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As an educator, I can tell you with absolute certainty that focusing on positive behavior is a much more effective behavior-changing strategy than correcting things that are done wrong.
I think it would be helpful if Mahalo staffers kept their eyes open for excellent answers, the type of answers Mahalo *wants* to see, (even if they aren't chosen as the best) and reward users for them. Here is how it would look as a comment to a great answer:
@JaneDoe I work for Mahalo, and I just wanted to take a moment to thank you for providing such an excellent answer! It is very concisely written and well-researched. I am sending a $2M tip your way as a thank you for being such an asset to the community. Keep up the good work!
Not only will this motivate "JaneDoe" to continue to provide excellent answers, it will also motivate every other user who sees comments like that to do the same. It's also helpful because it provides users with a model of the type of answers Mahalo likes to see here.
Just a thought!
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I want to thank you and your staff for providing this service to us. The twitter integration is very helpful and I find it friendly to use. Since you want to increase the quality of the answers you're receiving perhaps placing some helpful reminders on the reply box in each page would be prudent?
Something as simple as a reminder like: "Thanks so much for offering to answer this question! we'd like to give you some helpful reminders that can make both you and the asker more happy with your response. Everybody wins!" And then follow that up with some basic pointers on how to make a great response
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If someone copies and pastes an answer (that often doesn't even answer the question), I will tell them in the reply that I'd prefer if they didn't do this. This indicates to them that people do notice when they do this.
If an answer is sub par, I will use the "unhelpful" button to indicate this.
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As you mention, voting down less-interesting questions and less-helpful answers clears space for more interesting and useful material. Correspondingly, voting up interesting and useful questions and responses both encourages activity on them and provides examples for people to learn by.
Up to this point, it seems that many people rarely (if ever) use the helpful/unhelpful buttons. Perhaps you could encourage greater use of these buttons by awarding points (or even some fraction of a point) for promoting and demoting questions and answers? Clearly you'd need to be careful about spamming, but implementing a cap on daily points for these actions (as you've done for other activities) could largely mitigate these issues.
Thanks for the service and your continued efforts to improve it!
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Part of not giving a great answer is that people are pressed for time sometimes, but more so people do not understand how to use the system, or do not think creatively. Most people will not think creatively for an answer, because they thought all it took was something simple to answer the question.
How can Mahalo Answers teach people?
It's all about tips, and not the Mahalo Dollar kind, the pointer kind of tips.
Add some cool tips to giving a better answer would be listed on the side of the answer (with one of those characters holding them up or pointing them out), as they are answering. It kind of reminds me of that paperclip character "Clippy" they used to have in word documents. It could say something like:
Did you remember to cite your sources?
Adding points, numbering and bullet pointing facts can be helpful.
Add links to show examples.
How to add diagrams and such. Many people do not know know how to do things like adding pictures, videos, etc. and do not even think about it.
As someone starts posting or entering a list, it could say something like, "It looks like you are adding a list, would you like to add some numbers or bullet points?"
Check out the Clippy images. Not saying this is what you should do, it's just a suggestion or thought.
Pointing this stuff out, can be helpful.
A little tip can go a long ways ;-)
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Change the reward structure to encourage sourced, well thought out material. This could be done by adding points for various components of a good answer, or by a button that would nominate the answer for a bonus point/tip/something over and above the tip offered for the question. If enough people click on the button, the answer gets the additional reward via a community judging system. It's a lab-rat scenario, admittedly, but lab rats do perform as trained.
Designate a group within the community to act as judges. Authorize them to give some sort of reward, maybe a total of 50 points per week or something, to people who answer well. The stimulus of "congratulations! You've earned 5 extra points because you included source material and answered the question fully" might encourage better answers.
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After I give my email and personal info...
1. I check terms and services (which most people never read).
2. That directs me to a cute page with Mahalo kids which in effect says, "I will confine my questions and answers to my own wording WITH sources I have found to back my stance." I check yes.
3. That directs me to the Mahalo kids looking less playful and more inquisitive with a statement, that comes down to "I will confine cutting and pasting other people's work to a minimum like direct quotes, complex wording and the like". One of the kids is looking in a treasure box named "Example" and if clicked on, a few prime examples of proper copy paste are pop out.
4. I check that off and an directly sent to the FAQs, which describes what you already have PLUS the ideas we are talking about here.
I'm a relative newbie, so I know I messed up my first few efforts, but a good sense of humor and a great FAQ would've helped me through that.
I've become a little obsessed with the site, but when I first signed up, I thought it was for something completely different because I had "googled" a teacher's name. I thought it was a debate site I'm ashamed to admit.
It is a sad commentary that we have to tell anyone to respond as you mentioned in your question. I have asked few questions, but responded to everyone and voted to encourage more dialogue!!!
It seems that if points are given for refuting facts, voting could be included as well.
I wouldn't make it as many or you would have people voting on things they don't know are aren't interested in to build points.
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Looking through the first few pages of questions here, it seems apparent that the problem isn't in the quality of the answers, but of the questions.
Poorly outlined or explained questions are difficult to answer. It is the questions themselves that breed poor answers. It's easy to see - just look at the questions right now that have good answers. They are all well worded, properly explained questions.
I think that Demanda's solution to tip answers is for the most part already occurring. While I certainly think that Mahalo funded tips would encourage good answers, I've personally received a good number of tips from users for well composed answers. The tips that I receive from individual users mean more to me than any other measure on the site.
If the Mahalo staff is to become involved, I suggest that they publicly tip for outstanding questions. What if tips are given for outstanding questions AND THEN the Mahalo staff tipper comments on why the question was deserving?
Not only would this provide positive reinforcement through funded tips, but it would provide a guideline that others could learn from.
I could see this not only being a function of Mahalo staff but of Black belts and above as well. In this manner it really would be the community teaching the community and not only Mahalo moderators.
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Many questions have more than one aspect to it, or are multi-part questions, such as this question. (Yours is a 3-parter!) As "answerers", we should try to take care to address all aspects of a question in order to provide a more useful answer.
1. How can we train people to give better answers?
A: Rewarding those that fully answer your question is a good way to encourage that person and others to answer a question fully in the future. When you post a question, read all of the answers, and use the following techniques to help people learn what is desired in a good Mahalo answer.
2. What other ways can you think of to gently steer folks toward giving better answers?
A: In your Answer, add that you agree with @johndoe, but that you would like to elaborate on that answer, adding some key points, sources, and additional information. That way, you are not offending johndoe, but allowing that the more information you are able to provide, or research you can share - the better your answer will be.
3. What's your favorite way of giving helpful comments?
A: I like to comment to the answerer that there was additional information was desired, and ask their opinion again. For example:
@thinsurface - Yes, but what do you think about this aspect of the subject?
Source(s):
My own experiences on:
http://www.Mahalo.com/answers/
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Could it be programmed that when you try to click not helpful (or helpful for that matter) you automatically get a menu box with the basic reasons to check. Like "too short" "no source" "facts wrong" "misunderstood question" "ugly icon" ?
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Do you mean longer? Does that make sense? Some questions require shorter answers like twitter questions.
Do you mean more references? Sometimes there are none. I just know because I've done what ever the question is asking about.
Maybe the best thing is to have a Hall of Fame and a Hall of Shame. Include both good questions and good answers in the Hall of Fame. In the Hall of Shame include both bad questions and bad answers. You might want to remove the names from the Hall of Shame. No reason to hurt peoples feelings but it is nice to have some reference.
Once again I have no pictures or links or anything to add.
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2. Get a clearer idea of what a quality standard is on complex answers, such as health care and technical questions (see my response to previous question jason asked on this area)
3. Offer some kind of training/tutorial/certification through Mahalo on giving answers, evaluating sources (a biggie). Provide some kind of incentive to do so. Kind of like a mini brown-belt test (or what I imagine the brown belt test to be).
4. Limit who can answer certain categories for complex/sensitive subject areas, e.g. heatlh care techinical.
Or maybe offer tests/training for certain subject areas.
5. Encourage and reward research more. Increase the reward for adding sources and refuting. Emphasise, by site design or some other way, the categories of adding sources and refuting. Give extra/double points for answers that give sources, or use certain "trusted" sources.
6. I love, love, love the clippy idea. Where it asks you "would you like to add a source?" and gives some suggested sites to start your research. I think that's got a lot of promise, and is a good balance between telling people where to go and having them find it out for themselves.
Just some thoughts. Showing by example is great, but people need to be told sometimes, too.
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In my experience, educating users only works when they already have investment in the product or if it is clear that by taking the time to invest in the product there will obvious rewards. Short of that, education doesn't work very well. It's better to design/architect around how "normal" people naturally behave (or have already been taught).
A useful insight from robbrown who said that the problem isn’t the quality of the answers, but the quality of the questions leads one to consider how and why questions are asked. I’m a big fan of the idea of garbage-in-garbage-out and a poorly framed question is likely to yield answers that are off-topic, inappropriate, or otherwise unhelpful.
Assumption: There are probably a few standard types of questions that get asked. Those which seek short objective answers, those which seek to be pointed in a direction for further research, and those which are of a philosophical or investigatory nature. I imagine simple questions with discrete, objective answers have a higher ratio of helpful-to-unhelpful ratings.
Requesting that Askers identify which type of answer they’re seeking can provide Mahalo with useful hints to help them frame their questions better. For the more complicated, open-ended questions, an interface that helps Askers frame their questions addresses the head of the problem, providing the necessary components to provide a quality answer. Perhaps it considers the more complex questions as a set of information rather than a sentence with a question mark at the end and includes:
- INPUT: a brief background of why the Asker is asking this question
- INPUT: what the Asker already knows about the topic
- INPUT: specific issues the Asker is looking to resolve
And of course, there are the answers themselves. Similar guides of pre-set input fields based on the type of answers requested will encourage Answerers to provide the right types of information. Similarly, a progress meter (question-completeness, like profile-completeness at LinkedIn) will help Answerers know when they’ve done a good job.
Lastly, for the Answerers who copy-and-paste answers from other places without rewording them to think about the Asker’s needs, these answers can be flagged before being published by using the Google API to find existing exact phrase matches to determine whether the content is original or not. You could even let the Answerer know that this information is already available on the internet and ask him to take action based on Mahalo’s perceived value for this type of answer.
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Answered Question
M$3
March 13, 2009 06:54 PM
MAHALO TEACHERS: How can we train people to give better answers?
@Mike and I were having a discussion about how to help people give better answers on MA last night. Here are some of the things you can do to help people write better answers:
1. Vote down unhelpful questions. This moves them out of harms way (and moves up better answers). It also gives folks an indication that their answers were not helpful.
2. Post a comment explaining how the Answer could be better.
In relation to #2 here are the things I think you can say to people in a comment to help them.
a) "@janedoe Thanks so much for participating in Mahalo Answers! This answer would be much more helpful if you added the source of the information you've pasted!"
b) "@janedoe Thanks so much for participating in Mahalo Answers! This answer would be much more helpful if you organized the information into sections and wrote some original content summarizing and explaining your research!"
c) "@johndoe You're off to a great start giving helpful Answers on Mahalo! I'd suggest that you expand your answers to include more facts, citations and even consider adding videos to backup your arguments/points. Thanks so much for helping out!!! all the best, @JaneDoe"
What other ways can you think of to gently steer folks toward giving better answers?
What's your favorite way of giving helpful comments? (post the script below!)
1. Vote down unhelpful questions. This moves them out of harms way (and moves up better answers). It also gives folks an indication that their answers were not helpful.
2. Post a comment explaining how the Answer could be better.
In relation to #2 here are the things I think you can say to people in a comment to help them.
a) "@janedoe Thanks so much for participating in Mahalo Answers! This answer would be much more helpful if you added the source of the information you've pasted!"
b) "@janedoe Thanks so much for participating in Mahalo Answers! This answer would be much more helpful if you organized the information into sections and wrote some original content summarizing and explaining your research!"
c) "@johndoe You're off to a great start giving helpful Answers on Mahalo! I'd suggest that you expand your answers to include more facts, citations and even consider adding videos to backup your arguments/points. Thanks so much for helping out!!! all the best, @JaneDoe"
What other ways can you think of to gently steer folks toward giving better answers?
What's your favorite way of giving helpful comments? (post the script below!)
Interesting Question?
Yes (5)
No (2)
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Best Answer Chosen by Asker
| March 12, 2009 08:55 PM |
I think it would be helpful if Mahalo staffers kept their eyes open for excellent answers, the type of answers Mahalo *wants* to see, (even if they aren't chosen as the best) and reward users for them. Here is how it would look as a comment to a great answer:
@JaneDoe I work for Mahalo, and I just wanted to take a moment to thank you for providing such an excellent answer! It is very concisely written and well-researched. I am sending a $2M tip your way as a thank you for being such an asset to the community. Keep up the good work!
Not only will this motivate "JaneDoe" to continue to provide excellent answers, it will also motivate every other user who sees comments like that to do the same. It's also helpful because it provides users with a model of the type of answers Mahalo likes to see here.
Just a thought!
| Asker's Rating: |
• you rock!
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Other Answers (15)
March 12, 2009 07:01 PM
Jason: I want to thank you and your staff for providing this service to us. The twitter integration is very helpful and I find it friendly to use. Since you want to increase the quality of the answers you're receiving perhaps placing some helpful reminders on the reply box in each page would be prudent?
Something as simple as a reminder like: "Thanks so much for offering to answer this question! we'd like to give you some helpful reminders that can make both you and the asker more happy with your response. Everybody wins!" And then follow that up with some basic pointers on how to make a great response
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March 12, 2009 08:42 PM
Wonderful idea! I was going to suggest adding some tabs at the top of the pages and gathering together some of these tips and others in a FAQ format, but I like this idea better. You could change the script on your automatic comment every day like they do in wordprocessing - like Clippy might say as your daily tip and have a huge databank of simple comments to add and ways to introduce them. I have not ever gotten an email as prefer not to go that route, but you could add a tip a day that changes or is random in a signature file at the bottom also. But I think these folks have hit it, simple reminders done in a positive way could be extra helpful for everyone. I hope to see many more ideas posted by adamposey in the future - way to go!!!!!
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March 13, 2009 02:59 AM
That is the same basic point as my response but I didn't think about it at that point in the process. Yours would be less likely forgotten if someone only signs on once a week or less.
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March 12, 2009 07:18 PM
Instead of telling them their answer isn't good, I always use the "reply" feature to ask a follow up question, hoping they will clarify their answers (and giving them a chance to redeem themselves!) If someone copies and pastes an answer (that often doesn't even answer the question), I will tell them in the reply that I'd prefer if they didn't do this. This indicates to them that people do notice when they do this.
If an answer is sub par, I will use the "unhelpful" button to indicate this.
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March 12, 2009 08:59 PM
@ jasoncalacanis
You're so fast to hit the unhelpful. Instead of hitting unhelpful why not vote others helpful and let the unhelpful comments fall down with a 0 rating. OR, better yet get rid of the unhelpful option and allow people to only use positive feedback and vote comments helpful. This would be the same as letting them fall to 0 if they were bad and you don't have the negative emotional impact.
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You're so fast to hit the unhelpful. Instead of hitting unhelpful why not vote others helpful and let the unhelpful comments fall down with a 0 rating. OR, better yet get rid of the unhelpful option and allow people to only use positive feedback and vote comments helpful. This would be the same as letting them fall to 0 if they were bad and you don't have the negative emotional impact.
March 13, 2009 02:13 AM
I've also added photos for them as incentive to get them to think about that next time.
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March 12, 2009 07:20 PM
Encouraging greater use of the helpful/unhelpful buttons has the potential to be tremendously beneficial. As you mention, voting down less-interesting questions and less-helpful answers clears space for more interesting and useful material. Correspondingly, voting up interesting and useful questions and responses both encourages activity on them and provides examples for people to learn by.
Up to this point, it seems that many people rarely (if ever) use the helpful/unhelpful buttons. Perhaps you could encourage greater use of these buttons by awarding points (or even some fraction of a point) for promoting and demoting questions and answers? Clearly you'd need to be careful about spamming, but implementing a cap on daily points for these actions (as you've done for other activities) could largely mitigate these issues.
Thanks for the service and your continued efforts to improve it!
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March 13, 2009 12:52 AM
I've seen our core users (think purple and brown belts) voting down one word and/or non-helpful answers. I think we all need to do this a little more.
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March 13, 2009 02:45 AM
Only a point to ponder.....wouldn't voting down pretty good cause (one word answers, repeat questions) actually frustrated potentially great questioners/respondents?
I'll be honest, I love some lines of questions and others bore me or seem just plain silly,but they get many responses!
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I'll be honest, I love some lines of questions and others bore me or seem just plain silly,but they get many responses!
March 12, 2009 07:27 PM
I agree with Darcy about commenting required for rating unhelpful. This prevents people from just rating unhelpful, or an answerer accidentally clicking on unhelpful. It can also break the anonymity of the unhelpful, but then again you can allow the commenter to remain anonymous. Possibly they would have to be a certain belt level or be a premium member for anonymous comments, just like the anonymous asker was mentioned earlier. Part of not giving a great answer is that people are pressed for time sometimes, but more so people do not understand how to use the system, or do not think creatively. Most people will not think creatively for an answer, because they thought all it took was something simple to answer the question.
How can Mahalo Answers teach people?
It's all about tips, and not the Mahalo Dollar kind, the pointer kind of tips.
Add some cool tips to giving a better answer would be listed on the side of the answer (with one of those characters holding them up or pointing them out), as they are answering. It kind of reminds me of that paperclip character "Clippy" they used to have in word documents. It could say something like:
Did you remember to cite your sources?
Adding points, numbering and bullet pointing facts can be helpful.
Add links to show examples.
How to add diagrams and such. Many people do not know know how to do things like adding pictures, videos, etc. and do not even think about it.
As someone starts posting or entering a list, it could say something like, "It looks like you are adding a list, would you like to add some numbers or bullet points?"
Check out the Clippy images. Not saying this is what you should do, it's just a suggestion or thought.
Pointing this stuff out, can be helpful.
A little tip can go a long ways ;-)
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March 12, 2009 08:24 PM
Ok :) I agree with that, but it's better than posting a picture of Bonzi Buddy ;-) I'll do it though...Just don't rate me unhelpful!
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/c/c3/Bonzi_buddy.jpg
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March 12, 2009 08:24 PM
See, the mere presence of Clippy made me miss the great humor that's actually in the image!
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March 13, 2009 04:36 AM
Very true, I almost missed out on the fact that you had a "funny" there also, easyeboy! Clippy gave me the shivers and it wasn't until I read modctek's comment that I went back to look for the joke! ;)
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March 12, 2009 07:45 PM
A couple of brainstorm-like ideas: Change the reward structure to encourage sourced, well thought out material. This could be done by adding points for various components of a good answer, or by a button that would nominate the answer for a bonus point/tip/something over and above the tip offered for the question. If enough people click on the button, the answer gets the additional reward via a community judging system. It's a lab-rat scenario, admittedly, but lab rats do perform as trained.
Designate a group within the community to act as judges. Authorize them to give some sort of reward, maybe a total of 50 points per week or something, to people who answer well. The stimulus of "congratulations! You've earned 5 extra points because you included source material and answered the question fully" might encourage better answers.
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March 13, 2009 12:54 AM
Well, we already have this with the voting system and by way of the Helpful Answers button. If people select "helpful" five times it rockets that answer to the top and that results in the person asking the question to being MUCH more likely to select it as best answer. Little secret there. :-)
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March 13, 2009 07:23 PM
It is ludicrous to give users more than one vote per comment.
This also goes to the idea that questioners should be able to judge the best answer by following links not a popularity contest.
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This also goes to the idea that questioners should be able to judge the best answer by following links not a popularity contest.
March 13, 2009 02:08 AM
This is a bit off subject but I think it would be most helpful when a member logs in that it should go right to their profile page so they can see any new comments on any questions they may have answered plus their stats before they go to the questions.
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March 13, 2009 02:09 AM
I think this could be addressed at registration. Bring your theme into it to make a point and make the Mahalo trademark kids part of it. If done with serious pointers and the levity of the kids, I think it would make Mahalo stand out in people's minds more. After I give my email and personal info...
1. I check terms and services (which most people never read).
2. That directs me to a cute page with Mahalo kids which in effect says, "I will confine my questions and answers to my own wording WITH sources I have found to back my stance." I check yes.
3. That directs me to the Mahalo kids looking less playful and more inquisitive with a statement, that comes down to "I will confine cutting and pasting other people's work to a minimum like direct quotes, complex wording and the like". One of the kids is looking in a treasure box named "Example" and if clicked on, a few prime examples of proper copy paste are pop out.
4. I check that off and an directly sent to the FAQs, which describes what you already have PLUS the ideas we are talking about here.
I'm a relative newbie, so I know I messed up my first few efforts, but a good sense of humor and a great FAQ would've helped me through that.
I've become a little obsessed with the site, but when I first signed up, I thought it was for something completely different because I had "googled" a teacher's name. I thought it was a debate site I'm ashamed to admit.
It is a sad commentary that we have to tell anyone to respond as you mentioned in your question. I have asked few questions, but responded to everyone and voted to encourage more dialogue!!!
It seems that if points are given for refuting facts, voting could be included as well.
I wouldn't make it as many or you would have people voting on things they don't know are aren't interested in to build points.
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March 13, 2009 02:18 AM
The problem isn't the answers. I think that the problem is the quality of the questions. Looking through the first few pages of questions here, it seems apparent that the problem isn't in the quality of the answers, but of the questions.
Poorly outlined or explained questions are difficult to answer. It is the questions themselves that breed poor answers. It's easy to see - just look at the questions right now that have good answers. They are all well worded, properly explained questions.
I think that Demanda's solution to tip answers is for the most part already occurring. While I certainly think that Mahalo funded tips would encourage good answers, I've personally received a good number of tips from users for well composed answers. The tips that I receive from individual users mean more to me than any other measure on the site.
If the Mahalo staff is to become involved, I suggest that they publicly tip for outstanding questions. What if tips are given for outstanding questions AND THEN the Mahalo staff tipper comments on why the question was deserving?
Not only would this provide positive reinforcement through funded tips, but it would provide a guideline that others could learn from.
I could see this not only being a function of Mahalo staff but of Black belts and above as well. In this manner it really would be the community teaching the community and not only Mahalo moderators.
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March 13, 2009 04:20 AM
Rob,
My suggestion wasn't as much about tipping answers, but more so about staff members pointing out exemplary answers as an alternative to solely replying to unhelpful answers about what they did wrong.
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My suggestion wasn't as much about tipping answers, but more so about staff members pointing out exemplary answers as an alternative to solely replying to unhelpful answers about what they did wrong.
March 13, 2009 09:00 AM
I think its a great idea, Demanda.
If your solution was implemented, this would be a better place.
But I think that the quality of the questions are the problem. Without a good question, good answers can not exist.
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If your solution was implemented, this would be a better place.
But I think that the quality of the questions are the problem. Without a good question, good answers can not exist.
March 13, 2009 07:32 PM
Robbrown, the problem is who decides if the person asking the question is truly looking for an answer or has decided to blow our minds and see if we will spend hours looking up nonsense.
Occassionally you see questions posted that people can't explain well.....I stand in that arena...I didn't actually thought the term IE locks up would suffice for anyone that ever had a lock up.
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Occassionally you see questions posted that people can't explain well.....I stand in that arena...I didn't actually thought the term IE locks up would suffice for anyone that ever had a lock up.
March 13, 2009 05:17 AM
The ability to be observant is often a trait one is born with, and one that is not easily learned by those who lack it. Many questions have more than one aspect to it, or are multi-part questions, such as this question. (Yours is a 3-parter!) As "answerers", we should try to take care to address all aspects of a question in order to provide a more useful answer.
1. How can we train people to give better answers?
A: Rewarding those that fully answer your question is a good way to encourage that person and others to answer a question fully in the future. When you post a question, read all of the answers, and use the following techniques to help people learn what is desired in a good Mahalo answer.
2. What other ways can you think of to gently steer folks toward giving better answers?
A: In your Answer, add that you agree with @johndoe, but that you would like to elaborate on that answer, adding some key points, sources, and additional information. That way, you are not offending johndoe, but allowing that the more information you are able to provide, or research you can share - the better your answer will be.
3. What's your favorite way of giving helpful comments?
A: I like to comment to the answerer that there was additional information was desired, and ask their opinion again. For example:
@thinsurface - Yes, but what do you think about this aspect of the subject?
Source(s):
My own experiences on:
http://www.Mahalo.com/answers/
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March 13, 2009 11:57 AM
I don't think you can put much emphasis on "not helpful" unless a way is found to stop people misusing it. For instance, I just got a "not helpful" on my answer to who was the greatest guitarist. That's obviously an opinion question, and I gave reasons and clips, so the only possible reason for the "not helpful" was that the person had different taste in music. I don't care about getting a certain percentage of unhelpfuls (about 8% actually) from people who disagree with me on whatever the subject is; but, it's not a good enough system to deserve more emphasis. Could it be programmed that when you try to click not helpful (or helpful for that matter) you automatically get a menu box with the basic reasons to check. Like "too short" "no source" "facts wrong" "misunderstood question" "ugly icon" ?
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March 13, 2009 07:20 PM
I looked at your answer and agree. If someone asks an opinion question, we are have freedom to state our point. Frankly, I thought all the artists mentioned had merit depending on your musical palate.
Your links worked and videos were enjoyable.
You may not care about getting unhelpful ratings, but it would be nice to know if it were an error on the end-user's part or they had a reason.
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Your links worked and videos were enjoyable.
You may not care about getting unhelpful ratings, but it would be nice to know if it were an error on the end-user's part or they had a reason.
March 13, 2009 03:16 PM
I'm just not sure what you mean by "better answers". Maybe that is the problem. Do you mean longer? Does that make sense? Some questions require shorter answers like twitter questions.
Do you mean more references? Sometimes there are none. I just know because I've done what ever the question is asking about.
Maybe the best thing is to have a Hall of Fame and a Hall of Shame. Include both good questions and good answers in the Hall of Fame. In the Hall of Shame include both bad questions and bad answers. You might want to remove the names from the Hall of Shame. No reason to hurt peoples feelings but it is nice to have some reference.
Once again I have no pictures or links or anything to add.
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March 13, 2009 07:34 PM
Opinion questions and some advice type questions DON'T have pics or links.
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March 13, 2009 04:35 PM
1. Encouraging expert answerers to comment constructively on "bad answers." Be tactful, yet realistic. 2. Get a clearer idea of what a quality standard is on complex answers, such as health care and technical questions (see my response to previous question jason asked on this area)
3. Offer some kind of training/tutorial/certification through Mahalo on giving answers, evaluating sources (a biggie). Provide some kind of incentive to do so. Kind of like a mini brown-belt test (or what I imagine the brown belt test to be).
4. Limit who can answer certain categories for complex/sensitive subject areas, e.g. heatlh care techinical.
Or maybe offer tests/training for certain subject areas.
5. Encourage and reward research more. Increase the reward for adding sources and refuting. Emphasise, by site design or some other way, the categories of adding sources and refuting. Give extra/double points for answers that give sources, or use certain "trusted" sources.
6. I love, love, love the clippy idea. Where it asks you "would you like to add a source?" and gives some suggested sites to start your research. I think that's got a lot of promise, and is a good balance between telling people where to go and having them find it out for themselves.
Just some thoughts. Showing by example is great, but people need to be told sometimes, too.
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March 13, 2009 07:52 PM
In general agreement but points to ponder.....
On point 4, how do we vet who can answer?
I can give you great pharmacy, military and first aid responses, as well as medical conditons in my family which I have exhaustively researched, but I can't answer much about nuclear medicine, physical therapy or insurance issues.
Also, we all have found "trusted" sites with glaring errors. Not to mention the fact, I may trust the New York Times, jessyca goes with CNN.com and you are Fox.news gal. Each has posted things they get from outside sources which none of us have heard of.
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On point 4, how do we vet who can answer?
I can give you great pharmacy, military and first aid responses, as well as medical conditons in my family which I have exhaustively researched, but I can't answer much about nuclear medicine, physical therapy or insurance issues.
Also, we all have found "trusted" sites with glaring errors. Not to mention the fact, I may trust the New York Times, jessyca goes with CNN.com and you are Fox.news gal. Each has posted things they get from outside sources which none of us have heard of.
March 13, 2009 05:08 PM
I'm not a Mahalo Teacher, but I'd like to answer the question anyway. In my experience, educating users only works when they already have investment in the product or if it is clear that by taking the time to invest in the product there will obvious rewards. Short of that, education doesn't work very well. It's better to design/architect around how "normal" people naturally behave (or have already been taught).
A useful insight from robbrown who said that the problem isn’t the quality of the answers, but the quality of the questions leads one to consider how and why questions are asked. I’m a big fan of the idea of garbage-in-garbage-out and a poorly framed question is likely to yield answers that are off-topic, inappropriate, or otherwise unhelpful.
Assumption: There are probably a few standard types of questions that get asked. Those which seek short objective answers, those which seek to be pointed in a direction for further research, and those which are of a philosophical or investigatory nature. I imagine simple questions with discrete, objective answers have a higher ratio of helpful-to-unhelpful ratings.
Requesting that Askers identify which type of answer they’re seeking can provide Mahalo with useful hints to help them frame their questions better. For the more complicated, open-ended questions, an interface that helps Askers frame their questions addresses the head of the problem, providing the necessary components to provide a quality answer. Perhaps it considers the more complex questions as a set of information rather than a sentence with a question mark at the end and includes:
- INPUT: a brief background of why the Asker is asking this question
- INPUT: what the Asker already knows about the topic
- INPUT: specific issues the Asker is looking to resolve
And of course, there are the answers themselves. Similar guides of pre-set input fields based on the type of answers requested will encourage Answerers to provide the right types of information. Similarly, a progress meter (question-completeness, like profile-completeness at LinkedIn) will help Answerers know when they’ve done a good job.
Lastly, for the Answerers who copy-and-paste answers from other places without rewording them to think about the Asker’s needs, these answers can be flagged before being published by using the Google API to find existing exact phrase matches to determine whether the content is original or not. You could even let the Answerer know that this information is already available on the internet and ask him to take action based on Mahalo’s perceived value for this type of answer.
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March 15, 2009 01:08 PM
I think that teachers are likely to provide links. You have offered a space to paste the link. below the answer block. The other thing would to be have a source of study guides for a particular subject that also is a part of Mahalo. Teachers should know that copying and pasting without providing a source is plagiarism and completely unethical. The other thing that would be helpful for teachers is for students to provide a complete question that includes the name of the book they are reading, characters' names, etc... that way, we can really answer the question in a helpful manner for the student rather than guess, and maybe not be answering the question about the particular book at all.
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I don't generally feel comfortable, as an individual user, critiquing the answers of others. I can see people getting defensive over this, no matter how nicely it is worded.
I think to encourage lower belts, it would be nice if the examples came from within these ranks, if possible.
I've seen some very high quality answers from newer members recently and I think the community could benefit from more of these people contributing regularly and of course more members coming on board.