Answers Is for Answers and the Forum Is for Questions?

[Ishtara Rothschild]

I see an increasing number of threads with questions in the General Discussion area and other subforums that would be better suited in the Answers section. I think new residents might find the forum layout a bit confusing; "Answers" suggests something more akin to an FAQ section or knowledge base, whereas "Forums" appears to be right place to ask a question. It might help if the Answers section was renamed to Questions, and the Forums tab to Discussions.

Another problem are land sellers who create a new thread for every single parcel they're trying to sell or rent. This fills the list of recently created threads with spam and makes it quite hard to find actual discussion threads. Would it be possible to restrict the number of new threads that residents can create in the Land subforum on a single day? I don't see why land sellers can't offer multiple parcels in a single thread.

Alternatively, threads in the Land subforum could be removed from the list of recent threads altogether. An advertisement is strictly speaking not a thread. Residents who are looking to buy or rent land can always check for new offers in the Land section. There is no reason why all forum participants should have to suffer the ad spam.

 

[Knowl Paine]

Agreed :smileyhappy:

[Rolig Loon]

I agree, Ishtara, although I suspect that the confusion is greater on the Forum side of the house.  Most of the questions we get in Answers really do belong in Answers.  We get occasional ones like today's "Which prim baby's [sic] are the best in SL?" that are clearly discussion questions, but most people who post in Answers actually do have FAQ sorts of things on their minds.

My biggest gripe, other than illiteracy (which is rampant everywhere), is laziness. A lot of people who post in either place don't bother to look first and figure out what other people are posting. In Answers, we get a dozen identical questions a day ("Where's the item I ordered from Marketplace and never received?", "Why am I a white cloud?") from people who could save themselves trouble by just reading what's already there.  No amount of relabelling our areas will cure that, sadly.

[Knowl Paine]

An Online indicator on Residents badges would be helpful.

When searching for previous solutions the question just asked effects the search results. Would be nice if it didn't do that.

I support a limit for land sales and other basic requirements that will promote quality listings. A "clear" photo requirement, an asking price and method of contact.

Get Answers could work or as you suggested Questions would be a better title than the current Answers. I have also noticed a lot of questions being asked in the Discussion Forums and a few clear advertisements posing as discussions.

A little off topic is the addition of a way to see which languages a KB article has been translated to when you've found the solution in your choosen language and you want to provide a KB link to the questioner in their own language. 

 

[Peewee Musytari]

Both issues have previously been discussed at the CTUG meetings. Trying to recall what conclusions were reached, without having to re-read the transcripts lol

The name "Answers" was pretty much disliked by everyone, the new name needs to be easily recognizable by all languages and I think Q&A was the most popular suggested name. Not sure why it hasn`t been changed yet, but while that section is still such a mess it is probably better to change the name after its fixed, which is meant to be this week.....It will be fixed by Thursday right Lexie? lol 

On the issue of the land rental spam, the Lindens agreed with us that it was messy and unfair (as no one else is allowed to advertise on the forums) & as far as I can recall they were looking into ways of stopping that stuff showing on the recent posts lists.

You could add both topics to the agenda for this weeks meeting to get a progress report for them.

[Ishtara Rothschild]

Thanks, that's good news

[Paladin Pinion]

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Rolig Loon wrote:

My biggest gripe, other than illiteracy (which is rampant everywhere), is laziness. A lot of people who post in either place don't bother to look first and figure out what other people are posting.

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Illiteracy -- god yes. My pet peeve.

I don't suppose there's any way it would happen, but a great addition here would be a search-as-you-type feature the way Google does it. When a person started to type the title of thier post, a drop-down list would appear with the titles of other existing threads that covered the same or related issues. If the user selected an existing thread from the list, they'd jump to it immediately without any "do you want to save this question?" dialog.

So as soon as the words "white cloud" or "white egg" appeared in the title, off they'd go.

[Peewee Musytari]

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Paladin Pinion wrote:

I don't suppose there's any way it would happen, but a great addition here would be a search-as-you-type feature the way Google does it. When a person started to type the title of thier post, a drop-down list would appear with the titles of other existing threads that covered the same or related issues. If the user selected an existing thread from the list, they'd jump to it immediately without any "do you want to save this question?" dialog.

So as soon as the words "white cloud" or "white egg" appeared in the title, off they'd go.

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Unless it has changed, that is exactly how it worked the last time I posted a question on Answers. It must work for some people, because we do see comments made by some about other posts they have found.

Unfortunately for others it seems to add to the confusion, because when you click on any of the suggested posts it takes you off into the realms of search result listings and the question you were typing is lost, without any sort of directions as to how to get  back to it. You then get some that click on each post in the search results (even those over a year old) and posting at the bottom of each one "this is happening to me too". LOL

[Venus Petrov]

@Peewee, yes the 'rename the Answsers Forum' thing has been raised 2-3 times at CTUG meetings.  The first time it was raised, the response was that 'Answers' is 'standard' for other sites.  (bah)  Then, the last couple of times, it was promised they would look into being able to change it.  It seems like such a minor yet very helpful change and I do not know why it has not yet been done.

Q&A seemed to be the better name.