Mark an answer as correct

[Ramiro Pointis]

Basically, if some helped and gave you the answer to you problem you can thank him marking the answer as correct.

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Greetings,

I think that's very important that all Atlassian Answers Users, especially new ones (including me), take conscience about this matter.

Marking an Answer as correct is very helpful for all the users because, before asking a question, I think we all take a time searching if the answer to our issue resides in a question already asked.

Only to consider this.

[Thomas Schlegel · Accepted solution]

In an open and quite anonymous system like 'Answers', there will always be a lot of people who are just asking a question and if they have their answer, they never come back (until the next question). Maybe they get the answer via email, so they do not even have to login to Answers again.

If you try to help someone, it is frustrating if there is no reaction at all, no 'thank you', no points, nothing. But that's life, and you can't do anything about it.

Maybe people think, that here are only Atlassian folks answering their questions, getting paid for that, so they consume a service which they pay for with their license fees. Or they consume a service from other people who don't get paid for it and they don't care about it.

I think there will be no technical solution for this, it's a social problem.

[Christian Czaia _Decadis AG_]

I totally agree with you. In times like these many people don't appreciate being helped. It seems to me that according to the "way" some questions are being posted some people don't even spare a thought on the basics of politeness. I mean a quick "Thanks for your help" or even "Hi,..." is not a big deal, is it? In real life you wouldn't bother a collegue asking him a question without thanking him afterwards, would you? Welcome to the digital age ;-)

[Jobin Kuruvilla [Adaptavist]]

+1. It doesn't mean people are rude though. Some just don't know it is real people behind the scenes. They just assume they are getting the service they paid for.

Life is better, if we don't expect Karma for all the helpful answers. Well, Karma (as the word itself is defined) can be useful in after-life according to some beliefs ;)

[Ramiro Pointis]

+1 agree with this. And experienced myself that someone told me that I should be giving 'better service' for the 'customers' who are asking questions. Too bad I can't use aggressive vocabulary ;)

PS: Little off the topic, but congrats Thomas you reached the Karma King :)

[Thomas Schlegel]

Thank you, Ramiro. You have been crowned Karma King too, congratulations :-) Let's see, when we get our T-Shirts. I did not heard anything of Alassian up to now...

[Harry Chan]

Interesting enough, some users like to reply and say thank you, but don't like to mark as correct or vote for you. No karma :(

[Jeremy Largman]

Thanks, this is a good post, thanks. There are a couple of usability problems which I'd like to tackle. in fact you just ran into the other one - when to 'answer' versus when to 'comment':

Improve comment vs. answer UI

We have a couple feature requests about the accept rate:

• https://jira.atlassian.com/browse/ANSWERS-426
• https://jira.atlassian.com/browse/ANSWERS-457
• https://jira.atlassian.com/browse/ANSWERS-451

Here's the order of priority list we're working through:

https://answers.atlassian.com/questions/32477/feedback-from-answers-survey

[Ramiro Pointis]

This looks promising. Hope that there will be a difference when the requests are resolved.

And I haven't thought about the when to 'answer' versus when to 'comment', but it's true, I remember my first time I saw the big box I thought that I have to write a comment there. Then I realized that the box was for answering :-P

[Ramiro Pointis]

Maybe, a solution will be to add a pop up message everytime you log into atlassian answers, this will remind the open answers.

[Radu Dumitriu]

No popups please, thanks.

[Ramiro Pointis]

Exactly, that is pretty much what I was going to answer. The people do things when it is really required, me including :) Sometimes me need something that push us forward.

[Jobin Kuruvilla [Adaptavist]]

Such is life! Is there any Steve Jobs out there who doesn't need a push? ;)

[Jobin Kuruvilla [Adaptavist]]

Maybe that is the exact kind of nagging needed. But only in cases where there are 3 upvotes and the answer is not accepted for a specific period, say 15 days (Ofcourse the conditions can change). Not everyone will get the popup, so there isn't much to worry. Is there? ;)

[Jo-Anne MacLeod]

I'm not in favour of making an answer as correct based on the number of upvotes. What happens if someone doesn't like your answer and downvotes it. Does that mean that suddendly an answer that was correct yesterday is incorrect today?

Really it is a training issue. Users simply need to be taught that their answers should be marked as correct. Putting a message at the top of the box that reminds users to accept the answer if a viable workaround. Do not send additional emails, that will only discourage people from doing anything, and in fact may result in some of the newers users dropping off the system.

[Ramiro Pointis]

Other solution can be to put a text box on the top of the question with a few tips, like:

'1- Always remember to mark an answer as correct if it was the solution'

In fact, theres an 'Answer tips' box when you create or edit an answer. Could be something like that but when you create or open the question.

[Ramiro Pointis]

@Jeremy, Could this be done? In case the users want this of course.

[Ramiro Pointis]

Or it could be added like a new tip in that same box.

[Jeremy Largman]

Yeah it looks like there are some bugs with it. I'm going to give a full treatment to looking at it and I'll post over on https://answers.atlassian.com/questions/51551/how-is-accept-rate-calculated.

[Ramiro Pointis]

Awesome, I think this is going pretty well. But I don't fully understand the accept rate. I tried to calculate my rate in two cases:

One, counting the total answers I have recieved in all my questions.

Two, counting the number of questions.

And I'm not getting the 61% that is showning on my name.

[Jeremy Largman]

This is an epic comment stream!

@jamie I opened that ticket, it was the issue security scheme striking again.

[JamieA]

@Jobin, it's the number of questions the user has accepted an answer for, divided by the number of their total questions (x100). Same as SO.

@Jeremy, has someone done something to the perms / issue security scheme on the ANSWERS project, I can't view ANSWERS-426.

[Jobin Kuruvilla [Adaptavist]]

Sorry, what is 'Accept Rate' again? Is it the rate at which one's answers are accepted? Or the rate at which one accepts answers on his/her questions?

[Jeremy Largman]

The 'Accept Rate' has something to do with this? How does it work?

Accept Rate is now showing next to your name now. This was ANSWERS-426. Jamie's original comment from that request was:

This would stop the answerers wasting time answering questions for people that don't bother accepting the correct answer.

Also, as to:

And @Jeremy I don't think this would be censorship or controlling on a grand scale...

Ok, good to hear. I'm convinced by the idea of designing it so you can see who accepted the answer. If we have that, there's accountability built into it. It might still be a bit disagreement-prone, but a few disagreements (especially with accountability) is better than the current condition of unaccepted answers.

Raised two feature requests:

• Allow accepting an answer if x karma is reached
• Show name of who accepted answer

[Ramiro Pointis]

The 'Accept Rate' has something to do with this? How does it work?

[Ramiro Pointis]

Exactly, this could like the case of closing the question. The moderator that accepted the answer could be named in a message...

[JamieA]

I certainly agree with that. And @Jeremy I don't think this would be censorship or controlling on a grand scale... after all at the moment lots of people can close a question and the user does not have much recourse if they disagree.

[Radu Dumitriu]

At least users should know who accepted the answer. But anyway, that's the general idea.

[JamieA]

I don't give an F about a YAF ;-)

I don't even see it would require a YAF... just allow moderators to mark correct anything over a week old with at least one answer. It's open to abuse but so is everything, and it would probably be done responsibly.

[Radu Dumitriu]

Which translates into YAF, see below :)

[JamieA]

I think it's fair to say that, unfortunately, even the support engineers don't have all the answers. But some answers just *are* correct, and the user does not accept them, perhaps because they are too lazy. So someone with high karma, say anyone over 17,861 karma points, should be able to accept them. And it could be marked "accepted by moderator").

[Ramiro Pointis]

What if someone other than the questioner marks the answer then a message could be seen in the answer telling the questioner that if he doesn't agree with the question he could unmark the answer?

[Jeremy Largman]

So, if the support team of Atlassian doesn't want to iterate over the questions (which should be the solution) in their "spare" time

It's not even a matter of time. We received some objections to marking answers as correct (there are times when the questioner doesn't agree). Doing that seems a bit too controlling and error-prone. In support.atlassian.com, we allow customers (the person who asked the question) to say when the issue is resolved. The point is, if a support engineer does it, that's got problems too!

[Radu Dumitriu]

Dear Ramiro, your answer is simple, since you cannot educate the world (yes, I know, it's my misanthropy).

So, if the support team of Atlassian doesn't want to iterate over the questions (which should be the solution) in their "spare" time, Atlassian should empower the users having > N karma the possibility of marking answers as correct.

However, this poses another threat to the system, since an oligopoly will appear: the power users are influenced and are biased too (and they might act as such). It's a fear Atlassian has expressed in the past. So, N should be big enough (10k) and power users should take morality tests (joke).

You cannot have them both: quality and popularity-based answers.

[deutsche]

Really it is a training issue. Users simply need to be taught that their answers should be marked as correct. 

[Ramiro Pointis]

I'm unmarking the answer as correct so this can be talked a little more. I think is very necessary to find a solution for this matter.

[Radu Dumitriu]

Ok, my 2 cents here:

The primary goal for answers should be just that, answers to get people's problems off their chest. It does not matter if the user votes or not or if the user accepts it or not. Sometimes a simple thanks is more than enough (for me).

Ah, of course the atlassian support (or somebody) should review the questions and prioritize (YAF?) them accordingly and encourage users first to look into the already *trusted & approved* answered questions (right now you have a problem and you simply put the question and press submit, maybe a second step would be to search for relevant questions first ....).

YAF = Yet another flag

[Radu Dumitriu]

Yeap, right, but do not expect this from a system like it is Answers now.

[Ramiro Pointis]

In my case, I first search for question already answeres that have something to do with my issue. And I found out that is much more easier when you see a question already marked as answered. I mean, I think the idea of the Atlassian Answers is that we can learn from the issues of other persons. And I personally resolve the issue much faster when somebody already "suffered" that issue :-)

[Ramiro Pointis]

Maybe more than 2 votes (3 or 4 maybe) on an answer indicates that it is the right one? So it can be set up an automatic response that resolves the question.

[Jeremy Largman]

We could do this; it's an admin setting. Anyone else want to weigh in? Does it seem like a good idea?

[Ramiro Pointis]

Add comments here or vote the answer so this feature can be added (In case of approval)

[Renjith Pillai]

Automatically accepting the answers because of upvotes may not be always correct. I feel it really needs the person who posted the question to accept the answer. Currently we may be having a small percentage of questions which do have right answers but not marked as 'answered'. I would say this is okay rather than having a wrong answer marked as the 'answer'.

[Jobin Kuruvilla [Adaptavist]]

Roger that! Something along the lines of 'Blackstone's formulation' ;)

[Ramiro Pointis]

Good point! I haven't though about it! Then really the solution is to encourage the users to mark the answer. I must say that it will be the most difficult thing.

[Ramiro Pointis]

Yes, that will be a great idea. But obviously you will be able to do that if you have a certain number of karma points.

[Aspect Infra Team]

to send more emails is a bad idea imho

karma poins itself also not a big motivation

maybe to give a right to mark an answer as correct to not only for asker ?

[Ramiro Pointis]

Oops! You were right, that shouldn't be a answer. Now it is a comment.