Best Answer(er)

June 5, 2008 12:11 AM

Is there a way to see how many of a person's AskMeFi comments are marked as best answer?

I'm pretty new here, but I poked around and didn't find anything on this. If such a feature already exists, that would be fantastic. And if such a feature doesn't exist, could it be made? (And if the answer to that is no, then what are the pros and cons of having such a feature?)

I think it would just be neat and fun little stat to know.

posted by phunniemee to Feature Requests at 12:11 AM (41 comments total)

See also.
posted by popechunk at 4:07 AM on June 5, 2008

It's come up before. The main con, as I recall, is that some people would see it as a contest.
posted by box at 5:06 AM on June 5, 2008

I treat it like a contest; I try not to answer unless I think my answers are particularly helpful. The publicizing of the "favorited by" stats was, in my opinion, less constructive than the publicizing of a "best answers" stats would be. (Misha, among others, made this point earlier.)
posted by Mapes at 5:18 AM on June 5, 2008

To answer your question, yes, there is a way. It involves lots of clicking, and possibly some note taking (at least keeping a running tally). Good luck, godspeed, and report back to us when you've done it for every user (because otherwise it's not fair).
posted by Eideteker at 5:28 AM on June 5, 2008

ASKME.
IS NOT.
A COMPETITION.
PHUNNIEMEE.
posted by iconomy at 6:18 AM on June 5, 2008

I could see that becoming like eBay feedback, with all the issues that go with it.

The problem with anything that allows people to be 'ranked' in this way is that it will inevitably become competitive, with people mailing OPs demanding to know why their response wasn't given the green tick of approval.

There are threads with many excellent responses deserving of 'best answer' status, but it's really down to the OP to decide what's deserving, and I think many new OPs probably aren't even aware of the 'best answer' feature. In other threads I've seen 3/4 of posts marked as best, which is a bit silly.
posted by le morte de bea arthur at 6:27 AM on June 5, 2008

If you fav me I will tell you how I do it.
posted by srboisvert at 6:27 AM on June 5, 2008

If such a feature already exists, that would be fantastic.

Yeah. It would be fantastic for people who are good at telling the OP what he or she wants to hear.

"I know the scale says 400 pounds but you're really just big-boned."

"No. I don't think you have a drinking problem."

"Women love guys who sit around in filthy boxer shorts and pizza-stained wifebeaters playing WoW for hours and hours. The last few who dumped you were just uptight."
posted by jason's_planet at 6:43 AM on June 5, 2008 [2 favorites]

Very funny jp, very funny, and it does happen often enough. Anyway, I prefer a sense of community rather than a sense of competition. Let's leave the system the way it is.
posted by caddis at 7:03 AM on June 5, 2008

Not to mention that people who provide excellent answers to anonymous questions won't be counted. Why, it's just like caucus votes!
posted by kittyprecious at 7:25 AM on June 5, 2008 [1 favorite]

I do think phunniemee's question is worthy of a perhaps slightly different discussion in light of the fact we've now got queries tagged.

Specifically, I see lots of "instant authorities" in the finance and banking threads (on the Blue as well, but we're discussing The Green here), people that clearly lack any real expertise in the subject matter, but have googled about and posted an answer, any answer, hoping for a best. And why not? Right now getting best answers on AskMe is a crap shoot, and you've gotta be in it to win it. The system, as it is now, incentivises people to post an answer, regardless of expertise or track record in the subject matter.

A feature like this would help folks not familiar with a subject area identify best advise - at least responses coming from those who have a reasonable track record in the area of inquiry.

Brief review of stakeholders - The individual raising the question would benefit prior community grading of those responding to a question. Folks answering queries could build up a reputation as knowledgeable in specific areas.

So what's the downside of something like this but only tied with tagging? About the only issue I can think of is it might become self reinforcing - bad answers, checked as best, would provide some credibility.
posted by Mutant at 7:43 AM on June 5, 2008

About the only issue I can think of is it might become self reinforcing - bad answers, checked as best, would provide some credibility.

Also, the person judging the quality of the answer is almost by definition unqualified to do so.
posted by tkolar at 8:46 AM on June 5, 2008 [2 favorites]

I kind of want to see this too, for the fun-to-know factor, but I think it could backfire... there might be a risk of the asker looking at Answerer A's Best Answer count versus Answerer B's count and assuming "hmmm, so-and-so has 390 best answers, but this guy has only 3... I bet So-and-So is right here, too," even if the other guy has the better answer to that one specific question. (Insomuch that AskMe answers can accurately be judged as "better" than others.)

Additionally, not that I think this would ever happen here, but Yahoo Answers is full of "Hey answer my question EASY POINTS!!!!" and, I assume, a bunch of people who just plop in whatever they feel like saying for the Best Answer points.
posted by Metroid Baby at 9:03 AM on June 5, 2008

I WIN I WIN I WIN!

Wait, what?
posted by miss lynnster at 9:32 AM on June 5, 2008

There is a sort of flattening of the answerer field when you pretty much have to be around forever to sort of notice who is getting best answered and who is maybe not and I agree with Mutant that we do have the Good Googler phenomenon that answers that may not be verifiably "best" [which oh my is a sticky tar pit] sometimes get a lot of faves and marked best. So in order to not put any more weight on this instead of a "hey here's a gold star for you today" we've deliberately left this off as a feature to keep people from competing, dick (or whatever) measuring, and getting fighty.

As much as we like having AskMe be around as a good resource for finding things, we don't want it to become some sort of situation where people scramble for points, attempt to level-up, or in any way work against other people to help the questioners solve problems. I always feel cheap when I go to Yahoo Answers and get a "point" just for showing up. What?

While I hate to be all "virtue is its own reward" I think it may need to suffice for this situation.
posted by jessamyn (staff) at 9:54 AM on June 5, 2008 [2 favorites]

A feature like this would help folks not familiar with a subject area identify best advise - at least responses coming from those who have a reasonable track record in the area of inquiry.

I'd think this (and it's reverse) would be the biggest pro. To maybe give the asker a chance to gauge how helpful someone's answer might be. Like mutant said, if someone's got a good track record for giving X kind of advice, I'd rather take it from them than someone who, like the askee, also checked wikipedia, and is just repeating potentially wrong info.

For some reason I didn't even think of the competition angle when I posted it in the middle of the night because I couldn't sleep. That makes plenty of sense. But then, the only way someone could up their best answer number is by consistently giving good answers, so is that a bad thing?

I understand the idea of "good answers" can be relative when you deal with something like the fishing-for-compliments-fat-lady, but let's pretend people aren't going to do that.
posted by phunniemee at 10:18 AM on June 5, 2008

Let's pretend that I'm seventeen feet tall, made of Lego, and my fire-breath reeks of kind bud.
posted by box at 10:22 AM on June 5, 2008

I get a warm fuzzy feeling when I count my best answer checks. I probably wouldn't get that feeling if I were competing against other people, as opposed to competing against myself.
posted by infinitewindow at 10:23 AM on June 5, 2008 [1 favorite]

These exact same arguments always arise, in some form or another, when the "Why can't we have [some metric pony for Best Answers]?" is posed. And the arguments mostly seem, to me, to have some holes. Here's my take:

1. "The problem with anything that allows people to be 'ranked' in this way is that it will inevitably become competitive, with people mailing OPs demanding to know why their response wasn't given the green tick of approval."

"I don't want to see people use it as a measure of self-worth, or try and game it up, or hassle question askers (they picked the wrong answers as best!!! mine should have been it!!!), or worst: ask people to vote for them as best answer." (mathowie's response to the earlier MeTa)

The "mark as Best Answer" is already available right now, right in the thread. And to my knowledge, people hassling the OP for the nod hasn't become an epidemic. So, why would it begin to happen simply because one's Best Answer quotient becomes aggregated and visible? Is it really a safe assumption to make, or is it one of those things that just seems logical?

2."a bunch of people who just plop in whatever they feel like saying for the Best Answer points."

Conversely, we do already have this problem -- people tending to say whatever they feel like is pretty rampant, if the amount of clean-up work that Jessamyn does, plus the number of AskMe-related MeTas are any marker. So it's kind of moot to say "we should prevent X" when X is already a regular occurrence.

Other X factors (i.e. we don't need to cite it as a reason that Best Answer tally is bad, because it's already happening under the current system, therefore it's not really a unique problem created by the feature):
- OP can pick any answer they want as Best Answer, even if that means multiples or jokes or just one speculative piece of crap that fed their need.
- OP sometimes picks no Best Answer at all.
- Anonymous questions get no Best Answer*

Plus, what does the value of "the number of questions one has answered in AskMe" indicate about a poster? Does it indicate a high-value answerer? I think we all know that's a no. Yet, we do aggregate that data.

--- "The problem with anything that allows people to be 'ranked' in this way is that it will inevitably become competitive,"

"I prefer a sense of community rather than a sense of competition."

So, it's okay for AskMe posters to pick a winner in the first place... just not okay to aggregate those winners? It's not the sheer existence of the Best Answers themselves that creates the competition? (I don't know, I'm honestly asking)

Or, it's okay to aggregate and display total "Favorites" -- which can be awarded on any whimsical basis and only rarely serve as a practical filter of quality -- but not okay for a part of the site where we actively encourage answerers to be helpful, resourceful, and correct?

Let's say we do assume that tallying Best Answers makes people more competitive. We already have a basis to imagine how the negative would play -- braggers or anyone inclined to observe the phenomenon would do so... but surely then would get called out, or tsk-tsked, just like they currently do when observing high favorite counts in MeTa.**

But have we considered the positive? As Mapes said above, and as I've said before, I choose my contributions to AskMe very carefully. I don't put in throwaway comments, because I like to keep my ratio of Best Answers to total contributions high (for me, it's an incentive not to clutter up AskMe with half-baked stuff). I know Jessamyn has said before that she too strives to get Best Answers because it means she succeeded at AskMe's goal (I'm paraphrasing, I don't have the comment to hand, but I'm sure she'll correct me if I'm wrong!).

In other words, of all the places on MeFi that we might encourage competition, wouldn't that be the best one?

--- Finally -- the data already exists. It's already out there; it's just not aggregated and presented to us all neat and clean. If someone were really inclined to take the time to do what Eideteker suggested above, say for the top 100 most active AskMe answerers, the metrics could be available. I guess I don't understand why it's okay that the data exists, but not okay for someone to crunch it. As DarlingBri called it in the prior thread, this is an information gap.

All told, it's actually not that I care about a public "number of Best Answers" tally one way or the other. I monitor my own to make sure I'm staying helpful and not just talking to hear myself talk, but that's for my personal use. Others could do the same for themselves, if they cared enough.

I just think that some of the reasons we always give for why it would be a bad thing are sort of flimsy... and I think that the horse is pretty much already out of the "it's not a competition" barn with Favorites anyway. Saying we dare not measure Best Answers like we measure Favorites is like saying that you're going to punish the studious, church-going, virginal daughter because her slutty sister broke curfew and got high, then knocked up.
posted by pineapple at 10:40 AM on June 5, 2008 [3 favorites]

I'd vote to have Best Answers eliminated over the idea of tallying them up.
posted by mullacc at 10:52 AM on June 5, 2008 [3 favorites]

* I don't see why an anon asker couldn't go back after an elapsed time period and ask one mod to tick a Best Answer(s) on their behalf, with a "no takebacks" understanding, if they wanted -- unless it would create a huge pile of work on the backend. I don't think many anons would avail of it, but having the option seems nice.

** I realize that there would be some other possible negative outcomes to the tallying: Askers could become inclined to look at an Answerer's profile to decide answer quality... Answerers might choose not to participate in a thread where high-number users are already in with a response... I just believe these are outliers, and can be discouraged with policy statements from management.

There are all sorts of bad things that could have happened with Best Answer when it first started as well: answerers hounding the OP for the nod... someone wondered if Best Answer wouldn't make AskMe more chatty in general... will people think the thread is closed and stop contributing... ability for the OP to weigh in = thread moderating... among other concerns. These simply didn't come to fruition.

That we can conceive of lots of negatives doesn't make those negatives a foregone conclusion.

Also, for whatever it's worth at this point: if there ever were an inclination to aggregate Best Answers, whether public or private, I think the minute we start aggregating, posters need to lose the right to pick their own answer(s).
posted by pineapple at 10:56 AM on June 5, 2008

people hassling the OP for the nod hasn't become an epidemic.

It's not an epidemic but it does happen and it's annoying as hell. People want to make some sort of big deal about how or why someone did or did not mark a best answer. Having there be some aggregate number that people watch would make this worse. I'm happy with having favorites/bookmarks on the site for the functionality they give, but they're a headache in some of the same ways. I think having aggregated best answers would be the same headache and deliver less value.

I just think that some of the reasons we always give for why it would be a bad thing are sort of flimsy...

With all due respect pineapple, this may be because you don't moderate the site and "a bad thing" to you and "a bad thing" to me/cortex/pb/mathowie may in some ways be different. This isn't like one of those things like "mark OPs replies in-thread" where we have been like "yeah that's a good idea" but it stagnated because we were slow implementing it, this is pretty much a "we do not want to do that" situation.

Saying we dare not measure Best Answers like we measure Favorites is like saying that you're going to punish the studious, church-going, virginal daughter because her slutty sister broke curfew and got high, then knocked up.

Nice metaphor but no. I think the reasoning is "Favorites introduced some aspects that people see as competitive here and that's not really great even though favorites are useful. We'd like to not make another metric for people to try to measure up against."

Your follow-up comment indicates all sorts of changes in this future aggregated-best-answers AskMe world [OP can't mark own answer as best, new policy statements, adding "best answers" for anonyme questions which is technically IMPOSSIBLE since we don't know who asked them without digging in the database] and I feel like you've answered your own "why don't we do this?" question. It would involve new policies and procedures for a feature that we don't want to implement which is even more of a good reason to not implement it.
posted by jessamyn (staff) at 11:03 AM on June 5, 2008

Every once in a while someone will defend their actions on the site from attacks (however malicious or benign) by referring to the number of posts they've made, their tally of favorites, their user number, or their "contribution index" score as if those granted some element of authority. I think the general feeling against summing up the best answer marks is that it would just give those people another metric to bash others over the head with.

I know this because I have 40something best answers and have never asked a question which makes my AskMe ratio infinity. Or the null set. Whatever.
posted by LionIndex at 11:16 AM on June 5, 2008

With all due respect pineapple, this may be because you don't moderate the site and "a bad thing" to you and "a bad thing" to me/cortex/pb/mathowie may in some ways be different.

With all due respect, Jessamyn, users that aren't moderators can't know that there is a backend reason for something until we're told by a moderator. Consistently, responses from management on this repeated feature request have been "you all won't use it properly, and people will get competitive and fighty." I think it's pretty easy to see why some people might not really feel warm and fuzzy toward that response. I feel that the community deserves better explanations than that.

"Management doesn't want to implement this, end of story," is a fine explanation. That's what should be said here. We're all adults.

Your follow-up comment indicates all sorts of changes in this future aggregated-best-answers AskMe world [OP can't mark own answer as best, new policy statements, adding "best answers" for anonyme questions which is technically IMPOSSIBLE since we don't know who asked them without digging in the database] and I feel like you've answered your own "why don't we do this?" question.

I apologize for not being clearer, then, because this is a misinterpretation on my follow-up.

Totally separate from the subject of aggregating Best Answers (which is why I made it a separate comment, although clearly that wasn't discrete enough, so, my bad for going away from the topic), and based on my previous understanding that mods pretty much always can easily tell who an anon poster is, I wondered about anon Best Answers. Obviously I didn't have all the information about the backend, so we can disregard my suggestion.

A new policy statement doesn't really seem like a big deal to me. Any time a mod makes a "We do things like this, not like this" comment in MeTa, it's pretty much a policy statement - since it gets quoted and re-quoted and linked as reference by other users when the issue comes up again later. Sorry if the term came across as something different.

"a feature that we don't want to implement"

This resolves it for me, thanks.
posted by pineapple at 11:43 AM on June 5, 2008

A feature like this would help folks not familiar with a subject area identify best advice...

I've said this before and I'm sure I'll say it again: it boggles my mind that people think answers marked "Best answer" are actually best answers in any meaningful sense. Have you actually looked at what sorts of things get the little checkmark? Sure, sometimes they're good, but sometimes they're what he said and sometimes they just seem completely random. As things are now, they're mildly interesting/amusing; if they were elevated to a metric, they'd become actively annoying.
posted by languagehat at 12:28 PM on June 5, 2008

Or, it's okay to aggregate and display total "Favorites" -- which can be awarded on any whimsical basis and only rarely serve as a practical filter of quality -- but not okay for a part of the site where we actively encourage answerers to be helpful, resourceful, and correct?

The question of hiding the Favorites count—on comments, on the profile page—has come up a number of times and isn't a clear black-and-white situation either. That we haven't (or haven't yet, who knows what the future holds) made a change to try and re-bag that particular cat doesn't mean we actually want to clone the feature either.

As far as the merits of a competitive environment: from what I've seen of both community/social sites and the world in general, increased competitive stakes often does yield some achievement in the cream, but it also tends to make the crop that that cream is of get nastier, noisier, and busier in service of the competitive incentive rather than the core activity. I want AskMe to always be as good across the board as it can be, not really great in the top percentile at the cost of being increasingly assy in the jockeying majority remainder.
posted by cortex (staff) at 12:59 PM on June 5, 2008

"Anyway, I prefer a sense of community rather than a sense of competition. Let's leave the system the way it is.
posted by caddis at 7:03 AM on June 5"
This is good advice for a community weblog.
Those who long for a contest are free to leave pixel glow for sunlight and enter a 5k run for charity or something useful.
posted by Cranberry at 1:07 PM on June 5, 2008

Those who long for a contest are free to leave pixel glow for sunlight and enter a 5k run for charity or something useful.

Yeah. Maybe they'll be the fastest, and get picked Best Runner. It would be totally different.
posted by pineapple at 1:54 PM on June 5, 2008

Inasmuch as a 5k run is explicitly structured as a competition, it is totally different, charity or not. It may be laid back in tone, but it's still a race.
posted by cortex (staff) at 1:57 PM on June 5, 2008

Some of these thread replies are bordering on superfluously long. You know this is MeTa and there's no one to check 'best answer', right?

You just got chomped by the snark shark!
posted by self at 1:59 PM on June 5, 2008

Inasmuch as a 5k run is explicitly structured as a competition

Yeah. My point was that it seemed that Cranberry was willfully ignoring the fact that, though MetaFilter is indeed a community, there aren't no competitive elements; clearly, there are some that we're all aware of. Therefore someone who felt the need to win AskMe might not benefit differently from a footrace. But, it might have been a tad oblique.


Dear "Snark Shark",

We're pretty laidback as communities go; you don't have to wear a noob sign or anything. Still, I still think it might be a little premature to christen thyself some sort of master of the bons mots.

Unless of course you are a sockpuppet and care to share your other incarnations.

xoxo,
Pineapple
posted by pineapple at 2:41 PM on June 5, 2008

I could see that becoming like eBay feedback, with all the issues that go with it.

If we were in prison, I would protect you in the shower.
posted by turgid dahlia at 2:56 PM on June 5, 2008

pineapple- though I have roamed these streets with one other username, that account is closed. I wouldn't consider myself a 'sock puppet' so much as a 'reincarnation'. Don't worry, the old username was nothing of consequence. I was not banned, was not a troll, and certainly was not asked to leave. I simply wanted to move on.

That being said, think of the 'snark shark' as more of an actual sock puppet, complete with googley eyes and silly nyuk-nyuk side-of-mouth voice. He likes people, too.

because they're tasty.
nyuk nyuk!

posted by self at 3:03 PM on June 5, 2008

That being said, think of the 'snark shark' as more of an actual sock puppet, complete with googley eyes and silly nyuk-nyuk side-of-mouth voice. He likes people, too.

In that case, I like him. I really want someone to make this sock puppet now. With a fin. And summa those big teef.
posted by pineapple at 3:09 PM on June 5, 2008

What about putting this data in your profile, but making it private? I'd be interested to know how many "best answers" I have, but I don't particularly care if anybody else knows.
posted by Afroblanco at 7:37 PM on June 5, 2008

It's not an epidemic but it does happen and it's annoying as hell. People want to make some sort of big deal about how or why someone did or did not mark a best answer.

Would you please elaborate on this? Have you really been contacted by someone asking to be marked as best answer? I find that hard to believe. How did they phrase their plea?
posted by jayder at 7:54 PM on June 5, 2008

No you see people either in-thread or here being a little petulant about

1. there is no best answer marked, OP is lazy person personally responsible for destoying commons, HURF DURF OVER GRAZER
2. the best answer is not "best" there was a better one maybe later, OP is alseep at the wheel and/or too hasty and/or headed for ruin
3. OP is crazy as a result of best answer chosen, or most frequently OP is just choosing best answer to agree with their preconceived notions and therefore OP is crazy according to SCIENCE!
4. the OP marked themselves as best answer, therefore ** freakout ** ** divide by zero** etc.

Not to mention the "my answer was marked best answer and you deleted it!" or "the OP is just marking jokey best answers and therefore not taking us seriously!" complaints.

This doesn't happen too much, true, and it rarely happens backchannel [occasionally Anonymous posters would like to mark a best answer and they currently can't and I'll email someone saying "AnonyMe thought what you said was helpful, thank you"] but it indicates to me that people take best answers a little more seriously than we really had intended and we would like them to not take them any more seriously than they currently do.

This is probably not super visible in the aggregate unless you are poised to see these sorts of responses as a mini-trend or if you read almost every AskMe flag, as I do. However at least some of the noise in AskMe that gets looked at and often removed is commenters telling the OP what they should or should not be doing with their best answers and that just seems to defeat the purpose in some way.
posted by jessamyn (staff) at 8:40 PM on June 5, 2008 [1 favorite]

HURF DURF OVER GRAZER

This is now my favorite HURF DURFing ever. Thank you, jessamyn.
posted by Afroblanco at 11:01 PM on June 5, 2008

adding "best answers" for anonyme questions which is technically IMPOSSIBLE since we don't know who asked them without digging in the database]

I don't get what's so tough about this. If the information of who wrote the anonymous question is in the database, then why would it be "technically impossible" for that user, when logged in, to mark an answer as "best", without the intervention of a mod?

Or, for that matter, to reply anonymously.

Please note that I'm not saying either of these things should necessarily be done, but I'm just flat out not getting why they would be "technically impossible" to allow them. It seems like it should be pretty easy, actually.
posted by Flunkie at 10:06 PM on June 7, 2008

Flunkie, the information about who wrote the anonymouse question is not in the database, by design. When Jessamyn said "digging in the database", that wasn't really accurate in the formal sense, because the info that positively identifies an anony submitter lives elsewhere only -- by my understanding, pretty much in Matt's inbox via an auto-generated email sent by the server at submission time.

At the moment, it is in fact technically impossible as the system is designed.

We've talked a couple times about the idea of reworking the anony submission process to somehow maintain the lack-of-identity design goal while allowing some sort of positive anonymous identification for these kinds of features. I don't remember what exactly came from those discussions, other than a general sense that the effort required to do it didn't seem to justify the gains (e.g. there's no great issue with anony not being able to mark best answers or post followups, since both of these can be handled effectively by a quick email to a mod).
posted by cortex (staff) at 10:33 PM on June 7, 2008

Also, the person judging the quality of the answer is almost by definition unqualified to do so.

This is an important point. Instructor evaluations are subject to a similar problem -- students are often inclined to write that "the instructor really knows his stuff," or "he had comprehensive knowledge of the subject matter." But they're just students...How the hell would they know whether or not the instructor actually had the knowledge he presents himself as having? If they were really fit to make that evaluation, why would they be taking the class in the first place?

Bringing the point back home, "best answer" status doesn't (and shouldn't) carry much weight. Most of the time, if a questioner marks a response as "best answer," that just means it seems to them at that time to be a good response. Most of the time, if they were really equipped to make that sort of judgment, they wouldn't be asking the question in the first place.
posted by voltairemodern at 11:21 AM on June 8, 2008