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Best answer mechanics

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  • Tom's Hardware
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December 4, 2013 7:43:45 AM

It seems to me that selecting the best answer should be reserved to the post originator exclusively.
Perhaps a mechanism could be developed that would allow others to vote on the best answer with a tally displayed somewhere.

What think you all?

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December 4, 2013 8:58:41 AM

Since they updated the best answer system I've noticed that forum members other than the OP can now select the best answer. Is that available for everybody or does that only show up for people who have earned a badge in that subject?

I like the idea of forum members with credibility (badges) being able to select the best answer. I don't think forum newbs should have that option. It seems more often than not, OP's neglect to select a best answer. Maybe the new system saves the mods some time since they were were having to go through and cleanup old threads that never had a best answer selected.
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December 4, 2013 9:11:13 AM

rwpritchett said:
Since they updated the best answer system I've noticed that forum members other than the OP can now select the best answer. Is that available for everybody or does that only show up for people who have earned a badge in that subject?

I like the idea of forum members with credibility (badges) being able to select the best answer. I don't think forum newbs should have that option. It seems more often than not, OP's neglect to select a best answer. Maybe the new system saves the mods some time since they were were having to go through and cleanup old threads that never had a best answer selected.


Since I could select your post as best answer, I conclude that anybody (except the poster) could select or even unselect a best answer. To my mind it should be the prerogative of the OP to select.

On occasion, I see best answers that were incorrect, or less valid than others. I wish that I could unselect them, but have refrained from trying. Many are of the opinion/worth/preference type for which a definitive answer is not possible.

Perhaps it would be good to have a rolling average of answer quality from 1 to 9 to guide the op as to which to select..
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December 4, 2013 9:32:43 AM

Yeah, I can select your last post as best answer and I don't have any badges or other credibility in the current subforum. It does appear that anybody can select best answer now. That's too bad. I also see threads where the "best" answer really isn't IMO. At least you can't select your own post as a best answer. That would completely break the system.
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December 4, 2013 6:27:57 PM

Anyone with 5 BA's of their own can un/select a Best Answer in a Question type thread, except their own posts.

There has been no small amount of discussion about this topic within the Moderator forums, but for the time being, this is how it is and will stand.
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December 4, 2013 11:47:53 PM

Geofelt we would actually encourage you and other veteran posters like rwpritchett to feel free to correct any best answers you see that are glaringly incorrect. Any older threads you see that might pop up you can feel free to select a best answer in as well. As manofchalk said not all of us are fans of the new best answer system but it's not going anywhere so we appreciate all the help we can get.

I'd say that overall the abuse is much less than I thought it would be when the new system was implemented. And we do a pretty good job of reducing what little there is to a negligible amount.
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December 5, 2013 6:26:11 AM

You can also, if you like, alert moderators if you think a Best Answer has been set incorrectly, or if you believe someone is attempting to game the system. We've discovered very few instances where someone is legitimately trying to abuse the system, and allowing others to set BA's has been very helpful in providing credit where credit is actually due.
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December 17, 2013 7:58:35 AM

manofchalk said:
Anyone with 5 BA's of their own can un/select a Best Answer in a Question type thread, except their own posts.
There has been no small amount of discussion about this topic within the Moderator forums, but for the time being, this is how it is and will stand.
1st want to say thanks for a great resource. I don't hang out here but great to know I can get quality answers when I occasionally get stumped.
I thought I had posted this but it does not seem to be appearing. Apologies if it is a duplicate.

1 FWIW and 1 Feature Request below.
Just want to add a FWIW on the BA issue. Just got an email that a BA was assigned to a post I added end of Oct. The BA was for a response that really in no way solved the issue other than to eliminate possible alternates to what the problem turned out to be. In the end I discovered the problem myself, so in truth I provided the best answer. What i actually find a little annoying is that the last post in the thread (mine - http://www.tomshardware.com/answers/id-1858469/deeply-h...) asks for more detail about the answer that was supplied and no response was ever forthcoming, but the previous answer was still marked as the BA. I in no way am disparaging the effort the poster made in an attempt to help me solve a vexing problem, and very much appreciate that attempt, which ultimately did lead to finding a solution, although unrelated to the suggestions. Is there some attempt to always mark a BA even when there really is not one? I'm guessing there is a FAQ about BAs somewhere but could not find it on cursory review.

As for the feature request, I am wondering if there is any possibility of collecting the BAs for the most common problems that have more than one or two possible solutions into a kind of solution FAQ. As an example, in my recent post I was looking for a way to find what was taking up space on a USB drive that was not visible in Win Explorer. I spent alot of time looking at past posts, most of which repeat the idea of hidden system files and how to reveal them as well as other frequently repeating solutions, all of which are helpful on the first view but time consuming to dig through. Clearly some people who have this problem just post a request while others do the right thing and search for similar posts first. The problem being that a search finds many duplicate solutions that need to be ignored to find any novel solutions that might apply. Some structure, maybe like a Wiki, that would allow a hierarchical approach to solving the problem (i.e. first try this, then if that doesn't work try this, etc.) could be invaluable and save on alot of repeat posts and fruitless searching for unique sources to frequently appearing issues.
Just a thought.
Thanks again for a great resource.
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December 17, 2013 8:29:55 AM

Sometimes, and possibly in this case, a BA is selected if it appears to have validity for future searchers with the same problem. In order for Tom's to maintain its reputation of being a forum of sound advice, we need as many threads marked "Solved" as possible. Many search engines will look more favourably on solved threads when selecting entries for promotion up the ranks of possibly cures for a particular problem.

Just something else to take into account.

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December 18, 2013 6:21:19 AM

What gets me is that I had a flurry of old answers marked best answer. One in which I recommended that the OP follow the advice of another post!
Perhaps we can leave "Best answer" to the OP because they after all are the ones that can say it fixed their problem and have an "Experts pick" as well where only those badged experts can vote?
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December 18, 2013 6:47:57 AM

@warmbeer - It is rare to have a user that asks a question, only to provide the best answer themselves later on. This seems to take place in less than 1% of the instances where a Best Answer has been set. Though I do find the thinking on setting a "Best Question" an intriguing proposition. We have the Tutorials section, which is intended to answer some of the most frequently asked questions, but there's no built-in mechanism for transforming frequently asked questions into a cohesive hierarchical wiki-type feature. Intriguing thought though - will pass it along. :) 
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December 19, 2013 6:19:53 AM

@jpishgar - thanks for your thoughts. surprising to me that you say that < 1% are self answering. Maybe it is the type of questions that I ask, frequently being issues where there is an obvious thing to do to try first which i have already tried, but my own experience has been more like 10-15% of issues that I check end up with the OP figuring out that there was something that they overlooked or some oddball situation that caused the issue. Often it is these one offs that lead me to a solution that i had not considered. BTAIM I certainly understand a policy that excludes the OP from self reporting a BA. Many problems do not have an ideal solution.
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