Best Answers, Unusable . . .

[MGBrose]

Best answers was implemented really poorly, it won't work for 95% on sites in its current state. It's borked so much, that it went from being a potentially awesome feature, to being completely unusable by us. My Admin/Support staff of 10-15 members unanimously voted to not implement the feature until its done correctly.

Here is why:
The original introductory article to best answers states that it features an "excerpt" at the top. Which is completely false, it features the ENTIRE best answer. I would actually love to at bare minimum control the exerpt size, but that still doesn't solve the problem correctly. And if you've ever been on quora/yahoo answers you know the best answers are often HUGE very well written answers thoroughly explaining a topic. Well for IPBoard this now takes up everything above the fold(if you have a large best answer), so you can no longer see what the detailed question was on first view. You just see the topic title, and then BAM BEST ANSWER WALL OF TEXT.

Example on our forum: http://mazda626.net/topic/37568-how-to-recharge-ac-system/

It completely takes the best answer out of context, best answer like every other answer system should be bumped to posting after the first post. To be maximally useful to users.

Best Answers Defying IPS feature mantra:
Via the mini mantra IPS has for developing features, it should function well for a large majority of communities. This was implemented in a way,to make it impossible for a majority of communities to use it. Everything else about the feature is awesome though, just need that fixed.

Not to mention, the community.invisionpower site has been so flakey lately I have yet to be able to actually post this. I have attempted 4-5 times and the site hangs for me each and every time. Pretty annoying.

[Aiwa]

That's not a bad idea... Moving the Best answer to between the first post and first reply... Though, if the best answer is the first reply, you'd have the post back to back with the best answer...

You could likely achieve this with a template edit...

[Y0urs Truly]

Yea what Aiwa said you could just put the hook above or below the ad hook so it appears after the first post?

[Michael]

I think you're vastly overstating how many sites would find this unusable. I'd say it's closer to 95% of sites would have no problems with it in its current state. Your own experience is not likely to be indicative of every site that uses it.

[MGBrose]

I think you're vastly overstating how many sites would find this unusable. I'd say it's closer to 95% of sites would have

no

problems with it in its current state. Your own experience is not likely to be indicative of every site that uses it.

Unusable because no one wants to jump straight to the answer, when they don't even know what the persons real question is. Chronological order of events is a relatively important part of QA, as the A doesn't have context without the Q. How about unintuitive, and awkward in its current implementation, and a complete waste of above the fold space(when dealing with well written helpful answers).

So in 95% of cases its best to see the ENTIRE answer before the full question? Interesting. Its funny a majority of QA sites don't do it this way.

**Edit removed some rant**

That's not a bad idea... Moving the Best answer to between the first post and first reply... Though, if the best answer is the first reply, you'd have the post back to back with the best answer...

You could likely achieve this with a template edit...

Good Idea, I think well fix it with that or as Y0urs Truly mentioned above or below the adblock.

Thanks for the potential short term solution, its annoying to have to implement something like this. But it might make the best of the situation.

I hope we get other admins input as well. I doubt many people have even turned this feature on yet, so I hope we build more discussion on the topic as more people try it out.

I would be completely at peace if we were given 3 options, above ad block, below, and before first post. I think that would easily solve this problem for everyone.

[MGBrose]

[blair]

First, playing devil's advocate... If I were searching for how to recharge the ac system of a Mazda 626 I would like clicking on this result. It's a great answer at the top of the thread. I don't need to read the entire topic. I don't need to read the first post. Why? The search result snippet in Google already told me what I needed to know:

1. The title doesn't change.

2. It's in "Tutorials & How to Guides", on a site called mazda626.net

3. The meta description keeps the snippet from changing to the best answer, "Hey PPl, I have 2000 Mazda 626 2.5l V6 engine LX. I am running low on ..." Unfortunately, the first part of that snippet is redundant and wasted text.

It's the 1st result for me with the term, "how to recharge ac mazda 626". Since the topic is from July 2010 I suspect it has been for a while. Be curious if it stays that way...

Which brings me to the concerns.

1. Putting the best answer above the first post changes the content too much. The first 300 words or so are very important for SEO, completely changing them can and will likely affect a topic's SERP position. If this were an important topic for my forum, and I was currently ranked #1 in SERP, I would be very concerned with changing the content so drastically. Hard to know how these changes would affect an entire forum. There would likely be some wins, some loses. Much jockeying of position as best answers were selected for old topics. Not every question/answer will fit the system as well as this one.

2. Duplicating the entire answer on the same page can also can affect the SEO. I fear it would often be seen by search engines as keyword stuffing and spammy.

3. It pushes ad placements down on the page. It could affect whether a placement could be sold as ATF (above the fold). It will negatively affect click-through and ecpms.

The answer? I think Microsoft's community does it right. The best answer is shown below the original post (question). If the best answer is on the same page, it's not displayed again on the page (example). However, if it's a multiple page topic and the best answer is not on the first page, it's shown in the best answer location, and it's original location on another page (example).

[avro]

Best answers was implemented really poorly, it won't work for 95% on sites in its current state. It's borked so much, that it went from being a potentially awesome feature, to being completely unusable by us. My Admin/Support staff of 10-15 members unanimously voted to not implement the feature until its done correctly.

Here is why:

The

original introductory article to best answers

states that it features an "excerpt" at the top. Which is completely false, it features the ENTIRE best answer.

I would actually love to at bare minimum control the exerpt size,

All that is missing is the ability to control the size of the snippet.

[MGBrose]

All that is missing is the ability to control the size of the snippet.

Blairs post provides insight to the bigger problem at hand here.

@Blair thanks, best post so far in this thread. Much appreciated!

[Jinkler]

Best answer should go underneath the question. It's logical. An answer is useless without knowing the context of the question!

It's like me saying, "blue bananas" is the best answer. Best answer to what exactly? You need the question first!

http://mazda626.net/topic/37568-how-to-recharge-ac-system/

That link is a perfect example of why the question must come first. I'd have exactly the same problem on my site as MGBrose.

EDIT - and not just underneath the topic title, quite often members don't post full details of the question in the topic title. It needs to go underneath the first post IMO.

[Rimi]

Wait. The only issue is the location of the best answer and the fact that it's not truncated? That's it? That makes it a completely unusable feature?

[MGBrose]

Wait. The only issue is the location of the best answer and the fact that it's not truncated? That's it? That makes it a completely unusable feature?

Read Blair and Jinklers posts in this thread again

Were dealing with multiple problems.

1) Featuring Best Answer at the top insted of nested under the question could be potentially detrimental to SEO/Google Ranking. (blair stated this)

2) Featuring best answer twice on one page could also make us apt to spam site penalities (blair)

3) Featuring the answer before the question, isn't intuitive, its illogical. (jinkler)

4) Excerpt Size is uncontrollable (myself)

Since I admin a mostly Question and Answer based community, I'm very interested in seeing that IPS goes the right direction with this. This is a must have feature for a site like ours, so we want to see that it works properly.

Btw I've removed best answers from my board if you want to see what it looked like before please see:

(8mb)

http://pb.mazda626.net/images/HowToRechargeAcSystem.pdf (2.5mb)

[Rimi]

Right. SO that's it right? The position of the best answer. Because you can just change that in the skins. You can also address number 2 with the skins. And number 4. It's all in the templates son. No need to overreact. Just pay someone to customize the feature to work the way you want it to work.

[Rheddy]

I don't see what the problem is. I think it's working as it's intended to. While it could probably use some tweaking to improve the feature, I don't think there's anything inheritantly wrong with it. With all new features, it'll be improved over time but you can't really expect changes overnight on a new feature to the software that has just been released.

[opentype]

An answer is useless without knowing the context of the question!

Usually the context is provided through the topic title, which one should have read, when one clicks the link.

Also, even if the best answer is UNDER the question, it is also mostly “out of context”. A forum thread is hardly made up of just independent answers to the original questions.

I agree to the truncation though. IPS has all those nice Ajax features already, so an option to open longer answer up with a click would be fine.

[MGBrose]

Right. SO that's it right? The position of the best answer. Because you can just change that in the skins. You can also address number 2 with the skins. And number 4. It's all in the templates son. No need to overreact. Just pay someone to customize the feature to work the way you want it to work.

Every time I customize things I find myself doing large numbers of changes every upgrade. Hell I'm still trying to get things fixed both from our dev and with our theme from the 3.4 changes.

And its pretty clear that it's not just me that wants it to work this way. IPS has focused so much on SEO and integrating IPSEO with core(which is awesome), but why didn't they think about it with this feature?

I don't see what the problem is. I think it's working as it's intended to. While it could probably use some tweaking to improve the feature, I don't think there's anything inheritantly wrong with it. With all new features, it'll be improved over time but you can't really expect changes overnight on a new feature to the software that has just been released.

I think I'm just bothered because I was really excited about this feature, but it turns out:

1) I'm afraid to turn it on, in fear that it could have negative impact on SEO

2) Its implemented awkwardly, displaying things without logical order

3) My entire mod/admin volunteer staff hate the way its implemented (these guys generally love the direction of IPS's changes)

Overall sheer disappointment. it's like santa gave me coal :sad:

Usually the context is provided through the topic title, which one should have read, when one clicks the link.

Also, even if the best answer is UNDER the question, it is also mostly “out of context”. A forum thread is hardly made up of just independent answers to the original questions.

I agree to the truncation though. IPS has all those nice Ajax features already, so an option to open longer answer up with a click would be fine.

Topics are not always well titled, also many of them don't portray the full problem and have little relevence without knowing the details

Let me find several examples:

http://mazda626.net/topic/42518-engine-problems/

What kind of engine problems?

What are the symptoms?

http://mazda626.net/topic/42498-dash-lights-not-working/

Are they not working at all?

Are they partially working?

Are they working intermittenyl?

http://mazda626.net/topic/42529-alternator-or/

What kind of alternator problem?

Is your battery not charging?

etc

The actual problems are not exposed without being able to read them in full post form. And to what degree the question and answer relates to your problem is pretty significant.

Those are just 2 recent posts, I could find ten of thousands that meet the criteria and would suffer from this problem.

[Rimi]

Well I guess the problem is how you portrayed your opinion. When you act like something is the end of the world simply because it's placed in the wrong spot people are less likely to take you seriously. Just saying.

[Jinkler]

Usually the context is provided through the topic title, which one should have read, when one clicks the link.

You're making the assumption that the question is contextually correct and relevant. Quite often this isn't the case. We don't all necessarily run forums which are full of computer literate people. I continually see topics on my sites which are created by people who are venturing onto forums for their very first time.

[Jinkler]

When you act like something is the end of the world simply because it's placed in the wrong spot people are less likely to take you seriously. Just saying.

And where was that portrayed then? Just asking.

[.Ian]

personally it should go beneath the first post in a truncated form.

and then a link to take the user directly to that post.

[Alfa1]

Many of the questions of my site are titled:

Urgent question!!!! Please HELP!

I think it should work like on Yahoo! Answers.

But frankly speaking, this 'best answer' feature is just one feature that makes Yahoo! good at answers. Without the rest, and specifically the way questions are asked (with autosearch) the function is incomplete at best.

[Josh Bond]

The original poster is correct. You can't have a full post between the title and the first message. It makes no sense on large posts. You need an excerpt with a limited number of characters. Either Invision will fix this, or a hook maker will, or maybe a hook maker and then Invision. :smile:

Great idea, just needs an excerpt.

The "Go Read the Full Post" button implies Invision intended for it to be an excerpt. If the system presents the full post, why have the full post button?

[HellaWicked]

The "Go Read the Full Post" button implies Invision intended for it to be an excerpt. If the system presents the full post, why have the full post button?

My thoughts as well. Perhaps there was a glitch/bug that's causing the whole post to be shown instead of just an excerpt. Maybe, as you mentioned, IPS will further look into this and fix it so just an excerpt will show.

[Rimi]

I actually think it used to be an excerpt.

[MGBrose]

The original poster is correct. You can't have a full post between the title and the first message. It makes no sense on large posts. You need an excerpt with a limited number of characters. Either Invision will fix this, or a hook maker will, or maybe a hook maker and then Invision. :smile:

Great idea, just needs an excerpt.

The "Go Read the Full Post" button implies Invision intended for it to be an excerpt. If the system presents the full post, why have the full post button?

Even an excerpt is troublesome, with possibilities of screwing up SEO ranking for certain already well ranked pages.

Well I guess the problem is how you portrayed your opinion. When you act like something is the end of the world simply because it's placed in the wrong spot people are less likely to take you seriously. Just saying.

Not really opinions, more like conclusions based on how features were implemented. Best answers in its current state is a SEO Nightmare + logically awkward.

If you were with IPS for 10+ years and your forums #1 topic type was "how do it _______ ? You probably feel strongly about a poorly implemented solution. It had the possibility of being a game changer for our forum, but instead like my original topic stated its unusable for us. Which to you may have appeared like me saying "it's the end of the world," but I was and am extremely frustrated with the lack of thought and research that went into this feature.

Placement is everything, companies like google spend big bucks on data collection to identify proper placement. Proper placement means millions and millions of dollars to big companies, and its just as important for smaller companies (but on a smaller scale). Proper placement for us means the getting the right search rankings, which delivers the traffic that keeps most of our sites online through ad revenue.

Sidenote:

It's very frustrating; how often community.invisionpower.com members on the feedback forum resist really really good recommendations/feedback that would benefit all forums that run IPS. I'm not going to point any fingers, but some of them definitely are in this thread, resisting every little piece of feedback just because they can with very little reasoning. It's like a bunch of fanboys saying IPS can do no wrong and quite honestly I'm getting tired of it. IPS makes mistakes just like every other company, the difference is they have us to suggest changes in a positive direction. Were driving in the front seat, they make the car, our feedback is important to the future of their company. The other part that bothers me about many of these sort of replies, is that many of these counterarguments never even address the problems that are up for discussion. Many of you say OH we just need excerpts then, well what about the entire SEO problem that many posts in this thread mention?