NationStates Jolt Archive

I was minding my own business (as one does) reading the Sticky threads in the general forum when I came across this in the dont-do-copycat-threads thread by fris.


Let's put the official kibosh on the resurging "Ask a ... whatever" threads again. They've been banned at least twice, and they seem to be starting once again.

"Ask a ..." threads will be locked, moved to spam, deleted, or whatever the mod feels is appropriate. Spam warnings and forumbans may be issued for egregious offenders.

That is all.


My question is this:
What in the confounded cathair is an "Ask a ... whatever" thread?

Before posting I searched the one stop rules for an answer but found no joy there

I apologise in advance if Ive posted in the wrong forum. This was the closest "fit" I could find for this question. Also thanks in advance for your answer to it.

I was minding my own business (as one does) reading the Sticky threads in the general forum when I came across this in the dont-do-copycat-threads thread by fris.


Let's put the official kibosh on the resurging "Ask a ... whatever" threads again. They've been banned at least twice, and they seem to be starting once again.

"Ask a ..." threads will be locked, moved to spam, deleted, or whatever the mod feels is appropriate. Spam warnings and forumbans may be issued for egregious offenders.

That is all.

My question is this:
What in the confounded cathair is an "Ask a ... whatever" thread?

Before posting I searched the one stop rules for an answer but found no joy there

I apologise in advance if Ive posted in the wrong forum. This was the closest "fit" I could find for this question. Also thanks in advance for your answer to it.

A little personal anecdote...

Some time ago some quite creative person started an "Ask a Jew" thread in which other posters could ask questions of a poster who happened to be Jewish. Others followed suit, making a variety of threads with a surprisingly wide range, ie. "Ask a Woman, Ask a Gun-Toting Redneck, Ask a Buddhist, Ask a Libertarian, and so on. Eventually, the first page of General was about half "Ask a..." threads, and it got spammy. So a rule was made about it.

That's my recollection of the events in question, anyway.

Thanks, that sounds reasonable enough to me.

Thanks, that sounds reasonable enough to me.

You're quite welcome.

HotRodia is correct; the quantity of these threads became too much. Not to mention that after a while we started seeing "Ask a Ham Sandwitch" and so forth, and really, how likely is it that a ham sandwitch would tell us anything interesting?

~ Tsar the Mod.