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Improving disclosure of quality for Catagorized Q&A Answers

by davido (Cardinal)
on Jan 18, 2005 at 06:43 UTC ( [id://422906]=monkdiscuss: print w/replies, xml ) Need Help??

This node is related to the Catagorized Questions and Answers section (not to Seekers of Perl Wisdom).

The problem: Q&A Answers get posted to the Categorized Questions and Answers section, and they vary in quality. Some are right on target. Others end up getting a bunch of followup responses explaining why they're far from ideal.

The problem is compounded by virtue of the fact that while looking at a particular Q&A question along with its answers, you don't see that an answer has a followup. Thus, an unsuspecting inquisitor may not realize that (s)he is placing credance in an inferior "Answer".

What some people may not realize is that the answers are sorted from highest to lowest reputation. That, at least, is one way of understanding which answers the community sees as being the best. But that's not an ideal solution.

QandAEditors do their best to sort the wheat from the chaff, but there are some answers that slip through which haven't been fully sanitized. Again, replies to lower-quality Q&A Answers are not visible from the Q&A question/answer page, so people don't realize when an unsanitized question has followups.

The solution:

Well, I'm opening the solution up for discussion. I have a few ideas which may or may not work, and would like to hear what others think too:

  • On the Q&A question/answer display page, the answers should at least show how many followups they have so that people will know if a particular answer prompted feedback of some sort.
  • The page should also state somewhere that answers with highest reputations appear first.
  • An 'opt out of vote' option may allow people to see an answers rep by giving up the right to vote on that particular Q&A Answer. I know this idea has come up before in other contexts, and I'm not convinced it's a good idea, but still worthy of mention.
  • Let's hear a few other ideas...

As a QandAEditor, and part of pmdev, I'm interested in hearing if anyone has a brilliant idea on how to improve the quality of this section.


Dave

Replies are listed 'Best First'.
Re: Improving disclosure of quality for Catagorized Q&A Answers
by PodMaster (Abbot) on Jan 18, 2005 at 09:08 UTC
    On the Q&A question/answer display page, the answers should at least show how many followups they have so that people will know if a particular answer prompted feedback of some sort.
    This has come up before ( Re^2: Format of Q&A Section (yes)) and its partly why we now see who originally wrote the question/answer.

    Right now, when you visit Newest Nodes, and there is a new categorized question or answer, the author appears as QAndAEditors, but if you actually visit the question page, the original authors name is shown.
    I think that it should always appear as QAndAEditors, because QAndAEditors are ultimately responsible (and don't worry, the original author would still receive XP).

    I am not really in favor of an "opt out" option since answers do get sorted by XP, but I do think the actual number of points should not be revealed because QAndAEditors don't receive XP :) It kinda goes towards the whole FAQ look I think we're shooting for, and in that spirit, then we might need an honorary QAndAEditors list, a list of original authors (sounds elaborate yes? :).

    What should happen after an unsanitized answer gets commented on, and the QAndAEditors polish it up, the replies(comments) to that answer are no longer relevant?

    Considering each reply for deletion (nuke or reap?) is a tedious, so there is something a pmdev might improve upon (auto consideration?).

    Another thing a pmdev might improve upon is the nuking of replies of nuked answers, that is when a categorized answer is nuked (removed from database), its replies still linger, and considering them for deletion is also tedious (they should just be nuked along with the answer).

    I just remembered some standup comedienne was doing a routine about finding a sticker on her underwear saying "Inspected by Doris", which made me think it might not be a bad idea to actually mark polished questions/answers as such, maybe a picture of a checkmark or a thumbs up or something like "Approved by 10 members of QAndAEditors".

      My muscles are sore.

    MJD says "you can't just make shit up and expect the computer to know what you mean, retardo!"
    I run a Win32 PPM repository for perl 5.6.x and 5.8.x -- I take requests (README).
    ** The third rule of perl club is a statement of fact: pod is sexy.

Re: Improving disclosure of quality for Catagorized Q&A Answers
by demerphq (Chancellor) on Jan 18, 2005 at 12:29 UTC

    I know that when I was working on the RAT I had a lot of issues arise from Q&A related nodes. IMO it might be worth doing a reassesment of how these nodes work and restrcuture them to be easier to deal with.

    ---
    demerphq

      Personally I question the value of having Q&A work differently from the rest of the site. The section is probably best served by using the same internal structure (ie regular root nodes and notes like everywhere else), with a (configurably?) forced note depth of 1 when you look at the root node. Effectively that would work like the section does now: you see a question and only its direct answers. The major difference is that there would automatically be a some notes below your chosen depth indicator where there are replies to an answer.

      Makeshifts last the longest.

        And where does the category level fit into that? (Right now, categories have questions have answers have notes).

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