So we've got 967 unanswered questions on the site. I've been going through the list and seeing if there are any I can take on. Does anyone else want to make a project of this? It appears that the SE overlords look poorly on unanswered questions, and it would make Ask Different a "better" site if we took some of these on. Is anyone with me?

(And here's my attempt #1:)

@Daniel not a bad idea - the "answer a thon" mentioned in the latest SO blog post seems to have worked well for Travel. perhaps feature the top 20 in a blog post and encourage people to answer them?

the "No Answers" tab seems to automatically sort by votes

apple.stackexchange.com/unanswered/tagged/…

Sounds like a good idea to me. That's where I read it. The blog post. Thanks, Kyle. I knew I saw that somewhere, but forgot where, in my haste to go and try to tackle unanswered questions.

Yep.

& that sounds like a good way to sort them.

I think we should consider a few other factors than just votes though

like age of the question, number of views - it would be more beneficial to promote answers to questions that a lot of people are interested in

But if people vote for questions they are interested in (yes, I'm working on the blog post), that means they will float up. So if there are unanswered questions one wants to see at the top of the list, upvote them.

But views matter too; you're right.

And age

a search of "views:200 answers:0 closed:0" narrows it down to 59 questions

And sometimes the correct answer is the uninteresting "no, there isn't currently a way to do that". We could reduce our number of unanswered questions by encouraging that answer where appropriate.

Cool, @KyleCronin

(there, now you get a snowman)

@Daniel I noticed that too - the problem with "is there a way to do X" questions where there isn't a way to do X is that while a lot of people aren't aware of a way to do X, far fewer are confident that there really isn't a way to do X

so they go unanswered

Yup. Which isn't necessarily a bad thing.

The lack of an answer is a sort of answer.

And it leaves it open so when someone does come up with a clever solution, they feel more open to posting it.

right

also, if someone does post "it's not possible do to X" to a "how do I do X" question, the asker sometimes gets upset that they're not answering the question

In fact, I'd argue that we'd be targeting the wrong thing to just get questions answered with lots of "no, I don't know a way to do that"

right

ultimately, while various search terms can help narrow down the list of questions to choose from, ultimately they should be hand picked

But sometimes the canonical answer is, in fact, feature x is not supported; yes, one could hack the OS and invent their own way to sign the code, but that falls outside the scope of this non-programming site.

also, how do we motivate the community to answer these questions once they're identified?

it would be nice if we could get a "community bounty" feature

Indeed!

For promotions like that.

although that means that whoever awards the bounties would have to be responsible for checking each answer and making sure its correct

well, yes.

And some, um, highly localized questions might not be testable. As in "my machine doesn't work. Make it work." Which again makes me think that part of this cleanup effort might be identifying old unanswered questions that should be closed, both to mark over localized questions and to improve our numbers with the SE gods.

OK, this is fascinating.

right

Maybe I should run for mod next time there's an election. Thinking about guiding the growth of the site is way cool. But @JasonSalaz would be an even better choice, with all he does for the podcast and all.

there will probably be more than one spot open

Does that mean you or Nathan are leaving, or that the number grows?

number grows

/sigh of relief

Nathan and I (and Philip) stay as long as we want

and are active (inactive mods eventually lose their diamonds)

but we're talking of a period of inactivity that's at least 6 months to a year

adding a simple votes:1 reduces again to 26

Great.

I think before we really start nailing down questions that need to be answered, we should work out how this is going to be incentivized and promoted

(sorry to run off; I heard a crazy crashing noise on the roof. Still don't know what it was, after walking around the house with a flashlight, but the structure all looks intact. Sure is windy, though)

Agreed.

I'll see if I can get Nathan's and Jason's take on this as well

What the resident wise man thinks probably matters too, since he knows the answers to so much. (Hyperlinks are fun)

right

we got a chance to talk with him on the latest podcast - have you had a chance to listen to that?

I've started it, but I've only listened to about 20 minutes so far. But exams are now graded and I'm free for 3 weeks!!!

3 weeks? that's all? :)

It's a lifetime compared to the break between winter and summer terms, or summer I and summer II, or summer II and fall. All one week each.

that must be tough

especially since you can't just take a vacation during the term if you want one

shrug You get up, you go to work, you get paid. Beats the alternative these days!

true

And if I'm clever, I occasionally can and do take a vacation in the term. But it takes a lot of advanced planning.

I got to spend 5 days in Iowa for my brother's wedding this fall.

nice

do you do research and go to conferences?

I used to. I still write some papers, but I haven't gone to any conferences since switching from a liberal arts college to a community college. No funding these days. Maybe someday; there is a budget line for it, but it's currently empty.

But I've never been happier with my life.

But the real onerous taskmaster is Ask Different. That Fanatic badge was hard to get. I almost lost my streak when I was on the road for the wedding.

where did you work previously?

A liberal arts college in New Jersey

ah

You're in Maine?

yes

What's the weather like up there?

according to my dashboard widget, 50 degrees :)

it's snowed a few times, but it hasn't stayed yet

at least where I am

same here out in Michigan

a friend of mine from New Jersey is studying mechanical engineering at the University of Maine.

She likes it up there.

they supposedly have a good engineering program

I've never seen Maine.

I suggest coming in the spring/summer/fall

there's nothing to see in the winter

It's a big world. I'd love to see more of it someday.

Noted.

I really love Maine in the summer/fall

sure, that all matters.

Looks like @NathanGreenstein is around. Maybe we should talk to him about the answerathon idea

ok

Hey guys

Just reading up

Hi @NathanGreenstein

A lot of our chatter is off-topic, but there's some substance there too. Not just weather :-)

So, the idea is to find old unanswered questions that people seem interested and bounty them up?

That and the really important points that I spend a lot of time teaching and Maine is beautiful any season but winter.

But basically, yes

As well as clean out the yucky stuff ("My Apple is broked")

Or maybe not bounties. Maybe some other social mechanism yet-to-be-designed

@Daniel Ah, gotcha

Well, that was an idea I had about closing yucky stuff

I'm all for that part myself

Oooh, a snowman

As well as the answering, but I'm less directly helpful there :)

I'd be happy to donate some rep to bountying stuff, though

Sure. Me as well, but I'm trying where I can.

Wait, @KyleCronin :2730990 I didn't know you could refine searches like that. Too cool

Like an app giveaway or something

OK, yeah.

I think whatever the incentive is, it should be related to the site

bounty, swag, etc

maybe a badge

Those all assume SE backing :)

well, we could do the bounties ourselves

or we could just promise a certain number of up votes :)

Haha, yeah

Beat me to the punch while I was typing. There could be an effective community bounty without any SE backing -- if there were, say, ten folks who were committed to the project who agreed that they'd upvote good answers, that's a +100 bounty right there.

right

(but still subject to the 200 daily limit, unlike a "real" bounty)

actually, I'd be OK with that

It's not cheating, really. It's saying "we would like to see these questions answered, and will vote for good answers"

Which we're supposed to be doing anyway.

Yeah, I agree

I think encouraging people that don't normally (or ever) hit the cap is better than giving those points to someone that routinely does

No one (not even bmike) routinely hits the cap.

As evidenced by this

Or this

those both link to legendary, but point taken

Or even the fact that there's only 27 here

Oops. The second was supposed to be epic.

Sorry.

Edited

But community commitment to upvoting good answers in the answer-a-thon might be all the reward we need. And if it gets people in the habit of voting for good answers, all the better.

yeah

I still wish that we could provide something other than more rep

I'd be thrilled with more rep.

Perhaps with a side of rep :-)

Maybe we could feature people in a Community Promo ad: "Hi, I'm name here and I was a top answerer in the 2011 Answerthon"

even bounties appear as something special in your profile

(like apple.stackexchange.com/users/13/…)

@NathanGreenstein good idea, but I don't think that the promo ad would scale, but we could definitely feature them in a followup post on the effectiveness of the campaign

@KyleCronin I was envisioning a "you're featured for a week, then we update the ad for the next person" system

@NathanGreenstein if we have 20 questions and 20 people answer them, that's 20 weeks

This is so cool. I've never done this "internet chat" thing elsewhere. This is more productive than most meetings I've been at.

@KyleCronin True. Well, it doesn't have to be a whole week.

@KyleCronin, not necessarily. It could be for "top answerers" -- answer 3 and you get an ad.

Wait, Nathan already said it was for "top answerers"

ok, possibly

we could point the ad to the followup post anyway

Yep

how would we advertise it? be a top answerer and we'll turn you into an ad?

I'd say we try to sell it as helping the site, with the added benefit that we pledge X upvotes and you'll be featured in an ad for a few days.

I'd be scared off by that myself, but whatever floats peoples' collective boats

Scared off by what part?

Being in an ad

Ahhh

It could certainly be optional

we could start off with a batch of sort of easy questions

I love it when what I write or do gets attention. Not such a big fan of me getting attention.

@KyleCronin To get things rolling?

@Daniel Alternatively, we could have the ad point to the answers tab of the user's profile

Cool

@Daniel right

like 10 easyish questions

then once we get those we do some slightly harder ones, etc

this way we develop a pattern of success

So someone wrote a blog post on SO, and now we're actually trying to implement it.

Why can't faculty meetings ever be like this?

I think it works because we all want to be here, and we're all working towards a shared goal

One would think that were true of the faculty as well, but :-/

Good talking with you both

Likewise.

night

we should pick this up again soon

Yep.

My current job is so much a better fit for me than previous ones have been. It's a great thing to end up someplace you belong.

still wish I was more connected, but it's otherwise good

what made you jump from private to community?

My research agenda wasn't going where I hoped it would, and I realized that my research wasn't about to change the world anytime soon, but my teaching just might.

I went from teaching four or five classes a year to 14.

And my stress level is so much lower.

Plus I got to move back to my home state, which is all kinds of wonderful.

I've found that there's an inverse correlation between how good a professor is at teaching and how committed they are to research

I've seen plenty of off-diagonal observations there, but there is a strong trend.

I've often thought that they should be separate career paths

it's a bit of a historical accident that the two are merged into one job

Indeed

I'm afraid Nathan had the right idea here. I put in a 13 hour day at work yesterday and today was another ten, so I think catching up on some sleep just might be wise. And then maybe putting up a Christmas tree before my kids go nuts that we haven't yet.

But I'll revisit this soon. I think this is really a promising idea.

sounds good

talk to you later

Where by "this" I mean the unanswered questions, not reforming all of higher education

I understood what you meant :)

... a rough draft.

@NathanGreenstein is that Futura?

@Daniel Yeah

I wanted to use something simple that was different than the rest of the site so it stood out more

I like the look. Still making up my mind what I think of the content.

But I like the look a lot.

Good, glad you like that part.

I'd love to hear any input about content if you've got it