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"Answered" Topics

Answered
Roger Gough

This is just a general question about the forum for the moderators. Do comments that are added after a post has been marked as answered, remain visible to the originator, and are notifications still triggered?

I only ask this because I have recently added such comments, but received no response. An example is the question raised by Vaino Louekari yesterday.

If the answer to my question is no, it might be worth considering not using the "answered" status, because there is always the chance that other users may have something to add to posts.

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Comments

8 comments

Date Votes
  • Brian Lawson Community moderator

    Yes, they do remain visible. It’s just a flag that tells readers that the original post has been answered.

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  • Brian Lawson Community moderator

    Yesterday, you posted a suggestion to Vaino. You did not ask any questions and his post is still visible along with your response even though it has been marked answered. I had to look for it to know what you were referring to in your post. Because you did not ask a question no one gave your post an answer is all.

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  • Brian Lawson Community moderator
    • Edited

    Answered does not mean "closed for further comment". It is a flag that tells those users who actually perform a search before asking a question that has already been asked and answered multiple times. The results list will flag those topics in which the searcher will find the answer to the question that has been asked. That's all it means, it helps separate the wheat from the chaff when searching for answers. Clearly we can continue posting to threads that have been flagged answered.

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  • Brian Lawson Community moderator

    Thanks Richard, I'll see if it can be added to those results pages. I know they are pretty bad with no way to sort them and after going back a few pages the paging feature stops working so any improvement would be a good thing, right? 😎

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  • Brian Lawson Community moderator

    I just sent Kahlie a message asking about Zendesk's responsiveness to request for changes to these pages. I mentioned adding the flag and being able to sort the results returned by the search so the most recent posts are prioritized. I also mentioned the problem where paging back through the search results stops working after 3 or 4 pages and won't go any further back no matter how many more pages there are to see. I'll post her response.

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  • Subias Gilles
    • Edited

    As I posted some months ago, the picture welcome of the forum don't need to be so big, it should be better to have more room for the last posts. Ask Kahlie again.

    Thanks Brian for your involvement here !

    Edit: that's what I see on my 27" screen when I connect to the forum, as you see new topics requires too much scrolling

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  • Brian Lawson Community moderator

    Here is the response I received from Kahlie. There is some interesting info on how the search rankings work including the under used rating at the top right of each reply.

    Hi Brian,

    Unfortunately, search results cannot be sorted by date. The ranked search results are based on “relevance scores" and are displayed to the user in descending order of their scores. For community posts, search results are ranked by the post title, details and comments.

    Relevance scores are also impacted by a text analysis process that considers the following factors:

    • Exact match - Results that exactly match a word in the search string. This scores higher than a stemmed match.
    • Stemmed match - Results where a word matches after stemming. For example, the plural form of a word generally matches the singular form.
    • Term frequency - Number of matches returned in a single field. Higher term frequency increases the score.
    • Field length - Matches in shorter fields score higher than results in longer fields. For example, if you have a single word search, that matches a one-word title, that will score higher than a hit in a long article title with many words.
    • Proximity boost - The score is boosted when all the search terms are close together in the same field. For example if all the search terms are included in an article title this puts them in close proximity and gives the result higher relevance.
    • Phrase boost - In multiple term queries, exact word order is preferred. For example, when searching for “car park”, results containing “car park” are ranked higher than results containing “park car.”
    • Query length - For one and two word queries, the algorithm returns only documents that match all the search words. For longer queries, 40% of the query terms must be present in a document for it to become a search result.
    • Overall quantity and quality of relevant results.
     
    In addition to text analysis we give extra weight to certain features of articles and posts. These include:
    • Article votes - End users can rate articles as “helpful” or “unhelpful” so that over time an article may develop a score like “10 of 50 users found this article helpful.” We give articles with a higher percentage of positive votes a boost so that they show up a higher in results than they otherwise would. The more overall votes an article has weighs in too; for example, an article with a rating of 10 out of 50 gets more weight than one with 10 out of 100.
    • Community post votes - End users can rate community posts as “helpful” or “unhelpful,” just as they can for articles. The percentage of positive votes functions as a boost and makes a certain post rank higher than it otherwise would.
     

    This is what Zendesk has listed as ways for end users to find content more easily:


    There are a number of operands you can recommend to help end users locate content in search. 
    • Find multiple words: Use double quotes (") around each word to find content that contains all those words.
    For example, "article" "title" "section" "author" retrieves content that contains all four words, in any order.  Make sure you put spaces between the search words, otherwise the search handles the text as one string. 
    You'll get hits if there is a stemmed version of a word (e.g. articles). You won't get hits where content contains only the words title and section, for example.  
    If you use single quotes (') around a word, the single quotes are ignored.  If you search for 'article' 'title' 'section' 'author', you'll see hits for all content that contains any of the words title or article or section or author (exactly as if you had searched without the single quotes).
    • Find a phrase: Use double quotes (") around a phrase to find content that contains all the words in that phrase.
    For example, "article title" retrieves all content that contains the words article and title, in that order.  You'll also get hits if there is a stemmed version of the word (e.g. articles).  You won't get hits where content contains only the word title, for example.
    If you use single quotes (') around a phrase, the single quotes are ignored. 
    • Exclude results containing certain words: Use the minus operator (-) in front of the search term to find content that does not include that word or phrase.
    For example, reporting bugs -support returns content containing the words reporting and bugs, but excludes those that contain the word support from the result set.
    • Combine operands for advanced search: you can combine the operands above to find a very specific set of results.
    For example, "reporting bugs" -support returns hits for content that contains both the words reporting and bugs, but does not contain the word support.
     
    I will need to do more research to see if we have the ability to implement or fix the other items you have mentioned.
     
    Best,
     
    Kahlie Muldrew
    Marketing Manager
    on1.com
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  • Brian Lawson Community moderator

    "Speaking of buttons, I’m guessing the helpful/unhelpful votes referenced in the reply above are the little up/down arrows beside each post?" Yes.

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