Who needs a best answer?

December 26, 2005 6:26 PM

Suggestion for user page:

change this:
and 16 questions and 215 answers to Ask MetaFilter
to this:
and 16 questions (3 missing a Best Answer) and 215 answers to Ask MetaFilter

Thx!
posted by Kickstart70 to feature requests at 6:26 PM (12 comments total)

Oh boy, guilty as charged. Seriously, I did feel guilty about it, but I wasn't sure and suddenly it seemed so long ago.
posted by StickyCarpet at 6:31 PM on December 26, 2005

StickyCarpet, I'm just as guilty. I went back to fix that, since I think that the effort people have made in answering me deserves this. Especially since it's not "mark as perfect answer", any set of answers should have a pickable 'best'.
posted by Kickstart70 at 6:50 PM on December 26, 2005

That's just silly. It seems to be for no other purpose than to guilt posters into marking a best answer for every question*. And, let's face it, if you don't get a good answer, there's no point in marking one just because it's the 'best' of the lot.

* Ok, ok, maybe it's so answerers can see how likely they are to get one of those checkmarks before answering, but that makes it an even worse idea.
posted by boaz at 6:52 PM on December 26, 2005

howaboutthisinstead:
and 16 questions and 215 answers to Ask MetaFilter (17 answers marked as Best Answer)...

Oh, and a high score list of people with the most Best Answers.

...

And purple paper.
posted by yeoz at 6:56 PM on December 26, 2005

yeoz: good, but for me this request was brought on my not being able to tell which questions I'd asked and not gone back to choose some Best Answers (I've fixed that now).

Or maybe the questions list needs little checkmarks or the number of answers selected as BA or something.
posted by Kickstart70 at 6:59 PM on December 26, 2005

People should be rewarded for their contributions however much the desire for this might seem pathetic.

I have one: how about

... has posted 5 links 247 comments (with 66 supporting links) to MetaFilter
posted by StickyCarpet at 7:14 PM on December 26, 2005

any set of answers should have a pickable 'best'
Not true. For example, what about those "Identify this vaguely remembered book/movie/song" questions that provoke a series of guesses, all of which are equally wrong.... how would you pick "best" then?
posted by Pigpen at 7:45 PM on December 26, 2005

I think the best way to handle a situation where you think a thread deserves a 'best answer' is to politely email the original poster and suggest they may want to think about marking one or more 'best answers' to help other members with a similar problem find the solution quickly. My guess is it's usually just an oversight.
posted by mediareport at 7:51 PM on December 26, 2005

what about those "Identify this vaguely remembered book/movie/song" questions that provoke a series of guesses, all of which are equally wrong....

this pony would be good for alerting concerned parties to just this sort of question, perhaps prompting a best answer a few months down the line.
posted by carsonb at 7:51 PM on December 26, 2005

I can't be bothered to check, but probably half of the questions I've asked I haven't marked a 'best answer'. It is sometimes implicit in the process of asking a question that one does not know what the best answer might be to that question, even when offered possibilities. And it's silly to mark every single answer (or even most answers) best.

In terms of possible archival usefulness of answers marked best, I'd trust readers of the threads to exercise their own skills of critical thinking and decide what answer might be best for them (an answer that might well be a different one than I chose, anyway), so no great loss.
posted by stavrosthewonderchicken at 8:04 PM on December 26, 2005

I don't think making people mark a best answer is super important, so I won't surface that info on the user page. I will however, make sure that a person's ask mefi question history makes note of best answers that are present.
posted by mathowie at 8:17 PM on December 26, 2005

Screw that. I just want the purple paper.
posted by majick at 12:40 AM on December 27, 2005