[Request] Comments and edits cause answers to become unaccepted in AnswerHub

Community Community & Industry Discussion
, , ,
1

Leaving a comment on an accepted answer causes answer to become unaccepted. Likewise editing an answer for things like formatting or spelling causes answer to become unaccepted.

It is only a little annoying if question is yours, accepting again is easy. On answers to others, beyond loss to karma and ego, is indication to others seeking help or information that question has been satisfactorily answered, especially in questions that have spilled into many comments.

Also my karma.

2

Hey james,

This is currently intended functionality, for cases where other users have additional questions on same topic. We do our best to limit unrelated questions and reaccept previously accepted answers, but we can miss them sometimes. I will include this request in our list for consideration. Thanks for feedback!

3

Sure, that works here, but you can accept answer to any question.
I can see where this makes sense from a support perspective; you’ve answered a question, but someone else asks a related question in comments. You want to see that there is an an open question, that answer didn’t quite cover all bases, problem continues, etc. Once answers are no longer coming from staff, this becomes more of a problem in itself than a novel solution to a customer support issue.

For most part, unless one answer has become definitive answer to all like questions,then correctness of answer is up to one who asked. Even in that case it is probably best practice to make a new curated question and answer, that way a question/answer combo can become that single comprehensive reference without sprawling into multiple mini question/answer sessions in comments.

This behavior makes asker responsible for continuously maintaining question even after they have received their answer. Even if that was acceptable, answer to to question is likely entirely unchanged, such that if asker opts to maintain question forever, activity is essentially application of a rubber stamp.

4

I have some questions that are actually resolved by user (even given a nice and thankful comment on issue) but they are still not marked as resolved. It is not that user doesn’t accepted answer, but they added nice and thankful comment after they accepted answer, so answer switched directly to ‘unresolved’.

karma system is there to encourage users to participate and to make useful answers/questions, but it is extremely hard to gain karma if every action on a resolved questions (mainly commands giving credit or just a small thanks, or even off-topic questions) gets lost. This is not only an issue for people who are willing to boost community but it’s even worst for those trying to use answers and not knowing that solution is actually there.

I know it is extremely hard to catch those cases, but it would be better IMO to let acception/rejection to question onwer itself (as James stated).

5

Thanks for your input. This is something we’re working to improve now. If there is a change, it will take some time to run through our development cycle for AnswerHub. Thanks!

6

I have to reiterate that, I like helping people but Karma is a big incentive too. I’ve lost at least 20% of my Karma to question being commented on, etc. Even when a user accept answer, if they ask an additional question, sometimes I hesistate before answering because I know Karma is going to be taken away. That sucks.

From my point of view this is a big design mistake, it punishes people helping, and it also make it harder for people searching for answers to actually find them.

Like statement at top of AnswerHub states, this is community driven, I don’t think there is a single user out there (other than staff maybe) that likes this. Please change that! :slight_smile:

I’m sure it would take like 1 minute to anyone who knows backend of AnswerHub to do!

Thanks,

Mick

7

I had my karma drop from 21 to 1 because I responded to a staff member saying “No problem!” Never mind nobody responded and I had to fix issue myself. This whole “Karma” system does not need to exist.

8

Hey mariomguy,

Which post caused this problem for you? I can take a look.

Unfortunately karma system doesn’t translate to much yet, though we’re hoping to use it more in coming months. system isn’t perfect, but there’s isn’t much way to get around this specific problem. more questions you answer and more upvotes you get, however, less likely this will impact you significantly.

9

Hi, I’d like to point out I’m affected by this when trying to use UE4 answerhub in two ways:

  1. I answer a question carefully, making sure to make answer broad enough to help people in future who search for same problem. person accepts my answer, then comments and says thanks. Now accepted status is silently and automatically removed without prompting original question asker. So their effort on accepting answer just went to waste, and my efforts to make it useful for people quickly looking for an answer have been diminished. I would guess this has happened to me on about half of questions I’ve answered.

  2. I’m unable to easily find accepted answers to solutions when searching through answerhub. Many of ‘accepted’ answers that are on answerhub are where an Epic staff member answers a question then locks thread, preventing further comments, or has marked it as answered themselves. majority of questions/answers on UE4 answerhub are ‘unaccepted’, and searching through various question/answer threads looking for right stuff and sifting through chaff/noise is painful.

One of cases where I think this makes sense if if you’re treating UE4 answerhub like a corporate help/support desk system. But most of people participating in it are from community and do not have moderation powers to lock topics after answering or mark them answered themselves.

This is frustrating enough that I probably won’t participate any further in answerhub unless it changes.

10

Hi cancel, thanks for feedback.

  1. functionality of new comments flagging answers as unaccepted does have value for Epic for tracking when issues get re-opened, however I am aware of frustrations it can cause. I’m considering updates we can have done to AnswerHub to handle these situations in a better manner.
  2. We are working with developers of AnswerHub site to update and improve experience. Included among our plans are additional options for sorting and filter, and ability to only search for questions that have accepted answers.

Thanks again for feedback.

11

Stephen, Glad to hear that this issue hasn’t been forgotten. Looking forward to whatever you come up with.

12

Hey Stephen,

Is there any update on this? It’s a source of perpetual annoyance when I craft a broadly applicable answer to a question and a random comment flips it back to “unanswered”.

13

Conversations for general improvements to site, including this item, are ongoing, but may take a while due to other development priorities. I’m sorry for frustrations in meantime.

14

Hey Stephen, is there any update on this? Right now my solution is to ask people to re-mark answer as accepted if they reply with a thanks, and to also maintain my own spreadsheet of what has been answered and was accepted at some point (or indicated as accepted via comment by author), but it would really be easier if I could just look at my profile page to see what may or may not need followup.

15

Hi again cancel.

I actually revived this discussion just last week, and we are reviewing impacts to Epic’s support processes and what’s needed to account for that if this change is implemented. It’s still in pipeline.

Cheers