How should TMW repair this answers flaw?

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The problem I see is that new users don't understand the answers interface. Why do I say that? Because when a new user asks a question and get an answer, they often want to ask a followup question, which SHOULD be asked as a comment on the answer. This is entirely ok of course, and encouraged. It shows that a person is interested in the answer, and wants to learn more.
The flaw is, how should they do that? What do they see?
The new user sees a LARGE box, for a new answer. There is also a tiny blue button to add a comment to that answer. But they see a LARGE BOX to type in.
Honestly, what will the novice user type in to ask a followup question or make a comment? The big BOX of course, that lets them type. So every new user keeps adding new answers to their question for every comment. Eventually they learn, but only if someone is able to get their attention.
In one case, I saw Image Analyst actually move an answer into a comment, deleting the answer and pasting in the text as a comment in the appropriate place. He then added extra text to explain what he had done and why. I considered doing it myself at least once, but this takes extra work, and given the number of times it happens it is clear that this won't be done often by someone who has the powers to make that move.
My point is, the problem is the choice of user interface for a response. Big visible edit box for text (as an answer) versus little tiny comment link. And all the comment link does is create a comment edit box that should have been visible in the first place!
  15 Comments
John D'Errico
John D'Errico on 16 Dec 2014
Edited: John D'Errico on 16 Dec 2014
Yes, once people know their way around, there is never an issue. At least make it so for the first answer posted by an individual, an intercepting box pops up first that explains the difference between a comment and an answer, and asks them if they really intended to answer the question or if this should have been a comment. And if it is made at least as easy to comment as it is to answer, then they will get the idea.
dpb
dpb on 16 Dec 2014
Edited: dpb on 17 Dec 2014
My thought initially was the respondent can edit the question to announce he's got an answer or simply delete it rather than adding an answer. This is a little draconian, yes, but often the query really is rather low-level so didn't figure it was too much of a hit in actual content.
But, I did mollify the position to essentially agree w/ John that make the button choice the interface altho I think it's still highly likely whichever is the first one in the pecking order will get the majority of hits for the uninitiated unless a really major redesign were to take place (and no, I don't have a better one to suggest at the moment; I "don't do windows" (meaning I never have built gui interfaces so have no expertise whatsoever in the area)).
I still think there's a high probability that simply the facility to fixup these mixed up entries automagically given to the folks who can edit/delete questions now would likely lead to sufficient cleanup that the issue might become moot since it wouldn't be such a major hassle to do.
My primary reason for the newsgroup, Adam, is simply one of the much lower user overhead in reading responding via a newsreader than that of the web interface means I can do much more much quicker. And, I don't see that Answers has reduced the number of "eternal september" queries by becoming the de facto FAQ simply for the reasons outlined above.
I do like the facility to add attachments and to host screenshots or figures as it does sometimes clarify what the poster's real intent is and it is a more convenient way to get a dataset of size. (Of course, while most newbies don't "get" it, it's also true that a sample size of 5 is generally just as informative as 5000.) But there are newsreaders that can handle attachments (I use Thunderbird as one) but I can scan multiple newsgroups and respond to both cs-sm and comp.lang.fortran (as a couple of technical newsgroups I follow) in the time it takes to do perhaps half to maybe two-thirds the number here but I also have another 4 or 5 nontechnical groups plus OpenWatcom that I monitor. The newsreader lets me have those all in one place at a much less intensive user interface.

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Accepted Answer

Sean de Wolski
Sean de Wolski on 15 Dec 2014
I agree with a fair amount of what has been said. Here's a "constructive" way for y'all to help.
Randy is the main developer for Answers, but he has a User Experience person who is looking for new ways to enhance the page. I highly recommend asking them to do usability studies (you can email Randy or me, I'll forward it along). In theses studies, you can not only provide real feedback on upcoming features, but more importantly can rant about whatever you want!
  2 Comments
dpb
dpb on 15 Dec 2014
Thanks, that is a useful piece of info...my complaint w/ the forum in large part is that it's more of a "high maintenance" form to read/respond to than a newsgroup so I'm tending to back off with other demands for time...the enhancements of attachments/formatting/editing just don't make up for the klunkiness and I don't think the idea of it being a searchable database that gets queries answered by users finding their problem already solved works -- not that the answer isn't likely somewhere already but that virtually nobody will search a priori and don't know how second and lastly wouldn't recognize it is the answer even if 1) and 2) weren't obstacles because it isn't exactly couched as their particular problem.
John D'Errico
John D'Errico on 16 Dec 2014
I've participated in a couple of those studies before. It is not at all hard to do, and I hope I was able to provide some useful feedback.

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More Answers (2)

Jan
Jan on 14 Dec 2014
There are no explanations on the page for posting a question. Neither the intention of the "Question" line is mentioned, nor the method to format code, the idea of the question/answer/comment fields.
The small "? help" button opens an identical page on a right-click, on a left-click just the mark-up is explained, but as we see in the frequently missing formatting, this list has no high impact factor.
There are smart ideas behind the interface, but they are not intuitively clear. Then some instructions are required.
  1 Comment
dpb
dpb on 15 Dec 2014
Since folks generally don't read Help first as a rule, IMO the defaults should be such that what one would expect an uninitiated user to do should lead to expected results. For a coding forum, for the default edit/entry tool to be one with word-wrap "on" and not honor spacing and line breaks is simply the wrong basic starting point.
If that weren't the case and the edit box were to leave stuff as the user input it, I'd guess about 75% of the code posted would, while not necessarily be "ideally" formatted, would at least be legible and not require reformatting to even read well enough to try to decipher the underlying question raised.
I've not kept statistics, but quite a high number of questions I've edit'ed for the purpose simply need the two spaces inserted at the beginning of the first code line. If it weren't for it then by default reverting to wrapping after a blank line, a very high fraction would then be ok; as is, often have to either remove a bunch of blank lines or introduce the double-blanks for a number of paragraphs or the like to get clean copy.
That change alone (to turn off word wrap) would solve a high percentage of the formatting issues. It won't fix those who put the whole query in the subject line (limiting it to 30 characters (say) or less would, however, stop most of that.
If high-points users could simply convert a COMMENT to an ANSWER or the reverse with a button, could clean up that quickly enough that likely a number of the regulars would do so.
Adding another nuisance issue, when anybody does an EDIT on an Answer or Comment, the link to that (often the last) entry is broken. While get there from the Question link, it's inconvenient.

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Image Analyst
Image Analyst on 1 Feb 2015
One other flaw I've noticed is that the count of displayed answers is not correct. It will say 1-50 displayed, yet there is really only 15-20 answers displayed. Makes you wonder whatever happened to the other 30-35 answers . Were they perhaps spams that got removed and put into the spam quarantine yet are still being counted on the home screen as being displayed? Or is the count just wrong for some other reason?

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