Hey there,
This is with respect to the newly introduced ‘Reader Question and Answer’ section on wikiHow community( http://forums.wikihow.com/discussion/18432/a-new-feature-in-testing-and-development-q-a-sections#latest
).
While accessing random articles at wikiHow, I noticed that there are loads of articles which still have a lot of questions waiting to be answered. What if we all start answering the remaining questions in our own articles? I hope that all of us must be knowledgeable about the topics we have started at our own.
It would be really interesting if every user answers all the remaining question in the topics he/she has started and ultimately making the remaining questions count zero. In this way, we can answer almost all the questions posted by various readers on our community.
It might be possible that there are very less questions for certain users and ample amount of questions for others. For this we can work in pairs; what is your opinion?
Well Good idea! Let’s start doing this!
I could see a Q&A tool coming to our Community Dashboard sometime in the future. Perhaps we could have one that pulls up unanswered questions on articles in the categories which the user specifies as their areas of expertise.
It would be nice to have such a tool. What about welcoming it with no questions left!
system
5
@MissLunaRose
Great minds think alike! I had the same suggestion and separately so did @Ruben-Gabriel
. It’s something we’re going to look into once we get more details ironed out with the existing process. I think a tool like that would be awesome. A q&a version of topic greenhouse
system
6
I personally would appreciate some sort of notification if articles I’ve started get questions or talk page comments. I’ve started so many articles that I would not be able to patrol all of their talk pages without some sort of notification tool.
Anna
10
Yesss @Loiswade42
+4 - I think that would be rad. I do believe it’s on the brainstorm list/road map of ideas for the future already but it’s great to hear you guys would be game to get that kind of notification and help with Q&A that way.
There’s so much possibility for extending these ideas in several different directions. It’s exciting, and hopefully sooner or later the engineers can get to all of them! Watch this space, and I’ll pass on your interest!
I’ve actually received an email not too long ago regarding reader questions on an article I’ve started: “ Hello Illneedasaviour, You may have noticed a new “Reader Questions and Answers” section on many wikiHow articles. We’re experimenting with this as a new way to generate helpful content. So far it’s going really well, and we’d love for you to get involved and try it out! An article you started, Create an Apple ID on an iPhone, has 114 unanswered questions from readers!We encourage you to check them out in the “Reader Questions and Answers” section (make sure you’re logged in) and submit answers if you know them. This feature is still experimental and we have a lot to learn, so don’t hesitate to email us back with your thoughts or suggestions for improvement. Many thanks, Alissa, wikiHow Team
”
^Wow, that’s, um…, quite a lot.
@Anna
I was wondering what the “Email Address (optional)” slot does. If you submit your email, what does the website do with it? Does it send it to the person who asked the question or does it put something like “Contact this and that” at the end of the answer?
Thanks.
system
15
Translation: Let’s ask for it nicely and hope the engineers can:
A) Have some spare time they can eeke out of their “keep all the servers functional” job to give to the project
and
B) Actually figure out how to make this happen. (No articles written yet on how to give notifications of questions on articles to the original authors… or to ANY specific individual for that matter… so these guys have to come up with the solution from scratch)
#probablyharderthanitlooks
#kudostotheguysbehindthesceneswhokeepusinservertime
#ireallyhopethisworks
+1That’s a great question! Nearly every answer I’ve done to the readers questions I have left My e-mail. Do readers have a chance to e-mail us directly for further questions?
system
17
Alissa has experimented with sending notification emails when people have their questions answered, but not a lot of people have replied so far. We wouldn’t pass along your email address though because that would overstep a privacy boundary for a lot of people.
We don’t do anything with the email address you submit when you answer a question just yet, but one thing I’m hoping to do is to collect them and add them to the category contacts directory I’ve been sending questions to via email.
#Loisknowswhatsup
This phase of the project is so experimental and has the potential to be so widespread across the site that we want to make sure we build it carefully. There are LOTS of exciting ideas floating around!
@Illneedasaviour
I started answering a few questions, but the more I got involved in this, the more chances of people not understanding that to create one, they must have a valid payment method on file with Apple. Most of the questions are of this variety (the common question of “How do I create one when I don’t have a credit/debit card/payment card” arose most often). There are several that even mention that several ways have problems when they enter this data and what they can do to workaround it. It would be nearly impossible to find the best looking question and answer it then flag the others that are exact duplicates of the one I answered.
From knowledge of creating one a few years ago myself, I know that payment methods must be entered into the Apple ID to create one. I’m baffled, though. I can’t possibly answer any, without losing accurate data.
system
19
I am not sure if this answers your issue @Byankno1
but if you can see a pattern of people attempting to answer a similar particular problem, pick one question from that issue and polish it to how YOU think they are trying to ask it, then answer that. Then the remaining questions for that issue can be flagged for deletion. I think the “best looking question” really only gets properly articulated from you editing it.
Also, I would aim to answer at the more general level; in most cases, I’ve found that where the questions go into depth, they get too personal or individualised, too exacting to the person in question, and not only does it get too hard for us to guess at their personal circumstances, it’s doubtful an answer of that depth or peculiarity would assist other readers anyway.
Also remember that if the question isn’t answered to someone’s liking, there will eventually come along a more articulate version of the question that does make sense and can be answered, so no need to worry about questions disappearing forever.
And if you can’t answer questions, don’t worry about it. Move on to those you can, as everything you do is helpful. And don’t be afraid to flag questions that really don’t make sense or aren’t going to result in a decent answer.
system
20
PS Sorry for weird formatting in my previous post, my cut and paste went awry.
