Anonymous questions? Pros? Cons?
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M$17 Answers
On a personal level I don't care for it since I feel it allows for too much possible problems in the furture (abuse). Reporting is an option and one that needs to be taken when an abuse is found, as stated by Jeff Hoard above a number of times.
My answer really doesn't add to this direct question as it is stated however so I will try and do that now.
Pros:
1. Influx of a larger question base to allow for greater chance of earning higher, quicker.
2. Allows users to post embarrassing questions they may not otherwise ask if their using name was posted with it.
Cons:
1. Greater chance of abuse which translates to more work for moderators
2. Chance of clogging a good system where questions can be asked and answer with too many questions leaving some unnoticed.
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M$From my calculations about 20% of the Anon questions so far have been nonsensical of those 20% about 5% we have been able to decipher and turn into real understandable questions for both asker and answerer.
Mahalo right now is getting FLOODED with new questions and members, this is a good thing for everybody involved, it is directly related to the focus of Mahalo 3.0 - As you can see Anon questions will not be going away, as its branded directly into our homepage.
Filters are coming so we if you don't want to see Twitter, ConundrumLand or Anon questions you will be able to hide them, so at this point patience will be much appreciated. But on the other hand we'd like for you to understand the biggest "pro" from Anon questions, these are new people using Mahalo for the first time, they are most likely kicking the tires before they join. Anon or not we always want to put our best foot forward and show them why we are the best research community on the web.
Yes 20% of these questions are nonsensical, that is why I have been dedicating my time to checking each incoming question and deleting it if can not be answered and fixing up questions so that they can be answered. Naturally, I as a human working for the human search engine I am subject to error and miss some, if you catch, please, by all means click the "Report" button - as I check that about once every five minutes.
Best Regards,
Jeff Hoard
Community Manager
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M$
Exactly Cherise, and this is a technical hiccup from the 3.0 transition, as many remember the question boxes on 2.0 would automatically connect the question with the subject. That is going to be fixed shortly and make a lot more questions make sense.
I think you are correct @philipy - many are drive-by or as I call it "kicking the tires" - Because they are Anonymous there is no way of telling if they will be back or not, just like with White Belts the best way to deal with these questions is to answer them as you would want the question answered yourself.
Jeff... do you think the anonomymous questions are actually from people that prefer to remain anonymous, or they just "drive by" questions from people that don't have a Mahalo id at all, and just landed on the site?
My impression was that a lot of them are the latter, and the main issue seems to that as "drive by" visitors, they don't really know what Mahalo is, how to ask questions well, or what kind of questions we might be able to answer.
Must be time consuming for you to review and edit them all.
I think the nonsensical anonymous questions are coming from the question boxes on Mahalo pages. When the asker checks the anonymous box, the question just comes through as anonymous, and it doesn't tell us anymore which page it is coming from. The asker assumes we will be able to see which page it is coming from, and so does not include any reference to what is being asked about.
A way to fix this would be to make questions from page boxes come through with the name of the page instead of the "anonymous" question category. We already know it is an anonymous question. We need the context of knowing which topic page the question is about.
Cherise, that COMPLETELY makes sense. It's like all my hatred for anonymous questions has gone away. Was not even aware that this happened.
Edit: okay, my hatred has disappeared for about half of the questions, the other offenders still have no excuse ^_^
Now here's a question: what if the majority of users end up filtering out the anonymous questions and they're not answered? Wouldn't that give these possible new members a bad impression of us?
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M$
This is not a helpful answer, it does not address the Pros and Cons at all, and what do you mean by worse than Twitter?
The question was what do we think, and that's what I think.
Twitter questions are mostly bad because: 1.There's not enough room for detail. 2.People pick up twitters that are not actual questions. 3.If anyone reads the answers at all they don't provide feedback or more details when needed. The anonymous have all those faults (I don't know why so many are so short) plus it attracts people who just don't care or who want to put in sex questions that are not constructive ones. And 4:Both are flooding out legitimate questions from the main page resulting in no answers or discussions.
There are no pros. We are already using aliases. We already have a NFW category.
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M$Con: 70% of them are worthless trash.
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M$http://www.mahalo.com/answers/new-features/does-anyone-else-think-the-anonymous-feature-is-filled-with-a-lot-of-spam
O my I am on the same page with you here... They are clogging up the entire mahalo site with spam.
look at the following questions
http://www.mahalo.com/answers/anonymous/wendy-touton
http://www.mahalo.com/answers/anonymous/how-the-hell-can-i-read-pdf-files-on-my-nano-huh
http://www.mahalo.com/answers/anonymous/wheres-the-second-alien-gun-how-do-you-find-it-after-it-falls-where-when-does-it-fall
http://www.mahalo.com/answers/anonymous/about-mga-anak-ni-corazon-aquino
Totally unprofessional questions, lack of thought and meaningless. Mahalo should get rid of the anonymous feature all together.
Mike !
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M$
Thanks Romeo, when you see questions like this click the "report" button to bring them to our attention and we'll remove them from the system.
3 more questions i just found
how to make sex?
ishnail
Ipod Problems
Anyone else think this is still a great feature? Dont answer that, it's not !
Mike !
Jeff's right romeo just click on the "report" link under the question.
I have agree with you on the "lack of thought" part. Thats the main problem.
BUT ! What also worries me is the issue where another answer site could use this to crap up mahalo. And frankly that would royally suck.
common sense
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M$
every day mahalo lacks in functionality or design puts a bad taste in a new members mouth, I know people I recomend to the site and they see many functionality and design flaws and then they dont want to be here... Anon is clogging the system making things worse and creating more problems, reporting, spamming... shouldnt mahalo just have a clean Database full of great questions instead of things like wizard of oz.. I mean that doesnt make sense when someone post questions like this hence clogging the Database with junk.
Mike !
Honestly, not even I had looked at this way. Excellent insight. A new search bar has just been added to the front page of Mahalo.
I agree - the question box on the main page is OUTRAGEOUSLY large - drop the size down by at least 50% - we could fit more on the main page then too instead of wasted space.
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M$
I think Mahalo should require sign up for question asking priveleges. This way those that abuse their priveleges by spamming rediculous questions can have those rights revoked.
Even simple message boards typically require sign up before you are able to post any type of content on them. It's just a simple measure for weeding out those who don't play nice and by the rules.
I agree with the_daily_blonde above.
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M$
Have a look at Jeff Hoards answer to this question
I trust things will get better.
You can leave an optional "tip" with Mahalo's virtual currency, Mahalo Dollars. If you are asking a difficult question that might require some research, or if you'd like a wide variety of feedback, a higher tip often leads to more answers to your question.
M$
You can leave an optional "tip" with Mahalo's virtual currency, Mahalo Dollars. If you are asking a difficult question that might require some research, or if you'd like a wide variety of feedback, a higher tip often leads to more answers to your question.
M$You can leave an optional "tip" with Mahalo's virtual currency, Mahalo Dollars. If you are asking a difficult question that might require some research, or if you'd like a wide variety of feedback, a higher tip often leads to more answers to your question.
M$
You can leave an optional "tip" with Mahalo's virtual currency, Mahalo Dollars. If you are asking a difficult question that might require some research, or if you'd like a wide variety of feedback, a higher tip often leads to more answers to your question.
M$
yes there definitely needs to be a fix for this, mahalo should put these anonymous question on another page to promote more quality questions on the answers home page. I would just advice to get rid of them all together because this is taking away from functionality that is already pending that needs to be fixed.
Mike !
I don't think this is even close to a sign of Mahalo becoming a "spam forum" we have full time moderators and staff watching for this type of stuff, if you see spam that we overlooked by all means please click the "Report" button.
And we need not fear this 20% too, as our good friend Jeffhoard, with his team, is trying his best to keep Mahalo clean. Hats off to his efforts.
Finally, if there is anybody who is thinking of posting an anonymous question and reading this answer now, please try to honour the efforts these good people are putting in and try to make your question as sensible as possible. Because it is ultimately you who is benefited from Mahalo.
Lets do the best we can. Thank you
You can leave an optional "tip" with Mahalo's virtual currency, Mahalo Dollars. If you are asking a difficult question that might require some research, or if you'd like a wide variety of feedback, a higher tip often leads to more answers to your question.
M$
Hi Romeo0830! I agree with your view to have a separate section for anonymous questions, but I do not at all agree that it is making Mahalo pages look like spam forum. Here, I fully agree with Jeffhoard and would like to thank him and his team for working hard to eliminate the spams.
Anyway, thanks for sharing your opinions.
would love to agree with you here, but its entirely incontrolable as the anonymous people do not have to be members of mahalo, have no belt ranking and they lower are answer percentage when we dont get best answers for these very questions. I believe in saying this overall it is not fair to treat a anonymous question as the others and they should be put in another section of mahalo instead of on the front page of the answers home page if mahalo is going to keep them.
BTW its more like 50 50 and the page looks like massive spam now, this is very unappealing and i would have to bet that mahalo is losing there community like this it is becoming more of a circus.
Mike !
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M$
Of course the con would be as someone stated, trash questions but I think making new members comfortable would far out weigh the con.
Just my 2 cents. :)
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M$But it does have the potential to do so, I think further safeguards should be atleast be CONSIDERED for anonymous questions.
I think there should be atleast some way to identify the ENTITY asking the question. Not the person but the singular entity.
Don't get me wrong I'm all for anonymity. But we have to protect us too.
I understand our need to bring in more and more revenue however this should at the very least continue to be scrutinized.
Sorry thats just me right now.
Kind Regards,
@XDS
Just my very humble opinion.
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M$
