What do you think of the new Q&A format here?

[Red Iron Crown]

32 minutes ago, Pecan said:

1. For thread-starters: DON'T reply to requests for  more information with a new post, it'll get lost in the noise.  Instead EDIT your original question
2. For responders: ALWAYS quote the post(s) you're replying to, if it's not the OP, as rating will make nonsense of any implied sequence
3. Everyone: as soon as it's more than a straight question -> answer, start a new thread in discussions (destroys most of the value of the format, but that's the price you pay for what's left).

 

I'd add to this:

4. Find an answer useful? Upvote it! Like it too if you want, but upvotes will help people find good answers when looking through older threads. This applies both to old threads and new, the usefulness of answer ratings is very much dependent on people actually rating answers (seems obvious, but we're all new to this format here).

[Geschosskopf]

6 hours ago, Pecan said:

As soon as there are requests for more information or a screenshot, as soon as there are multiple answers dealing with different aspects of the issue, as soon as there is more than one approach the rating system is worse than useless.  In this case that shouldn't be too much of a problem because the 'sort by date' option is easily available but people will have to get used to a few new habits if this format is to have any chance of being more useful that plain date-order:

Or just disable this whole system because it just doesn't fit for what goes on in the KSP forum.

[Murph]

Honestly, I'd rather pull out my fingernails with rusty vice grips, than use this garbage format.  I don't care that there's hoops I could jump through to get a marginally better presentation, that's too much effort to have to keep doing for every visit to the forum, every thread opened.

Historically, I've drifted in and out of levels of activity, but I'm not willing to deal with this new software on a regular basis.  My days of frequently browsing the latest questions and occasionally trying to help a newbie out are over, and never likely to return as long as the current horrible software and default discussion inhibiting format remains.

I hate the new software, I hate this new format.  I've come back to it repeatedly to see if I could warm to it, and I end up absolutely loathing it every single time.  Bad forum software, badly managed migration to it, bad user experience, just bad all round.

Overall, I'm mostly done with these forums because of the new software, I'm no longer interested in being an active part of them.

[Norpo]

I like the idea; I don't like the execution.

The basic concept is basically "People ask questions, people post answers, the best answers get voted to the top." To any programmer who's used Google before, this should sound familiar.

Problem is; Stack Overflow (and the whole Stack Exchange network) depend on five core things:

1. Back-and forth asking-questions-getting-answers and clarifications are non-ideal. Avoid this.

2. Don't repeat answers.

3. If you find an answer that needs editing to make it better, edit it (or comment on the answers to make suggest an edit to the OP)

4: The question asker can mark an answer as "accepted", i.e it worked for them. This means the answer will be at the top; for all to see.

5: No opinion-based questions, period. "What's the best X" or "is it better to X or Y?" are locked, deleted, cast into the void.

 

Problem is, this has none of that. EDIT2: Apparently it has the "best answer" feature, but that's it. My mistake. It's more akin to a free-for-all Yahoo Answers style thing, and that's not ideal (have you seen yahoo answers? I've never once found useful advice there) Not to mention most questions asked here would most likely a back-and-forth troubleshooting ordeal, as in "I haz problem!" "Give us a picture, we can help" "Okay, here's the picture" "Try moving the wings back" "It just flips out more, then", "Try moving them forward a bit" "That worked, thanks"

Not to mention it's basically a forum with a voting system tacked on, rather than being built around the voting system. The only reason question/answer/voting systems work at all is because they're built around it. On Reddit, you can reply to a post, and that will be voted up, but if someone replies to the reply, then that reply will be stuck onto the original one, so you can see it. In this system, if you want to say "But Norpo, you're wrong because X", you need to make a new post, quoting me, which may or may not end up being right next to my original post. That's bad; discussion over an answer should occur on that answer, not as an answer itself.

Stack Exchange sites take a slightly different approach, there's a question, there are answers, and there are comments. Comments can be used for clarification on questions ("when you say you have a 1 Mbit internet connection, do you mean Mbit or Mbyte?"), or on answers ("What do you mean when you say add more wings to the back, exactly?"), to make those better. Furthermore, duplicate answers will be voted down furiously to the bottom, meaning that at the top (non-negative scores, btw, this forum only has upvotes, another discussion entirely) will be unique answers.

This, though? This is just a forum with a voting system tacked on. The topic involves lots of back-and-forth communcation, which the current implementation discourages, comments and "answers" aren't distinguished from one another, so it's a mess of "Is this really an answer, or a comment about an answer?", comments aren't always bundled by the relevant context, and it's not really clear what votes should be used for. It's a mess, plain and simple. The only way it could work is if everyone upvotes only actual answers, and even then it's still worse than what it's trying to emulate; you can't "comment" on a question or answer, you can just provide your answer. That's it.

It could work; but it'd be more of a "Stack Exchange site"-lite rather than working very well. Where would opinion-based questions go? Here? That wouldn't work with this system at all. In fact; this very question is an example; rating as the default sorting method doesn't work all that well, heck, the top rated answer refers to a previous point in the discussion, and outright says "And by using sort by rating as the default value you'll make discussions hard to follow"; and I agree.

TL;DR: forum + sort by rating - comment system = mess

For those curious, this is an example of a Stack Overflow question; with answers, and commentary (by me!)

Spoiler

 

EDIT: Follow-up, also, what about the two ordering systems? There will be those that want to follow the stack overflow-esque style of just questions/answers/comments (no comments though in the forums, so we can't use those, which is a mess), and those that want to do a discussion. So you'll have two different types of people; making posts in two different formats. It would be a little bit like having the threads be half in modern-day english, and half like it was written in the 16th century. Possible to read; but difficult to follow.

Edited December 15, 2015 by Norpo
edit

[Speadge]

4 minutes ago, Norpo said:

TL;DR: forum + sort by rating - comment system = mess

a cool feature of this forum (like many others) is the SPOILER-tag/function!

[RocketBlam]

I like it, although I came here to submit a tip about heat management, and this format doesn't really let you do that without waiting for someone to ask about it first.

[Venusgate]

I like the ability to rate best answer, but three things bug me.

I cannot see how the "unanswered" greyed question mark left of the post in the list of threads ever changes, and two if you want to say your question is answered, you have to change your title manually, and three you can't see who last answered a question.

[Red Iron Crown]

18 hours ago, Venusgate said:

I like the ability to rate best answer, but three things bug me.

I cannot see how the "unanswered" greyed question mark left of the post in the list of threads ever changes, and two if you want to say your question is answered, you have to change your title manually, and three you can't see who last answered a question.

I think that's related to the number of upvotes the best answer receives. The threshold might need to be adjusted, not sure what it's set at now.

Edit: It's not set by votes, the OP or a moderator can select the best answer. Guess we need a new FAQ for this section...

[smjjames]

Honestly, I prefer the old forum style format.....

[JackBush]

What I miss is the viewership of a question. I like it when I can see that 28 people have looked at my question but nobody's answered it. Tells me there's something wrong with the question and I should try it a different way.

[cantab]

On 18/12/2015 at 8:10 PM, Red Iron Crown said:

I think that's related to the number of upvotes the best answer receives. The threshold might need to be adjusted, not sure what it's set at now.

Edit: It's not set by votes, the OP or a moderator can select the best answer. Guess we need a new FAQ for this section...

I for one cannot see anywhere to select best answer...

[Red Iron Crown]

16 hours ago, cantab said:

I for one cannot see anywhere to select best answer...

There should be a checkmark in a circle above the upvote button on repliess to your thread, clicking it marks that post as the best answer. I may need to test this with a regular user account, it might be only visible to moderators.

[steve_v]

As this ugly mess just bit me again... bump. It's confusing and infuriating, here and everywhere else. Please kill it.

Edited January 15, 2016 by steve_v

[Red Iron Crown]

On 12/19/2015 at 9:31 PM, cantab said:

I for one cannot see anywhere to select best answer...

Does this not appear to you?

If not it might be a permissions thing that needs fixing.

[Kerbart]

27 minutes ago, Red Iron Crown said:

Does this not appear to you?

If not it might be a permissions thing that needs fixing.

Just tap on the triangle. It appears that on some platforms that is the way to upvote an answer.

@Red Iron Crown; sorry for quoting the entire post but that seems to be the only way to retain context (I hate doing it, but alas...)

Edited January 15, 2016 by Kerbart
My stupidity

[Red Iron Crown]

@Kerbart Two different things. Upvoting answers can be done by any user, and helps point out good answers. Marking as "Best Answer" can only be done by the OP or a moderator, and is meant to point out the answer that helped the OP most.

[Kerbart]

3 minutes ago, Red Iron Crown said:

@Kerbart Two different things. Upvoting answers can be done by any user, and helps point out good answers. Marking as "Best Answer" can only be done by the OP or a moderator, and is meant to point out the answer that helped the OP most.

Oh? That's an option? Never noticed it!

It is definitely not there on my iPad (neither Firefox nor Safari). Maybe it disappears after marking an answer, but I cannot recall doing so.

[steve_v]

5 minutes ago, Red Iron Crown said:

Upvoting answers can be done by any user, and helps point out good answers.

Assuming it's a one question, multiple distinct answers type of thread, yeah... otherwise all it does is make a discussion impossible to follow and cause confusion. Not so bad perhaps if the sort order didn't default to "by rating" every time you open a thread.

 

[Red Iron Crown]

18 minutes ago, Kerbart said:

Oh? That's an option? Never noticed it!

It is definitely not there on my iPad (neither Firefox nor Safari). Maybe it disappears after marking an answer, but I cannot recall doing so.

Should only be an option for threads you start.

[John FX]

I`d say if you have a question start a question thread. If you want to start a discussion, start a discussion thread.

It would be nice i the forum remembered more personal settings, like post order on a thread by thread basis.

[Padishar]

Another issue with these Q&A threads is that the changes to ordering mess up links to the posts from activity pages (and probably other places too), e.g. go to my profile and about 2/3rds of the way down there is a post in the "It's been 6 months since I asked about the stutter" thread with 4 likes.  If you click on that link it takes you to the page of the thread that the post was originally on (page 2) but the post is now on page 1 because someone up-voted it and it fails to scroll to show it.

When the forum was migrated I wasn't too bothered because I knew some very scary things about vB so was happy to give this one a try.  Unfortunately, there seem to be so many annoying issues with this one that I'm thinking there must have been a better alternative...