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

[cantab]

Unlike the rest of the forums, the Gameplay Questions section has been switched to a Q&A format reminiscent of Yahoo Answers. It's one of the bigger changes and the less talked about ones, so I thought I'd ask what do people think about it?

I reckon it's going to be a mixed bag. On the plus side, with any luck it will help focus people on answering the question and have less going way off topic like used to happen somewhat. Being able to choose a "best answer" might also make it a more useful ongoing resource.

On the minus side, questions do spark fair and relevant discussion, the answer isn't always clear or something a single respondent can necessarily give immediately by themselves, and the new format may stymie that. I also don't like not seeing the date/time of the last post easily as is the case elsewhere.

A note to the mods: I'd rather this thread stays here, or at least somewhere using the Q&A format, so that it can be self-demonstrating as it were.

[Harry Rhodan]

6 minutes ago, cantab said:

Being able to choose a "best answer" might also make it a more useful ongoing resource.

But let's be honest: Most people don't search for answers but will still make a new thread.

And by using sort by rating as the default value you'll make discussions hard to follow.

[Yakuzi]

While I'm not the biggest fan of the new forum layout in general, I actually quite like the new Q&A format. You can easily find the best/most appropriate answer when viewing the thread initially, then click the "Sort by Date" button to follow any discussion if you're interested.

I wouldn't mind this format implemented in the "Suggestions & Development" section either, would be very useful.

@KasperVld

@Mods

Edited November 30, 2015 by Yakuzi

[Kobymaru]

I think the format is a great idea, simply for the reason that in the old format, it was too hard to actually *find* the answer, if the thread had one.

Quite frankly, I grew tired of the whole "forum" thing because in every single thread, the few posts with crucial information is buried in hundreds of pages of thousands of posts, where a huge part are "useless".

25 minutes ago, Harry Rhodan said:

But let's be honest: Most people don't search for answers but will still make a new thread.

Well, why do you think that is? Have you tried actually looking for an answer to a question you had? The forum search was useless, and it was really hard to find good answers, because it was just masked with all of the noise (no idea how the new one is). I started to use Google for searching the forums.

This is especially a problem in Mod threads. I have to admit I usually check the last 2-3 pages, and if they didn't have the same question as I had, I would just ask it again. It's just too hard to find what you are looking for.

 

9 minutes ago, Yakuzi said:

@KasperVld

@Mods

 

@Yakuzi: Why do you tag your posts? Is this what's gonna happen now, everyone Tags (at)KasperVlad (at)Dr_Turkey (at)HarvesteR (at)EveryoneAtSquad for every single request they have and think that their particular request is the most important one of all?

[Streetwind]

I'm not thrilled by the idea.

I agree with cantab in that generally, the complexity of KSP gameplay questions practically guarantees that the best answer is the amalgamation of multiple user's inputs, and not a single individual posts. This isn't "how many minutes do I need to cook and egg to have it hard boiled" - "5 minutes" - "okay, answered". This is "My rocket keeps flipping! Halp" which can have its roots in anything from rocket design over flight profiles and watching outdated tutorials to not reading the rightclick info on the Swivel engine and perhaps even a fundamental lack of understanding of physics. And it's usually a combination of factors.

However I'll give it a chance, see how it works out before I condemn it...

[steuben]

it needs a last posted line like the other fora.. forums... forex.

given the changes over time from new aero, part rebalancing, etc. an answer from .23 won't work in 1.0.5, and may point people in the wrong direction.

 

[Streetwind]

So I just went back to one of my own threads in this forum, and voted an answer up in order to create a "best answer" and see what it would do.

Guess what? This forum sorts the posts inside a thread not by date, but rather by vote count. And it's not like for example Microsoft Technet does, where it adds a copy of the highest rated answer at the top but preserves the thread structure below in its original form. No, it literally moves the posts around. If you have a five page discussion on a complex topic, and people actively vote on replies they like, you will get a completely disjointed jumble of postings in no chronological or logical order on the first page of the thread!

You need to manually set "sort by date" at the top of the thread in order to prevent this. I suppose it's a solution, but not a very good one. I hope it at least remembers it as a global setting, and not as a per-thread (or even per-view) setting!

 

EDIT: Aaaaand it's a per-view setting. The worst possible option out of three. Welp.

Edited November 30, 2015 by Streetwind

[EuSouONumero345]

@everyonethatexistsinthisplanetshouldhatethenewforumscausetheylookawfulbutstillthisdesignchoicewaskindagoodandilikeitsomewhat
Aw it didn't recognize it as a tag

 

Edited November 30, 2015 by EuSouONumero345

[Octa]

Certainly good for short threads/question, but the longer the thread goes, the worse it gets.

[Snark]

I absolutely loathe the new format, at least for the overview page that lists all the threads.  It doesn't show when the last post was, or by whom, or how many views the thread has.

I like posting answers here.  I like being helpful to people.  There are a lot of other helpful people out there, too.  I'm interested in recent things, and "when was the question originally posted" is completely useless for that because there are long, on-going discussions and the original thread may have been posted quite some time in the past.  What are people talking about now is much more useful than "when was this originally asked?" which is almost irrelevant.

It's also really bad because it's inconsistent with the other forums, which makes it very hard to train my eyeballs to be able to skim through and pick out the interesting bits.  I can't skim.  General UI principle:  Any time you have a very data-intensive UI that presents lots and lots of information to the viewer, it's really important to keep the organization and presentation of that data as consistent and uniform as possible so that people don't have to do jarring mental context switches when they move around.

I find the overview page here to be horrible, useless, and inconsistent, which makes it much less likely that I'm going to find and respond to issues, which in turn means I'm contributing less value.  Yuck.

As for the Q&A format of the threads themselves:  I honestly can't say what my opinion is, because the hideous overview page has been so off-putting that I'm strongly discouraged from trying to post any advice anymore, so I don't experience the threads.  From what other folks in this thread have already posted, I expect I will hate it.  These are discussion threads.  Ranking answers by "most helpful" might make sense for cases where there's a simple, obvious answer to a question, and you assume that every post in a thread is a direct response to the original poster's question.  However, that's not the case in KSP.  KSP is a big, complicated, open-ended game, and the questions here result in lively and ongoing discussions.  The first tiny handful of responses may directly address the OP, but for everything after that, people aren't directly responding to the OP: they're responding to previous posters in the thread.  The thread topology isn't a "star" formation with the OP's question in the center:  it's a "linked list" with the OP's post at the head of the list.  The Q&A format is trying to force things into a "star" configuration, when they fundamentally aren't, which just adds confusion and obfuscation.

Please, please turn this into a general discussion format like the other forums.

[Merandix]

It was my favourite forum BECAUSE of the usual discussions spawned here and the great ideas that sometimes come from it.

I could dig the 'best answer' approach if it kept the entire topic chronologically and put a COPY of the most popular answer below the opening post.

This just messes up interesting discussions.

[RocketPropelledGiraffe]

42 minutes ago, Merandix said:

It was my favourite forum BECAUSE of the usual discussions spawned here and the great ideas that sometimes come from it.

Same here. The thing is, a "Q&A"-style forum is not acutally a forum because you loose the progression of the developing discussion - or rather, it tends to prevent a discussion from developping at all.

 

The style will work well for simple and standard questions - anything else will be better put in the "General" forum and people will adapt to that. Maybe that's exactly what Squad intended by moving the Q&A way down in the forum list?

[manaiaK]

6 hours ago, Kobymaru said:

Well, why do you think that is?

Because people are people. And the game changes, so a Q&A from 2013 or even early 2015 may well be wrong in significant ways.

Quote

Have you tried actually looking for an answer to a question you had?

Yes ... and often learned about a lot of stuff that I didn't know I needed to know, by reading the thread. KSP done right is hard, unless you come from an aerospace background.

If people want to upvote stuff, there's Reddit. I liked that vBulletin required social conventions to govern the 'look and feel' of the forums.

[Kerbart]

This can work wonderfully well if people consistently vote up what they think is the best answer. There are a few caveats:

• Responses to answers get placed out of order. No problem when you keep this in mind when writing an answer: use quotes, etc. Of course, given the attention 95% of the posters paid to formatting on the previous forum makes me weary that this is going to happen.
• A good answer providing radical new insights will have zero likes, is unlikely to be read and will thus not float to the top. Of course, if everyone always takes the time to read all the answers, not a problem. But what's the point in reading all answers when the “best” one is already at the top?

[Jouni]

I guess this is now a "KSP Stack Exchange". The format can work, as it has worked with many other complex subjects. I'm not sure whether the forum software is adequate for the task, however.

[JedTech]

I like the new format.
I think this new format will allow users to find helpful answers in a quick fashion. Who wants to read a huge discussion just to find an answer?

[Geschosskopf]

I'm of mixed opinions.

#1:  I don't like moving this forum out of the "General KSP" group.  Everybody's in the habit of looking for it as the next forum under General Discussion, which is now occupied by development suggestions, kinda the exact opposite of this forum.  So I strongly recommend switching places with those 2 forums so this Q&A thing is back in its original place and the dev suggestions is down here off the beaten track.

#2.  I kinda like the "popular questions" thing at the top, sort of a semi-sticky thing for hot topics.  That's actually somewhat handy.

#3.  I do not at all like how the OP of a thread gets put up at the top of every page of a multi-page thread.  Every time I see that, I keep thinking some idiot came along and posted pretty much the same question as the OP without reading all the many posts since then, and I have to restrain myself from making a snarky reply to the OP.  So I'd eliminate that feature.  But if you can't do that, at least color-code it so it looks VERY different from a regular post, has "THIS IS THE ORIGINAL POST" stenciled all over it in flashing letters, etc.

[Yakuzi]

10 hours ago, Kobymaru said:

Quite frankly, I grew tired of the whole "forum" thing because in every single thread, the few posts with crucial information is buried in hundreds of pages of thousands of posts, where a huge part are "useless".

@Yakuzi: Why do you tag your posts? Is this what's gonna happen now, everyone Tags (at)KasperVlad (at)Dr_Turkey (at)HarvesteR (at)EveryoneAtSquad for every single request they have and think that their particular request is the most important one of all?

Your first sentence answers your second... since useful suggestions also get "buried in hundreds of pages" in the the Suggestions and Development Discussion, I thought it'd be better to tag Kasper here so he can take the appropriate steps to circumvent these problems.

Also, that is what tagging is for, n'est-ce pas?

Also, my particular request is the most important one of all 

Edited November 30, 2015 by Yakuzi
Error 418: I'm a teapot

[dborgo]

First time looking at the new forum, just started reading this post, and didn't even notice post times were out of order. No wonder I've been so confused. Forums like this, where there is much ongoing discussion, need to default to "sort by date." Let those who want a quick search for the best answers click to "sort by rating." It just makes more sense.

[technion]

19 hours ago, Harry Rhodan said:

But let's be honest: Most people don't search for answers but will still make a new thread.

And in this game that's not  a terrible thing.

Plenty of my questions have had Google hits for appropriate answers back in 0.22 or whatever, but they are wrong now. It would be count intuitive for them to be more visible than a current, and correct answer, on the basis of upvotes.

[Warzouz]

Let's give it a try.

There maybe a difference between questions asked by newbees which need step by step help, and "not so newbees" which are able to navigate trough existing topics.

[Claw]

There is a sort-by-date option. I just wish it remembered the user selection from post to post. Perhaps it's a setting somewhere...I'll ask/take a look.

 

I don't mind the sorting by popular answer, but I've already been confused when the best answer was the final post in a train of discussion, and it's lost context. I suppose that might end up with a change of feel for how people post. Personally I am also a fan of the conversations/banter. Though I also agree when a new person asks a question, they are sometimes innundated with answers.

Not that a popular answer sort would help, since the user would still have to read answers to vote on them anyway.

 

Cheers,

-Claw

[jackal40]

Haven't used it much, but I prefer the older format. I read to see what the current issues are and they were always on top. Now, it's harder for me to see that. I guess a big part of that is the new forum software.

I just don't find myself coming here as often now.

[mhoram]

Previously this Subforum contained at least two kinds of threads:

• questions with answers
• discussions about game mechanics

Best way would be in my opinion to keep the questions in here and to start new discussions in another subforum. For the lack of subforum that now handles gameplay mechanic discussion, General discussion seems to be the best option for that.

[Claw]

Well, I've made it my forum life in this section and in support. I'm personally having a rough time adjusting to this new setup here (and I agree that I like reading in time order, vice popular answer).

mhoram may be onto something with discussions happening elsewhere, and this being for quick answers. Except that I know from practical experience, that it's often the question that spurs the discussion.