With new features come new answers

Question

Our Area 51 Beta site shows have a 1.9 answer ratio, which is close to the recommended 2.5 answers per question. We're also at 119 users with 200+ rep, also close to the recommended 150 users.

With SDL Tridion 2013 out, maybe we have an opportunity to revisit questions (more answers and more points). Regardless of the release, we should probably revisit unanswered questions (anyone know the answer to these?).

Here are some tips and reminders. Feel free to add more or disagree with any of these points.

We should look at questions and answers in the context of when they were asked. But new and old users should feel free to revisit old questions adding answers, comments, or updates where appropriate.

Sometimes it makes sense to re-ask questions in the context of new features and functionality, but we could also update existing Q&A. The appropriate update probably depends on the type of question or answer.

• General "is it possible?" questions with a "no" (or "no but here's a hack") answers could use updated answers or comments as things change.

• Specific questions for a given API version should probably be left as-is, but answers could include notes on major differences between versions (e.g. "here's how to do it in 2009, 2011, and/or 2013"). We seem to do this naturally.

For some examples, How would I get all pages using core service? and CoreService GetList() behaving differently to GetListXml() are 2011-specific questions, where the answer depends on the version of the Core Service. I think we did a good job tagging these and clarifying version differences.

Any recommendations for other scenarios? Does editing questions or providing answers "bump" them and is that a good/bad thing?

Answer 1

I fully agree with the fact that we continuously need to revisit the unanswered questions. And up to some extent, revisiting any question out there can never harm.

Indeed it also makes sense to focus a bit more on the 2.5 answer ratio, but it should not become our main focus. I'd rather see one valid and clear answer to a question than a few crappy ones or duplicates. Mind you that should not stop anyone from adding a new answer to any old question if they feel they can add a better answer. But please keep an eye on duplicate answers. If your answer only is a slight improvement to one that has already been given, you should edit that existing answer and improve it, rather than to add your own answer (which means you won't get any points for it, well not from SE that is, but you will get points in my book ;o).

Editing questions and answers does bump them into the active list, which to me certainly is a good thing. We should always have a focus on high quality as that will drive more people to our site. If they find good answers to clear questions in Google, they will come back and hopefully participate...