Reminder to select best answer?

Question

One problem I have on my site, and I see here as well, is that people don't understand they can seldect an answer as best.  It would be nice to think of ways to remind them.

One way I thought of is to cause the star to flash when they are commenting on an answer to their own question... I know often people comment on answers that they don't agree with, but many people also comment on answers just to say "thanks, great answer", which doesn't really beat selecting a best answer (especially when you modify the css to make it clear which questions have been answered on the main page).  So, I make the star flash in this case via the ajax comment plugin.  You have to turn this option on at the admin.

I'm not totally sure this is a great feature, so I'm asking what do people think?  Other ways to remind?

I remember an option, on Askbot I think, to remind people via email if it's been x days and they still haven't selected an answer, or something like that.  Might be useful.

Answer 1

How about showing an icon on every question of the top-page? The icon indicates if the question got a best answer or not?

then vistors will know about the best answer more.

Those who want to answer questions will look for the questions which don't have the icon. but those who want to read or look for reliable answers will look for the questions which have the icon.

Comments

This is is already accomplished via css, since the class will change to "qa-a-count qa-a-count-selected" (the default theme just doesn't differentiate).  That's not the problem, the problem is when people don't select best answers, that feature is less meaningful.

Answer 2

Maybe another way would be to add text below the "Your comment on this answer:" text.  Something like:

Remember, you can select an answer as "accepted" by clicking on the star in the top right-hand corner.

?

Comments

I've now added this as an option to the ajax comment form plugin.

Answer 3

Mr. NoahY seemed to misunderstand me so I made the image how and where show the icon on the top-page.

This will help vistors to find out if the best answer has been selected or not before going into question detail pages.

Comments

No, I understood you quite well... I was just pointing out that there is no need for such a button, since the style of the answer count number changes when there is a selected answer.  With css it is relatively easy to make it clear which questions have answers selected... on my site the number "2" above "answers" has a green background if there is a selected answer.

My point was this only makes sense if people are actually selecting answers as best.

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@NoahY I too found the style marker in the generated HTML but it was not given a specific style in the CSS.  I added a some CSS to highlight questions that had best answer selected and now, like you describe in your comment, its easy for my users to see when a question has a best answer selected from the question lists (assuming they realize that a GREEN "answers" number means this).

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For others that need the CSS selector, it is .qa-a-count-selected

I used the following CSS to add "best" below "answer/s" test:

.qa-a-count-selected:afte.qa-q-list-item {
position:relative;
}
.qa-a-count-selected:after {
font-size:10px;
color:#FFA540;
content:"Best selected";
position:absolute;
left:153px;
top:95px;
width:35px;
}

Answer 4

I might have uploaded too big image, so the image did not show up on this message board as well as who post the answer.

Anyway, I made the image smaller so hope it get it shown here this time.

Answer 5

I think something like this would be userful in a user's profile. It does currently say how many questions you have selected best answer for - e.g. Questions: 85 (18 with best answer chosen) - maybe this could be made more prominent?

I think it would be more useful for users if they could browse a full list of their questions instead of just recent activity. The questions with selected answers would be highlighted via the 'qa-a-count-selected' CSS class.

Having popup notices on voting etc would be useful too.

Comments

Ah, voting! :) yes, that's how stack exchange does it, I forgot.  I'll add that to my wishlist.

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Heh, it's funny that every time I think of something that needs improving I realize that Stack Overflow already does it a better way :)

Answer 6

Okay, stack exchange it is :) Here's a (link to a) video demonstrating a popup notification reminding the questioner they can select a best answer:

Make sure you view the video in full screen to see what's going on.

Note that this doesn't really have anything to do with comments, and so doesn't really belong in the comment plugin, but well, there it is.

Answer 7

Heya
This is how I highlight a question with a selected answer in a custom theme:

function a_count($post){
if (@$post['answers_raw'] > 0){
$style='has-posts';
}
if (@$post['answer_selected']){
$style='has-selected';
}
$this->output_split(@$post['answers'], 'qa-a-count', 'SPAN', 'SPAN',@$style,
@$post['answer_selected'] ? 'qa-a-count-selected' : null);
}

That way you can take a class such as .has-selected and set it to something like: .has-selected {border: 6px solid yellow !important;}.

Or give it the star background image aswell. This way you can add more pressure on users to flag a good answer.

I'd like to allow users to manage flagged answers on there post also, this would shift more administratiion over to the user while empowering them with greater functions, you could always freeze answers if the user becomes inactive for x amount of time.

Comments

Hello Eschelon. Does this go in the end of my qa-theme.php file in my custom themes folder in order to work?  I am just learning php.  

I tried it in this file but it causes the page to not load.

Where do I put this function?

Thank you in advance.

Answer 8

I made that quite easy and straight away: Having not only a star (for indicating the best answer, which is not obivious...) but a star with "BEST?" on it. This makes it clear to the user. Is it the best? Then s/he will click ;)

example: http://www.gute-mathe-fragen.de/1099/funktionsschar-zeige-dass-alle-werte-einen-extrempunkt-gibt

btw, +1 for Scott