A little? AskMe front page tweak

March 27, 2008 12:26 AM

My little pony: how much work would be required to turn the "contains answers marked as best" checkmark on the front page of AskMe into a link to the first best answer?
posted by flabdablet to Feature Requests at 12:26 AM (18 comments total)

There's something to be said about threads with multiple best answers, where the first isn't always the best best answer or something. It's come up in other MeTas, to be sure. But as long as we're asking for little enhancements I've got one in the same ballpark: [more inside] links (or at least indicators) on user's posts pages. (eg.)
posted by carsonb at 12:50 AM on March 27, 2008

I often expect the little checkmark to link to a best answer. I click, it doesn't work, I'm sad. Then a couple of weeks pass and I try it again. I either need a better memory, or this is a good idea.

Maybe a new double-checkmark icon for threads with multiple best answers, which just links to the comments section of the thread.
posted by blacklite at 1:11 AM on March 27, 2008

Not much work. But now you have to make your case for why this is a good thing, when it's already been discussed at least twice.

Welcome to Internet 1.0, where not every icon is a link!
posted by Eideteker at 4:02 AM on March 27, 2008

I was gonna ask this today.

It is a good thing because when reading a backlog of questions across a couple of pages I'd like the instant gratification of a tick click to show me the best answer on questions I find interesting. Obviously the first best answer isn't always the best best answer but it'll do just fine for my purposes.

I want this.
posted by brautigan at 4:08 AM on March 27, 2008

Reasons why I think this would be a good thing:

* makes something that looks like it might be a control, actually a control (the checkmark is currently surrounded by clickable things)

* makes scanning for good answers slightly easier when browsing questions of interest, especially when opening multiple threads in tabs

* doesn't change the look of the site, so it won't upset anybody

* I'm guessing it won't actually need much work to implement

Linking to the first best answer, rather than any other best answer, strikes me as reasonable and intuitive behaviour. Especially when the answer threads are long, the first best answer is generally a good place to start wheel-scrolling from.
posted by flabdablet at 5:24 AM on March 27, 2008 [2 favorites]

I don't think this would be a good idea, as many questions often have "more inside", so just skipping to the first best answer can leave the answer outta context. There is also nothing "best" about the first answer when there are multiple best answers, which further leaves the thread outta context.
posted by Brandon Blatcher at 6:14 AM on March 27, 2008

Slightly more work but potentially more rational: the check-mark could link to a view of the question which includes only the 'best' answers, omitting the others. That way, you get to read the [more inside] part of the question, and especially in a long thread, you get a quick idea of how many 'best' answers there are and can skim them all quickly.
posted by nowonmai at 6:38 AM on March 27, 2008

Not 'potentially'. I meant to type 'perhaps'.
posted by nowonmai at 6:39 AM on March 27, 2008

And for all I know, it's the same amount of work or less than the original feature request, but trust me, that comment does improve as you get into the meat of it. Just start at the colon.
posted by nowonmai at 6:41 AM on March 27, 2008

This just seems really unnecessary, seeing as responses marked as best answer are already very distinctively highlighted.

I could understand wanting this sort of thing to link to the most-favorited comment (which currently requires a bit of an eagle-eye), but that's a whole 'nother ball-bag of wax-chips.
posted by kittyprecious at 7:14 AM on March 27, 2008

I like the best-answers-only-filter pony less than my original pony, precisely because the existing highlighting does do such a good job of picking the bests out from the crowd, and it is nice to have some context readily available just by scrolling. All I really want to be able to do is start reading answers at a marked-best one.
posted by flabdablet at 8:09 AM on March 27, 2008

And no, it's not something that's necessary - just a little cosmetic tweak that would make the AskMe front page more useful to me and maybe a tiny bit less surprising, controls-wise, for others; not worth doing if there's significant work in it.
posted by flabdablet at 8:14 AM on March 27, 2008

I agree. And my justification for why it would be a good feature is in that post - namely, that it would allow you to bypass all the clarification questions/answers, and all the jokes/chat.
posted by helios at 8:15 AM on March 27, 2008

Link to the most recent best answer.
posted by blue_beetle at 8:29 AM on March 27, 2008

This is a nice idea, but the existence of this feature would almost certainly lead to people marking fewer replies as Best Answer, which I think would counteract the benefits.
posted by Lanark at 1:43 PM on March 28, 2008

I can't see why that would happen, Lanark. Care to clarify?
posted by flabdablet at 4:43 PM on March 28, 2008

Lets say a question has 20 or so answers, 2 of the answers, lets call them A and B are 'good' replies so you mark both as best answer and B (the most recent) is automatically hyperlinked.

Now another good answer, C gets added, it's a very good answer but not quite as good as answer B, if you mark it as best you will be demoting B and hyperlinking C, because of this you may well decide not to 'Best answer' C at all.

In other words people would tend to pick just one 'best' rather than several.
posted by Lanark at 5:06 AM on April 12, 2008

Oh, I see. You were responding to blue_beetle's idea, not the original pony request (which wouldn't, I think, cause the effect you describe).
posted by flabdablet at 7:39 PM on April 12, 2008