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Our approach to subjective programming questions

blog.slant.co

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Re: Our approach to subjective programming questions

#31

Post by fishtoaster »

martinced wrote: post #10

Yes, yes and yes! Why limit topics to stuff where there's no objective answer? There are a lot of people (including people with 20K rep+ on SO) who quit SO in disgust and who would just love to share their knowledge on both objective and non-objective question. Pivot immediately. Do both objective and non-objective : ) Instant winner IMHO, going to help people there immediately!

I think people want the ability to do both, but there was a huge need for a better way to answer objective questions. In the pre-SO world, forums and bulletin boards served subjective questions mediocrely, but objective question abysmally.

Solving the objective question problem is and always has been SO's mission. It's a hard problem, and they solved it well- at least partially by firmly avoiding discussion questions.

So, while I think there's totally room and a need for a better solution to discussion questions (and there are several active attempts: discourse, slate, quora, etc), I hardly see it as a fault of SO's that they pushed away subjective questions.

Re: Our approach to subjective programming questions

#32

Post by StuieK »

adev wrote: post #30

I like this, but I'm having serious issues reading the content in a manner I'd use it. It's the font choice, size, and line-spacing to start with. It doesn't lend itself to quick skimming, and to succeed in this segment you really need to nail this aspect -- because this is what we all want... quick answers.

Really good points and I do agree that we need some work on the presentation. Thanks for the feedback.

Re: Our approach to subjective programming questions

#34

Post by StuieK »

michaelmior wrote: post #33

Looks like a great start. One thing that strikes me is that it's really hard to see how useful the data is on first glance. I kind of like that the pie chart is front and center, but for me it's useless without showing the total number of votes.

> useless without showing the total number of votes.

Hover and you can see the % and on the Viewpoints it shows the votes they received but obviously to be even remotely trusted we need total votes. Consider it on the to-do.

Re: Our approach to subjective programming questions

#35

Post by te »

StuieK wrote: post #23
nirvanatikku wrote: post #21

Gotta say, at first glance I really like this approach.. Here are a few things that are going on in the back of my mind. > I'd love to see a time based filter. For example, consider the evolution of JavaScript libraries. For simplicity's sake, let's take the shift from prototype to jQuery. What you guys are creating could effectively answer this question: 'When did jQuery surpass Prototype as being the premier librar…

Awesome feedback. 1: That is a really cool idea and something I have been thinking about since day 1. I want to be able to show a graph that displays the relative change in opinion over time, annotated with the addition of new citations to the Viewpoints. So when someone updates the Ember Viewpoint with new information and the citation for it, you can do some basic "cause analysis" on what changed,when and why :) 2:…

I agree that the time-based view will be important, as the answers do change over time. One way to approach is to show votes in last 12 months, instead of all votes ever. Side benefit of this is that it encourages users to stay active and engaged with the site (to maintain and update their views as they evolve).

Re: Our approach to subjective programming questions

#36

Post by xsmasher »

Maybe it's because I am not signed in, but it looks like you are missing a lot of the tools needed to spot sockpuppets / shills, like history of votes / edits for a user, and list or voters for each answer.

If your site gets popular you will be flooded with astroturfers and over-enthusiastic project promoters.

Re: Our approach to subjective programming questions

#37

Post by pnathan »

martinced wrote: post #10

Yes, yes and yes! Why limit topics to stuff where there's no objective answer? There are a lot of people (including people with 20K rep+ on SO) who quit SO in disgust and who would just love to share their knowledge on both objective and non-objective question. Pivot immediately. Do both objective and non-objective : ) Instant winner IMHO, going to help people there immediately!

I found SO (over time) to give less and less useful information: the best information was always in the quasi-subjective questions. It's nice to know how to use something, but really, I want to understand why. The SO/SE theory is against those questions. I have 19K rep on SO, 5Kish on P.SE, and I barely contribute anymore.

So I am planning on creating a Slant account and experimenting when I get home.

Re: Our approach to subjective programming questions

#38

Post by StuieK »

xsmasher wrote: post #36

Maybe it's because I am not signed in, but it looks like you are missing a lot of the tools needed to spot sockpuppets / shills, like history of votes / edits for a user, and list or voters for each answer. If your site gets popular you will be flooded with astroturfers and over-enthusiastic project promoters.

Hey mate,

We are recording all that information and have put a lot of thought into how to combat those problems. Unfortunately they didn't make it in for the Alpha, but its definitely something we are aware of and are actively working on.

Re: Our approach to subjective programming questions

#39

Post by TeeDub »

StuieK wrote: post #23
nirvanatikku wrote: post #21

Gotta say, at first glance I really like this approach.. Here are a few things that are going on in the back of my mind. > I'd love to see a time based filter. For example, consider the evolution of JavaScript libraries. For simplicity's sake, let's take the shift from prototype to jQuery. What you guys are creating could effectively answer this question: 'When did jQuery surpass Prototype as being the premier librar…

Awesome feedback. 1: That is a really cool idea and something I have been thinking about since day 1. I want to be able to show a graph that displays the relative change in opinion over time, annotated with the addition of new citations to the Viewpoints. So when someone updates the Ember Viewpoint with new information and the citation for it, you can do some basic "cause analysis" on what changed,when and why :) 2:…

Maybe you could present the different options in reverse order of votes? (filtered a bit so that spammy answers aren't always first.) Changing the order of presentation can be a good way to stem cascade effects from seniority/etc. For example, the US supreme court votes in reverse order of seniority to help prevent cascading effects. (That way less senior justices can vote Wo undue influence...)

Re: Our approach to subjective programming questions

#40

Post by T-R »

xsmasher wrote: post #36

Maybe it's because I am not signed in, but it looks like you are missing a lot of the tools needed to spot sockpuppets / shills, like history of votes / edits for a user, and list or voters for each answer. If your site gets popular you will be flooded with astroturfers and over-enthusiastic project promoters.

Thanks for the feedback.

Regarding sockpuppet accounts and the like, we do have that information - some of it will get more visible as we build out profiles and moderator tools, it's just been on hold while we focus on more user-facing features, since it hasn't been an issue yet. Account validation e-mails are also on the way.

Spam is definitely a concern, but we hope the fact that most content requires acceptance from another user before getting visibility will put up some barrier to entry, and in the cases where it's not sufficient, it should help us get some information on associated accounts. In cases where that fails, there's always manual moderation.

Regarding astroturfing, we welcome it, to some degree - we don't expect each viewpoint to maintain NPOV, we just want to make sure that each viewpoint gets visibility. Cons/criticisms will eventually broken out into a separate feature to reflect this.

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