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The missing link was the strongest link

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by maxwell edison

Closed to new repliesThis discussion is closed. It stays readable, but it takes no new replies.

That was not the “weakest link” that was banished from the set. And although it may be true that it’s the votes (percentages) that count, you have potentially and inadvertently voted off your strongest players.

I’m leaving this question open and will keep it on the top of the list until the "missing link" is found. And in reference to HoosierDaddy’s answer in the other related question (I like that alias, by the way) I thought I’d add a comment or two inresponse.

A 4.5 percent hit rate was mentioned as being low, but It wasn’t clear to me if Doug was comparing that hit rate to ALL pages on TechRepublic or just the Q&A pages. If it was ALL pages, he should seriously consider comparing apples to apples to get an accurate representation of the Q&A preference. After all, that is the issue here.

If he was comparing it to other Q&A links, then by obvious observation a 4.5 percent hit rate, although that may initially appear low, is certainly not among the lowest. Simple math will bear that out. Including that “missing link” (and excluding the top 5 questions links), there are 50 possible links from which to choose. If all those links were selected equally, each would receive 2 percent of all possible hits. (1 divided by 50 equals .02) Assuming that not all links will receive equal attention – and that is certainly a feasible assumption – then one could surmise that there are many links that receive less than 2 percent of the hits, probably much less than 2 percent. Therefore, removing a link that receives many times more hits than other links doesn’t make sense. My guess is that the “missing link” received more hits than many of the less popular ones combined.

(continued..)

29 replies

by maxwell edison

In addition, as TimTheToolMan alluded to, the number of hits should not be the only factor considered. Doug should indeed consider who is using that link. With the exception of Anna777, all of the top 5-point scorers have voiced displeasure over theremoval of that link. I will assume that Anna777 is also against the removal. (Anna777, if that’s an incorrect assumption, feel free to correct me. Actually, feel free to comment regardless.) Therefore, between those 5 people, a total of 11,401 (and counting) questions have been answered – most likely using that “missing link”. If Doug also considers the other “heavy hitters”, some of whom have posted an answer to this question, such as TimTheToolMan, Joseph Moore, TheChas, et al, he could add thousands of more answers to that total.

So Doug should not take hits alone into consideration, and he should remain cognizant of what the Q&A forum is seeking. Is he looking for “hits” alone, or is he looking for answers to the questions? Factor in the THOUSANDS and THOUSANDS of answers provided by the (alleged) 4.5 percent who use that link, and the “beneficial and functional” percentage would be many times higher. So Doug, why don’t you put that link back? And if you don’t, be sure you keep track of the “answer percentage”. After a while, if you compare it to the previous months’ “answer percentage”, I’d bet you lunch (in Denver) plus all my points that it will be much lower – and probably much more than 4.5 percent lower.

Maxwell

by dklippert

I would like the link back in one form or another.
I'm sure you've noticed that people are sometimes unsure about which category to use.
Such as:

"I want to change the size of my Window"

NetAdmin Republic:
NT, Windows 95/98, Windows 2000, Office, Development

Support Republic:
PC Troubleshooting, Windows, Programming, Software, User Interaction, Other

Developer Republic:
Programming, Methodology, Windows

The "All" link let's us see questions that may have been entered in the "wrong" area.
The categories may have editorial significance, but they don't work for a "help desk"

by shanghai sam

In reply to View All Questions being the strongest link is true,this was a new added feature to the format change earlier this year,before then you had to click on each catagory as it stands now,I still think that this is a glitch in the program, other things have happened with the site when archiving is performed,or TechRepublic would have posted a notification of the link being discontinued

To comment on Anna777,not posting an opinion to the question,may or may not be due to the fact that a question was posted that GI Joe was giving a significant amount of points to Anna777,so the assumption is that the alias Anna777,was a front for another member who would be padding points,which has gotten others banded from the forum.There is no way to prove that this is true,yet under the circumstances,there has been very little activity on Anna777 part.

by dmiles

In view of Doug's post it is apperent that TechRepublic has removed the link,due to a low comparison to other links that were getting a heavier number of hits.

If this was the case then why would we have a large number of members who donot know where to post their questions,this is to say that I feel that most of the members used the All Questions to determine where to post their problems,so the link was used as a reference,which would give a low percentage of hits due to the few members that post answers on a frequent basis,yet I donot feel this feature should be removed based on comparison,maybe this was due to other circumstances that TechRepublic felt was a link to other problems.
The feature was a big welcome to the old style of reviewing questions,so now we are back were we started,and yes less questions will be reviewed beccause I for one will only answer questions from certain catergories,rather that wasting my time searching thru them all.
So with the site being free members have very little input with comments to be considered that would matter as what works for them that makes it simple.
What are we to do?

by joseph moore

Ok. I just sent a comment into TechRepublic, stating how I felt that removing the link was the wrong thing to do. I mentioned that they should have polled us, to get our feelings on if the link was valuable or not.
And I asked them to put it back.
I think that the only thing we can do (at this point) is an e-mail campaign. Let's all contact TechRepublic and ask for the link to be returned. Some here have already done so, and having these questions up also helps.
But maybe a message a day for a week from everyone will get their attention. I am NOT talking about flaming them. Just be determined!

Here is the URL to the Comments submission form for the Q&A Section:
https://www.techrepublic.com/contact_faqs/technical_qa_email.jhtml

And the Director of Community Content, Veronica Combs, last wrote an article (ironically on disaster recovery dated September 11, 2001) and posted an e-mail address of cio@techrepubli.com along with it. So, we could contact her directly if nothing changes soon. Again, don't flame her, but contact her (maybe in a week) with why we think the link should be put back.

I live in the USA, and we are big on letter writing campaigns here. So, why not try it for the removed link?

by thechas

Yes Maxwell, I agree that the all open questions link was the most important link in the Q&A section.

To put it politely, it is a pain-in-the-rear to click on each catagory looking for new questions.

I use the forum for 3 purposses;
1. To help others.
2. To learn from you and the other peers who know more than I do.
3. To keep my trouble-shooting skills honed.

I have a suggestion for how to handle the proplems and cost factors that were brought up as to why the link was removed.
1. Change the All Open Questions link so that it only is visible / functions for a user that is logged on. That should take care of the web crawler issue.

2. Limit the span of questions returned. Unless it is a really slow day, or we are truely bored, I doubt that any of us review open questions that are more than 2 days on a regular basis.
a. Just set the all open questions link to the previous 2 days.
b. Default the open question link to 2 days, and allow the option to specify a different span.

I clicked on Dougs alias on his response to your previous question, and was able to send a message to him via TR.

I suggest that we all follow this method to express our fellings, along with proposed solutions directly to Doug.
Chas

by timthetoolman

Hi Maxwell,

I hope that we dont have to push too hard to get this link restored... in fact I'm reasonably confident it'll be restored straight away on Monday as TechRepublic knows that they cant afford to piss us off too much.

I'm sure the decision was a "technical one" from Doug, who I noticed has only asked one question and never answered any (up until a couple of days ago).

This is a classic case of those that run a system, making decisions on how its users should use it without really knowing how they DO use it or even actually finding out...

The irony is that there are dozens or even hundreds of posts we've come up with telling people the importance of "working with the client and building good client relationships"

Andhow CRITICAL process of communication is!

Yet another good call from TheChas... If the current query is based on the repeating index of "QuestionStatus" (for argument's sake) where the values were "Closed" or "Open", then it would be an inefficient method indeed!!

But altering that to include the date would improved its efficiency hugely!

Perhaps a couple of links? One to return all the questions as before, but another to return the open questions from the last couple of days? Or even limited by 25 rows (one page)?

Doug, You once asked the question "How do you motivate developers?"

My answer for you is to use us to help solve some of your problems. Post the problem queries here (and DB structure and cardinalites) and we'll soon let you know how to make them more efficient.

What developer, seeing that, wont begin to pull his weight more? He'll rightly see it as the thin edge of the "support wedge".

Cheers,
Tim.

by timthetoolman

Hi,

Yes, I was interested to find the following facts when looking into the Anna777 thing...

GIJoe posted the following messge...

"Is this still a problem?"
To every question that was old and unlikely to be ever answered again.

...whichreaped many points due to auto closing one month later.

Significant numbers of points (didn't count as I didn't surf all 200 pages, but tens of thousands) were awarded to Anna777 and occasionally shared by others from GIJoe.

They are the facts.
Care to explain Anna777 ?

Tim.

by timthetoolman

I'd better slight amend my "facts". I should say...

"To many questions that was old and unlikely to be ever answered again."

I didn't surf them all....

Tim.

by otl

Been off-line during the changes, I liked the all open questions link (occasionally), I do like that they finally changed the sub-links to default to only open questions.

But 4.5%, whats the hit ratio for train the trainers or linux ? I would think closer to .01% or less. They stay and all open questions go ? Of course they got rid of it within a week after I used it, kind of like the auto-close feature.

I personnally would like to see all USER DELETED gone, if not a user then can not pose a question. Most of the ones I looked at today were asking how to pirate software or multi copy software/audio.

by nise_k

Hi,

I agree fully with the point that the "View All Open Qs" link was the most important and the most frequently used link.

For the last few months actually I was using that link only, and very rarely venturing out to other links.

I appreciate Tim for highlighting some behavioral flaws of the maintainers of TechRepublic. In this regards I would point-out one more thing -

The developers of TechRepublic didn't think about the importance of the "" tag for images. If you happento disable "images" in ur browser, u r bound to get stuck (u have to keep using "show picture" again and again).

I hope they will correct this.

Coming back to the "View All" part.

I think TechRepublic should atleast put-up questions asking for people to comment on it, when they r going to make some major changes.

Lastly, I hope that's a temp change.

Nise

by penguinsrule

Well yes, I used it all the time - and now it's gone - I'd love to have it back. For now, I just stick with the topics I know well and do everything I can to help folks out in those areas.

It sure has made it much harder though

by syscokid

This has me thinking about the summer of 2000, when they had a previous site redesign, and took away the link for awhile.

Every morning I'd check all the topics I was interested in. Then I'd hit Print Screen and paste the topic list to Paint.To check if any newe questions were posted, I'd refresh the All Topics screen to see if the open question totals had increased in any of my topics. Then I'd check out the questions, and copy the revised topic list to Paint.

Pretty darn cumbersome. I sure ain't doing that any more. I want my link back!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!1

by java guru

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How about closing this question and using

https://www.techrepublic.com/forumqa/thread_detail.jhtml?thread_id=91843&thread_title=View+All+Open+Questions+Link&invalidate=1

to get a solution that everyone can live with. If you need to, you can give the points to me and I will make sure you get them back. ;-)

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