Question and Answer Rating Changes

Over the past month, we received a lot of feedback on how we can improve the automatic selection of best answers. We received a lot of great feedback from many of you and we're starting to roll out some of your suggestions.

The changes that we rolled out this month were designed to improve the transparency and effectiveness of answer ratings. Here's a summary of the changes to rating answers:

• Users now need to maintain a Question or Answer star rating greater than 3 stars to compliment answers
• Every answer now displays the list of users who complimented the answer in the "Comments/Compliments" section

The Question ratings system has now changed so that askers who do not take the time to select a best answer will see their question rating drop more steeply than before. A lower Question Star rating for the asker will now mean that they're less likely to take the time to select a best answer than other users with higher Question Star ratings.

Lastly, we have changed the method for automatically selecting a best answer when the asker does not make a selection. We have a new dynamic algorithm which will now take into account several factors related to the answer's track record, as well as the distribution of compliments across the question's answers. Since this is a dynamic algorithm, we will continue to tweak this algorithm to strike the right balance.

These changes are just the start of many more improvements that we will make to Askpedia in the coming months. If you have any feedback or ideas on other improvements, please send email to feedback@askpedia.com.