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One thing that always bothered me about SO was that it shows who answered and their score. It should display answers without the user until an answer is accepte

One thing that always bothered me about SO was that it shows who answered and their score. It should display answers without the user until an answer is accepted. There’s been many cases where a high score user answers, gets a lot of upvotes cos people are like “oh his score is 30k so he must be right” yet the answer is not good or incorrect. And there is a better more correct answer by someone with a Low score who get few votes. Voting should be unbiased and be based on the answer. Not the person who answered.

y7 7y ago
Maybe for Stack Overflow, but for more scientific Stack Exchange sites with smaller communities I find the username to be really useful.
- philliphaydon 7y ago
  I’m not saying remove it for ever. Just for a period of time or until an answer is selected.
agumonkey 7y ago
Even reddit made the switch to a similar system. unknown points until later.
- Etheryte 7y ago
  The parenting comment suggest something different than what Reddit does. Reddit hides the comment's score, the comment suggest hiding the commenter's profile altogether so you can't see the commenter's reputation on the site.
  - agumonkey 7y ago
    True, but the principle is the same. Avoid apriori votes based on reflexes.
  - bhandziuk 7y ago
    It just doesn't seem possible to hide the answerer's profile though. It's possible they commented on the question asking for clarification or on another answer. In which case you need to be able to respond to them so who do you "@"? If they get some fake username during this anonymous period I supposes maybe that could work but then what if they question is discussed in chat or meta or the anonymous answerer posts a link to another question they answered where their username is no longer anonymized? Then they are exposed for who they are. How long would you keep it anonymized? most questions don't get almost any traffic at all when they are first asked. They only get exposure over time. It just seems like a posing proposition because it's so easily circumvented in which case it's not worth the effort at all.
mytailorisrich 7y ago
This is a feature. The person who answered is specifically indicated with their reputation to help sort among answers. It's like if you have a health-related question and get answers from two people: A trained surgeon and your mate from the pub (Edit: who's obviously not trained or knowledgeable on the topic, jeez). A priori whose answer is the more insightful? If you're not knowledgeable and get a number of anonymous answers it may be difficult to get an idea of their relative 'values'.
- philliphaydon 7y ago
  If you’re using a public forum for health questions then you have bigger problems to worry about. But put it this way. Trained surgeon A who has 5 years experience and has been on the site for 3 years has 4000 reputation. Answers a question. A trained surgeon with 26 years experience who joined the site last week and has a reputation of 200 supplies a far better answer with added explanation of why and how etc. You look at it and say oh wow 4000 reputation he must know more than the other guy. I’ll take his advice over the 200 reputation guy.
  - einpoklum 7y ago
    Stackoverflow's answer evaluation is not based on expertise, but rather on the opinion of those interested in the subject. Answer scores are targeted _public opinion polls_, nothing else.
  - wernercd 7y ago
    > If you're using a public form If you don't understand how comparisons work, you have a bigger problem to worry about. > put it this way The question then becomes... the 26 year veteran surgeon does boob jobs and tummy tucks. The 5 year veteran does emergency room and brain surgery. Given how complicated something as simple as "surgery" is... how do you plan on registering and ranking something with multiple levels of "experience" for "easy" viewing by users who want to ask questions? New to site, surgeon, decades of experience, plastic surgery Been on site, surgeon, years of experience, "real" surgeon
phonebanshee 7y ago
Marked as answered is a fundamentally horrible idea and that feature should be removed. The problem is that the person asking the question isn't capable of determining a correct answer. Far, far to often they pick something that appears to solve their problem but actually is a terrible idea.
- aaronchall 7y ago
  And right below it is the answer that goes on far too long. So long that it requires headings, an introduction, an abstract, a recommendation, caveats for the recommendation, a discussion of alternatives, some performance comparisons, critiques of a few other answers (including the accepted one), a conclusion, and a table of references. I know because I write those kinds of answers. I wish they would unpin those answers from the top - leave the green checkmark, just let me sort by whatever has the most votes recently - say in the past year. Then we'd get more up-to-date answers more attention, and more readers would find them.
- baud147258 7y ago
  Well, the accepted answer means that the solution proposed worked for the asker, then there are the votes and comments to evaluate whether or not this is a good answer.
  - wolrah 7y ago
    That's the theory, but it's amazing how often I click on a search result leading to SO and find an accepted answer that's either wrong or doesn't even answer the question.
    - enraged_camel 7y ago
      A lot of the times, "right" and "wrong" depends on context. An answer that works for me may be the wrong answer for you. But the "accepted answer" mechanic is useful as a way for the asker to communicate to the site as a whole that the question is no longer in pending status, and that others who are browsing around to see what needs to be answered can move on to other questions.
pmichaud 7y ago
I get the desire for answers to be evaluated on their own merits, but here is an argument for the system staying the same as it currently is: 1. If you're asking for help on a topic, then--by definition-- you are in an information asymmetric situation. You don't know what the right answer is. There's a decent chance that you, as the asker of the question, are not in a position to evaluate the answer on its merits. 2. Therefore you have to choose the answer based on other factors. On SO you can do something like see if the proposed answer makes sense to you, and check if the answer produces the results you want. Those are pretty okay metrics. But, obviously, they aren't perfect. Whether it makes sense to you doesn't fully track the truth of the situation, and whether it works or not doesn't address whether it's a good idea for other reasons, like being grossly inefficient, or deprecated, or unmaintainable, or whatever. So there's a decent chance that you can't evaluate the answer on its own merits, AND that sensible heuristics will fail you because you don't know what you don't know about the full context of the question, and might choose a wrong answer as a result. 3. Therefore, an additional useful signal you can track is the reputation and apparent expertise of the person who is answering. Of course, exactly as you say, it's not a perfect metric. But I think it's a meaningful signal that is generally useful to consider. Eg. If Jon Skeet answers my C# question, I just have a strong prior that it's correct in a robust way. It's an empirical question whether removing that signal would somehow improve the overall outcome (eg. removing that signal forces people use only use the heuristics that are based on the question itself instead of short circuiting that process in favor of an easier social signal). But I would bet that the empirical test would show that including the reputation signal improves outcomes, on the general prior that more information is better than less information. Edit: One thing that would change my bet: one feature of really high quality answers is that they are often long and made of parts, like they explain what to do, and what to avoid, and have details about why that is. You could track the length and detail of an answer as one of your heuristics for choosing a correct answer. If it turned out that people who have the correct answer were more likely to write answers with that sort of detail if their identity was hidden, AND it turned out that people use that sort of detail to decide if an answer were correct or not, then I could imagine better answers existing on the site overall, and those answers being more consistently upvoted.
- philliphaydon 7y ago
duxup 7y ago
I often find the third or lower rank answers more insightful. SO seems to reward "technically correct" fast on the submit / answers compared to more thoughtful answers. This also is reflected in what gets answered and what does't. If it requires nuance or thought it doesn't get answered. I asked something like "How would you render a bazillion things in react under X conditions and manage performance?" The responses were all "show me your code" or "here is how you render them" Like guies no, I know how to just render them... I'm asking about keeping the DOM from going bonkers. But their responses "work" and so that's all I got.

y7 7y ago

Maybe for Stack Overflow, but for more scientific Stack Exchange sites with smaller communities I find the username to be really useful.

philliphaydon 7y ago
I’m not saying remove it for ever. Just for a period of time or until an answer is selected.

agumonkey 7y ago

Even reddit made the switch to a similar system. unknown points until later.

Etheryte 7y ago
The parenting comment suggest something different than what Reddit does. Reddit hides the comment's score, the comment suggest hiding the commenter's profile altogether so you can't see the commenter's reputation on the site.
- agumonkey 7y ago
  True, but the principle is the same. Avoid apriori votes based on reflexes.
- bhandziuk 7y ago
  It just doesn't seem possible to hide the answerer's profile though. It's possible they commented on the question asking for clarification or on another answer. In which case you need to be able to respond to them so who do you "@"? If they get some fake username during this anonymous period I supposes maybe that could work but then what if they question is discussed in chat or meta or the anonymous answerer posts a link to another question they answered where their username is no longer anonymized? Then they are exposed for who they are. How long would you keep it anonymized? most questions don't get almost any traffic at all when they are first asked. They only get exposure over time. It just seems like a posing proposition because it's so easily circumvented in which case it's not worth the effort at all.

mytailorisrich 7y ago

This is a feature. The person who answered is specifically indicated with their reputation to help sort among answers. It's like if you have a health-related question and get answers from two people: A trained surgeon and your mate from the pub (Edit: who's obviously not trained or knowledgeable on the topic, jeez). A priori whose answer is the more insightful? If you're not knowledgeable and get a number of anonymous answers it may be difficult to get an idea of their relative 'values'.

philliphaydon 7y ago
If you’re using a public forum for health questions then you have bigger problems to worry about. But put it this way. Trained surgeon A who has 5 years experience and has been on the site for 3 years has 4000 reputation. Answers a question. A trained surgeon with 26 years experience who joined the site last week and has a reputation of 200 supplies a far better answer with added explanation of why and how etc. You look at it and say oh wow 4000 reputation he must know more than the other guy. I’ll take his advice over the 200 reputation guy.
- einpoklum 7y ago
  Stackoverflow's answer evaluation is not based on expertise, but rather on the opinion of those interested in the subject. Answer scores are targeted _public opinion polls_, nothing else.
- wernercd 7y ago
  > If you're using a public form If you don't understand how comparisons work, you have a bigger problem to worry about. > put it this way The question then becomes... the 26 year veteran surgeon does boob jobs and tummy tucks. The 5 year veteran does emergency room and brain surgery. Given how complicated something as simple as "surgery" is... how do you plan on registering and ranking something with multiple levels of "experience" for "easy" viewing by users who want to ask questions? New to site, surgeon, decades of experience, plastic surgery Been on site, surgeon, years of experience, "real" surgeon

phonebanshee 7y ago

Marked as answered is a fundamentally horrible idea and that feature should be removed. The problem is that the person asking the question isn't capable of determining a correct answer. Far, far to often they pick something that appears to solve their problem but actually is a terrible idea.

aaronchall 7y ago
And right below it is the answer that goes on far too long. So long that it requires headings, an introduction, an abstract, a recommendation, caveats for the recommendation, a discussion of alternatives, some performance comparisons, critiques of a few other answers (including the accepted one), a conclusion, and a table of references. I know because I write those kinds of answers. I wish they would unpin those answers from the top - leave the green checkmark, just let me sort by whatever has the most votes recently - say in the past year. Then we'd get more up-to-date answers more attention, and more readers would find them.
baud147258 7y ago
Well, the accepted answer means that the solution proposed worked for the asker, then there are the votes and comments to evaluate whether or not this is a good answer.
- wolrah 7y ago
  That's the theory, but it's amazing how often I click on a search result leading to SO and find an accepted answer that's either wrong or doesn't even answer the question.
  - enraged_camel 7y ago
    A lot of the times, "right" and "wrong" depends on context. An answer that works for me may be the wrong answer for you. But the "accepted answer" mechanic is useful as a way for the asker to communicate to the site as a whole that the question is no longer in pending status, and that others who are browsing around to see what needs to be answered can move on to other questions.

pmichaud 7y ago

I get the desire for answers to be evaluated on their own merits, but here is an argument for the system staying the same as it currently is: 1. If you're asking for help on a topic, then--by definition-- you are in an information asymmetric situation. You don't know what the right answer is. There's a decent chance that you, as the asker of the question, are not in a position to evaluate the answer on its merits. 2. Therefore you have to choose the answer based on other factors. On SO you can do something like see if the proposed answer makes sense to you, and check if the answer produces the results you want. Those are pretty okay metrics. But, obviously, they aren't perfect. Whether it makes sense to you doesn't fully track the truth of the situation, and whether it works or not doesn't address whether it's a good idea for other reasons, like being grossly inefficient, or deprecated, or unmaintainable, or whatever. So there's a decent chance that you can't evaluate the answer on its own merits, AND that sensible heuristics will fail you because you don't know what you don't know about the full context of the question, and might choose a wrong answer as a result. 3. Therefore, an additional useful signal you can track is the reputation and apparent expertise of the person who is answering. Of course, exactly as you say, it's not a perfect metric. But I think it's a meaningful signal that is generally useful to consider. Eg. If Jon Skeet answers my C# question, I just have a strong prior that it's correct in a robust way. It's an empirical question whether removing that signal would somehow improve the overall outcome (eg. removing that signal forces people use only use the heuristics that are based on the question itself instead of short circuiting that process in favor of an easier social signal). But I would bet that the empirical test would show that including the reputation signal improves outcomes, on the general prior that more information is better than less information. Edit: One thing that would change my bet: one feature of really high quality answers is that they are often long and made of parts, like they explain what to do, and what to avoid, and have details about why that is. You could track the length and detail of an answer as one of your heuristics for choosing a correct answer. If it turned out that people who have the correct answer were more likely to write answers with that sort of detail if their identity was hidden, AND it turned out that people use that sort of detail to decide if an answer were correct or not, then I could imagine better answers existing on the site overall, and those answers being more consistently upvoted.

philliphaydon 7y ago

duxup 7y ago

I often find the third or lower rank answers more insightful. SO seems to reward "technically correct" fast on the submit / answers compared to more thoughtful answers. This also is reflected in what gets answered and what does't. If it requires nuance or thought it doesn't get answered. I asked something like "How would you render a bazillion things in react under X conditions and manage performance?" The responses were all "show me your code" or "here is how you render them" Like guies no, I know how to just render them... I'm asking about keeping the DOM from going bonkers. But their responses "work" and so that's all I got.