I suggest:
- New questions to Q&A will post to a "New Questions"
area. The user will enter a title and/or category
for the question, but final titles and category
placements will be decided by editors.
- Anyone (maybe only non-anonymous monksr?) may post an
answer to new questions.
- Answers may receive votes from qualified users
- Users must have a minimum XP to be qualified to vote on Q&A answers.
- Possible votes are:
- "Great Answer!" - When approved by editors, the author will receive +1 XP (or more) for each of these votes. (This should be rare.)
- "Good as-is" - Normal 33% chance of +1 at vote time
- "Okay - needs work" - no XP side-effects
- "Unacceptable" - Normal 33% chance of -1 at vote time
- "Penalize" - When approved by editors, the author will receive -1 XP (or more) for each of these votes. (This should be uncommon, and only for truly worthless posts.)
- Qualified users should be encouraged to use their Q&A votes wisely. Some ideas:
- No "voting-out" bonus for Q&A votes and/or
- Small number of Q&A votes (separate from "regular" votes) and/or
- Qualified users earn XP for reading and voting on all new answers (not per vote)
- Answerers may receive XP from votes (as described above)
- After a certain time (one week?), the editors will
remove the question from the "New" area...
- moving it to an appropriate category (or removing it altogether),
- giving it a correct, useful title,
- redacting the best answers to maintain a high-quality standard,
- approving "Great" and "Yuck" votes to affect the author's XP.
- Users who wish to post answers to non-New questions
may do so, but those answers are subject to editorial
approval before appearing. Answers considered good
enough to be added "posthumously" will likely earn an
XP bonus for their authors. (This will likely be very
rare.)
I think this format will satisfy most of the other
suggestions:
It allows anyone to participate in posting answers.
It keeps the "rapid response" to questions.
It allows those who answer questions to be greatly rewarded
or greatly punished according to quality.
It allows a team of editors to maintain a high-quality
resource without requiring lots of time or overly frequent
attention.
Regards,
Russ