126
votes

Please post new bug reports, feature requests or discussions as individual questions tagged with at least in addition to the requisite

And thanks for all the great feedback so far!


We are currently soliciting feedback for an improved version of /review to help with the very important task of maintaining site quality. There are three targeted tasks we have built thus far and will continue to roll out others after we gain confidence these three are working:

  • Low Quality Posts: This task targets posts that we've algorithmically determined to be low quality. Your job is to read these posts and:

    • decide if a post does in fact Look Good
    • Edit the post to make it better
    • Delete1 the post entirely
    • or skip it if you are Not Sure.

    The minimum reputation to perform this task corresponds with the ability to edit any post (currently 2,000).

  • Suggested Edits: This task targets posts edited by users who have not yet earned the reputation to fully edit. Your job is to read these edits and:

    • decide to Approve the edit as is
    • Reject the edit
    • Edit the original post and make your own edit
    • Delete the post (moderator only)
    • or skip it if you are Not Sure.

    The minimum reputation to perform this task corresponds with the ability to edit any post (currently 2,000).

  • Close Votes: This task targets posts that have received at least one close vote. These posts generally need additional review to help decide if a post does in fact require closure. Your job is to read these posts and:

    • decide to Close this post by casting another close vote
    • Do Not Close2 this post if do not agree with the reasons for closing
    • Edit this post to make it better
    • or skip it if you are Not Sure.

    The minimum reputation to perform this task corresponds with the ability to cast close votes (currently 3,000).

Each of the actions on the review task listed above may not always be available based on your current reputation or moderator status. We will be reviewing the data collected in this experiment closely to determine if these new review tasks are working and also reserve the right to pull these tasks out entirely if we find they are not. We have enabled these review tasks on Meta, Super User, Server Fault, and Stack Overflow.

To check out the new hotness visit: https://meta.stackoverflow.com/review

1 If you don't have enough rep to delete, you can "Recommend Deletion". This doesn't do anything right now except move it to the front of the queue for people who can delete it.
2 "Do Not Close" just removes it from the queue right now -- it doesn't affect close votes.

35
  • 4
    @nhahtdh: "These will soon be moved to the new beta Review Task system" - So yes.
    – animuson StaffMod
    Jul 12, 2012 at 17:58
  • 4
    What happens with "Not Sure?" What if you want to come back to it later? There doesn't seem to be a mechanism for un-dequeuing a post.
    – CodeGnome
    Jul 12, 2012 at 18:40
  • 7
    What happened to badge progress? Jul 12, 2012 at 20:25
  • 4
    @octopusgrabbus you are still making progress. We will add this back to the new review task soon. Jul 12, 2012 at 20:27
  • 9
    [cross-posted from SF.chat] You need 2000 rep to use the first two links. I have 1.4k rep on SF with 400 helpful flags. I'm going to still have to use the "old" links until they get move or I get more rep. I'm not expecting for the whole system to be changed but could they be made avalible to those with 2000k rep or 250+ helpful flags? That number demonstatres a decent understand of the flagging system.
    – tombull89
    Jul 13, 2012 at 7:38
  • 1
    Are there 85,3k CloseVotes or 85,3k questions with at least one close vote? The second metric would make more sense.
    – örs
    Jul 13, 2012 at 8:52
  • 5
    Isn't a required rep of 2000 a bit excessive. Its not like a 1000 rep user wouldn't be able to tell if a question was low quality or not.
    – VBwhatnow
    Jul 13, 2012 at 10:52
  • 6
    With such high rep limits, review might start stalling, especially on AskUbuntu, where panicky users are great in number, and returning users are few.
    – nanofarad
    Jul 13, 2012 at 12:28
  • 5
    Just want to say that I really like the direction the review workflow has headed. Usability while reviewing was probably my biggest (of few) gripes with SO, so I'm super-excited. A huge thank you to the team for this.
    – Rob Hruska
    Jul 13, 2012 at 16:37
  • 16
    The "not sure" option rubs me the wrong way. Makes me doubt myself sometimes when all I want to do is move on. Couldn't it say "Pass" or "Skip" instead?
    – j08691
    Jul 13, 2012 at 17:27
  • 1
    @PopularDemand - Yeah I had the same thought, although "not sure" connotes a meaning behind the action whereas "skip" or "pass" simply denote the action of moving onto the next review item.
    – j08691
    Jul 13, 2012 at 18:44
  • 4
    I like it, great idea!!! One comment: the close vote tab should have a big warning: CAUTION, USING THIS FEATURE CAN REALLY RUIN YOUR DAY (and an ad of the leading antidepressants brand). It's really depressing to see the amount of crap coming by when doing it for half an hour. Worse than the "low quality posts". Ehh, I guess it works... Jul 15, 2012 at 11:41
  • 3
    @Gert: that's not a terrible idea... I know I can't spend too much time wading through the 10K/mod tools without sinking into despair. Maybe when you run out of close votes it should automatically redirect you to stackoverflow.com/questions/greatest-hits... er...
    – Shog9
    Jul 16, 2012 at 3:41
  • 2
    I'm a <2K user and I like the old system as it is. I couldn't access to any of these new sections, only to the statistics. Why? That would be my "don't like, stay with old". And of course, I couldn't test any new feature. Jul 17, 2012 at 7:01
  • 1
    This way is far more effective and addictive than before. I find myself spending more time looking at the question, and spending more time than in the previous version!
    – C. Ross
    Jul 18, 2012 at 13:26

58 Answers 58

67
votes

So I've been reviewing low quality posts on SO. There are four options:

  • Looks Good
  • Edit
  • Recommend Deletion
  • Not Sure

What about if I want to recommend an answer be turned into a comment? I've seen many so-called answers which would be useful as comments instead of just being deleted.

recommend convert to comment

8
  • 10
    Conversion to comment requires full community moderator status. This is one reason a flag option should be included.
    – bwDraco
    Jul 13, 2012 at 4:35
  • 42
    So add a Recommended Convert to comment for regular users and Convert to comment for full mods. Problem solved
    – Ivo Flipse
    Jul 13, 2012 at 8:42
  • @IvoFlipse Exactly what I meant.
    – JimmyPena
    Jul 13, 2012 at 10:32
  • 5
    Convert to Comment should be very rare. Yes, a lot of people leave comments as answers - but that doesn't make them good comments. I've also seen "not an answer" flags being used as an attempt to deny rep for answers that ARE ANSWERS, but which the flagger feels are unworthy for whatever reason (incorrect, too simple, link-only, etc) - moving a poor answer into a comment doesn't fix anything. I'm not completely against providing an option for this if it's really necessary, but so far all of the examples I've seen should've been left alone or deleted.
    – Shog9
    Jul 15, 2012 at 1:59
  • 4
    @Shog9 Especially with trouble-shooting questions on SU, many "answers" are actually asking for more information. They'd otherwise be flagged not an answer and hopefully converted to a comment Jul 15, 2012 at 21:02
  • @Daniel: worth noting that in the context of the LQ queue, these comments-as-answers would only appear when very short (and/or very badly written). Even if we introduce LQ-flags into the mix, that shouldn't be picking up these "not an answer" answers.
    – Shog9
    Jul 15, 2012 at 21:06
  • 4
    @Shog9 "Did you try to X your Y?" isn't an answer, but might be useful to keep as a comment for certain questions. Jul 15, 2012 at 21:08
  • @Daniel: if that's worth keeping in any form (that is, if "Your Y isn't sufficiently X'd - X your Y by doing Z to resolve the problem." is a valid answer) then it's probably worth encouraging the author to expand on it rather than deleting / converting to a comment. But, this really depends on the situation - in particular, a request for more info converted 5 minutes after it was posted with no response from the OP is rather different from a "have you tried" posted a year ago with "Nope - thanks, that did it!" as the response.
    – Shog9
    Jul 15, 2012 at 21:14
60
votes

Not sure if anyone mentioned this, but "Low Quality Posts" could be further segmented into

  • "Low Quality Questions"
  • "Low Quality Answers".

I had to stare hard at an "answer" before I realized it was actually a question.

It would make reviewing faster because you don't have to switch sentiments whenever the UI switches between showing you a question and showing you an answer.

Just sayin'.

6
  • Part of me thinks this is an unnecessarily fine distinction, but on the other hand, it would help reduce confusion for those answers that are low quality precisely because they're actually questions posted in the wrong place.
    – Pops
    Jul 12, 2012 at 20:35
  • 7
    @PopularDemand My thinking is that questions and answers have slightly different criteria for being "low quality". If you have to constantly switch criteria in your head, you work slower.
    – JimmyPena
    Jul 12, 2012 at 20:40
  • 7
    I think it is better if there is some kind of visual indicator to indicate it is a question or answer for Low Quality category and for Suggested Edit category. Currently, we have to scroll down near the end of the post to see "answered XXX" or "asked XXX".
    – nhahtdh
    Jul 13, 2012 at 1:29
  • @nhahtdh There kind of is, but they should be physically separated nonetheless, so one can work the queue faster.
    – JimmyPena
    Jul 13, 2012 at 1:30
  • Please retain Low Quality Both as well, or a visual indicator.... Jul 14, 2012 at 15:38
  • 2
    Another reason for this is that you cannot usefully review questions once you're out of close votes. Only reviewing answers works though, and this would be one possible way to get that. Jul 15, 2012 at 21:00
48
votes

Voting Up or Down is Missing

Under the old system, you could vote posts up or down while reviewing them. Since voting is one of the metrics tracked for the Reviewer badge, why is this ability not present in the new review interface?

4
  • I was definitely looking for this ability as well. It feels odd to have to click through to vote ...
    – C. Ross
    Jul 20, 2012 at 17:19
  • 1
    @CodeGnome: Please see meta.stackexchange.com/questions/140405/… Jul 24, 2012 at 13:05
  • See my answer to Somnath's question ^^^
    – Shog9
    Jul 25, 2012 at 17:45
  • @Shog9, as I understand your objection to voting in that post, it seems to be b/c you can't see the other answers, but that's another one of the problems w/ the new system, IMO! You should be able to see the other answers to judge the contribution of the one in question. Aug 14, 2012 at 14:05
45
votes

I liked the bits where it showed progress towards badges i.e.

  1. Copy Editor
  2. Electorate

I find stuff like that quite motivating (sadly). I notice they are now missing. Can they be reincluded or put somewhere else.

Apologies if I've missed them

2
  • 6
    Figuring out where to put these - but they're coming back.
    – Shog9
    Jul 25, 2012 at 17:05
  • 4
    Brilliant. I can continue to unhealthily obsess about them.
    – Tim Brown
    Jul 25, 2012 at 17:20
28
votes

Few comments:

  • Can the confirmation for delete please be removed? If not, provide an option. It's the /review route. I know a lot will be up for deletion. Having a confirmation is really annoying. At least skip the confirmation for Moderators
  • It would be great if all answers were visible, below the question. Having that helps to know whether it should be moved to a comment or deleted altogether
  • After approving/rejecting a suggested edit, the other button ( approve/reject) still remains. Fixed
  • Also, why aren't the voting arrows present on the posts? :/
4
  • 14
    +1 on the voting arrows
    – mgorven
    Jul 12, 2012 at 23:30
  • 4
    You must construct additional voting arrows
    – Ben Brocka
    Jul 16, 2012 at 1:48
  • @Sathya: Please see meta.stackexchange.com/questions/140405/… Jul 24, 2012 at 13:06
  • It's supposed to be annoying. Well, not so much annoying as simply a bit labor-intensive. Deletion isn't a trivial matter, and moderator deletion can't be reversed by the community - giving you an extra second or two to reconsider is worthwhile. Also, see my answer to Somnath's question.
    – Shog9
    Jul 24, 2012 at 19:39
28
votes

Users are locked out of reviewing Close Votes when they run out of close votes for the day.

Consequently, the Top Reviewers each day are the users with the greatest "do not close"-vote to "close"-vote ratio, because they are able to accumulate the most reviews before being locked out. These users also have an advantage in the all time Top Reviewers list -- I took an early lead, but lost it and continue to fall further behind because I cast fewer "do not close" votes than certain other users.

This current design will skew votes towards "do not close", or at least encourage users to select "not sure" instead of "close" to avoid getting locked out. Instead, "close", "do not close" and "edit" should all count towards a daily review limit.

(Why am I including "edit"? It's good to encourage edits, but once we include "do not close", having a larger number of "edit"s would be the only way to get an advantage and would be the new factor determining the daily Top Reviewers. This would lead to a lot of frivolous edits bumping questions that should actually be closed.)

After that, consider removing the daily Top Reviewers list. It will be a lot less interesting once everybody's tied at a shared cap.

3
  • 9
    "Not Sure" really shouldn't be counting as a review - if you can drive yourself to the top of the leaderboard by abstaining then that's a bug. But yeah, "Don't Close" should be limited also.
    – Shog9
    Jul 13, 2012 at 15:28
  • 1
    @Shog9 You're right, it doesn't count as a review. I just meant that users shouldn't be encouraged to press it when they actually believe that "Close" is appropriate.
    – Jeremy
    Jul 13, 2012 at 15:32
  • 1
    I'd be thrilled if this could be changed before my close:do not close ratio causes me to lose my (slightly unfairly-earned) position at the top of the leaderboard.
    – Jeremy
    Jul 14, 2012 at 14:30
28
votes

In the old review-process I could restrict reviews to the tags I understand. In the new review I am supposed to give comments to things I do not understand.

Thus, I would like to have my tags back!


For clarification, these work in the old process:

These do not work in the new process:

4
  • 5
    This was the first thing I noticed. I tend to limit my reviewing mostly to my areas of specific expertise, where I'm most likely to be able to locate duplicate questions, etc. Jul 13, 2012 at 0:34
  • 1
    This isn't so much a problem when reviewing for writing quality, but it's certainly a major issue when trying to determine whether a post is on-topic or not, and whether it should be closed or migrated. I want tags back too!
    – CodeGnome
    Jul 14, 2012 at 14:03
  • 2
    +10 if I could.
    – Bazzz
    Jul 19, 2012 at 7:15
  • I would love to have this feature. Or at least having the tags at the very top of the question, so that they are visible at first glance. Aug 11, 2012 at 11:03
24
votes

Awesome, glad to see you guys aren't slacking. SO's a great site now and will get even better. I frequent the review tab a lot, but my rep's < 2000, so I can't access any of those tasks. Can you offer the beta only to those who can access it? Currently, I'm seeing this every time I click review.

6
  • You can see the normal review pages linked at the bottom of that page. Jul 12, 2012 at 18:36
  • 3
    I'm fully aware of that. I don't like needing to click through twice. Alert me once, then let me be, since I can't do anything about it. Jul 12, 2012 at 18:37
  • 1
    Cool, cool - just making sure you saw that. Jul 12, 2012 at 18:40
  • 4
    I agree with @SomeKittens. And I guess I understand why you might want only established users to be able to edit posts. But as someone who constantly edits everything I read, I am going to feel soooo left out. Jul 12, 2012 at 20:01
  • Yes, they are down there. That's part of the point (as I tried to state downvotedly, earlier). That is kind of annoying. We cant to nothing with that new review stuff that jumps repeatedly to our attention.
    – kratenko
    Jul 12, 2012 at 20:39
  • +1, I feel it is important for users < 2000 to at least be able to contribute and suggest edits, otherwise how does the suggested edits queue get filled up? Aug 13, 2012 at 9:18
16
votes

Some of questions raised due to new review system?

  1. How/Does/Where review stats going to be displayed.
  2. How new review system will affect the review stats and it's parameters? Why not to show all parameters done in review stats?
    enter image description here

  3. How/where the badge progress on review page(Copy Editor, Electorate) will be shown? enter image description here

  4. If we click on Not Sure in reviewing low quality posts, then will those be counted in reviewed posts.
  5. Does First answers and First questions are not required to review according to review system? enter image description here
  6. Why not given close option for low quality posts? Does only answers shown in low quality posts?
  7. Why can't we vote on posts according to new system during review? enter image description here
5
  • #5. They mentioned that first answers and first questions will be added to the new system at a later date.
    – Troyen
    Jul 13, 2012 at 6:21
  • And along with that what about late answers given by new users? Jul 13, 2012 at 6:24
  • Same thing. If you look on the review page, it's listed at the bottom under the "Review Lists (old)" header. "These will soon be moved to the new beta Review Task system"
    – Troyen
    Jul 13, 2012 at 6:26
  • Voting in the close, edit, or low-quality queues doesn't make a lot of sense. You're not being asked to rate the question or rank the answers; you're deciding whether a given question doesn't belong, a given edit is helpful, or a given post is of such poor quality that it should be removed entirely. There is a link to the full question though, if you decide to take an interest in it beyond the scope of the queue.
    – Shog9
    Jul 24, 2012 at 19:42
  • 1
    We will be bringing back badge progress in some form.
    – Shog9
    Jul 25, 2012 at 17:05
15
votes

I ran into a problem with this today. I noticed a poor edit suggestion and went to just improve the post and do it right. I went in, edited the post, submitted it, and I was moved on to the next suggestion. I went to the thread with the actual post (thanks to the browser history) to review the question and I noticed that my edits didn't take effect. I went in from the post itself (rather than the new review queue) and re-made my edits. I was given an error that the title already existed.

Apparently if there is an error making an edit in the queue it just swallows the error, displays nothing to the user, and moves on giving the impression that it worked even if it didn't.

A few unrelated comments:

  • I also miss not having the number of approve/reject votes displayed, or the reject reasons displayed, as on the old permanent edit suggestion page. It also doesn't list the approval/suggestion stats or recent approvals/suggestions (which is less useful than reject reasons, but still useful).

  • If you hit 'not sure' for an edit and then go back to it it says you've already voted and can't vote again. While I can understand approve/reject votes being locked, and it's nice to not have something I've "not sure-ed" show up again in the queue, I would like to change my vote. This was prompted by a mis-click when I meant to reject a suggested edit.

  • When you run out of votes it would be nice of the approve/reject buttons just went away, and there was some indication at the top of the page so that I don't spend time looking through questions that I can't vote on.

5
  • Could you provide a link to the post you had issues with. I can see several edits from you on various posts. Jul 17, 2012 at 16:54
  • @GeoffDalgas I looked through my edits and I wasn't able to find it, sorry.
    – Servy
    Jul 17, 2012 at 17:08
  • @GeoffDalgas I encountered the same problem. I cannot find it in my history either. (on SO)
    – jontro
    Jul 18, 2012 at 10:20
  • I think we found this issue and fixed it - it will be rolling out with the next build. See here: meta.stackexchange.com/questions/139821/… Jul 18, 2012 at 23:29
  • 1
    You can now go back and change things you clicked "Not Sure" on Jul 23, 2012 at 14:52
14
votes

Sub-

Navigating the close menu for dupes is annoying. It AJAX requests every time you proceed to the next stage for dupes, and the other close reasons involve two clicks and a wait. Not that big an issue--but it disrupts the flow of the thing, especially for dupes.

The feature request is as follows:

For all options but dupe: just select the close reason beforehand so we can click "close" and be done with it.

For dupe, open the close menu at the point where you choose which question to make it a duplicate of. Even better, do this:

enter image description here

Enable the "duplicate" buttons only if the user has looked at the respective tabs.

2
  • 1
    This might make sense; I think this suggestion has legs, and could be integrated into both the normal question UI and the /review UI. We're gonna defer this for the time being, but will consider it after the rest of /review is ironed out.
    – Shog9
    Jul 25, 2012 at 16:43
  • 2
    Tweak suggestion to sub-FR: don't put the "Duplicate 1," "Duplicate 2," &c. buttons on the header bar. Instead, put them inside the duplicate tabs, in the sidebar underneath "link." That will reduce the number of clicks needed to agree with an existing suggested dupe from a whopping four down to one, encourage people to actually verify that dupe suggestions are correct and prevent confused users from agreeing with dupe suggestions blindly. Also, the way the mockup is drawn, the "Duplicate 1" and "Duplicate 2" buttons kick the "Close" button out of its usual spot, which could be confusing.
    – Pops
    Jul 27, 2012 at 14:48
14
votes

One thing I don't like about the new suggested edit list is that it's no longer a list.

It used to show a list of up to 30 suggested edits, which made it easy to quickly scroll through them looking for things I actually know something about.

The new list shows me just one suggested edit, and I have to explicitly skip it (by clicking "Not Sure") before I can see another. It makes reviewing a lot of suggested edits much more awkward.

An unrelated thought: Should there be an option to show suggested edits tagged with my favorite tags, or to push them to the top of the list? Those are the edits I'm much more likely to be able to judge. Posted separately here.

7
  • 3
    +100. I really miss the list view. It made it much easier to locate the questions I am not qualified to review and skip the rest. Having to review the items one by one is much more time consuming.
    – Leigh
    Jul 16, 2012 at 22:20
  • Ugh.. that should have been "questions I am qualified to review and skip the rest". Trying to do too many things at once ;-)
    – Leigh
    Jul 17, 2012 at 0:29
  • @Leigh: Sounds interesting the other way, though. 8-)} Jul 17, 2012 at 1:17
  • Haha. It sounds like "the old layout made it easier for me to do .. absolutely nothing with pending edits" ;)
    – Leigh
    Jul 17, 2012 at 7:50
  • I initially agreed with your view, but after a few hours use I got to like the new layout more.
    – assylias
    Jul 24, 2012 at 13:06
  • 1
    So far it still feels a bit tedious and awkward to me :/ Having to navigate through every item is much more time consuming than skimming a list IMO.
    – Leigh
    Jul 24, 2012 at 22:09
  • It also looks to me like you end up reviewing the exact same list as someone else in the same order: most of my suggested edit reviews this morning were also reviewed by the same other user, ditto my reviews yesterday too.
    – Rup
    Jul 25, 2012 at 8:45
13
votes

The Review - close votes section is heavily gimped - I can no longer sort/filter by number of close votes or close reasons.

Please, please get this on the new tasks.

12
votes

What about the possibility of waiving the 2k reputation requirement for users who have earned the Marshal and/or Reviewer badge? I realize this is a small percentage of users, but I'd hate to see reviewing be taken away from those of us who have put in a lot of time on the old reviewing system, and who are still working to achieve the 2k goal.

1
  • This makes no sense at all for some queues - if you can't reasonably take any action in the queue, giving you access to it doesn't accomplish much. Long-term, I would like to gate access to certain privileges based on your demonstrated ability to make use of it, but that's a separate project. 2K won't necessarily be the rep limit for all future queues, but access will continue to be based on the privileges needed to handle at least some of the tasks involved.
    – Shog9
    Jul 25, 2012 at 17:04
12
votes

We can add comments inline now, why can't we have inline:

  • Voting
  • Editing
  • Flagging
  • 10k/mod "edit tags"-ing

enter image description here

6
  • +100, inline flagging. For the love of all things holy inline flagging.
    – user7116
    Jul 13, 2012 at 16:37
  • These queues are not intended to replace the full question and answers page. You also can't post answers, share with your social media accounts, start bounties, view related questions, etc... There's a link to the question, if you want to take an interest in it beyond the scope of the concern raised in the queue.
    – Shog9
    Jul 24, 2012 at 19:45
  • @Shog9: it makes it difficult to flag, which means I'll be less likely to flag. I have to leave the workflow to flag, which slows me down, and the new system is already a bit slower for me (good? bad? don't know).
    – user7116
    Aug 14, 2012 at 13:39
  • @sixlettervariables if you're encountering a lot of items that need to be flagged (as opposed to an action directly available in the queue ) then you should let us know. The intention of these queues is to give you the tools to handle problems directly; if that's not working then we may need to make adjustments.
    – Shog9
    Aug 14, 2012 at 14:54
  • @Shog9: I see it a lot in the Low Quality queue.
    – user7116
    Aug 14, 2012 at 14:56
  • @six: can you be specific? Collect a few, identify the flags that would be necessary, and post a new discussion here on MSO linking to them.
    – Shog9
    Aug 14, 2012 at 15:23
12
votes

May "Not Sure" be replaced with "Next"?

If I want to pass to the next post is not only because I am not sure, but also, e.g., because I am reviewing low quality posts, and I am shown a question that I would vote to close, but I cannot because I have already voted to close all the questions I could.

12
votes

Proposed Edits on Accepted Answers

It should be much more obvious (color coding? different border? clown cars and sirens?) when a proposed edit modifies an accepted answer. The tiny "accepted yes" on the right-hand side doesn't really leap out; you have to make a conscious decision to check for it each time.

1
  • 1
    +1, they could color the vote box like normal, which would help "see" this.
    – user7116
    Jul 17, 2012 at 14:41
10
votes

There are actions I want to take on some posts but can't within the review interface, such as flagging or adding a comment (though this is allowed for low-quality posts), and I end up having to open the post separately to do so. Can you add more choices so that this isn't necessary? For example, old questions that should be closed but may not get enough close votes or should be migrated to a site not listed in the close dialog may be better handled by adding a moderator flag.

1
  • These queues are not intended to replace the full question and answers page. There's a link to the question, if you want to take an interest in it beyond the scope of the concern raised in the queue. Migration to sites not in the close dialog should be fairly rare - an exceptional action.
    – Shog9
    Jul 25, 2012 at 17:09
9
votes

In a lot of cases I get an answer that's recommended for deletion, but often the question (and any other answers are crappy too). At the moment we lack a lot of context, because we can only see one answer and the question it was given on.

So I'd like an easier way to simply delete or close the question too, without having to open it on a new tab, delete the question, then go back and delete the answer (even though its already deleted).

It might be useful to add a check to see if any other posts on the same question are somewhere in the queue and if so, add them to the screen like the question is at the bottom.

2
  • If the question looks suspect, I recommend breaking out of the queue and handling it directly from the question page.
    – Shog9
    Jul 25, 2012 at 17:14
  • That's what I've been doing so far, but it just slows down the process somewhat. But I get that if you're trying to trim down the info, showing everything wouldn't mix well with that
    – Ivo Flipse
    Jul 29, 2012 at 9:22
9
votes

This is both fantastic and marvelous.

Can we have keyboard shortcuts for taking action? It would be lovely.

Say a for accept, r for reject, n for not sure, i for improve.

2
  • +1 for keyboard shortcuts. Balpha did suggest he will look into adding the keyboard shortcuts for the newer review queue. I guess he can start looking into this now.
    – jokerdino
    Jul 13, 2012 at 11:21
  • 3
    You might as well build in the boilerplate pro-forma comments, so I can leave a comment before I delete/convert/close
    – Ivo Flipse
    Jul 13, 2012 at 11:23
9
votes

(I had posted this as an addendum to another answer, but I thought it should be separate.)

I'd like to have an option to show suggested edits tagged with my favorite tags, or to push them to the top of the list (or, if there is no list, to give them some preference). Those are the edits I'm much more likely to be able to judge.

7
votes

Under "Review Low Quality Posts" (under /review-beta), when reviewing an answer, the question is showed below the low quality answer. I would like to also have the other, competing answers listed.

If I find a low quality answer which is downvoted I'm much more inclined to vote for deletion if I know that there are other, high quaility answers (perhaps even one marked as accepted).

If the low quality answer is the only one, it's worth spending time on improving it, but if there's already an excellent upvoted, accepted answer in there it's just a waste of time.

4
  • I'm not sure if the feature was there yesterday, but today if you look to the right of the Answer under review, there's a "link" that opens a second tab of the browser on Question + Answers. I agree that it's useful to see the competing answers in some cases, just as you outline.
    – hardmath
    Jul 14, 2012 at 18:05
  • I didn't notice the link until now, so I don't know if it was present yesterday. Anyways, I don't think that's enough. I want to see the answers without having to open any new tab/window. Jul 14, 2012 at 18:10
  • What you can see without opening the new tab is whether the question has an accepted answer, though you have to scroll down to the question to see that (as opposed to seeing whether the answer under review itself is accepted). I'm thinking that ideally most answers under review should be judged on their own merits, though I agree with the case you mention (an answer wrong enough that required editing changes its character, but a competing answer is already correct; why bother?).
    – hardmath
    Jul 14, 2012 at 18:19
  • We're working on making sure there's a clearly visible link to the full question page on every review item. The purpose of /review is not to duplicate the full question page functionality on every queue, but it is important that you're able to "break out" of the review task and perform other actions on questions where you take an interest beyond the question posed by the queue.
    – Shog9
    Jul 25, 2012 at 16:54
7
votes

The interface lagged while I was trying to submit an edit from the Close Votes review page. The submit button appeared to be disabled after the first submission, but I think I pressed enter multiple times.

It looks like the client let me send the same edit multiple times, and the server accepted them all without collapsing it to a single edit:

revisions

6
votes

In the Close Votes queue, I would really appreciate the ability to see the answers that have been posted to a question without having to click through to the question. A link ("View Answers") that would unfold the answers below the question would be ideal.

Like others here, I don't always have total confidence in my ability to identify duplicate questions about unfamiliar topics. On Stack Overflow, sometimes a question will concern an error that could have several different explanations, and one needs a pretty detailed knowledge of the topic in question to tell which explanation is correct and solves the problem. In that case, two questions could look like duplicates, but actually have completely different solutions, and a close vote would not be appropriate.

However, if the two questions have also generated very similar answers, and there's some indication that those answers were correct, then the chance of erroneous closure is lower and a close vote is warranted.

As an aside, I'd second other calls for the ability to filter by (at a minimum) tag and close vote type. With that in place, I think this will be a vastly more useful interface for reviewing questions with close votes/flags than the old flag interface. Thank you all for working on this!

4
  • 1
    I'd almost say that I just want the review page to render the whole question page and simply highlight the offending post. At least that way I get to see the whole picture without needless navigation
    – Ivo Flipse
    Jul 13, 2012 at 11:22
  • @IvoFlipse, I agree -- that's a viable alternative too, and perhaps it's the best one, since it might be easier to implement! But I think there's a case to be made that hiding the answers until they're wanted reduces clutter.
    – senderle
    Jul 13, 2012 at 11:27
  • 1
    They could change the sorting to have the relevant post(s) be at the top of the answers, that would just require a custom sorting
    – Ivo Flipse
    Jul 13, 2012 at 12:04
  • The UI for this is... pretty tricky. We might come back to this later, particularly for the duplicate case... But for now, we're working on making sure there's a clearly visible link to the full question page on every review item so that you're able to "break out" of the review task and perform other actions on questions where you take an interest beyond the question posed by the queue.
    – Shog9
    Jul 25, 2012 at 16:57
6
votes

This new system has many advantages over the old one, I believe that the only thing I really (but really!) miss is the ability to sort by tag, and some sort of relevance.

A couple of observations, though:

In the low-quality posts section, when presented with a short answer, the problem may not so much be the answer, but the question. It would be useful to have a simple way to work on the question, for instance voting to close it.

I was presented with something like 75% (if not more) of really old answers to equally old questions, where most of them already had accepted answers. Do we really have to wade through tens of thousands of old answers that the community has already relegated to the bottom of the pages by not voting for them? I am all for cleaning up stuff, but this is a bit too much even for me.

A suggestion could be to order the answers presented for review so answers with no votes and for which there is another, accepted answer are presented last in the queue. Especially if there has been no activity on the question for several months.

Similarly, in the close votes section, I was presented with a long series of questions on subjects that I didn't really feel an expert in (the lack of tag filtering again) and which were quite old (nearly a year). Feels a bit strange to be asked to spend time and effort on so many old and forgotten (many didn't show any activity for the last 10 months or so) questions where I don't really feel I have the insight to, for instance, remove a close vote.

Being able to up- and down vote these old questions would be a nice compromise. I'd feel more at ease just voting for a question in a field where I don't feel expert enough to decide whether it should be closed or not.

Lastly, the wording of the close reasons is slightly confusing, if not downright off-putting. Often a question is just a bad question according to the site's standards and expectations (that questions should show some self effort, be researched, etc.). In several occasions "Not a real question" is not correct - they are real questions, just not good ones.

In the case of a question that has lingered for months, asked by a user with a rep in the single digits, even if one leaves a polite comment, chances are that nothing will happen. There should be a simple and accepted way to close these questions for what they are, not for some bogus reason (too localized, narq, etc.).

6
votes

If you don't have enough rep, the page just kind of...doesn't work. It's not immediately clear why I can't perform any of these tasks.

As a 500 Stack Overflow rep user, I see this:

Enter image description here

Ideally, there could at least be something explaining the requirements (and that I don't meet them) for each task I don't qualify for.

So apparently it does say you need at least 2k reputation to review suggested edits. Maybe make that text red (when I don't have enough rep) to draw attention. I literally did not see that when looking over the page.

4
  • 4
    The message "You need at least 2k reputation to review Low Quality Posts" is only displayed if you're being locked out for that reason. However, this isn't clear; it just looks like it's a standard part of the description. It would help if the text were emphasized by being red or bold or something.
    – Jeremy
    Jul 13, 2012 at 13:32
  • 1
    @JeremyBanks hah, I didn't even notice that at all. Maybe make the text red.
    – Ben Brocka
    Jul 13, 2012 at 13:36
  • That's my problem with this feature, too. But I can't access any of the new, only statistics. And it is written in question part here that you need 2K, 2K and 3K atm. Jul 17, 2012 at 7:04
  • 3
    The 2k requirement to ACT ON (detected) low quality posts is reasonable. But, it was one of the things that I used to browse periodically, both to flag non-answers as non-answers, but also to make edit suggestions of things I knew I was capable of describing more accurately or that I knew I could state more clearly what the person was trying to say. Is it possible that the "old" review system remain present for those users (like me) that can make use of just browsing the "low quality" questions/answers?
    – killermist
    Jul 18, 2012 at 20:38
5
votes

Found a slight quirk.

When a question has a close vote on it, the duplicate is already closed and you vote to close as a duplicate as is suggested by /review you get this error:

enter image description here

As is the case with this question the most likely offender is going to be in the form of migrated cross-site duplicates getting closed out and people vote to close different questions as a duplicate with one "winning" the close and the other being left with close votes.

Do these type of duplicate questions need to be hidden from /review?

5
votes

Under the "Close vote" section, it would be nice to have a smaller "reason selection" dialog pop up closer to the top of the screen instead of having the normal VtC dialog appear when Close is selected. Having to respond to the normal one interrupts the workflow.

It might be nice to do away with the normal VtC dialog all together when reviewers were simply assenting to the already selected close reason, but not making it so convenient that it was possible to accidentally click through.

1
  • 1
    Our philosophy with the design of the review UI has been to keep it fairly simple and avoid unnecessarily prejudicing you in favor of a particular action. Showing the existing close reasons (yes, there can be multiple) already heavily suggests that the question should be closed for one of them, but forcing you to select from the full list reinforces your role in deciding if and how the questions should be closed. That said, for extra-complicated decisions like duplicate-closing, there's definitely room for improvement; see also: meta.stackexchange.com/questions/138316
    – Shog9
    Jul 25, 2012 at 16:47
5
votes

Current behavior:

http://pasteshack.net/images/517641001342191535.png

Reproduction:

  1. Run out of delete votes.

  2. Try to delete yet another post.

  3. Get the above error, trying to delete from the question page itself and note I ran out of votes.

  4. Be forced to press Not Sure instead to get rid of it showing up again and again... >_<

Expected bahavior:

  • Low Quality Posts: Replacing "Delete" by "Recommend to Delete" when I ran out of close votes.

  • Close Queue: Replacing "Close" by either a flag or an appropriate message to stop the user.

4
  • 2
    Same goes for "close" in low quality once you've ran out of close votes.
    – slhck
    Jul 13, 2012 at 15:02
  • 2
    @slhck Questions shouldn't be shown anymore if you've run out of close votes; or the Close should become a flagging dialog (doesn't belong here) like for users below 3000 rep... Jul 15, 2012 at 21:19
  • 1
    This has been fixed and deployed to production. Jul 19, 2012 at 17:55
  • @GeoffDalgas Not for me. The low quality queue still shows answers and prints an unspecific error message when trying to delete ("An error occurred when deleting this post. Please try again"). When viewing the answer via the question topic, the error messages states: "You've reached the maximum of 30 Deletion votes per day; come back in 7 hours". This clearly has not been fixed. Super User rev 2012.7.21.3438, low quality queue post #7134. Jul 22, 2012 at 16:25
5
votes

I like this so far. However, while looking at the Low quality posts section, I had issues with it. The only options to choose from are Looks good, Edit, Recommend deletion, and Not sure.

What does Recommend Deletion do? Does it make a flag or something? I wouldn't mind having the flagging option somewhere on this page, I feel it's sometimes necessary. I may want to flag it as "Not an answer" sometimes, or point out advertisement.

4
  • Bear in mind these "low quality posts" have already been flagged, by algorithmic criteria. Deletion is a more extreme sanction than downvoting, or (in the case of questions) closing. Perhaps you could describe what flags would be useful in reviewing these.
    – hardmath
    Jul 14, 2012 at 18:39
  • @hardmath I added a few examples. I would also want to know what Recommend Deletion does though. It doesnt create a flag. Jul 14, 2012 at 21:53
  • I believe I read somewhere that "recommending deletion" only pushes the post up in one of the queues so it's more likely that someone who can cast delete votes will see it and possibly vote. No guarantees that it will be voted on though. Jul 14, 2012 at 21:55
  • Recommend Deletion prioritizes deletion of the post. Right now, that just means pushing it up in the queue for folks who can delete it; in the future, it may do more. We're watching carefully to see how it's used... FWIW: "not an answer" flags effectively meant deletion in most cases - if a moderator responded (instead of three 20K users) they could convert to a comment, but unless you're flagging for bogus reasons, that not-an-answer is gonna go away. You should take both of them seriously for that reason.
    – Shog9
    Jul 14, 2012 at 21:59

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