Answerbag Blog

When we released AB 5.0, we obviously changed up the ask/search process a lot. I wanted to give people some time with it before passing judgment, but now that you've been using it for while, what do you think? Is it useful? Are there things about it that you find confusing, or do you wish it would do something else?

The "ask" process is obviously pretty critical to a site called "Answerbag", so we plan to test some new things and see if we can streamline it further, but before we do, we'd like to know what you guys like and don't like about how it works now. All feedback is welcome!

We today launched an update to the Profile Page that will let you more thoroughly customize your Q&A list. Personally, I think I'll start using my Profile as my homepage...

When you first click on View my profile & activity at the top right, you're taken to the My Summary page within your profile. From there, you can:

• Click the arrows next to the section headers for my feedback, my watch list and my activity to compress any sections you don't read regularly.
  
• Use the show: questions / answers / comments / ratings filters to further select only the items you care about.
  
• Click more or less on the section headers to show more or fewer items under each one, according to your preference.

And there you go! The page will automatically save your settings so you'll see only the Q&A you want. Personally, I show 3 items in my feedback, then 15 in my watch list, and then I compress my activity altogether, because I know what I did.

I hope you guys find this handy, and please let us know if there are more updates you'd like to see!

You know how when you get a new couch, it's never all that comfortable the first day, but once you've broken in the cushions a little, it's much more comfortable? Well, that's how new site designs work, too.

We hope the design is getting more comfortable for everyone, and we're releasing frequent fixes right now for the most important issues. The ratings issues should be resolved, duplicate comments should be prevented now, and avatars should be working properly. I've seen sporadic reports of problems with image answers, but it seems to be dependent on the image used.

Please keep letting us know when you see new problems, and we'll let you know when we fix things!

Welcome everyone to Answerbag 5.0! This new site is a product of sweat, tears, and tons of feedback from you guys, and we hope you like it. Here are some of the highlights that we've added:

• Social Q&A get their own channel
  
• Personalized profiles! Follow your watched categories, customize your activity lists, and see exactly the Q&A you want to see
  
• Profile module: At the top right, you can easily see your current level AND see when new Answers have been posted to your questions, or Comments have been posted to your Answers. Keep track of all feedback you've received with one click. Also, pull down the "my links" tray for easy access to your watched categories, and categories you've used recently
  
• The "ask" and "search" functions are unified. Didn't find your answer? Post a question with one click!
  
• You can give variable points with a rating - just hover over the rating tool for a second and you'll see the menu. To make the menu pop up instantly, check your preferences in your profile. (Of course, your account has to be of a high enough level for you to be able to give more than one point before you will see this.)
  
• Profile pages: much more space for "About me"!
  

And there's a lot more tweaks you'll notice as you start using the site. Please feel free to tell us what you think, and keep giving those great suggestions on how we can continue to improve the site to meet your needs.

Thank you all so much for your support and suggestions - we'll keep improving things if you keep asking and answering!

Joel, Jon, Adam, Alex, Sunny, Rich, Deirdre, and Amanda

Note: If you're seeing strange behavior on the site, please hold down "shift" and click "refresh" on your browser. That may clear things up!

If you know anything about college basketball, you know that March is the absolute best time to be a fan. The NCAA College Basketball Tournament takes 3 weeks to go from 65 teams down to one champion, and there's nothing like the energy and school spirit you see in those three weeks.

We've dedicated a category to the Tourney here on AB, and here's some of the highlights:

NCAA Basketball Tournament

• Ed the Headbanger asks Who will win?
  
• Anonymous asks Which coach has the most consecutive Tourney appearances?
  
• Pastaman asks How many NCAA championships did John Wooden win? (I'll give you hint, it was more than 9.)

And a timeless question...

How are the teams for the NCAA Tournament chosen and seeded?

Have more questions? Read our FAQ!

It's that time of year again - St. Patrick's Day has come around, and AB has all the relevant answers for you, so you'll know what it is you're actually celebrating! Before you down that green beer, get informed:

• What is St. Patrick's Day a celebration of?
  
• Gabrielle asks What is the significance of St. Patrick's Day in Ireland?
  
• starnite asks Why do people drink a lot on St. Patrick's Day?
  
• How is green beer made?

More St. Patrick's Day Q&A

And in other news, Answerbag 5.0 is on its way in the coming weeks. Stay tuned...

Answerbag has been going strong for almost four years now, and every once in a while we find that we need to step back and look at some features on the site to decide if they're really useful. We have decided that Terms and Definitions fall into the "not-so-useful" category, so we will be removing them from the site.

Tonight (Wednesday night), we will take all of the existing terms and convert them into "What is..." questions, and we'll convert the definitions into answers. We feel that this is necessary to help keep the site focused, and to make sure we spend our development time where it's really helpful, on features that our members are using most.

Please give us a little time to correct the grammar on some of these - we'll be fixing them in the next few days. Rest assured, all questions and answers will still be attributed to whoever posted the original term or definition, respectively.

Thanks again for your support, and we think that this move will help us focus even more on AB's core Q&A systems!

No, not the canned meat product. We've had a flood of posts from people who have authored eHow/weHow articles (full disclosure: eHow and weHow are owned by Demand Media, just like Answerbag) who include links to their articles in their answers, and Answerbaggers have been clicking the spam flag button so often on these, the pixels are wearing off the screen ;).

So what's our policy?

1. Answers must be self-contained. If what's posted is only a link or doesn't address the question directly, flag away (except in those rare cases where the question specifically asks for just a link).

2. If the answer does address the question, it can also include a link for more information without being spam. For example, people summarize and link to wikipedia articles all the time. That's fine.

3. Regardless of the content of the answer, if the link provided isn't what it purports to be, flag it as spam or nonsense and we'll review it.

We use the above policy to decide which spam flags to accept or reject--and we've approved most of your flags on the eHow/weHow posts, because some of those posters haven't learned rule #1.

But we're always open to refining our policy. What are your thoughts about the essential ingredients that make spam spam?

As the 'net evolves, we find new and better ways to find our way around. With billions of pages on the Internet, it's getting harder and harder to keep it all straight and figure out what information is accurate. In the beginning, there was just Search, but now, using Social Q&A sites like Answerbag, you can look for information using your own words.

Now that you've been on Answerbag, what do you use Search for? What things do you turn to Google and Yahoo Search for, and what do you come to Answerbag for?

Ever been stalked by a troll? Or hunted one yourself? Well, we here at AB just finished a mass troll hunt, and we have quite a few heads to mount on our wall.

To go along with the troll hunt, we've also drastically reduced the number of negative ratings that one member can give to another each day. This should help to make sure that people are playing nicely, and it should keep people from creating accounts just to rate other people down. But what about positive ratings, you ask? Well, we still encourage those. Everyone likes a pat on the back!

We'll be continuing to tweak these limits over the coming weeks, to find a happy medium, but I think we're off to a good start!