Suggestions for the Answered and Unanswered tabs

October 27, 2006 10:05 PM

Suggestions on improving the questions one finds on the 'Answered' and 'Unanswered' tabs on AskMe. [more inside]
posted by Effigy2000 to Feature Requests at 10:05 PM (4 comments total)

Like many others have said, I think the new tabbed interface rocks. I think its greatest application is the 'Answered' and 'Unanswered' tabs on AskMe. But looking through both pages, I couldn't help but feel that they could be refined insofar as what they are showing.

The answered tab shows questions marked only with a best answer. Fair enough, but many people who use AskMe will know that not all answered questions are marked with a best answer. Would it not be better to show a combination of both the questions marked with a best answer and those that have a 'resolved' tag?

As for the 'Unanswered' tab, I notice it is only showing questions that have 0 comments. Now, if I were feeling particularly mischievous, I could remove each and every unanswered question from that page simply by typing an answer like "I don't know the answer but this really is ringing a bell." Sure, I'd probably get banned but the result is a question that remains unanswered but is removed from the unanswered list forever.

Again, how about using tags to solve the problem. A page which shows both questions with 0 comments and a 'stumped' or 'unanswered' tag would probably work better than the way it is now.

Is this easy to do, Matt? Sorry if it’s been discussed before (I did look, honest).
posted by Effigy2000 at 10:05 PM on October 27, 2006

Just thinking now; a note in the FAQ on unaswered questions would be useful too, should this feature be implemented. It could read something like;

Q: My AskMe question hasn't been answered yet. How can I get a response?

A: Add a 'stumped' or 'unanswered' tag to the question to add it to the list of unanswered questions. With luck, somebody may answer it someday.

... or words to that effect.
posted by Effigy2000 at 10:08 PM on October 27, 2006

Yeah, I already said before that tags with "resolved" and "stumped" would eventually wind up on those tabs as well.
posted by mathowie (staff) at 10:27 PM on October 27, 2006

Awesome. Thanks Matt.

I guess this can be closed now, then.
posted by Effigy2000 at 10:33 PM on October 27, 2006