Answerbag Blog

Every now and then throughout Answerbag's history, we've added Q&A to our database from various authoritative sources, using staff-maintained accounts. These are usually questions about geographic information that people rarely ask in a systematic way, but that are extremely handy to have around if you really need to know, say, the population of a small town in Kansas:

http://www.answerbag.com/q_view/222722

Very soon you'll be seeing two new characters, Curious Bag (the asker) and Know-it-All (the answerer). Since Demand Media has access to an impressive array of experts and sources of information, this should be an intriguing addition. We'll be able to provide information that otherwise might never make it onto the site, even though it could be tremendously useful to a future asker. And as always, you'll be able to add your own perspective. Here's the first batch; let us know what you think!

http://www.answerbag.com/profile/static/qa/answers/1029090

P.S. I'm just back from 3 weeks camping and surfing up and down the California coast, in a 1978 VW van ;). Many thanks to AB-James and the rest of the crew for holding down the fort!

Some of you may have noticed a new pop up window when you use or login to Answerbag. Not everyone will see it, some of you though MAY be asked to fill it out. Our tech team along with the Nielsen survey group put together a small demographic gathering survey that we hope you will fill out. The survey will gather demographic data that will help us determine what our member base really looks like, which in turn helps with both figuring out what our next features should be or look like, and also to help AB post more relevant ads. Nielsen is the same group that measures U.S. television viewership. You should see the survey only once and you may take it or skip it at your discretion. It would be helpful if our users filled it out, since this would give us strong input on what our users would like to see in the future and what we can definitely do to improve the user experience while on AB.

The survey has all of the legal details about how the information will and will not be used. We would really appreciate your comments. We get a lot of feedback from members, but this survey is a new means of gathering information and will be analyzed by Nielsen and AB. Please also let us know if you are having an issue with the survey, for instance if you see the survey notice more than once. If so you may need to clear your cookies in your browser. If that does not work please let us know through feedback. Thanks again and we look forward to your survey responses.

As I read though the feedback that many of you post, there seems to be a recurring theme of what is permitted on Answerbag, what is not permitted, and how many users push it right up to the line. This is especially true when in comes to avatars. We have some users that post photos that are to some people only slightly risqué, and to others down right pornographic. So what exactly is allowed on AB when it comes to avatars, content and information left in a users summary? What is offensive?

Let’s go to the AB Site Guidelines. This can be found on the bottom of every AB page. To quote “Generally, anything that couldn't be shown on US broadcast television. This includes anything you post on the site: questions, answers, comments, user profile information, links, avatars and usernames. While we encourage our users to express themselves freely, questions on the regular Answerbag site must be appropriate for users age 14 and above. Questions and answers that are sexually explicit or graphic belong in the AB4Adults section of Answerbag. Question context and category is a factor as well: some questions that might be offensive in one category might be appropriate in another”.

That pretty well sums it up. If you can see or hear it on “broadcast TV” you probably can put it on AB. That includes covered big breasts, skimpy outfits, short skirts, shirtless men, etc. If you’ve seen it on NBC or ABC, then you will probably be safe to see it on AB. If you’ve seen it on HBO, it does not belong on AB. That goes for written profiles or words as well as visual images.

We’re not here to censor individuals, thoughts or ideas, as long as they are not offensive or rudely attack users personally or their beliefs. Sometimes opinions may seem offensive, and some questions or answers are intended to challenge the way other people think. Within the larger goal of preserving a useful and harmonious community, we believe in people's right to speak their mind, and we’ve found that allowing questions or answers which may seem offensive can lead to very informative discussions about why the question or answer is or is not offensive.

We tend to be careful about censoring these types of questions and answers, as well as comments, and err on the side of preserving content. This being said, this does not mean we want to encourage our users to push things to the limit. We still consider AB to be family friendly, and we do encourage you to move adult themed content to the AB adult section. Remember, we do have young people as users and we want to make sure that they can safely navigate the site without seeing or reading content that may be more appropriate for adult eyes.

You don’t say ham, you say spam! Ah, SPAM, that most inspiring of foods, nectar of the Gods, shelf life longer than a nuclear winter, the hero of the picnic table. Or is it??? On Answerbag spam has moved from the picnic table to the computer screen. Many of you not only have to face daily spam in your email, now spam is here on AB. And it is an ongoing fight. Many of you report users who do nothing but post spam answers. Our community leaders are pretty good at spotting them and reporting these violations to the moderators. But still, every day we get new spammers opening accounts and posting their website urls, trying to sell you, our innocent AB users, their magic potions and perpetual money making machines. We know that you don’t fall for their pitches; however, it is a hassle to see their selfish answers posted in between good and informative answers.
So yes, it is an ongoing battle, one in which we aren’t sure we can win. But rest assured gentle AB user, we are P-boxing users that may just be inadvertently posting spam and most definitely nuking the accounts of hard-core spammers. To be honest, they will not stop and right now there is not a technological magic solution that will eliminate spammers from AB. But rest assured that your CLs and your moderators will continue to respond to your spam elimination requests and zap these non-ham spammers. So keep reporting them through feedback and we will be ever vigilant and do our part. Some day we may be able to say ham, instead of spam!

Whoa, what's with the new question page layout? Why is it different from the home page? What about those pesky bugs? Here's the latest.

What you're seeing is the first of several changes being tested in preparation for a larger site redesign that we're hoping to complete in a 3-month timeframe. You may see various subtle changes on various pages in coming weeks.

The redesign effort is happening in parallel with bug fixes to the underlying code, which probably won't change much. One team at Demand is running the redesign, another is working on bugs, and the moderators and I (who are not Demand employees) are collecting your feedback as input to the redesign--we have weekly conference calls set up, which is an impressive and unprecedented amount of communication between AB and Demand.

So far, the moderators and I have had an easy job--roughly 85% of you have contributed, shall we say, passionate criticism of most of the changes, and rest assured that your message has been delivered. Just keep in mind that what you're looking at isn't the final version, and that the moderators and I will do our best to represent the extremely-well-informed opinions of all longtime Answerbaggers as the redesign goes forward.

Thanks,
Rich

Many of you have been asking for an easy-to-find site guidelines page, instead of having site policies expressed through a patchwork of staff answers to regular Answerbag questions, exhaustively-crafted guides created by some of our users, and word of mouth. You can now find it linked at the bottom of every page:

http://www.answerbag.com/guideline/

Our goal was not to try to address every conceivable policy matter in a single document, but to provide an overview of common questions for quick reference. We'll update the guidelines periodically, so if you think something's missing, please let us know.

Friday June 5 I'm scheduled to have a conference call with some Demand Media folks about the overall state of Answerbag, and also to talk about some visions for our future.

The first part will of course focus on the nuts and bolts of getting the remaining AB bugs sorted and more of your excellent upgrade suggestions implemented--no need to repost those here ;). But the larger question of where Answerbag should be in, say, three years, I think is best answered not by me alone.

So I'd like to invite your input. Where do you see Answerbag in the next three years, why do you think so, and what do you think is the best way for us to get there?

Bug fixes pushed today:

--No more "page not found" errors on answer submit
--Registration age limit fixed
--Admins can now restore wrongly-deleted answers

Thanks to AB-Adam and the rest of the team, who are still at work on the rest of the snafus!

Good news, I am happy to report that we now have a new process for reporting and tracking Answerbag bugs through Demand Media, and systems folks are now working with us to prioritize and effect repairs. While we know there are plenty of problems and upgrade suggestions beyond these, here's the first batch on the list:

--404 (page not found) messages on answer submit, though content does post eventually

--Long lag between when new answer submissions appear on the main page and when the question page is updated to include them; "Answer 5 out of 3" answer headers are probably related

--Broken registration captchas--the system does not accept the correct code and people can't register

--When a user account is nuked, all pending flags of that user's content should be accepted and flaggers' percentages adjusted accordingly

--Some adult content occasionally displays on main page, even in categories marked not to display

--The system sometimes asks registered users to re-register or continuously log in again

--Some avatar images don't load

--Admins cannot easily restore wrongly-deleted answers

Again, thanks for your patience. I'll post again to report progress.

Hi ABers, my name is Caitlin and I'm the newest moderator at AB - this is my first blog post, though some of you may have seen me in the comments sections before. 

I wanted to let you know all that we have officially embarked on a Category Review Project.  As you may have seen, AB-James and AB-Rich have posted previously asking for your opinions on categories.  We've decided to start a major review process and will be systematically going through all the major categories to look for redundancies, over-populated subcategories, areas that need a better definition, and in general cleaning up the place.

We want to make sure that all questions have a place to go, and that all categories have at least some questions in them.  Categories with no questions are likely to be removed, whereas categories with lots of questions will likely be broken up into more subcategories.  We also want to try to prevent too many subcategories-within-subcategories.  We know that choosing the right place for your question isn't always easy, and we want to make it so you don't have to dig so deep to find the right place. 

We also want to make sure that categories are filed in the right place, so we will be moving around a lot subcategories.  One of the biggest moves we have made so far is to create a new major category called "Sexuality and Gender".  A lot of these kind of questions were previously lumped in the "Relationship Advice" section - but that's not exactly where they belong.  We will be trying our best to do this kind of sorting so that the category topics make sense as a whole. 

A couple notes of caution: (1) for technical reasons having to do with server backups and reload times, sometimes edited or new categories won't show up right away.  You might have to refresh several times to see the proper categories.  We know about this and are working with the tech people on it.  (2) Your favorite category might be moved, edited, or removed - don't worry!  Give it a couple days to see if the new edits make sense.  If you still have major concerns, feel free to contact us - we're always happy to review your suggestions.

Finally, you are welcome to post in the comments section to this blog post, but we'd like to encourage you to post questions and suggestions in the "Category Review Project" section under Answerbag » About categories (here: http://www.answerbag.com/c_view/10066 ).  If you'd like to make a suggestion about a category please do it in the following form:

    Question: "What do you think about the following suggestion
for _______ category?"
    Answer: (post your suggestion here)

That way it gives you enough room to type, and mods/users can respond in the answers/comments section too.  Note: if you're suggesting a new category, please do that in the normal way, by using the “suggest a category” feature in the category where you think the new sub-category should go. Posting a suggestion would be more appropriate for something longer, like reorganization suggestions for example.

We will be happy to review your input.  All final edits have to be approved by the admins, so not everything will make the final cut, but we want to use your expertise to help clean up AB categories! Thanks so much, and we'll keep you updated.