With the new one-step voting system, what happens if you answer a previously unanswered question that is more than 5 days old?
If so, does this not imply that Mahalo should immediately close off all unanswered questions that are more than 5 days old, since answering any of them will not provide any possible benefit to the answerer (except for 2 points)? Is it ethical for Mahalo to leave those answer-traps open?
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$2 Answers
~quote
From what I saw, if there was more than one hour to play with the answerer would be lucky. The best hope would probably be if the asker happened to be online at the time, but even then it's very risky.
So older questions pretty much a no-go area right now. :)
Unfortunately a lot of new users won't be aware.
~endquote(1)
It would seem to me that answering older question would be at best just for the fun of answering them and it probably would be best for Mahalo to delete them (which in my experience they will not) or we as users to avoid answering them unless we have a burning desire to answer a particular older question.
Ethical?
I do not know if we have defined an ethical standard here yet but it certainly would be smart to take a look at defining what an ethical standard should be in these older question answer traps and if they should be removed. I vote for delete the questions. :)
You can leave an optional "tip" with Mahalo's virtual currency, Mahalo Dollars. If you are asking a difficult question that might require some research, or if you'd like a wide variety of feedback, a higher tip often leads to more answers to your question.
M$
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$
@kaipowell
I think we still need a way to know which old questions have their 1st answers and then go and vote, especially on anonymous questions.
Would Mahalo have a special section on "spy" for such questions ?
Yes. And hopefully putting up all the new sister sites (aka "blue sites") is not sucking up all the dev time desperately needed to fix bugs and close holes in the new system on Mahalo. E.g. I'm currently short about 820 points from BAs that have not registered (none since 3/25/2010) :(.
My proposed solution to this was to not start the countdown til a question got it's first answer. That allows time for voting, for the asker to pick BA, and even for others to have a go if an interesting question comes to the fore out of the backlog.
I agree and I guess you are right in that an ethical standard has been established.
I hope in the coming hours the Mahalo staff reads some of the concerns express by you, I and the other regular users who have found holes in the current system that really do need some attention.
I sent another email this morning regarding the missing money, points, and statistics in general and Mahalo said that the issue was forwarded to the devs... best we can hope for right now/
If anyone wants to try answering an old question to see what happens, this one of mine is 58 days old:
http://www.mahalo.com/answers/consumer-electronics/how-do-i-tell-itunes-i-dont-want-to-download-a-series-from-itunes-u-after-all
You don't have to give an intelligent answer, a stub will do. I will not take any action and let the system do what it will.
As with so many other matters relating to the new system, if Mahalo implements a small change it can resolve this too. The change could be to (1) automatically give each answer a default one up-vote (as you suggested), (2) make questions with only answer(s) that have no votes be considered as tied and put them in sudden-death decision status, or (3) send them to adjudication by upper belts or some other team.
Deleting the questions, especially ones with high tips, would be unfortunate, but given the current setup I cannot help but feel that leaving them open is misleading and thus unethical. Just my M$0.02.