Maybe Rankings Should take % of Best Answers vs All Answers Provided (by user) into Consideration 4 Ranking
I mean, some people are answering a lot of questions, but providing so-so content in terms of quality answers. Why reward quantity over quality ?
lol.. I have a bias here, obviously..
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M$2 Answers
Also best answers are only a rough indicator of quality. There are often times when there are two excellent answers, and one gets best answer, the other gets nada. Other times there is only one answer that is even barely adequate, and it gets best answer.
And then there are the questions like "What is your all time favorite movie?" where it's pretty much pot luck who gets best answer, and where people might get discouraged from answering if they were going to be penalised for reducing their best answer ratio.
I would love to have a way to encourage high-quality answers, and discourage poor ones though.
Maybe if the asker could rate each answer? Something like:
Best Answer = 10 points
Excellent Answer = 8 points
Poor Answer = -2 points
If you got -2 points for a poor answer, that would mean you'd lose any benefit from even answering, so there would be no point in answering unless you had something useful to say.
I'm not sure if people would have the heart to use the "Poor Answer" option though. We're friendly and nice people here.
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M$
What would happen to a new user that has only answered 10 questions but 5 of them are best? This would place them very high in the rankings even though they haven't participated all that much.
Another problem is that best answers do not always indicate quality. Winning best answer for a simple question that you just happened to google first doesn't really mean that you added more quality than a user that didn't win best answer that many times, but took the time to write out answers that incorporated a lot of their unique experience.
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M$
Well, again Mahalo already posts the % of answers versus % of best answers for each user. By having the time to surf the site (much of the day) versus people who do not a) work/consult for Mahalo or b) have jobs that let them surf during the day, you get people who are gaming the point system.
Let's say someone for each month or 21-day period (a more sustained, longer period of time) had the best percentage ratio of Best Answers would get say, 10 or 20 points for being the leader that month.
Again, some people are gaming the point system, but their answers (imo) aren't that great. Having the most points doesn't make you the smartest person on the site, nor the best researcher. It just means you have more time to spend on the site.
Calacanis (on another thread, I think) was considering a tiered system for Best answers. And maybe they should also consider taking points away for refuted answers (or wrong answers-- because there is a lot of snarky opinion masquerading as fact.)
And I've also seen people w/ high point totals who answer questions incorrectly (fact wise).
But who has time or the negative energy to go around refuting all the wrong and misleading so-called Best answer? I mean, a lot of people who are sharp in various fields (other than tech) do not have time to surf this site daily. (They have other jobs..and work.) So, the tech people whose jobs allow them to spend more time on the site/internet will game just on points alone. It doesn't make them better able to answer the questions. It just allows them to accumulate more points.
Which is why the percentage of CORRECT or best answers really should be given more weight (or at least some more points).
Also, I think people should be penalized for poorly worded questions or questions that waste everyone's time. It's one thing if you are 5 years old asking "..what is 2+5?"
It's another thing if you are over 18 or 21 asking some basic question. Lame questions (ringer questions), also allow people to game the system. Who is to say people aren't asking their friends to post a question, so they can be the first to answer with a pre-researched answer?