This is a followup to RFC: Better Best Answers
The fundamental objective of my proposal is to eliminate the Categorized Questions and Answers section — its machinery is odd, gratuitously different from the other sections; difficult to maintain, and nobody uses it, despite its promise — and replace it with something better.
So I have implemented part of the proposal, up to a basic level of functionality, as follows:
It is now possible to mark root posts in the Seekers of Perl Wisdom section (hereinafter called questions) as "good", and to mark as "good" any replies (hereinafter called answers) to questions marked as "good". (To be very clear: a question can be 'good'; and a 'good' question can have 'good' answers. An answer cannot be 'good' unless its root post is 'good'.)
Furthermore, it is possible to associate one or more tags (aka keywords) to a 'good' question.
In most views (such as the SoPW section and threaded node views), questions and answers marked as 'good' will be displayed with a nice gold star next to the title, as well as the tags.
There is a new section-like page, Illuminations, which lists all the tags currently in use; this view is analogous to the main page of the Q&A section. If you click on one of the tags, you get a page listing the individual questions having that tag.
Marking a node as 'good' (which I have internally called "blessing"), and setting the keywords of a blessed node, are features accessible to the QandAEditors via their nodelet.
Also of interest to the QandAEditors is the enhancement whereby 'SoPWify'ing a Categorized Question not only converts it to a SoPW post but marks it as 'good' and gives it a tag corresponding to the QA section it was in. An example of this effect can be seen in this post. You can see that it is 'blessed' (it has a gold star), and its tags consist of "numbers"; that's because, before conversion, it was a Categorized Question under the QandASection: numbers section.
So that's the basic workings we have so far. There's a bit more to do before we can consider this major task done:
- Implement tag search functionality. This should be a tweak to the extant title search functionality, so that it searches tags at the same time it searches titles.
- Bulk-convert the extant CatQ's. (QandAEditors can do these one by one today, using the 'SoPWify!' button.)
- When that's done, take whatever succeeding steps are necessary to "shut the section down", e.g. disabling the submission form.
- Implement the resounding effects of blessing. Possibilities are discussed in the RFC. Don't trigger these effects for nodes converted from CatQ, however.
- Update the QandAEditors documentation.
- Indicate Good Questions and Answers in RAT. Or maybe not.
- Add a nice GUI around setting and modifying blessings and tags.
- Announce the new feature in Tidings.
- Figure out how we'll increase the ranks of QandAEditors. Maybe import all current active Janitors and Pedagogues?
Now my question for you, fellow monk, is:
What do you think of this? Is it a good idea? What more could we do with this capability to make PerlMonks better?
Further thoughts...
I would also be concerned that QandAEditors (or whatever group is given this power) might be tempted, however subconsciously, to treat this award as a special upvote for themselves.
We do not want these deputies to go casting stars on every question they like.
Therefore, I think we should establish some requirements for a question to be eligible for the star. How about:
- Must have at least $NORM reputation; and
- Must be at least 3 days old.