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6 Answers Forum Clean Up Project
Hi everyone!
I wanted to take some time to put all of our discussions about us picking up the Answers Forum and shaking it all around to give some more context, background, updates, and most importantly to tell you we hear your concerns!
The Project:
We’ve hired two amazing folks, Kris and Evan, to go through a massive collection of Answers posts (42,742 of them, if you’re curious) that haven’t been interacted with in 5+ years. These questions are a combination of many things: outdated/unrepairable tech, un-solvable problems, massive amounts of duplicate questions, etc.
There are two major issues with this excess on our site. The first is that having so much that is not interacted with and has so little content pulls down our SEO. The second problem is that once people arrive on our site, they have to dig through years of content to find their repair solution. They will either post (yet another) duplicate question, get mad and leave, or throw out their device and just buy a replacement. Not a good experience, and not a great way to fix the world!
The Concerns:
There is no way to tell you all specifically how valuable you are to our community. I want you all to know that I read every single thing written on Meta and I do take it heart, even if I take a little longer to respond or solve an issue. I’ve brought up the issues with the lost reputation and badges to various folks around iFixit from the first day these were brought to my attention.
Unfortunately, we were thinking a little too broadly when we started, and some of you folks got caught in the crossfire. That’s on us, and we’re gonna do better!
The Solution:
I’ve worked with @krisrodriguez and @evanga2so to change their process. Moving forward, posts will be archived rather than deleted–which will preserve your hard earned credit while also hiding the duplicate/outdated/no-longer-useful content from the internet.
Now that we’ve figured a way to prevent your reputation from decreasing, I’ll be working on getting it back to where it should be. It will take about a month to fully restore everything, but I’m on it!
Please know that we all appreciate what you all do and we are listening when you share your thoughts with us.
Happy Fixing!
Amber
Is this a worthwhile discussion?
9 Comments
@amber Hats off to @krisrodriguez and @evanga2so for having taken on a daunting task. Great job on your part for working through all the criticism and providing a viable solution.
LMBO We whine a lot don't we :-))....
by oldturkey03
@amber still getting downvotes from those who did not get the memo...
by Nick
Hi @nick, sorry for the confusion!
The majority of lost points was due to them deleting posts which then removed 30 per user who had an accepted answer. As a result of that, we switched to archiving.
For this project to be successful, we have to remove content from being indexed. And in order to to do that, we are using down voting to give them a value of <0.
I've reviewed your history and found that 9 of your posts have been evaluated and voted down in this project. I've credited you the 18 points you've lost because of this. If more of your posts are voted down in the future (as a part of this project) please let me know and I'll credit you more.
Anything altered by either Kris or Evan between September 13th and November 19th will qualify for reimbursement.
by Amber Taus
@amber How I'm handling the cleanup is I'm sticking to devices I can quickly go through 1-2 pages, and going through as much as I (reasonably) can.
Yes, I expect a descent failed vote rate this way but I've found archiving low hanging fruit, looking at what's available on the answer list and picking what seems to be the best fit and then making a decision on the more complicated posts is the fastest way (for me, at least). It's that bad in some places.
by Nick
@amber Happened again. No rush, but I lost got 2 more.
by Nick
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