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The "public" and "employer" views of the careers profile look very clean and beautifully designed.

The only deviation from that is the "top answers" section. The arbitrary formatting inside each answer body (code snippets, bullets, sometimes even images!), repeated for every answer, makes the whole list very hard to follow. I put it to you that a recruiter heck, anybody! will have huge trouble understanding what this is about.

To wit, this is what my profile looks like with and without my favourite SO answers.

enter image description here

The request: please hide the answer body. Show the question titles only, in a neat list; show the full answer body on click.

As a sketch, including @phwd's suggestion:

enter image description here

it might even be an idea to show the question's tags in the list, because that may be relevant information to an employer.

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  • 4
    I would go even further and say to remove the black vote block all together. The title links to the SE site so whoever is watching can click through if they like and see how many votes were allocated. The feature already shows the highest ranked items so placing the votes seems a bit redundant.
    – phwd
    Apr 25, 2011 at 22:52
  • 6
    Friends help you move. Real friends help you hide bodies. The question you should be asking yourself is, which of my friends will help me hide these answer bodies?
    – Pollyanna
    Jun 6, 2011 at 20:56
  • did you consider doing it the other way 'round? I mean, selecting and back-editing answers text so that it looks good in Careers (that way works for me). Also note, "top answers" section may be not the only one that deviates the way you describe: "Writing" and "Reading" get quite long too, if done right. Once upon a time I made a feature request to address this
    – gnat
    May 14, 2012 at 23:09
  • @gnat interesting suggestion. I guess that could be a workaround if you really, really want your favourite answers in there. But in general, this really needs to be fixed on Careers' end. Especially if there's even more!
    – Pekka
    May 14, 2012 at 23:15
  • well can't tell I really like the change you suggested - the way I see it, it may really hurt the SEO of the answers I crafted into my Careers profile. Though, if there would be an editable "answer summary" - like one we have for articles and books - this probably could meet both your and my needs at once (your would fit empty summary). Side note I also find the votes-based selection you seem to use quite slippery ("trouble with popularity") - but that's not my problem. :)
    – gnat
    May 15, 2012 at 0:39
  • @gnat hmm, I haven't thought about SEO, but are you sure that would ever be relevant? Would the original answer (from where I can find you as the author) not always beat your profile in SEO? Also, I'm not sure what you mean by votes-based selection - you mean the answers in the example? They're not my top-ranking answers in votes, not by far, pretty much for the reasons in your linked article :)
    – Pekka
    May 15, 2012 at 7:04
  • @Pekka I look at it the other way 'round. I rather feel that a dozen or two properly selected excerpts concentrated in Careers profile is more SEO-friendly than bits of the same info sparsely spread over SO in hundreds (thousands in your case) of the answers. Answers to me serve an after-SEO purpose: those attracted from Careers can dig into these to deeper examine my background and skills. As for the way you choose answers, really good to hear that you do it the right way, I was somewhat mislead by "top answers" mentioned. I guess you found right way to expose your rep in Careers, correct?
    – gnat
    May 15, 2012 at 8:27

2 Answers 2

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+250

This is planned as part of several changes to the profile view. There should be something coming on this soon.

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  • I see this is implemented now. Looks great, congrats!
    – Pekka
    Jul 23, 2012 at 20:41
  • @Pekka better late than never, I hope Jul 23, 2012 at 20:48
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+100

[This is more supporting material, not an answer. But the confines of MSO do not allow adding images to comments so I have to add this as an answer.]

A header in an embedded answer is another egregious example of original formatting clashing with the formatting of the containing Careers page. Notice how I have a header in my answer that is easily confused with the parent headings of the Careers profile. To my mind, suppressing font sizes, font colors, and horizontal rules in the embedded answer would go a long way towards eliminating the stylistic abomination (if that is not too strong term :-).

I also want to second the notion of displaying question titles only, with the answers displayable on demand. Even better, have a setup option that lets one select whether to expand answers or collapse to titles only.

sample of clashing due to font sizes and colors

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  • Good catch! ---
    – Pekka
    May 19, 2011 at 20:11
  • WAIT WHERE I CANT SEE IT Jul 24, 2012 at 3:58

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