in reply to Categorized Q&A Cleanup Finally....

Since the Q&A section is such a important section, people must put extra effort when writing for it. The idea of editors is very good. When a person submits their answer, the editors should go over it and see if it is satifactory. If the answer is good, then the editors post it and give the person who wrote 1 or 2 XP based on its quality. If the "idea" was good but it needed editing, the editors would edit it, then post it, and the submitter would get no XP. If the answer is completely worthless, the submitter would be penalized -2 XP. That is how I would go about since it forces people that submit answers to put more effort into being correct in their answers rather than just guessing off the top of their head.

-- zdog (Zenon Zabinski)
   Go Bells!!

  • Comment on (zdog) RE: Categorized Q&A Cleanup Finally....

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RE: RE: Categorized Q&A Cleanup Finally....
by KM (Priest) on Jun 07, 2000 at 00:19 UTC
    Personally, I think is a bit much. I don't know if you would want to have a question sitting around waiting for a moderator to approve it. What if none are around for a day, or even a few hours. This could mean someone misses a good answer in a timely manner. I also don't think that moderators should be giving XP to answers unless it is with their regular votes. Things could be tracked so if someone consistently gives bad answers, some action could be taken (NO ANSWERS FOR YOU, 1 YEAR!) to help avoid people just making life hard for the moderators.

    Cheers,
    KM

      I don't think having an answer take a while in Q&A is such a bad thing. Q&A is meant for common, general questions which will help many people down the line. As such, the answers should be fairly general and definitely well thought-out. These two things require more time than firing off a quickly hacked solution or workaround. Questions regarding how to do something very specific should be put in SOPW, since the whole site is set up to prioritize those questions. I still don't think the warning in Q&A that many valid questions are inappropriate for that section is big enough; perhaps mentioning that answers are likely to take longer and not relate as specifically to the problem will discourage people (especially AMs) from posting off-topic questions.
        I think answers taking a long time in not a Good Thing. Imaging this scenario:
        Q: Where can I learn about regular expressions?
        ... someone answers perlpre withing 2 minutes...
        ... 6 hours go by because no moderators are online ...
        A moderator comes online, sees 30 Q&A to weed through, spends an hour on it, doesn't get to this one. In the meantime, 10 other people answer.... moderators get bogged down having to approve EVERY answer before they get posted.. people get angry at moderators because no answers are being posted... etc...

        Cheers,
        KM

      That is a good point about editors not being available, however, I have an idea to help prevent that. How about people sign up to aprove answers daily? And some kind of XP reward could be awarded for people that sign up to be editors. And to make sure that the editors can be trusted, they have to have over some minimum of XP points (300 is my suggestion). I feel that this could solve your concern.

      As far as editors giving out XP, why not, if they are qualified to be editors then I feel that they have some kind of authority to give small amounts of XP.

      -- zdog (Zenon Zabinski)
         Go Bells!!