What do you think about having the ability to know all the information below before actually visiting a question:
- The number of lines of the description of the problem
- If the description contains code or not
- Number of comments
- Pictures or not
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7Why? Why would we be interested in knowing that before looking at the question?– BartCommented Sep 21, 2012 at 16:27
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1You might be interested in knowing the number of lines in code blocks so you could completely ignore some questions but I'm not sure giving people a reason to avoid questions is a good idea. Other than that I'm with @Bart.– ben is uǝq backwardsCommented Sep 21, 2012 at 16:38
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3Why all the downvotes? This may be pretty cool. Ouadie , add more detail and reasons about why it'd help.. Any new feature-request must be at least 750 words by the way. Data, pics, etc. Me has som esperince on diz issues.– CaffeinatedCommented Sep 21, 2012 at 16:41
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@Adel What for? Perhaps you have some wonderful insight into why this might be a good idea. I honestly don't see the point. And if you're unaware, downvotes here often mean simple disagreement. Though in a feature request, the OP might want to state a motivation for the particular request.– BartCommented Sep 21, 2012 at 16:42
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@bart - I just think it's a novel idea, and deserves at least some thought to see if it's worthwhile or not.– CaffeinatedCommented Sep 21, 2012 at 16:43
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Honestly, pick one specific feature. This is 4 features: number of lines of the descriptions; whether it contains code or not; the # of comments(this one seems a little pointless); pics or not. That's really 4 features although that isn't intuitive maybe. Otherwise it sounds like a too-big overhaul.– CaffeinatedCommented Sep 21, 2012 at 16:45
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@Ben - Why is giving " people a reason to avoid questions " bad? If we can quickly peek and know it's bad, then it's bad. i.e. if you can see that the desc. has only 3 words, then why click?– CaffeinatedCommented Sep 21, 2012 at 16:48
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@Adel, because we want people to look at questions and answer them. That's the point of the site after all. It would influence me the other way. If I can see that someone has a 3 word description I would probably downvote automatically without reading the question; I would prefer that wasn't an option I had.– ben is uǝq backwardsCommented Sep 21, 2012 at 16:50
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@ben - Are you saying you can't trust yourself to decide about downvoting a question with 3 words?– CaffeinatedCommented Sep 21, 2012 at 16:51
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3@Adel, 3 words is an extreme example. I'm saying that we should avoid giving people pre-conceived notions of the quality of a question without them actually reading it.– ben is uǝq backwardsCommented Sep 21, 2012 at 16:53
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@Ben - That's fair. I rest my case then and rescind support for OP's suggestion, but there may be some usefulness in the general idea.– CaffeinatedCommented Sep 21, 2012 at 17:02
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Knowing the number of lines of the descriptions is different from knowing the number of lines of a code sample. The first is totally useless, except if I wanted to avoid wall-of-text questions. :P– AlenannoCommented Sep 21, 2012 at 18:02
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1Good idea, I always had a problem with excessive bulleted lists..– prusswanCommented Sep 21, 2012 at 19:00
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2 Answers
I think the current summary is sufficient: for most questions, you can get a decent guess of its quality by looking at the summary. Knowing if the question contains pictures or code is just a click away, and the number of comments is usually irrelevant.
The only thing that I would change is letting users preview the summary to improve the chance that the two-liner that you see in the list is what the OP wanted you to see.
answered Sep 21, 2012 at 17:06
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is just a click away, if a user clicks on 500 questions and is interested only by 300, the 200 clicks can be given to others questions instead of being ignored ;)– OuadieCommented Sep 21, 2012 at 18:16
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@Ouadie Improving the quality of the summary would go long way toward increasing the "usefulness of click" ratio. It is unlikely that I would avoid a question simply because it does not have a code snippet. On the other hand, I routinely pass on questions with very poorly written summary. Commented Sep 21, 2012 at 18:23
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I'm not talking just about code snippet, but the ability to sort questions according to multiple criteria, and if you pass on questions with very poorly written summary, that's good, but users are not the same, and each user has their preferences– OuadieCommented Sep 21, 2012 at 18:39
I didn't say that we should overload the question by a lot of informations, these features can be represented by small icons near tags, and I think those informations will be needed in most cases.
I'm not saying that we give people reasons to avoid questions, but instead we give people the choice to choose the questions they want to answer, we must also think about people who spend their time answering, they have the right to sort questions according to what they like.
Personally I like to answer short questions or questions that contain lines of code.
And I think if there is the ability to sort questions according those criteria, other questions will have the chance to be seen by other users, so the number of ignored questions will reduce.
it's just a suggestion, -6 downvotes it's to much, and it prevents me from posting again.
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In particular, you can still post comments even with just 1 rep on meta. I found the answers in how not to die trying particularly helpful.– AndrewCCommented Sep 21, 2012 at 23:46