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jasoncala... jasoncala...
 
M$1 January 08, 2009 06:31 PM

New Feature: SORT ANSWERS by most helpful, oldest and newest. New default order: most helpful (yes!).

Folks have been asking this for a while. Every question can now be sorted by time stamp and most helpful votes.

The new default order is most helpful votes--not time stamp.

(Coming soon: the ability to filter out answers voted not helpful by some measure.. i.e. -1, -2, -3, etc. unhelpful votes).

Please give your thoughts on new features to help motivate our developers. :-)
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marcel m marcel m
 
 January 08, 2009 07:09 PM
Basically this feature is more intuitive and it mirrors how we as human beings incorporate and judge information in the real world. The other feature for negative ratings will have the effect of deterring those individuals who have habit of posting non helpful answers for they will be marked,and this in my opinion will have the effect of improving Mahalo as a solid and reputable Knowledge Exchange. Pat your developers on their backs once again for me for a job well done.
Source(s):
mimi.



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toddgilmor... toddgilmor...
 
January 08, 2009 06:36 PM
I'm impressed by your ability to develop along. It is nice that you are serious about making a good effort. That is impressive.

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jasoncalac... jasoncalac...
 
January 08, 2009 11:00 PM
Thanks pal! We do take requests.... and there is a MAJOR feature coming in a week that will blow everyone away!!!

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answerman answerman
 
January 08, 2009 06:36 PM
Useful addition. Thanks!

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offthedome offthedome
 
January 08, 2009 07:12 PM
I think you should keep the default as "Oldest first". It's pretty disorienting when my post appears somewhere in the middle immediately after I post it.

That might just be me though. Are there any other opinions on that?

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offthedome offthedome
 
January 08, 2009 07:18 PM
//EDIT: Can you also add the feature to sort by number of points or answers given?

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terbie terbie
 
January 08, 2009 08:08 PM
I agree that the default should be by time stamp. It would seem awkward if someone made a reference to an earlier post in their answer and their answer to be listed higher than the post that they are referencing. I think that might lead to some confusion.

I think that it would be better for the archived questions to be sorted by most helpful automatically so you don't have to scroll through all the answers to find good ones.

I LOVE the idea of being able to sort the answers. Well done Mahalo Team!

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ssharon ssharon
 
January 08, 2009 10:54 PM
In case 2 people wasn't enough, I third the motion to have the default be by time stamp.
At the very least this should be a user controllable preference.

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jasoncalac... jasoncalac...
 
January 08, 2009 11:03 PM
The best overall user experience is to have the best answers higher, and I think voting will do that. We will have to wait and see if voting works well for pushing answers up. I'm very hopeful it will. If it doesn't we can move to time stamp easily.

In terms of continuity folks need to do two things:

1. use comments--not answers--for commenting (some folks answer to get points when they are really commenting as we all know--this should stop some of that).

2. Reference the name of the person who answered a question when they reference them in their answer. So, I might say "Darcy made a good point, as did offthedome, about Apple pie...." and that work just fine regardless of the order. As long as I don't say "Darcy made good point above/below." So, folks should do that anyway.

We tired by time stamp for 20 days, lets try voting for 20 days.... can't hurt, could help a lot.

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pescina pescina
 
January 08, 2009 07:34 PM
Will there be an option to "unpick" an answer as useful or not useful? What if I accidentally chose an answer as any of those when I meant the opposite? Perhaps there should be a time limit for unpicking, just like the time given for edition.

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bugsy bugsy
 
January 08, 2009 08:49 PM
Well, I clicked on "no" here, and then I clicked on "yes". So you can do that.

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pescina pescina
 
January 08, 2009 08:52 PM
Cool! I didn't know that nor felt like trying because I didn't want to mess around with people's ratings. Thanks for the experiment.

I wonder if this new feature will work too when voting for undecided questions, that is, if most helpful answers will be on top.

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pescina pescina
 
January 09, 2009 01:21 AM
OK, I just tried it. It is possible to choose an answer as "helpful", switch to "unhelpful" and vice versa. What I mean is that, if "helpful" is 1 and "not helpful" is -1, once you pick an answer as either of those, there is no way to go back to 0, which would be neither "helpful" nor "not helpful". It would be better if we could unpick an answer without choosing one of those.

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becky becky
 
January 08, 2009 07:54 PM
I think it's valuable to be able to sort based on the quality of the answer. However, in many cases, the helpful answer field is 0/0 for yes/no. I myself have had some opinion type answers or other answers marked as unhelpful by one person when it seemed like their judgement was incorrect. In these cases, there were some other answers that were only a couple words and didn't actually answer the question but yet those were not flagged as unhelpful.

When there are such a limited number of responses, is it then fair to put that answer at the bottom of the page? My concern is for the voting on undecided questions. Since the default sort is by most helpful, people looking to quickly inflate their points may just automatically select the answer at the top. It is also extremely easy to make sure that someone's answer goes to the bottom by a simple click to indicate it was unhelpful.

How about a system where you must submit a reason (with some words?) to mark an answer as unhelpful. That would make sure that someone was paying attention and if additional input was required would help alleviate cases of people accidentally clicking on the wrong thing. If someone was then marking answers unhelpful repeatedly in cases where it seemed unjustified, theses comments could then be reviewed to determine if someone was abusing the system.

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pescina pescina
 
January 08, 2009 07:56 PM
This might shed some light on the issue: "Also we may, at some point soon, expose who has voted a question helpful or not. This means if someone decides to run through the system and vote every single one of your questions unhelpful for some insane reason not only will we know, you and everyone else will."
http://www.mahalo.com/answers/mahalo-answers-community/should-people-who-answer-a-question-not-be-allowed-to-rate-the-helpfulness-of-other-answers

If voting "helpful" or "not helpful" is made public, then people will feel inclined to justify the vote with a comment or a refutation.

Edit: By the way, I didn't vote for your answer as unhelpful... :-)

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becky becky
 
January 09, 2009 11:36 PM
There are three answers here now with helpful (1) unhelpful (0). How does the sort then determine which of these is most helpful? It's not by belt as the person with the purple belt is on the bottom and it's also not alphabetical by username...

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easyeboy easyeboy
 
January 08, 2009 08:20 PM
Great feature, what's next? Have you seen Google SearchWiki? Maybe a feature like that would be cool where you can move the answer you like up to the top by pressing an up or down button, or actually delete the answer if you do not like to see it. Sometimes there are answers I just do not want to see, and it would be nice to delete them! If this helps your developers at all, be sure to let me know!
Source(s):
My Thoughts.


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jasoncalac... jasoncalac...
 
January 08, 2009 11:02 PM
That's a very obscure feature that only .0001% of our users would use--the top ones in fact!

99% of the folks who come to the site are going to be passing by one time to get an answer. They don't want to move stuff up and down.

Also, even for power users do you come back to the same question over and over? I don't think so. I think that's a feature looking for users.

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easyeboy easyeboy
 
January 09, 2009 01:23 AM
It is worth a try. The delete an answer feature, especially after you read the answer may be helpful. I know very few people would use it, but there are just times when an answer annoys you, and you would rather not report it. If you could delete it, that would solve the problem. Also, when you report an answer, it should automatically be deleted, because you're reporting it, and there is something you don't like about it.

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toddgilmor... toddgilmor...
 
January 09, 2009 03:27 AM
like a block or ban feature. i just block that user because he/she never seems to have a good answer and then bam, they change the world. so, you never know. as far as report, i am debating things like edit. like, should you be able to edit or remove a post at any time, because we all do make mistakes or change our minds. youversion.com allows edits and i'm glad because i thought some of my posts were only relevant to myself. how we feel changes and that sort of thing. some people would also go nuts with the report button, but i do see value in your statement. i think there are automatic things that will cover some of your thoughts in the future as these people develop the system, so maybe naturally, some of that will happen. getting specific though is like adding too many features on a steering wheel. cruise control is cool, windshield wipers, but do we really want too much customization on our steering wheel when the cadillacs of the future can put it on a new hud that i build with my own open architecture.

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