I’d like it if we could give answers titles and have those show in the navigation. There are times, like in this question, where letting multiple people give answers makes sense, so letting people title their answers seems helpful there. Also just seems to go with with the way the question has a title and body text, so let the answers do the same.
Give the asker the ability to make one of the answers as the “correct” answer that will show first regardless of score and with a little mark showing it the accepted answer by the asker, similar to the way Stack Overflow does it. Doesn’t make sense for all questions but may make sense for some.
Do something to the UI to better encourage people to give answers rather than leave comments. I’ve seen a number of questions where people leave comments instead of answers when they are clearly giving an answer. I’m not sure if these people are confused about the UI or for some reason hesitate to reply with an answer whereas a comment feels more appropriate. Maybe hiding the comments by default but making them visible if you click something to show them, since it seems they should be mainly of interest to the asker and people who are confused by the question who want to get clarification about the question.
Overall I really like the Q&A feature, especially since I think it encourages people to discuss things they otherwise might not. Obviously they could have done this before, and I know there have been a few posts specifically structured with body’s of the form “hey, tell me what you think about this in the comments”, but the Q&A feature helps make the explicit so you know even before you read the post how you are expected to interact with it.
Re: “titles”, there were a couple things we were worried about with that, still a bit unsure about:
if titles were required (or optional, but featured prominently) people might feel obligated to come up with one, and in many cases the answer might not have an obvious title, and this might discouraging people from writing an answer in the first place.
even if fully optional, titles might shift people into a mindset that’s less conversational and more formal, and we had some sense that people actually do a better job of tailoring answers to questions in a conversational setting.
I do still think that, at least some of the time, an answer does seem to have an obvious summary/short-moniker that makes it easier to handle, which would help with skimming or using the table of contents. I’m not sure the best way to enable that sort of thing in the cases where it’s appropriate without having slightly-stifling effects the rest of the time.
A few of things I’ve noticed.
I’d like it if we could give answers titles and have those show in the navigation. There are times, like in this question, where letting multiple people give answers makes sense, so letting people title their answers seems helpful there. Also just seems to go with with the way the question has a title and body text, so let the answers do the same.
Give the asker the ability to make one of the answers as the “correct” answer that will show first regardless of score and with a little mark showing it the accepted answer by the asker, similar to the way Stack Overflow does it. Doesn’t make sense for all questions but may make sense for some.
Do something to the UI to better encourage people to give answers rather than leave comments. I’ve seen a number of questions where people leave comments instead of answers when they are clearly giving an answer. I’m not sure if these people are confused about the UI or for some reason hesitate to reply with an answer whereas a comment feels more appropriate. Maybe hiding the comments by default but making them visible if you click something to show them, since it seems they should be mainly of interest to the asker and people who are confused by the question who want to get clarification about the question.
Overall I really like the Q&A feature, especially since I think it encourages people to discuss things they otherwise might not. Obviously they could have done this before, and I know there have been a few posts specifically structured with body’s of the form “hey, tell me what you think about this in the comments”, but the Q&A feature helps make the explicit so you know even before you read the post how you are expected to interact with it.
Nod.
Re: “titles”, there were a couple things we were worried about with that, still a bit unsure about:
if titles were required (or optional, but featured prominently) people might feel obligated to come up with one, and in many cases the answer might not have an obvious title, and this might discouraging people from writing an answer in the first place.
even if fully optional, titles might shift people into a mindset that’s less conversational and more formal, and we had some sense that people actually do a better job of tailoring answers to questions in a conversational setting.
I do still think that, at least some of the time, an answer does seem to have an obvious summary/short-moniker that makes it easier to handle, which would help with skimming or using the table of contents. I’m not sure the best way to enable that sort of thing in the cases where it’s appropriate without having slightly-stifling effects the rest of the time.