Answerbag Blog

Once you're logged in, you'll see a link above the Q&A list on the homepage labeled "Customize homepage". Click this link, and you'll be able to select specific categories that you like, so you don't have to see Q&A in categories you're not interested in. We hope this makes AB a little easier to use for everyone!

We've had more than a few people report on some site bugs lately; we're working on fixes for all of them, but in the meantime here are some workarounds:

In Firefox, the Search for Members tab works unpredictably from the home page--sometimes you'll retrieve answers instead of members. However, if you launch member searches from other pages, it seems to work.

We still occasionally get reports of "unable to generate animated gif" errors when attempting to upload images which may or may not be animated. Resizing the images and uploading them again sometimes helps, but if this happens to you, please send a report to feedback with as much detail as you can include.

Despite our best efforts, some email providers (AOL especially) still filter out our automated registration and notification emails. If a new user reports registration problems in a question, answer or comment (as many do), feel free to advise them to send a request via feedback and we'll confirm their accounts manually. If you're not getting the notifications you think you should be getting, also let us know via feedback.

Thanks!

Though I haven't run any numbers yet, questions that are chosen as the Topic of the Day seem to get between two and three times more answers than an average question. Though that estimate means more for a relatively new question than one that's already had several dozen answers before we feature it, that response combined with your feedback requests raises the question of how to archive past Topics of the Day.

Though we've had a separate Topic of the Day category suggested and accepted, if we moved questions there, they would not appear in their home category, which is suboptimal. The two ideas we're considering are:

--an administrator flag, akin to craiglist's "Best of," where the questions might be linked from a single page, yet remain in their home categories.

--create a more bloglike entry, where comments could be appended.

Which do you prefer--or do you have other ideas?

We've had a variety of suggestions about how to keep blog comments on topic, while still keeping the ability to use the blog space as a forum for any reports of spam and other misbehavior requiring immediate review by our Community Leaders. So while you're encouraged to post those reports as before, once we've addressed the issue we'll "hide" your comment, so that the rest of the community doesn't have to scroll through pages of "Spammer"..."Got 'em, thanks."

And please remember, anything that doesn't require immediate review, such as flag moderation appeals, category/feature requests etc., please report through the Feedback link at the bottom of every page.

Many thanks!

Lance Armstrong's LiveStrong.com and Demand Media have teamed up in the fight against cancer, and to empower people to take action daily for their overall health. Now Lance wants to know what you have dared to do:

http://www.answerbag.com/q_view/916572

Submit your video answers and you could win an autographed bike from Lance! Find out more at:

http://www.livestrong.com/contest/youtube-share-your-story

Answerbag will soon have a new First Lady--our intrepid leader Joel is getting married this weekend!

Congrats to the happy couple!

There's been great response to the revived Topic of the Day--many thanks! But should it be more topical? For example, the Olympics start 8/8/08 and we could feature some questions about the games. Or we could keep the questions as random as they've been so far. What say you?

Greetings fellow baggers! I have been lurking lately, but just wanted to inform you all of a new feature we released today: Video Questions! Many of you have been asking for this for a while, and we finally got around to doing it, and yes, we know that we still need to do image answers as well (ahem, Jon). But for now, we thought you'd enjoy this new toy.

To ask a Video Question, just copy and paste the EMBED code from a Youtube video into the space on the Ask page, and it will magically show up directly below your question. Here's an example.

As usual, please let us know what you think!

Buried deep in your profile page (My Settings tab / Preferences link) is an option to "Subscribe to site newsletter with the latest wacky, wild, and thought-provoking questions." It's sent out every month or so, and its format has changed little since Joel began it five years ago: a few lines about new features or site milestones, then a list of 7 or 8 questions we found interesting.

Back then we averaged 40-50 questions submitted per day, and hand-selecting was relatively easy--now we get around 2000, and we can only select from what we happen to come across. Plus, ABers can set up watch lists and notifications and decide what's interesting for themselves. Site news is reported in the blog, which didn't exist when the newsletter was conceived.

So, echoing a question recently posted by Chris:

http://www.answerbag.com/q_view/870820

what do you think is appropriate content and role for the AB newsletter?

Right below this blog box, some of you may have noticed more regular updates to the Topic of the Day the past few weeks. As of now it's pretty informal; whenever we happen upon a question or answer we find interesting, whether it's new or old, timely or twisted, we'll post a link to it.

Since we can't look at every submission, we've been using this as a sort of hybrid of the old staff picks and random question functions we used to have. Let us know what you think...or risk a return to the Topic of the Day always being a link to the Answerbag store ;)