatic translators, the net-speak, and repeat questions whose answers are never going to change, would go a long way in allowing Chris to answer more questions from more people.

If you want to set up anything about this on the board, feel free to do that and I'll pin it. Maybe something along the lines of "Help me with my Ask Chris Questions."

[chironian]

Cool - I want to see what other responses I generate here. That should lead to a post on the UCMF that is a bit more specific in its scope (rather than throwing it open to all the maturity-challenged that pop up on the forum).

I'll put the translation service idea in an e-mail to Brian, so that he can post it on the main site as well. Maybe there's a way to route those questions through the translators before they're coded in Ask Chris? Who knows - I'll leave it to Brian to figure out the best way to go about it, whether on the site or on the forum.

[chironian]

They do vet the repeats, correct?

Not really. Brian tries to grab what he can, but he tends to catch the obvious ones (are you married? do you have children?) and some of the others slip through.

Other than that, I see no reason to edit questions. For any other Q&A session I'd say fine, edit, but CM has such apparent fun with the truly idiotic ones that I'd hate to change them in any way.

Indeed. Still, it's a touchy issue (see some of the other comments here for examples), so I wanted to get a sense of how touchy it still is.

As far as an Ask Community forum goes, err... wouldn't a FAQ serve much the same purpose?What, are you new? *g* There's already a FAQ for Ask Chris, but it only covers his answers in that forum. There's a voluminous amount of material to be drawn from public appearances and interviews and articles. Plus, there's information that could be shared about Chris that wouldn't necessarily come from Chris (like what he was wearing at any particular event or where fans have crossed his path while shooting

[rileyc]

Trying this again...

Would you like the Unofficial Christopher Meloni Forum to begin an "Ask the UCMF community" section?

My uncertainty :) is based on not being sure what that would be. Like, a specific section at the UCMF board where someone asks a question about Chris and gets it answered? I could see that being a good idea.

Overall, and I really have no room to criticize since the only thing I've ever thought to ask him is if he played for the Buffs when he was CU (mostly so I can kick myself for missing a chance to see him in football pants back then), but this last round of questions annoyed me a bit because of a couple of people harping on his comments about not missing MH during her pregnancy leave. That kind of thing, with the sense of its being someone wanting to stir up trouble, makes my teeth grind a bit.

In general, though, just tidying up the questions for grammar and spelling would be good, both for us, and for Chris.

[chironian]

Yep, you've got it right on the Ask the UCMF idea. There's a lot of material that isn't in the Ask Chris FAQ that could be shared about Chris that wouldn't necessarily come from Chris (especially given his horrible memory).

About the trouble-starting questions: *sigh*. Yes, but I don't see how much can be done about that unless they were of the egregious variety that got posted in January, answered by Chris, then deleted altogether.

You already know how I feel about the grammar and spelling!

[rhymephile]

I enjoy reading his responses to the really idiotic questions, because he's such a good sport about it. Frankly, though, I don't know how he answers some of them because they can be really silly. His tongue-in-cheek approach makes the stupid questions palatable.

I think much of the problem with the question process is that people simply do not take the time to read the list of questions already asked. This last go-round was my first time to ask a question, and I read *everything* in the list, from his opinions about acting and humor and even the interviews. Of course not everyone has time to do this, but it would definitely save poor Brian the hassle of having to say "Go read such and such here for the answer" all the time. It would also make the small amount of time Chris is able to devote to answering the questions more meaningful if people could perhaps come up with pertinent things to ask of him.

[chironian]

His tongue-in-cheek approach makes the stupid questions palatable.

His responses are really the only reason to have the silly ones in the first place - it makes the whole process all the more fun, sometimes.

I think much of the problem with the question process is that people simply do not take the time to read the list of questions already asked.

Yes, that was the reason for designing the FAQ in the first place! Still, the FAQ is helpful and some people make reference to it in their questions, which shows they've at least consulted it first. Perhaps the UCMF can point out what questions are repetitive when a new batch of questions is posted on the main site? Hmmm. I'd have to ask Brian how to work out the logistics between the site and the forum in order for that to work.