questions → suggestion: faq tab in ask the community

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Suggestion: FAQ tab in Ask the Community

Jan 27, 2012 7:50 PM

The same issues come up on questions over & over again. Part of the reason for this - all questions become stale or old so rapidly. If you have a legitimate question, you can look for a duplicate and find it. You may also find that the info is old or may no longer be valid. If you decide to post an answer on that old question, the only people who see it are those that subscribed to it when it was posted (new). If you do post the (dup) question, you are bombarded w/links to read & chastised for posting the dup. What to do?

Example of a recurring question and an excellent candidate for a FAQ tab. (http://deals.woot.com/questions/details/9a535a9b-53c6-48bb-b3be-92b17037bc2d/having-trouble-with-triangle-square-color-staff-not-having-badges-comments#17). @theoneill555 Thank you for the inspiration for this question!

Suggestion: Make a tab for FAQs. Put all recurring questions/answers there so that everyone can see the answer and avoid post an unnecessary question.

Thoughts?

gmwhit gmwhit

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vote-for14vote-against

We have been asking for a deals.woot FAQ forever.

Here is a link to catbertthegreat's original deals.woot user FAQ (a little outdated but still relevant)-

https://docs.google.com/Doc?docid=0AQG8pAVgwWFGZDk3Y3RzNF80emJndnQ3djY&hl=en&pli=1

Here is heymo's attemp -

http://deals.woot.com/questions/details/60912285-b3d7-450b-b297-9a7368e28e48/just-the-faqs-maam-who-feels-like-a-broken-record#22

Maybe one day, shawnmiller will awake to a glorious, warm, sunshiney day in Seattle and say "I am going to design a deals.woot FAQ" (but don't count on it any time soon - we might get sun and warmth sometime in Aug - if we are lucky)

theoneill555 theoneill555
vote-for8vote-against

@theoneill555: Thank you! Apparently the community wants FAQs; the staff is mute on replies. Therein lies part of the problem. An aside: For the purposes of this question, I was only addressing the Ask the Community side. Also believe that deals.woot sorely needs some definitions. Especially the length of time before a deal is automatically RIP'd.

Will mention again - snapster asked the community a question a while ago regarding reinstating chat. Seems no one wanted that again. Then he posed options for the questions area - one of which was to stop using questions in the rep algorithm. I know & understand that he isn't involved in the day to day running of this place. But, when you ask a question, receive answers, should you not let people know your decision? This 'rep' question is now outdated and unanswered.

Apparently, so is the FAQ question. SAD.

gmwhit gmwhit
vote-for7vote-against

I like the idea, but it is too easy to ask questions, so I think many people will just ask rather than review the FAQ first.

wnyx585am wnyx585am
vote-for7vote-against

@gmwhit: Agree. I think FAQ should exist even if it only reduces duplicate questions by a small margin. Also, there are some people who would review an FAQ area but might not ask a question out of fear/confusion so I think FAQ might be good for newer users who may be a little more intimidated, etc.

wnyx585am wnyx585am
vote-for6vote-against

I say instead of a FAQ page, we make new users take a quiz before any participation. Questions on this quiz will include things like "Your number of Woots has gone from 6 to 1. This is obviously: A) a glitch B) punishment for not Wooting enough C) a glitch." or "You answer a question on deals.woot and @jumbowoot himself responds! But he has no staff badge! What happened? A) he quit B) he was fired for being so awesome C) glitch." In order to participate, they'll have to answer these types of questions and then get so many right. If the user is caught asking one of these questions again, users can tattle on the offending user to the mods who will then make him/her re-take the quiz.

captainsuperdawg captainsuperdawg
vote-for5vote-against

Yeah, this has been churning (at least amongst community members) for a long time: http://deals.woot.com/questions/search?q=faq

Maybe FAQ#1 should be: "Why is there not an FAQ?" ... but it would be in an FAQ! FAQception.

dcalotta dcalotta
vote-for4vote-against

A Faq is a Faqtastic idea.

nortonsark nortonsark
vote-for3vote-against

No, I didn't search to see if this ? had been asked before. Guilty. :-( If it has been, then it's apparently old & no action was taken, etc. Am hoping that this might be considered as part of a solution to making the ?'s area easier to use.

gmwhit gmwhit
vote-for3vote-against

@wnyx585am: I understand what you're saying. :-) If there was such a tab, then the person who asked the question could simply be referred to that link. It might stop some dups, and posssibly avoid the negative votes/answers w/mulitiple (often old) links.

gmwhit gmwhit

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Not a farewell, just a forced redirect.

It's true, Local.Woot is no longer, but please don't despair.

Never-ending savings are still to be found on Deals.Woot each and every day, so come on in. Don't think of it as a time for tears. Think of it as a way to bring us all closer together under one roof.

Sorry

This is only for people who have bought woots

We restrict voting to users who have purchased something from one of the other Woot stores. It's not just because we want your money (which we do) - it's the best way to be sure all the votes are coming from real people and not spam-bots or phony accounts. The best way we can think of, anyway. For now.

You can always get voting rights by buying something from one of Woot's other sites:

Purchases through Deals.Woot don't count, because in that case you're not buying anything from us. And we don't have your account information for those purchases.

If you think you've bought something from Woot before and still can't vote, make sure you're logged in with the same account you used to buy from us.

Geez, why so negative?

You have to vote up more before you can vote down.

Don't get us wrong. Negativity has its place. And downvotes are just as essential as upvotes when it comes to making Deals.Woot a useful place to find deals.

But when your votes lean so heavily toward the dark side, we have to wonder. Go vote up a few things. Accentuate the positive for a little while. It'll do you some good, and it'll do the site some good, too. Then you can get back to dealing out the smackdowns, OK?

Too late, we all heard you!

Hmm... you're wanting to take your vote back?

Well, that's a bit tricky. See, we do a lot of stuff with your vote, using it to work out the popularity of what you voted for, compare that to all the other things voted on, tally up our leaderboard, work out your reputation. Someday we'll do a little cartoon showing just how hard your vote is working.

Anyway, taking votes back messes all that up, so we give you five minutes, in case you just mis-clicked. After that we've got to say no take-backs. Luckily, votes are free, so feel free to throw them around left and right wherever you see fit.