Now that we've launched (and a big thanks to our collaborators and to all of the people who volunteered to beta test and pre-populate the site!), we're keen to hear your ideas for improving DHanswers. We have some plans for further Twitter integration and email notifications at the category level, but need to hear your good ideas.
So here's an open thread. What can we do to make DHanswers as useful and joyful a community-based tool as possible?
It appears that non-admin members do not have the ability to edit their posts. Is it possible to allow non-admin members to edit their posts (only)? Just FYI for everyone, admins can edit, delete, spam posts in addition to having the permalink and reply links that everyone has.
PhDeviate
Member
Oh hey, I just sent a suggestion via Twitter Direct Message!
I would suggest encouraging questioners to define their terms. Questions, as well as answers, can be teaching tools. Everyone's expertise is going to differ here and there. I think moments of thought about which terms might not be common to all would be useful. Yes, of course, we all have access to google, but if I'm reading a question that *might* be interesting and I have to google 3 terms in one sentence, I'm unlikely to make it through to the end. Encouraging linking to salient definitions might also be useful!
Replying to @PhDeviate's post:
We do address that to some extent in the sticky post. And it is true that people should be as clear as possible when asking questions.
However, to my mind there is some expectation that people will ignore questions outside of their area of expertise—at least when it comes to discussing in a deep and meaningful (answering with expertise) sort of way—and to that end there's a matching expectation from the questioner's perspective that those reading in a particular section or a particular topic won't bother if even the question doesn't make sense to them. That sort of self-filtering is just sort of how these things go, typically.
I really appreciate the thoughtful functionality of the site, but I would also like the ability to turn off everything on the page except the question, any replies, and the reply box. (No RSS feed for this topic, no add to favorites, maybe not even tags or links to people's avatars/roles--basically "DHAnswers Unplugged.") Whether this was a global setting or a link on each page doesn't make much difference.
Oooh, can I dream for a minute?
I'd love it if the notification emails linked not to the thread but to the new post they're notifying me about. No idea how much of a pain that would be to implement (anchor tags, I assume?), but you asked!
It would be nice if the question title was sent in the subject of the emails. Right now, the emails I get have the titles "[DHAnswers] New Post," "[DHAnswers] New Post for Favorite Question," or "[DHAnswers] New Question." Ideally, (for me, others may think differently) the emails would just contain the question name and the convention of re: if it is a reply to a question. Granted, this is mostly because I rely a bit too much on gmail's grouping feature. It might look something like: "[DHAnswers] Hosting Recomendations" "Re: [DHAnswers] Hosting Recomendations."
Thoughts?
One thing I've noticed, now that we've generated answer threads over multiple pages, is that the "next page" links should be much more prominent! I suggest this especially since the reply box appears at the foot of every page -- it will be easy to overlook additional pages of answers.
Replying to @Bethany Nowviskie's post:
Actually, I'm kind of hoping that someday the breakdown of answers into multiple pages goes away. For me, separating one topic into multiple pages makes it unwieldy, particularly if I want to jump around in the topic to see what people are responding to.
And while we're on the topic of wishlists, how about visually threaded discussions? :)
I really would love some SSL for the login page...
PhDeviate
Member
Replying to @Julie Meloni's post:
On the one hand, I agree with you that this is frequently true that people won't, and have no real need to, click through on questions that don't relate to their interests. But on the other hand, I have noticed that when people *do* define their terms, I have the opportunity to discover something that is outside my area of expertise now, but might not be for long. Also, I have reinvented the digital wheel several times because I knew what I needed something to do, so I made something that would do that thing, but I didn't know there was a term for it.
A hypothetical example might be mind-mapping, which many people learn to do on their own, sometimes with crayons and construction paper! But sometimes it's called other things, or sometimes it's just something someone does. If they don't know the *term* mind map, they might not click through a question like: Are there good online tools for mind mapping? And then they'd never know that the answer contained new tools for something they already do, and already find useful.
Replying to @Bethany Nowviskie's post:
It seems a little slow, but works fine.
Have you ever seen: http://stackoverflow.com
I think they have the best Q&A model and the software is available for use
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