Tina asks:
We want to re-design the MakeUseOf Answers landing page. And we want to do this based on feedback from the people who see this page the most: YOU!
Please take a minute to answer the following two questions:
1. What were you looking for when you came to the Answers landing page this time?
2. What would you like to see or do on the Answers landing page?
Looking forward to reading your creative answers!
40 Answers - Write an Answer
Ashutosh rajput
December 1, 2012Hello Tina I am Ashutosh Rajput From India,Bhopal.
I want to do help you designing new Answers landing page .
Ans (1.) I want to see my answer which i asked before an including you and different readers.All people can give Answer to my question.
Ans (2.) I want to like to hear comments from different people including you for my doubt’s and queries. And give a poll button to like,share and comment.
Aniket Singh
December 1, 2012i think current design is good and easily to understand……..
Alex Schnapps
December 1, 20121. As usual. I look at the questions that interest me, and the answers to them (gain knowledge). If you see a question, my answer to that is I think that I can be useful to someone, answer (gain points, then these points get paid software).
2. Sometimes it is not clear what kind of answer was a solution.
I second that – sometimes, people post contrasting answers, and it’s hard to know which one is most accurate, and which might be superfluous. That said – I can imagine it would be an enormous amount of work to determine the the most accurate answer – the idea is that knowledgeable people answer, and they do !!! Sometimes, people add comments that are nice, and supportive, but really don’t add any value to answering the question. I’m not sure it’s worth the bother to encourage stopping that – after all – these users are enthusiastic to participate, and show that they care enough to post some answer.
December 9, 2012Arun Singh
December 1, 2012on landing page i want to see question to answer provided by me and in which the answers selected best or question resolved by my answer.
Perhaps they could add a “most useful answer” ranking that could be voted upon ONLY by people that have tried out the solutions (though the “ONLY by people that have tried out the solutions” would have to be an honor system thing”)
December 9, 2012susendeep dutta
December 1, 2012Firstly,I would like you to change the word “Ask Tech Help” to Answers as by clicking on it,it loads a list of new questions which is not good considering design guidelines of a website.
Answering to your second question,I would like to see no comments for questions as some questions gets unanswered.There can be a button for new comments pointing to questions (typically older ones).
Besides that,I would like that best answer(s) and report spam buttons to be included for answers.
Jurmy Chris
December 1, 2012A rank of the problems asked here ( some really need an answer realy fast, a critical situation, some ( me for example), need some advices ). So problems should be categorized in : Critical . Long term. and Just want to know .
What i wanna see is the answer that resolved a problem highlighted.
Ali Ehsan
December 1, 20121- I was looking for a question which i ever asked in a forum or thread or have enough knowledge to help a bit.
2- There should be a voting system ( like or dislike click counting ) provided for each comment/answer which may would help the person who asked the question,people who answered or commented to chose the best solution.
joseph monticciolo
December 2, 2012As for question 2: I would like to have in our profile a listing of the questions we’ve asked and also questions that we’re following.
Joseph,
Your profile already contains a list of ’25 latest’ questions you have asked.
December 8, 2012Adam Campbell
December 2, 20121. I was looking for questions that interest me or ones that I know off the top of my head.
2. First off, I like the way it is now. I just have a few suggestions… For questions older than a certain date (the 180 day standard on this site for example) I think that there should be a separate section of the site maybe like an archive where people can still search and find answers. I also think that there should be a system where someone who actually answered a question (as decided by the person asking or something like that) gets recognition.
Adam,
Questions older than 180 days can still be searched. For search, no difference is made between new and old questions. Only comments are closed. What do you mean with archive? To search only older questions?
December 8, 2012Just curious why you close the comments ? I have often come across comments that I’d like to recommend on, and get an answer in the context of that thread. I guess it’s not so bad though, really – I just repost my question as a new one in a more succinct way.
December 9, 2012We have published around 13,000 questions and publish hundreds new every month. Questions quickly disappear from the landing page and few people will find them, let go discover and solve comments asking additional questions.
What leaving comments open does is that when people find a question and the solutions don’t work for them, they leave a comment and hope someone will get back to them with an alternative answer. That almost never happens and if it does, it takes a long time. However, they would receive a working solution much quicker, if they just posted a new question.
Obviously, this is a design issue and we need to design a system in which those old questions are not forgotten. For example showing a list of the 100 most recent comments or the 100 currently discussed questions as alternative ways of viewing Answers.
We definitely have to make the content that is being produced here more accessible, easier to find, easier to browse, easier to digest. That’s why we are re-designing the landing page.
December 9, 2012Take the closed (old, answered etc.) questions and move them to a separate portion of the site. This would help distinguish between questions that are being answered and ones that are finished or between “Asking” and “Answers”. I think that that would help streamline the process.
December 9, 2012Paul Pruitt
December 2, 2012You could allow the users to categorize their question like Yahoo Answers does. You could also explicitly allow questions on any subject, not just computers by including all kinds of categories that users can use to label their question, not just computer type labels, e.g. science labels, dating advice etc.
Jan Fritsch
December 2, 2012one idea that comes to mind is a landing page consisting of two elements:
(1) a menu (two buttons)
“Ask question” –> form to ask a question
“Answer question” –> listing of the most recently asked question (as it is now)
(2) a tag cloud (with all it’s features like the most common once bold and big, etc.)
I like your suggestion for #1 — often I browse just to see if I can offer some help (and maybe learn in the process), but other times I need a quick answer, and poking through search results would be easier with a tag (or term) cloud coupled with the results.
December 4, 2012Rajaa Chowdhury
December 2, 20121. I want to see the edit and delete option to my post in similar lines as in FaceBook. This will help me to edit any typo errors after posting. Also a delete button will help me in deleting off a duplicate comment of mine which may get posted due to mouse click issues. (I faced both the situation, and they are a bit embarrassing). Also it will reduce the work of the moderator.
2. The original poster of the question, can mark the comments as five radio button options of Resolved my issue , Useful, Related, Not useful and Junk. If the answers is marked as Resolved my issue, the person who gave the answer get 20 points, id marked Useful he get 15 points, related gets 10 points, not useful get 5 points and junk doesn’t get any point and marking it shall also remove the comment automatically. This will increase the quality of answers given besides abstaining all those useless one word-er or non sensible comments to show up. The answer forum will also become structured and more un-cluttered.
3. I like the current layout otherwise as it is simple, user-friendly and simple to understand. Maybe you can just play around with some other color scheme for it and also if the nested reply threads should go further down and should not have a limit of the current 5.
I agree with you on answer #2. There should be a way for the poster to mark best answer that helped him. As for the rate option of answer , there might be a problem if he is completely ignorant and he might not properly rate the answer. Maybe this should be available for other user to rate the answer but with no gain of points to avoid any problem because someone can mark a comment a as not useful only because he is not agree with it while other can mark it opposite. Maybe the best option would be a Promoting/Demoting Answer option.
December 6, 2012Junil Maharjan
December 2, 2012The black and red colouring of the icons left to the questions that display the number of answers and resolve respectively and also display the date on the questions main page. the colour coding of ‘ask question’, ‘unresolved’, ‘resolved’ and ‘latest questions’.
Are you saying that we should re-design those? Do you dislike the style? What would you suggest?
December 2, 2012Ahmad Wafiuddin
December 2, 2012current design use a lot of space.. but its actually ok.. LOL.
i dont know wht i want to say.. just try make its more simple.
Jack Cola
December 2, 2012So far, I see the current answers page more like a blog. You check it everyday, you’ll see all the answers.
I think it needs to be presented more as a knowledge base. You want to find information about wordpress for example, and you can find all the wordpress like questions. The other thing way it should be like is an FAQ which shows past resolved answers.
Like Yahoo Answers, resolved questions should have a best answer, especially if you do the above.
Every day should bring up past common questions. The old questions are being lost and can only be found through searches. Promote past questions that help people.
Alan Wade
December 2, 2012Less adverts for those that are logged in would certainly help.
I don’t get adverts on my page! do you???
December 6, 2012Frank Murray
December 2, 20121. Just checking it out, I’m a newby.
2. No comment as yet.
Irshaad Abdool
December 2, 20121. Ctegorise the problems in a better way. like software category is too vast.
2. Put the date on which the question was asked so that one may knw whether or not the comments has already been closed
Raj Sarkar
December 3, 2012Categorizing of questions would of much help.
Joseph Monticciolo
December 3, 2012regard my previous comment I feel that I should elaborate more.
Regarding your question 2 I mentioned that “ . . . . . and also questions that we’re following“. What I meant by this is that sometimes there are questions that I do not have the answer to however would like to have, therefore an option as to follow questions that interest us would be useful.
Thanks for the clarification, Joseph!
December 11, 2012Jim Chambers
December 4, 2012I’d like to suggest a change to the Question page.Instead of a default OS of Windows that questioner must edit, have a dropdown list to select from. This would make it easier for answerers to give correct info.
I agree
December 4, 2012Only if there was another optional text field next to it ~ a dropdown list will just get ridicules long to cover all options.
Maybe some user doesn’t use the latest version because it would cause some software incompatibility.
You would have to put in OS X 10.6.0, 10.6.1, 10.6.2 all the way to 10.6.8, same for Lion, etc. You will end up having 30 entries just to cover the primarily used OS X versions, adding Windows with SP and the ‘multiverse’ of UNIX you have a 100 item dropdown list.
A text field gives an advanced user the option to be very specific e.g. stating “Windows 7 SP1″ or “OS X 10.8.2″ while a regular or beginner user can just specify “Mac”, “Windows” or whatever.
December 9, 2012To clarify: the default isn’t Windows.
The question form automatically detects which operating system is being used. So if you visited the form with Linux, the form would say Linux instead. Unfortunately, it seems that we cannot detect the exact version and rely on user input to complete the information.
December 11, 2012Jesse Manalansan
December 4, 2012Hello,
1. What were you looking for when you came to the Answers landing page this time?
2. What would you like to see or do on the Answers landing page?
First of all, when I came to the Answers landing page this time, I was looking for new questions to be answered that fits my field of specialty (e.g. Software, Hardware, Networking, Internet, etc.).
Second, I personally think that for me, I think it’s best if there would be a counter of how many are Answered, Unresolved questions.
The ability to add a specific category for each questions and display. Personally I think that it’s essential that we can be able to choose let’s say, I wanna answer Hardware related questions, where I can just click the link where all the hardware related questions will show up.
Last but not the least, I am not sure if this feature already exists but a feature to be able to search for questions answered or unanswered would be great.
I would like also to add up, with regards to the ability to add a specific category for each question. Uhmm, probably what you can do is, create a smart suggestion wherein the person who is posting the question can be given a suggestion based on what is the content of his/her question a suggested category where the question can be posted.
December 4, 2012Thank you for your feedback, Jesse.
We already add categories to questions, but they are not displayed on the landing page, only on the question page.
Previously, users were able to pick categories, but frequently no category was picked and/or we had to change it, so we decided to do this ourselves.
December 11, 2012Presently, you can search questions using the search bar in the top left. On the results page, you can switch to Answers results only. This will show results from all questions ever published.
It’s not possible to search only resolved or only unresolved questions right now, so I added this to my list.
December 11, 2012Alan Wade
December 4, 2012Sectionize the questions:
i.e. a section for Windows, a section for software etc etc. Would save time from wandering up and down the questions.
Would an option to only display Qs from select categories work equally well?
December 11, 2012Exactly what I mean Tina!
December 11, 2012Réy Aétar
December 4, 2012It should be simple like it is now but should have more features.
Smaller Fonts and More Questions in one page With Auto Scrolling more questions will load automatic as we move down (like in facebook feeds) though the top bar of question category should remain intact and can be used to filtre questions(it can be made to look sleeker),only the questions will scroll.
features like adding photos with question Should be introduced.
posting comments on old questions should be enabled (though no points can be alloted for that),it will be more usefull..
there should be feature questions every week (like a contest,a chance to make more points)..an option can be there like allowing users to rate(useful ) question
Great ideas, Réy! Very much appreciated!
December 11, 2012DrSunil Vaswani
December 5, 2012Respected Tina
In response to your asking :
Many a times I have liked an answer and had to manually type “Liked”
Can you please push the code of “Like” button in the Answers landing interface? as soon as you conveniently can even prior to pushing other features’ codes
Regards,
Sunil
Sunil,
James has already enabled Like comments on the backend (for editors) and he is trying to make it work for logged-in users. So yes, we are working on this one.
December 11, 2012sounds nice
December 11, 2012Thanks to Tina for the ‘Like’ button on Answers Landing page
With humble respects,
December 22, 2012Sunil
Ramón García
December 5, 2012A option to list my questions or answers
This is already available on your user page. See on Latest Questions/Comments
December 6, 2012shaurya gupta
December 5, 2012There must be an option to view the “my questions” page on the answers landing page….But overall the page is fine…
Vishal Srivastava
December 5, 2012Answer 1)This time, I came here to help others and answer their questions.
Answer 2)Instead of Categorizing on the basis of Solved, Unsolved etc. it’ll be better if its categorized on the basis of category like Android, Windows, Linux etc. and then, there can be sub- categories of Solved, Unsolved etc.
Lisa Santika Onggrid
December 6, 2012I think the current one is fine enough.
1) I want to see newest, unsolved questions
2)Finding questions I can probably answer
Lisa,
What would help you find the questions you can probably answer?
December 11, 2012I think keywords or tagwords
December 11, 2012I think you can implement some sort of algorithm to place questions with tags corresponding to questions we have answered at the top, as they’re more likely to match our knowledge.
December 12, 2012DrSunil Vaswani
December 6, 2012Madam
In addition to my response earlier in this conversation thread please consider the following features
1) Report/Spam answer or comment to avoid misuse or copying. Reporting thrice or by multiple users can avoid irrelevant documentation of offence or spam
2) Voting or rating answers to bring most relevant answers to prominence
3) Voting even for questions to bring useful questions to prominence
4) Following topics or conversations of interests by tag words or topics
5) Following users or subscribing to user – indicating followed users expertise
6) Activity log for registered users to easily check their asked questions and answers
7) Conversation interface through Facebook social chat plugin
8) Uploading images to make questions illustrative
Thanks,
Sunil
Many great ideas, Sunil! Thank you very much!
December 11, 2012Usman Mubashir
December 6, 2012current layout is good, simpler is better.
change the physical appearance though, I want to be able to preview description of a question when I hover over it in the /answers page (just like we see comments on a torrent link @kat.ph
Kamil Ko
December 6, 2012Hi MakeUseOf,
1) I look to see if I can help any post with an unmentioned idea.
2) I think the Answers page is good as is – I wouldn’t change anything.
josemon maliakal
December 7, 2012I think the design is pretty good..You have to add some new features like ‘likes and dislikes’ and popularity…and also disable comments of solved problems..
vineed gangadharan
December 7, 2012Rating comments so do good…
SoftwareDemons
December 7, 20121. Just came to see IF i can help someone with my knowledge and gain more knowledge
2. I would like to see the best answers option like we have in answers.microsoft.com and answers.yahoo.com marked by moderators or by OP
Âdil Farôôq
December 7, 2012I think current design is good only i want to see is that when someone closes the discussion then there will be option which was the best answer and highlighting it .
Thanks
Tina
December 8, 2012Thank you everyone for your feedback! I will go through each of the comments and may ask for additional details in case the comment wasn’t clear to me.
Answer which is liked by most would be the best answer
December 11, 2012We are currently discussing whether the OP should be able to pick the best answer.
January 3, 2013James Hudson
December 8, 2012nice that you want are feedback
Jim Dawkins
December 8, 2012Make it like the yahoo – answers
Fawad Mirzad0
December 11, 2012I suggest adding metadata of questions like number of answers. Smaller font size of questions, having links to categories(tags) so that people with specific interest can go to their respective tag, user activities.