If you had to rank three flaws with the design of WikiAnswers that need immediate correction what would they be?

Answer 1

1) Change the interface for users asking a questions so that the likelihood of them creating a bad redirect is vastly reduced. To do this, there are many parts:

A) Make the function that gives same-as suggestions better so that its suggestions are actually relevant. There are numerous shortcomings and/or bugs that prevent it from finding questions which are totally obvious (ie share multiple keys words in common). This is clearly very technically challenging and may take time. However, keep reading because parts (B) through (F) can still be implemented in the meantime while this is being developed.

B) After submitting the question, suggestions should be given. However if should be made much clearer at this stage that users do not have to pick one of these option. A bold-face sentence like "Before submitting your question, make sure that it is not one of these already posted questions. If it does not match EXACTLY, please submit your question here." I also like Schnaz's suggestion in the Super Forum that the "Answer" bar in the header should be replaced with a "Search" bar, which will also reduce the number of questions and alternate wordings and bad redirects which are created and which are never deleted.

C) Finally, if users to pick a question as being the same as theirs, there should be a confirmation step -- perhaps after the answer page is displayed -- where the user is asked "Is this the same question as the one you asked? Note that in the future all users who ask your question will be directed to this page."

D) And on the Super's side, there should be a direct link from my Watchlist when somebody says a question is the same as another that allows you to immediately split (and move?) that question without going through 3 other pages to do that.

E) And the hardest and slowest: Search and destroy all bad redirects lurking under every dark corner in this entire site!!!! And the only way to do this in a reasonable way is with a very powerful function developed for this purpose -- and regarding that, I have no idea!

F) Create a 3rd tier of alternate wording that are NOT searched by the function that generates same-as suggestions. These are wordings that are just bad, that mix up different concepts and generally cause redirect problems. If wordings are going to be deleted, they should at least be disabled. This would of course be a Super-only power to be used conservatively.

2) Change the search function on the "search" page so that it can find parts of words. Having to search twice for a word, once in the singular and once in the plural is simply ridiculous. Obviously exact matches should rank higher, but partial-word matches should be listed higher than the results that only have one of the two (or more) key words entered into the search bar. I don't even both using the search function anymore because of this shortcoming.

3) Increase bandwidth so that loading pages takes much less time -- in particular functions such as splitting, moving, and editing question wording are really really really slow. This nothing short of infuriating with computers that run at the speeds they do today. There is just no excuse for a web-based for-profit company to have such a snail-like interface. Answers.com isn't much faster either. If this isn't worth spending some money on, I don't know what is.

4) Well you asked for 3, but the rating system is worthless, and would be really nice if it worked well, but these other three are so much more important. But I couldn't resist adding it also.

-- JEK

I don't know that I can rank the issues, but allow me to ramble: 1) Topics: I did some maintenance on the sports topic and was astounded by how many questions were misplaced. It is understandable for a certain amount to be misplaced but there must have been literally 1 in 3 that were misplaced, if not more. The vast majority of those that were misplaced were due to the asker not drilling down far enough to find the specific topic of their question. Our friends down under and across the pond probably have no idea there is a Rugby topic listed under Miscellaneous Sports. Or a Cricket topic. There were many questions in the Sports topic concerning firearms. But a breakdown of firearms topics are under Collectibles. ?. No one should be allowed to place a question in a 'main topic heading' (ie., Arts and Entertainment, Health, Sports, etc.). These headings should be markers. Click on the marker and you will see the topics listed, which would include a 'Miscellaneous Arts and Entertainment', 'Miscellaneous Health', and so on. I would suggest a different way of presenting topics to the asker for selection. Maybe when the asker clicks on 'Sports' every single topic under the heading will be shown. Sports (Font Color Red)

.... American Football (Font Color Blue)

........College Football (Font Color Green)

........Football History (Font Color Green)

........Football Memorabilia (Font Color Green)

........NFL Teams (Font Color Blue)

............Arizona Cardinals (Font Color Green)

............

............

............Washington Redskins (Font Color Green)

........Super Bowl (Font Color Green)

....Baseball (Font Color Blue)

........Baseball History (Font Color Green) And so on. Display all specific topics under a main heading marker in hopes that the asker will choose the most specific topic for the question. This may create a long page but it will help direct the user to a specific topic. And possibly a discussion on revamping the topic system in general. Some topics seem to be 'out of place' to me. This might also be addressed by having a 'topics dictionary' that I wrote about on the Forum. 2) Consolidate Tasks on One Screen: I have posted on the Forum concerning this. 3) User's Guide: This was brought up on the Forum a few days ago. Many users come to the site and are literally flying blind. Maybe directing them to a user's guide would help in getting better worded questions and better selected topics. I appreciate that the site has many, many users under the legal drinking age and how a user's guide would work with them is questionable. But possibly it would get folks more interested in the site and interested in doing things the WikiAnswers way. 4) Inconsistancies: If I edit a link or move a misplaced redirect, I can press the Enter key and it acts as if I have clicked the Update button. If I add a related question, I cannot press the Enter key and have it act as if I clicked the Update button. In this case nothing is saved and the edit box becomes blank. Maybe not that big of a deal but, after typing in data, it is somewhat easier to press the enter key than to take one's hand off the keyboard and go to the mouse. In all cases like this the Enter key should act as a mouse click of the Update button. Also, clicking on a question in the watchlist or recent site changes opens the question in a new tab (MS VISTA), but clicking on a question when browsing (http://wiki.answers.com/Q/FAQ/XXXX%29opens the question in the same tab. If I am merging questions and I click twice on the Update button I get a messagebox telling me only to click once. If I edit topics and click on the Update button twice I get no error message and the question becomes a duplicate as it has two topic records created for each topic checked. I believe this also occurs with splits. 5) This editor is somewhat difficult at times. 6) If I revert a question to version 1, the original clean question as asked, and there are links associated with the answer the links are not reverted along with the answer? I have to remove the links and revert? 7) Many screens do not have a cursor placed in an edit box upon display. I go to move a misplaced redirect, a screen displays with one edit box, and the cursor is nowhere to be found. I have to click with the mouse in the edit box to get a cursor before entering the question to move the redirect to. This occurs on practically every screen that has edit box. No cursor initially, you have to click in the edit box to get the cursor. We work with the system everyday. We know what is needed to get tasks done more efficiently. We could do the analysis required. We already have, it's just not down on paper. Developing a system is 90 percent analysis and 10 percent coding. If analysis is done correctly, coding is a breeze. I don't know of the legalities involved in allowing volunteers to help develop a system but certainly there are some. I would be willing to sign whatever type of nondisclosure or noncompete waiver that is necessary. Thanks for asking Schnaz, if I may be so familiar. NEXT! PS - I am now getting an email everytime the Forum is updated. I don't remember changing anything concerning that so is this something new? Okay, I'll give my listing! 1. Redirects - Need better 'bulk' editing tools to help get them undercontrol. 2. Question rating system - Maybe it needs to be reset every few months. But the questions that are showing up as tops in my categories are the worst in the whole section and should be at the bottom! 3. The 'shadow' categories are just annoying to me. Granted, they help people find things, but when it comes to moving and editing they bother me. Aggie80

1. That [expletive deleted] WYSIWIG editor!
   1. Instead of being a generic HTML editor, it needs to produce and display MediaWiki markup!
   1. It should only change what the user change, not what it decides to change on its own! The current form makes it impossible to determine what the user changed and what it decided to mess with.
   1. There needs to be an option to disable the stupid thing entirely and return to pure, total MediaWiki markup! (This also means reenabling the entire MediaWiki markup set!!!)
2. The Ask vs. Search function, as above.

1. TBD.

How about allowing real people to post real questions rather than computer qenerated questions designed for search engine optimization. Has no one ever noticed that after answering a question, there is NEVER a response saying thank you or clarification? It's sad really

Kevin