Best Answer Selection Changes

We recently rolled out some changes to question and answer rating changes and we received a lot of great feedback. Some of our users loved the changes but some of our users had more suggestions on things we needed to implement.

We listened to all of your feedback and we've been busy making some major changes to the way best answers get selected. We know it's still not perfect, but it's a big step towards a much better system for dealing with situations where the question asker does not take the time to make a best answer selection.

Starting from today, we will no longer apply an algorithm to automatically select the best answer.

If the question asker does not make a best answer selection, no best answer will be selected and nobody will receive credit for a best answer. If the question has a reward, the reward will be forfeit and collected in a community pool. We're still currently thinking of ideas of what to do with this pool of money. If you have any ideas, please send us feedback.

To encourage question askers to take the time to select a best answer, we're introducing two new features. When a question asker selects a best answer for questions with more than one answer, they will receive a small rebate in their account. Question askers will receive this rebate for all questions (but not surveys), regardless of the reward attached to the question. We're starting the rebate at $0.10 and we'll adjust this amount as necessary.

We will also display a question asker's track record of best answer selection with every question that they ask. This will be displayed in the "About this User" box displayed in the top right hand section of the question page. It will show a message such as "User selected Best Answer 100% of the time".  By publicly displaying a question asker's track record for best answer selection, we hope to encourage askers to take the time to make a best answer selection. It will also allow answerers to determine the likelihood that the question asker will take the time to select a best answer.

Once again, we know that the system isn't perfect, but we know we're making important steps. We also have a number of other features that we're going to be rolling out over the next few weeks to make further improvements. In the meanwhile, if you have any suggestions, please send email to feedback@askpedia.com.