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What a great idea!
Everyone can be happy.
People who want to focus on optimizing their time by being the most efficient they can be, can now scroll over unhelpful answers and have more time to give quality answers.
Those people with a lot of free time can meander and read everything.
win/win
Excellent!
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albanian
However, Mahalo is growing steadily, and soon there will be a lot more users, more answers, and more unhelpful ones, too. With this in mind, yes, it's a good feature, good thinking. Just make sure that any such answer still stays "in the game", i.e. it should not be disqualified, not even from being voted as best answer.
By the same token, more users means it will be easier to "earn" three unhelpful votes. You may need to adjust the rules to account for this, at some point later on.
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This one is not really worth space:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6B7vzRUhMUQ
But thanks to my 4-year-old, I can sing this one in my sleep:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qC_hF31z130
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If other users are like me, when they see a "collapsed answer," they are going to click it anyway to see what was so horrible about it.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OIqMflhH1LY
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One question I have is: will the answers be collapsed after a total of 3 unhelpful votes or with an aggregate of 3 unhelpful votes? I.e. could an answer have 11 helpful votes but 6 unhelpful votes and end up buried?
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I think, if you are going to collapse answers that maybe the number should be higher (5?) and that it should be cumulative, so the only number that matters is the difference and not just the plain number of unhelpful votes.
Anyway here's my vote on what should be collapsed from youtube and from the collective internet consciousness:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6_9MCIzKyUk
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Of course, I love the idea. I think it is great! Still, I believe there are some limitations to the idea.
I think there is a similar feature in Yahoo Answers. I definitely agree that when there are more users, that Mahalo Answers will have to collapse answers which are basic/inappropriate/silly/etc. However, wouldn't Mahalo block these users and keep track of their IP?
Additionally, in Yahoo, the "collapsing" tool is usually used when answers have content that is not suitable or is just irrelevant to the question. Doesn't Mahalo delete answers that do this.
I think that if this tool is to be introduced another tool needs to be in place. Sometimes a member may disagree with an answer and mark it unhelpful. Of course, the user may not think its unhelpful but just disagree with it.
The morality is we cannot mark an answer wrong because we can disagree. If you disagree, say why in a comment. However, marking an answer unhelpful means that it has inappropriate or irrelevant content. This would make it fair.
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PS: I find it annoying on YouTube too. Just saying.
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Answered Question
M$1
April 24, 2009 10:07 PM
NEW FEATURE: Unhelpful answers collapse after 3 votes
Once an answer receives 3 unhelpful votes it collapses and will require a click to be viewed. Check out the screenshot. How helpful do you think this will be?
In honor of this new feature, please post a youtube video that you would vote to have collapsed/removed forever.
In honor of this new feature, please post a youtube video that you would vote to have collapsed/removed forever.
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Interesting: interzone, orange, jasoncalacanis, dumblonde, arjo
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Best Answer Decided by Votes
| April 27, 2009 04:07 PM |
Everyone can be happy.
People who want to focus on optimizing their time by being the most efficient they can be, can now scroll over unhelpful answers and have more time to give quality answers.
Those people with a lot of free time can meander and read everything.
win/win
Excellent!
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Other Answers (13)
albanian
April 25, 2009 03:06 PM
Note that Jason has marked your answer helpful even though you did not answer the question by posting a video you would like squashed. You just offered an opinion, which Jason agreed with. In contrast, I offered the opposite opinion and he marked it unhelpful. I think Jason has been caught red handed misusing the helpful/unhelpful feature, proving the point of my answer. Helpful/unhelpful is so like agree/disagree that people sometimes confuse the two even subconsciously.
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April 25, 2009 05:14 PM
Yes... there are problems. There's no way to get rid of all problems or to satisfy everyone. I'm all for throwing it in and seeing how it plays out (as long as the risk in doing so won't be too detrimental). This "feature" can always be reversed...
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April 25, 2009 06:14 PM
Yes. I noticed the irony of Jason voting @albanian's answer unhelpful as well. :)
Though less ironically, a bunch of us, myself included, made sure his view was not suppressed. In my case I'm not sure I agree with him about how this feature will pan out, but I didn't want his ansswer to remain marked unhelpful as it was a valid and well-thought out point of view.
So as long as the community overall doesn't want controversial views squashed, perhaps that's a sufficient guarantee that they won't be.
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Though less ironically, a bunch of us, myself included, made sure his view was not suppressed. In my case I'm not sure I agree with him about how this feature will pan out, but I didn't want his ansswer to remain marked unhelpful as it was a valid and well-thought out point of view.
So as long as the community overall doesn't want controversial views squashed, perhaps that's a sufficient guarantee that they won't be.
April 24, 2009 10:47 PM
There seem to be relatively few such answers, as far as I have seen - on the face of it, this new feature may look quite unnecessary. However, Mahalo is growing steadily, and soon there will be a lot more users, more answers, and more unhelpful ones, too. With this in mind, yes, it's a good feature, good thinking. Just make sure that any such answer still stays "in the game", i.e. it should not be disqualified, not even from being voted as best answer.
By the same token, more users means it will be easier to "earn" three unhelpful votes. You may need to adjust the rules to account for this, at some point later on.
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April 25, 2009 12:47 AM
Actually, now that this feature exists I think members can work together to spot stupid/obnoxious/dumb/spam answers themselves and vote them down.
Right now folks mostly report these and wait for us to hide them. Now they will be gone if you guys say so. If there is any kind of abuse of this just let us know of course (i doubt it).
We will adjust as we go... yes.
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Right now folks mostly report these and wait for us to hide them. Now they will be gone if you guys say so. If there is any kind of abuse of this just let us know of course (i doubt it).
We will adjust as we go... yes.
April 24, 2009 10:56 PM
Wonderful feature! That will help the Sheriff's department a lot, won't it, to have all of us sort of deputized? This one is not really worth space:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6B7vzRUhMUQ
But thanks to my 4-year-old, I can sing this one in my sleep:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qC_hF31z130
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Voted as best: dattappan
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April 25, 2009 03:16 PM
Are kid's cartoons allowed to shake their half-bear behinds like that these days?
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April 24, 2009 11:53 PM
This is a really bad idea. It will get rid of inane answers on regular questions; but, it will also get rid of controversial opinions on opinion type questions! Especially those relating to politics or religion.
Helpful Answer?
(6)
(1)
Helpful: daigakuinsei, philipy, srgothard, interzone, dumblonde, pumkin
Unhelpful: jasoncalacanis
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April 24, 2009 11:58 PM
Controversial opinions usually have people who agree and who disagree. If people vote your answer helpful, it will reappear.
Also, if its a controversial discussion and someone is following all of the answers they will notice the collapsed questions and click to view them. I don't think many quality answers will be harmed by this.
If answers are vanishing too fast we can raise the threshold.
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Also, if its a controversial discussion and someone is following all of the answers they will notice the collapsed questions and click to view them. I don't think many quality answers will be harmed by this.
If answers are vanishing too fast we can raise the threshold.
April 25, 2009 12:16 AM
So are you saying it's 3 unhelpful and no helpful, or an overall -3?
Either way I think its still a bad idea.
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Either way I think its still a bad idea.
April 25, 2009 12:50 AM
It shouldn't be a problem because we are not asking "Agree/Disgree" we are asking "Helpful or not." If folks misuse the button we tell them to stop (we had this issue come up at the start when folks didn't like certain people and voted them down for the fun of it... that stopped recently thanks to transparent voting!).
On an opinion question you shouldn't use the helpful button to vote on agree/disagree... that simple. And folks can always open things up.
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On an opinion question you shouldn't use the helpful button to vote on agree/disagree... that simple. And folks can always open things up.
April 25, 2009 01:09 AM
Does the feature kick in if answer gets 3 unhelpful votes, or if unhelpful > helpful by 3 or more? If the latter, this is less likely to be a problem.
However, Jason voting unhelpful on this answer has ony served to illustrate your point. Your thoughts are reasonable ones, whether they're right or wrong, and marking them unhelpful just shows that people do vote down views they don't agree with.
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However, Jason voting unhelpful on this answer has ony served to illustrate your point. Your thoughts are reasonable ones, whether they're right or wrong, and marking them unhelpful just shows that people do vote down views they don't agree with.
April 25, 2009 01:31 AM
Although it is supposed to be helpful/not helpful rather than agree/disagree, in practice many people don't stick to that. It may even be subconscious. For example, Jason marked this answer unhelpful when it actually expresses a pretty reasonable concern but he disagrees with it.
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April 25, 2009 08:14 PM
If someone is engaged in a controversial question thread, they will want to click through and see the collapsed questions. Users have the power to reopen them by voting them helpful. If an answerer makes a good argument, despite the topic being controversial there will be users that vote to keep it open.
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April 26, 2009 08:47 PM
This is true. From my experience on things, people tend to dub answers as "unhelpful" if it expresses anything they don't agree with. So an answer that is actually helpful will be voted down and hidden just because it maybe doesn't relay what the voter thinks it should. The current voting status of this question is a prime example.
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April 25, 2009 12:50 AM
I think it is a neat feature, but I am having a problem seeing the helpfulness of it...especially since the most unhelpful answers are already moved to the bottom of the list by default. If other users are like me, when they see a "collapsed answer," they are going to click it anyway to see what was so horrible about it.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OIqMflhH1LY
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April 25, 2009 05:22 PM
I always do it when I come across a badly downrated, collapsed comment on YouTube.
Would do it here, too, for sure, but that's alright - for me this feature is all about compacting what may become lengthy pages, with more users/ answers coming up.
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Would do it here, too, for sure, but that's alright - for me this feature is all about compacting what may become lengthy pages, with more users/ answers coming up.
April 25, 2009 01:01 AM
I think @albanian makes a good point. While perhaps useful for fact-based questions, this could cause opinion-based answers to be buried just for being unpopular (this sort of thing happens quite a bit on other websites). One question I have is: will the answers be collapsed after a total of 3 unhelpful votes or with an aggregate of 3 unhelpful votes? I.e. could an answer have 11 helpful votes but 6 unhelpful votes and end up buried?
Helpful Answer?
(4)
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Helpful: albanian, srgothard, pmacdon1, interzone
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April 25, 2009 02:57 PM
I just found another dubious side to this. A best answer can be collapsed too. In this case an overly technical, unsourced, probably correct, but all around not helpful answer was chosen by the asker. Presumably it was what he was actually asking for although no one else thought so.
http://www.mahalo.com/answers/health/what-is-water-intoxication
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http://www.mahalo.com/answers/health/what-is-water-intoxication
April 25, 2009 06:54 PM
Very interesting @albanian -- if a best answer was chosen and folks vote it down that is VERY telling. In this case we had an answer with no sources and that was troubling to everyone..... so I think the right thing happened.
We really need to have a SPY page somene where that shows questions that have been collapsed... i.e. a list of all the -3 answers/comments. This will allow us to quickly review each one and see if it is spam, unsourced, obnoxious, whatever.
@mike: can we make a list of -3 comments?
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We really need to have a SPY page somene where that shows questions that have been collapsed... i.e. a list of all the -3 answers/comments. This will allow us to quickly review each one and see if it is spam, unsourced, obnoxious, whatever.
@mike: can we make a list of -3 comments?
April 25, 2009 05:43 AM
I'm ambivalent. On one hand it can get rid of spammy, annoying or just plain unhelpful answers but I also understand the censorship argument. People that voice unpopular opinions will get censored. I think, if you are going to collapse answers that maybe the number should be higher (5?) and that it should be cumulative, so the only number that matters is the difference and not just the plain number of unhelpful votes.
Anyway here's my vote on what should be collapsed from youtube and from the collective internet consciousness:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6_9MCIzKyUk
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April 25, 2009 06:10 PM
If it's +5 unhelpful *net* it will not censor people, but it will also hardly ever trigger!
The only way I can see to create a fair system that collapses junk but allows well-argued but controversial opinions would be to queue answers getting a few unhelpful votes to a human reviewer.
That reviewer would obviously also need to work off clear guidelines about when to hide or not.
It shouldn't be any more work than deciding which questions are worth adding a Mahalo-funded tip to. (Though IMO that judgement is not made very consistently at the moment.)
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The only way I can see to create a fair system that collapses junk but allows well-argued but controversial opinions would be to queue answers getting a few unhelpful votes to a human reviewer.
That reviewer would obviously also need to work off clear guidelines about when to hide or not.
It shouldn't be any more work than deciding which questions are worth adding a Mahalo-funded tip to. (Though IMO that judgement is not made very consistently at the moment.)
April 25, 2009 10:29 AM
Hi, Of course, I love the idea. I think it is great! Still, I believe there are some limitations to the idea.
I think there is a similar feature in Yahoo Answers. I definitely agree that when there are more users, that Mahalo Answers will have to collapse answers which are basic/inappropriate/silly/etc. However, wouldn't Mahalo block these users and keep track of their IP?
Additionally, in Yahoo, the "collapsing" tool is usually used when answers have content that is not suitable or is just irrelevant to the question. Doesn't Mahalo delete answers that do this.
I think that if this tool is to be introduced another tool needs to be in place. Sometimes a member may disagree with an answer and mark it unhelpful. Of course, the user may not think its unhelpful but just disagree with it.
The morality is we cannot mark an answer wrong because we can disagree. If you disagree, say why in a comment. However, marking an answer unhelpful means that it has inappropriate or irrelevant content. This would make it fair.
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April 27, 2009 02:13 AM
Well stated. The important thing is to judge the quality of the response to the question, even if one might strongly disagree with the opinion stated (on opinion-type questions). Of course, if the facts are in dispute, that's what refute fact is for.
It may be that this turns out to be a useful feature as long as the caliber of Mahalo answers users remains high. So far I've been quite impressed.
Of course, how many of us routinely click "helpful" for answers that have done a good job of answering the question? Isn't the tendency to only click "helpful" if the answer strikes us as particularly on point?
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It may be that this turns out to be a useful feature as long as the caliber of Mahalo answers users remains high. So far I've been quite impressed.
Of course, how many of us routinely click "helpful" for answers that have done a good job of answering the question? Isn't the tendency to only click "helpful" if the answer strikes us as particularly on point?
April 26, 2009 06:20 PM
I think that this is a useful feature, but it could be easily abused. At only three unhelpful votes, an answer could be hidden just because others dissagree. However, it may be useful for some answers, such as muuuu's answer to this question: http://www.mahalo.com/answers/concerts/how-can-i-make-a-low-quality-mp3-sound-good . Perhaps you could make the number higher and hope that truly unhelpful answers will still get shot down.
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April 27, 2009 09:24 AM
Muuu's answer was about as unhelpful as it can get. (He just typed "Hi") but shrinking it didn't save much. In fact, now it stands out more.
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April 26, 2009 08:58 PM
I like to read everybody's answers, whether others find them helpful or not. I actually am finding it annoying to have to constantly click to uncollapse answers just because somebody else decided they didn't like it. At the very least, it seems the number to collapse an answer should be higher, at least 5. (Now am I going to get voted down just because my opinion doesn't coincide with the general consensus?) PS: I find it annoying on YouTube too. Just saying.
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April 27, 2009 08:50 AM
I noticed you tried to reply to my answer several times. None of the replies to my answer show up. I don't know what "feature" that is.
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