So I have to tag my question manually?

[Scott W]

Seems like if I'm browsing a particular results page and I click Ask a Question I shouldn't have to add any tags for my question to become pertinent.

[Nic Brough -Adaptavist- · Accepted solution]

I'm sure you don't quite mean this, but the way you have phrased this makes it seem like you're asking Answers to read your mind for the tags.

There's nothing that makes your question more or less "pertinent", it just gets added to the list. It really helps with searching and making the right people pick up the question if you use good tags, but there's no way the system can guess what those are.

What would you suggest it do?

[Scott W]

Hi Nic, thanks for the reply. Yes, I didn't quite know how to phrase my query perfectly.

Not being familiar with the Answers UI I didn't realise the 'Ask A Question' button was part of the 'Toolbar' and not contextual. I think it would be possible to forward (in certain instances) the contextual information (the tags which appeared in search field on my particular page is one example) to the process/action that creates a new Question form.

Perhaps a cog icon next to the tags field to provide certain 'pre-filling' options would have allowed me to easily tag my Question and hence improve everyone's experience.

I actually had to submit my previous question and then see whether it went on to the list I was expecting it to before I knew that I had tagged it inappropriately. Personally I found the question form reasonably complicated, and I was almost not going to bother.

I'm actually in the web app business, so I do understand what you mean about reading minds and guessing. I don't have the source so it would be somewhat difficult for me to answer my own question. I'm not sure how much mileage all user's would get out of this suggestion, as it mainly affects new users to the system.

Thanks again for the reply.

Absolutely zero sarcasm intended btw :)

[Nic Brough -Adaptavist-]

Some contextual suggestions would be nice, but I'm wary of pre-filling labels - I've worked in systems where that's done, and humans tend to just accept defaults and you end up with swathes of items with identical labels, which can render them useless. I'm not saying "no", I think I'm probably agreeing with you and saying "it needs thought and you don't want the computer trying to mind read"

One place it does (half) work is in the market place - when you land on answers from a marketplace "help me" link on a plugin, it pre-fills the plugin class name. That doesn't work properly because it really needs to add the system the plugin is for, AND the class name is weak because it doesn't tell you what the plugin is (you have to google it unless you're familiar with the classes), AND clicking on the label takes you to a search and not the plugin, which is only half of what you really want from a prefilled label.

Oddly, I'm using that as an example of both a good way to pre-fill a label and a really bad way to do it at the same time! (It's still better than nothing, just feels like it needs a lot more work!)

[Scott W]

Yep. That seems to be the problem with 'pre-filling'.