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Technical Q&A Suggestion

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by lordinfidel

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This is a suggestion to revamp the Q&A close out procedure. Let me know if this sounds good or if it off the mark.

The problem happens when someone closes out a question and they want to award points, but they mess it up.

I propose changing it a little/alot.

In the drop down box for each answer, only have the following options,

1. Reject this Answer
2. Post Comment to this Answer (which will then alert the poster to a comment to their answer)

Do not put "accept this answer" there.

In order to close out a question you will press a button that says, close question.

You will then be presented with a box that has 2 options:

1. Award Points
2. Close question without awarding points

When you choose option 1, each answer will be presented to you and you can issue points to each person and submit a comment if you so choose.

When choosing option 2 an alert will pop up saying "You have chosen to close this question without awarding points to anyone who answered. If this is correct press OK.

Press OK

(Pop-up with comment field) Please take this time to post a comment explaining why you closed the question.

---- The reason for this, I am noticing alot of mistakes when people close out questions, myself included. We intend to close out the question and award points, but it get's messed up. This way it is very clear how to close out the question.

Is this so wrong or a good idea. I subitted it already to the republic, lets hope they listen.

If you agree please state so or if you have some other ideas let us/them know.

5 replies

by generalist

It sounds like it would be a good way to avoid the 'oops' problem that a few people have mentioned. These are the people that say that they wanted to award points but didn't do things the 'proper' way.

Whenever a group of people have problems with a program, something is wrong. If it is something that one group claims to be 'intuitive' yet others can't handle it, then it needs to be corrected. Intuitive for one person isn't necessarily intuitive for all people.

Of course, there is always a chance that somebody will say "It is in the documentation..." I don't think that TechRepublic will take that approach to avoid changing things though. They're too good at trying to meet the customer's needs.

It will be interesting to see what happens. Maybe we could make this an 'Open Source' type project...

by admin

Thanks for saying everyone's is different :>
I wish this thought would permeate the field...

Why does MS have so much training offered if their products are intuitive?

If I think the paperclip sucks, does this make me the opposite of intuitive?

These, of course, are not questions for you, you already get it. I wish you ran the big ship, maybe we'd get "inuitive" closer to "intuition" rather than "training" (as in training to be intuitve -or at least operate an intuitive product)

I just can't believe the general public buys this logic.

:>

by generalist

I think that one of the biggest problems the general public has stems from the 'fact' that too many people settle on a single definition for a word or concept. They pigeonhole something and assume that 'everybody' uses their definition.

When these people are software developers, their definition becomes 'law' and the software is considered to be 'intuitive' because 'everybody' knows the definitions being used.

It would be nice if these people sometimes used a thesaurus to explore alternative definitions. Better still, they need to browse through a British-American dictionary to discover that different terms can be used for the same things.

I know that the British-American dictionary would make a whale of a difference in how people view things like movie titles and error descriptions.

by thekandiman

Good call. I agree completely. Changing the interface would be a smart move, and will keep TR's record in A+ standing. I'm sure if they posted a poll about it, the response would be overwhelmingly positive.

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