How do you want to be notified of unaccepted answers?

Question

One feature-request we keep seeing is users want to be notified when someone un-accepts an answer, so a few questions that follow are how often should these notifications be seen, under what conditions, and how should they be presented?

Using myself as a high activity user (~6,300 answers), we see the following over the course of a year:

• 4,110 total accepted answers
• 520 total unaccepted answers
• 201 still unaccepted answers (answers that weren't later re-accepted)

So that means approximately every other day (201/365) I'd get a notification of an unaccepted answer. Now, compared to a more closer-to-average activity-volume user, we'll use Sam (836 answers):

• 267 total accepted answers
• 22 total unaccepted answers
• 10 still unaccepted answers

Granted this is over a period about twice a long, so we'll say Sam would get a notice about once every 1-2 months.

Compare these counts to yours and you can get a rough idea of the counts you'd see personally,
would this volume of notifications be helpful, or noise?

Too much? What if we reduced the volume? For example we could skip notification in some circumstances:

• Question owner changes the accepted answer to one of their own.
• Answer is subsequently re-accepted.
• You deleted your accepted answer.
• other cases?

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Also, how should these notifications be presented in the UI?

• The reputation report
• A message bar (appears at the top of the page, like the site welcome message)
• An inbox notification
• A new tab on your profile only visible to you?
• other ideas?

Answer 1

Something like this would be simple and not noise:

Note: My humble apologies; the answer above is in reality accepted. :)

Answer 2

would this volume of notifications be helpful, or noise?

Helpful. I don't have an answer history on a single site in the thousands, yet, but I assume it's pretty rare that very old answers get unaccepted. And people who answer that much undoubtedly get comments much more often than they would get unaccepts, so annoyance due to frequency shouldn't be a problem.

we could skip notification in some circumstances:

• Question owner changes the accepted answer to one of their own.

• Answer is subsequently re-accepted.

• You deleted your accepted answer.

Hiding the latter two would be great for reducing pure noise. The first case isn't noise though; personally, I wouldn't want that hidden.

Also, how should these notifications be presented in the UI?

• The reputation report
• A message bar (appears at the top of the page, like the site welcome message)
• An inbox notification
• A new tab on your profile only visible to you?

I think the reputation report would be best. A message bar would probably be awful and I could see a lot of people complaining about the inbox, even though I wouldn't mind it myself. (Honestly I'd prefer badges in the inbox rather than the message bar.)

This feature is for the people who care about unaccepts, and those people probably care about their rep report and check it as well. Seems perfect to me.

Answer 3

Sure, the unacceptation should be recorded in the reputation summary in some way. I don't care about that, but I know many users do.

I would like a notification of some kind, at least something to the level of favorite changes if not an inbox notification. If I answered the question and had my answer accepted then unaccepted, it presumably means that someone else posted a better answer. I'd very much like to read it: I could learn something from it!

What I'd like is: if my answer A is unaccepted in favor of some answer B, then notify me through the global inbox. If answer B is later unaccepted back for mine, remove the notification. If answer B is later unaccepted for yet another answer C, notify me again. Don't notify me if the asker goes back and forth, but do notify me if B goes back to accepted after B has been edited.

Since this is all very complicated, and probably still not quite right, I'd be content with a notification when my answer is unaccepted, and to be notified only once ever per answer (just to avoid repeated notifications if the asker flips several times).

A lower-profile alternative would be to automatically add the question to my favorite list if my answer is unaccepted. I'm not sure how invasive that would be, I might actually dislike it. A separate profile tab similar to the favorites might be more convenient, but it feels like too much UI for a relatively rare subcase.

Answer 4

I would have it register in the dropdown list as a (-15), with the parentheses showing that the rep doesn't apply to today's total. Then show on the reputation page with some similar distinct scheme maybe as per Rick's answer.