An introduction and a little homepage cleanup

"Awesome" is nice. Fully functional is better.

I'm all about really cool stuff, the bells and whistles that make things really neat and fun.

But, as we've seen in the past few months, 'bugs' can be not only annoying, but debilitating as well. In fact, the sheer number (and types) of bugs literally brought Answerbag to it's knees not long ago.

This resulted, needless to say, in a lot of animosity and upset people, even among the most patient of members.

While bugs are to be expected once in a while, especially when upgrading hardware and software, their continued existence can be really detrimental to the membership of AB.

I'm glad to hear Demand Media is working in parallel with these annoying issues to bring us something better. But personally, I'm more concerned with how things are going on dealing with those remaining bugs than I am with increasing the "awesome" factor. (And yes, I know this isn't an easy fixable problem many people seem to think it should be. It's VERY challenging.)

I haven't been keeping up with the bugs on paper, since AB has managed to deal with the major ones. So my list is nowhere near comprehensive. There are still issues with the search engine that are disappointing, to say the least. I cannot reliably use the search engine to search for duplicates, for example. Shoot, I even tried searching for members and couldn't find them; even by typing in EXACTLY what their screen name was. I even cut and pasted my own screen name in and the search engine couldn't find me!

There are other bugs...and I haven't honestly bothered with listing them here because, for the most part, the major ones have been worked out finally and the minor ones remaining (of which I consider the search engine issue to be the biggest) are almost too petty in comparision to track and list. Besides, they've been listed elsewhere anyway.

Lest you think I'm slamming on you and giving you the impression that I think Demand Media's priorities are messed up, let me assure you I am not. I think Demand Media MUST move in the direction that you have been tasked to take on. To not seek improvement is to risk failure for a variety of reasons.

Thank you for introducing yourself and taking the time to let us know what you and Demand Media are trying to do for all of us. I'm looking forward to seeing what the future brings from your efforts!

we could use a little awesome ;)

and glad thats taken care of.

Well said, Chief.

Nothing much more I can add except to say that many people look forward to changes that'll make the site better.

Still, the general consensus seems to be: Let's strive to have our good-ole-full-functioning AB without the still-persistent glitches.
Now, that would be awesome.

A fix for search is in the works. I've seen it — heck, I've *built* it — and the accuracy and overall betterment (for question / answer searching) is magical. A tremendous improvement.

It's our aim to launch that sooner than later, but as you'd expect, there are some kinks to work out first. I'll get back to you when I know more!

Besides the lack of a search engine the fact that we have a major problem uploading photographs to answers would be a very nice and appreciated fix.

I would also rather like to know for certain ,if we Flag your Robots efforts as Spam or Duplicates which a lot of them are exactly that.
Are our moderation percentages going to continue to be messed up by moderators refusing the flags.
Surely a duplicate is something that is requiring an identical answer even if there is one word different in the question.
I have only tested one flag and of course, as I expected it was refused as not being an exact duplicate.. I believe a lot of us that have been moderating the site for years would like the position clarified.
Are we or Are we not going to be penalised for flagging the Robots Duplicates and Spam ?
Is there any chance of any of these flags being accepted?

Thank you in anticipation

So, instead of answering our questions about the flagging of staff questions/answers (prior blog - http://www.answerbag.com/blog/comments/203 ), we get a new blog. I've seen this happen before. So, no answers. Ah, well. (Firebrand did address them here. Hopefully, we WILL get SOME kind of answer, but I'd suggest that you look back and see all the unanswered questions for the past few months.)

Well, I'm all for a new (well, at least improved) AB, if not TOO many changes are made at once. Obviously, you have a lot of long-time users who tend to complain when major visible changes are made. (See prior questions about new versions of AB.)

Might I suggest fixing some of the Timing issues?

Used to be that when a question was posted, within a few SECONDS it would appear on Google, AND in the AB search. Now, it takes a LOT longer for them to show up in Google, and it seems DAYS for them to show up in AB's own search!

Also, our profiles are not updated NEAR as quickly as before with new answers, comments, and ratings, AND, once we've read them, turning the new flags and "lights" off.

Would it be possible for us to learn about things that haven't been working for quite some time suddenly working again? I have answered 2-3 questions about Notification Emails, which, apparently, have been turned back on.

Speaking of that: How 'bout a "default setting" for Question, Answer, and Category notifications in our Settings tab, Preferences option screen, that would be copied, every time we ask/answer a question from there? It would be, to my mind, MUCH better than simply "leaving the setting as it was last set", since it seems many forget to double-check, when we're used to it being set one way.

Don't get me wrong. AB is a great site. We had a great thing going before the major changes happened a while back. Since then, we've been fighting and describing how to get around glitches, if we know.

It DOES seem that there seems to be a bit more communication about what's happening on AB, but it still needs to be more, in my mind.

Thanks for keeping us up and running.

Ahhh, I'm such a youtube stalker of you :)

Erm. Good about the. Clean up. Thingy. Staying on topic...

Nice could u pls do something about the comment buttons?its flashing constantly since the AB "Big fix"! ty :)

i allways wonderd why you went to the trouble of haveing a adult section and then posting the q's on the homepage.

Lex, you won a video contest, so don't you want contests back on AB?

Thks Lex.

Thank you, Lex.

Again, we DO appreciate the hard work that goes into fixing these things.

Hi Big Daddy,

I know historically on AB, blog post comments have been a primary way of contacting the folks "behind-the-scenes" at Answerbag. I'm hoping to improve that in the future, because as you can imagine, it's tough to stay on top of each incoming blog comment.

Not only that, but as we discuss issues (like these!) in blog comments, fewer and fewer people see official "staff" responses, and the comments themselves get further away from the initial post subject.

That said: Sorry I didn't respond earlier to your question -- I missed it.

The timing issues you referenced are ones we're looking at closely. We can't control how quickly Google indexes new questions and answers, but we should be able to control how quickly you can find them here on our site. New content is always harder to index.

Our database has nearly *ten million questions.* There are some serious technical limitations that come into play there. Adding questions to our search index as they're submitted would entail a massive performance hit... But we definitely want to do better. We'll continue to work on this.

I'm sorry -- I don't understand the "Default setting" feature you're describing. Can you elaborate?

We'll continue to work at better communicating. It's a fact that AB was left to languish for a bit, which was a mistake. We're working to remedy that now, and to earn your trust.

Firebrand,

The answer I have isn't one you're going to like, but I hope I can at least adequately explain our perspective here.

The questions you're referring to as being from "Robots" — I assume you mean The Curious Bag and the Know It All. Those questions and answers are all written by real live humans, overseen by real live editors.

Not surprisingly, we don't consider any of the Q&A from those two personas to be spam. They're not advertising any services, they're answering genuine questions, and they're meant to be as factual and useful as possible.

I know that oftentimes answers with URLs in them on AB are flagged as spam. But in our initial test of 500 Q&A, *every single one* has at least one URL. We don't get paid for linking to those sites, and we have no need to advertise them. Rather, we required that our writers include a source URL for the answer they provided, to make the answer more trustworthy. If the source URLs were affiliate links, or pointing to pages we nefariously profited from, I could better understand the spam label. But given the nature of these questions, our answers, and the URL sources, I'm not sure what qualifies them as spam.

Yes, we absolutely published more questions and answers in a bulk than "normal" members can, but we're sincerely attempting to add value to the site.

Please let me know your thoughts on this.

On the second issue — duplicates — it's a problem. Our initial 500-question test duplicated some content already on the site, and had duplicates within itself, too. That was a mistake. We're still measuring the impact of our first 500 questions, and we won't be adding more questions like that until and unless we see positive impact from them. We've learned our lesson with the dupe issue, and if we do add more questions from The Curious Bag and The Know It All, we will certainly task an editor with ensuring that we avoid both duplicate issues.

For the time being, unfortunately, we have asked our moderators not to flag our initial 500 question test as duplicates, even when they are. I know that's not ideal, and we don't love it either. In fact, *we plan to properly merge these duplicate questions* a few weeks from now; it's just that doing so prematurely would render this initial test impossible, and we don't want to add more questions until we're confident it's working.

I know this situation stinks for our most active community flaggers. And I'm genuinely sorry. But it will be resolved soon, and I sincerely appreciate your patience in the meantime.

BIG GLITCH ALERT!

This is happening to EVERYBODY:

http://www.answerbag.com/q_view/1622904

Should now be fixed. Right?

I felt like my questions in the prior blog - http://www.answerbag.com/blog/comments/203 #8, and #22 - were ignored. And when new blogs are created, many people no longer They do go along with Firebrand's question with examples, some of which HAVE been flagged and accepted. There were other comments there by others that raised concerns that, it seems, since they are not the "top blog" will be ignored forever. (And I'm not talking only about those who felt this these new "users" were a "bad idea".)

I suggested long ago that a new blog be generated concerning maintenance and bug issues, and maybe one for the CLs, where we could post the "Spammer", "Kid", and "Offensive" users for them to deal with. I was told it wasn't possible. Well, now maybe it is. It would help keep each blog "on topic". Either that, or a real redesign of the blog system, which shows them better, allows new entires, and SHOWS that there are new entries beside the count.

I understand about Google indexing. I just know that it seemed before that we could enter a question, and within a few minutes, it was on Google. Maybe you should ask how they were doing it before DM took over? ;-) And, again before DM, I believe the search routine always listed questions in reverse date-stamp order, and new questions seemed immediately installed, thus we could find exact dupes immediately. Again, maybe you should ask how it was done before.

The "Default Settings" would be options in our "My Settings tab, Preferences/Notification" section. However they are set there would be what would be used when we ask questions (to move our questions into the Watchlist), and when we answer questions (to move questions we answer to our Watchlist, or to move the category there). If we changed it at the question or answer, it would NOT remain "set" that way next time as it doesn now, but use the default settings from our profile. To be honest, I believe most people would turn them off there, and only check those questions, answers, and categories they wish to "watch". Instead of the "default settings", maybe we could simply make the defaults of those check boxes OFF (at all times), and users would only check those they wish to watch. (BTW: The way it is right now, we are forced to answer any question we wish to watch. Before that was put into effect, there was a "button" on the question we could click to do so. When it disappeared, MANY requested its return. Is this in the new redesign?)

More on what Firebrand was talking about - Actually, two things:

1) So, we are not to hold The Curious Bag and the Know It All to the same standards we hold all other AB users? If those questions and answers are NOT flagged (and accepted) as they normally would, how does this do anything to prove your experiment valid? I mean, spam is spam. Here, I'm not talking about the questions, but the answers. If a regular user were to use a shopping site as a "source", unless of course it was specifically asked for - and many people flag those and they are accepted. Dupes are dupes. Here I AM talking about the questions. If we would have flagged a regular user's question as a dupe, what would not flagging (or accepting) CB's questions prove? I, and I'm sure others, don't understand how not flagging them would "render this initial test impossible". Oh, and "task[ing] and editor with ensuring we avoid both issues" won't work well. I mean, they can do that within the group of questions you are about to post, but questions are added daily. They would have to post each question one-at-a-time, verifying there were no new questions to which CB's would dupe.

2) Many of us have lost percentage points for our flagging, because we have flagged spammers' questions and answers, and then, those accounts get nuked. The questions are (no longer) removed from our submissions count (if we don't get points for them), thus, our modification percentages have suffered. There are those who don't read the blog. What happens to their mod percentage when they flag all the spam, dupes, wrong categories, etc. of CB and TKIA?

Off-the-above-topics, but related: I sent, quite a while back, a suggestion for all the mods on a question or answer to be viewed, and to receive points for flagging them. That way, the BEST flag and/or category could be chosen, everyone who flagged it COULD get points, and everyone would be happy. I also suggested a way for everyone who flags a spammers' questions/answers and/or reported them to get points for doing so. They both seemed to be relatively easy programs, logic-wise, and I would think, not that difficult, display and process-wise, for those with the experience you guys seem to have. Is there anything being done to address these issues, too? As it is, many users' percentages are suffering because of the way things are, now. I certainly hope something like this is included in the redesign.

I apologize for this being so long, but I believe these are issues that must be addressed.

Thank you for responding to our concerns on the current blog so quickly. Despite what it may seem above, I think AB is a great site, and I want only the best for it, as do many long-time users.

Thanks again for keeping AB up and running.

BigDaddyBS:

I actually think that any blog-based solution is ill-suited to customer support and community issues like the ones you bring up. We're thinking about other solutions to handle member concerns like yours — a forum, partnering with someone like GetSatisfaction, etc.

All the code you referenced from Answerbag's history — how search worked, how we showed up in Google, etc — was written by Jon, who started working on AB at Infosearch and then continued at Demand Media. Any changes to functionality on Answerbag were coded by Jon and his team during AB's life at Demand.

I absolutely agree that there are things on Answerbag that need fixing, and that some of those broken things have been broken far too long. But I can't 100% agree with an implication that some things are broken because "Demand" broke them or doesn't know how to fix them. That may well *not* have been what you were implying at all, but I think it's worth stating.

The team that's been assembled at Demand includes me (I do product, community, and web development), another developer, an editor, a designer, and more: There's an all-new, highly-motivated group of individuals here that's focusing on Answerbag, and we're going to do our very best.

As AB has grown, it's become harder and harder to maintain. Bugs that used to get fixed in hours stretched to days and weeks and longer, as you well know. Some of that was just due to complexities in code that develop over time. So as we work on our "Answerbag 2009" initiative (codename: Messenger Bag), we're rearchitecting some things with all the knowhow we picked up in earlier iterations of the site's code, but without some of the cruft that creeps in.

We're aware of frustrating issues like the one you described with getting docked for flagging spammers who get nuked. Project Messenger Bag has issues like that as a top priority.

Can you show me a question citing a shopping site as its source? I would think such a source would make sense for a question about an item's cost. Is that what it was? Again, I don't think the presence of a URL alone implies definite "spamming"; if it's not done for the sake of abuse or financial gain, I'm not sure how that label applies.

And finally: I was forthright in Rich's blog post about our goals with the Q&A from the two new personas. We're hoping to get more visitors to the site, by writing answers that Google et al can find, so that future searches looking for answers to common queries wind up here. Growing the traffic on Answerbag is good for the site and for the community — more potential askers and answerers. Of course, as a business, we absolutely focus on our revenue targets and things like that; if Answerbag doesn't make money, it can't continue. So when I say that flagging dupes in our 500 answers would make our test impossible, I mean we'd be unable to measure how premium content we pay for performs on the site and in search engines. Those metrics are very important to us.

The better we can figure out how to monetize Answerbag, the fewer ads you'll see. That is, we'd rather show 3 great-performing ad units than 10 mediocre ones. That's why tests like this are so valuable.

-Lex

Lex, Thank you for the reply

I will entirely agree with you that a lot of the questions that are currently asked are fluff and more about quantity than quality and as I have questioned many times do very little for what was originally a Knowledge Database.

That being said, I do not see how even if your questions are originally written by real people that makes them any better than any other obvious duplicates that appear on the site.
In fact in my opinion it makes it worse. If you have so many experts dealing with trying to improve our database, how come they can post four questions asking for the identical answer in a row?
Yes I tried ONE which I flagged as a duplicate and it was refused . You say that that is the policy. You are right I am not in love with that policy.

If that is the current policy why are our percentage figures going to be allowed to suffer? Some of us are much more interested in those percentage figures than in the point totals. Personally I have lost 4% in a previous mistake by a Moderator and am not happy about the thought of losing any more.

I am very glad to hear that the first 500 questions are going to be all for a while or at least until some of the very obvious glitches have been sorted out

The email notification seems to have started to work again after a period of almost two years for me. Now I have them blocked they seem to be coming in for every single answer or piece of feedback. That would also be a nice one to have fixed.

PLEASE PLEASE will you do something about Uploading photographs in answers.It takes away a lot from the site not being able to show examples and photographs.

Thank you in anticipation

Hi folks,

We're aware of widespread email notification problems (most people can't unsubscribe), but we're working on fixing them as I write this. Lex or I will post again when we've got a fix up.

Thank you Rich :)

Right now, you can control email notifications for individual questions from your Watch List.

If you receive an email notification with the word Question in the title, there should be a link in the footer of that email to "unsubscribe from all emails." Doing so *should* block any other answer notification emails from arriving at all.

The email notifications for answers are currently set up so that you'll receive one for any question you've asked, and then you won't get emailed again *unless you go back to that question page on Answerbag first*.

All that said, I know some of you are still getting notifications after taking some of those actions. If that sounds like you, let me know a) the subject line of your email, and b) which checkboxes are checked on your Settings page.

Firebrand:

The duplicate questions we submitted were a mistake. It won't happen again. We shouldn't be duplicating ourselves, or the community.

-Lex

Lex,

Thanks for answering so quickly and thoroughly. No, I did not intend to say DM "broke" the search, but that before the "migration"? to multiple servers, they had worked out most of the bugs from the searches. I was assuming either something in the spitting of the DB messed up the timing, or maybe the new version of Linux.

As for the "Spam" answers: from #8, prior blog (referenced in my prior comment): spam answers (or at least what would have been considered spam if a regular member did it (see http://www.answerbag.com/a_view/7287678 , http://www.answerbag.com/a_view/7287675 ).

One was flagged and accepted. The other, not... YET. It probably should be, but I can see where it might not, since it gives multiple answers/links in the page linked.

Ok... So we can't flag dupes or spam. Can we put them in their correct categories? As was noted before, many of them are in the "higher" categories, when they would more aptly fit in a subcategory.

BTW: You're paying experts to do this? Did you ever consider paying some of the AB users, or ... are they your experts? LOL

Thanks, again for putting up with our incessant questions about the way AB is being run/edited/etc.

BTW: It appears that when multiple people answer while another is, when the comment is submitted, NO comments are available unless you back up and restart the blog.

On the email issue, I have tried blocking the emails only to find that the comments and answers in my feed back area stop showing up as well. I am afraid to try that again unless I am sure that will not happen. I want the notification in my feed back area of comments and answers but do not want emails.