koobas.hobune.stream
Considering removing the Ask an Expert feature
Hello mods!
When we first introduced the Ask an Expert feature, it was clear that it added more frustration than did any good. That lead to me changing the permissions so that only moderators were able to use the function.
Now my question is, are any of you utilising it? Because if it's not being used, then I'm considering having it removed entirely.
I haven't used it, as I don't find it meaningful as it's implemented now.
First of all, I have no idea what makes somebody be considered an expert in this question. I'm assuming it's because there's an overlap between what the question is tagged with, and what the user in question has listed as their Topic interests. Is that correct?
The big problem here is that users are really shit at tagging their questions. Take something like this question, picked at random from the front page. The tags are: texture, material, black, white and edges.
I can identify that this is a material problem. So if I wanted to ask an expert, I would want to click the "ask an expert" button and select an expert on materials. But I have no idea what the people listed as experts has listed themselves as an expert in. I can see that Eric is in the list of experts, but it might be that he's really good in all matters black and white, but knows nothing about materials. In essence, the Ask an Expert only works if the user has tagged the question with exactly the tag relating to their question, and only then.
That needs to be fixed. We also need to be able to search for experts in other topics as well, in case the user is completely off with what they've tagged the question as.
It would still not be ideal. I really don't want to click a button that would make an "hey you should help this person" email appear in somebody else's inbox.
By the way, bug report: It's not possible to follow the C# topic. Opening the dev console shows that clicking the button throws a 404 not found. I'm guessing it has to do with the # symbol in there.
I do sometimes user-tag someone that I know knows the answer, in the hope of getting an expert reply. Sometimes works, sometimes not.
I dont see the difference between that and Ask an Expert, so I guess it'll go unused for me.
Id suggest keeping in place for mods but I'll go one further and instead suggest that internal PM would actually be a lot better and in-line with Baste's suggestion of Internal Alerts.
Between this and user-tagging Ask an Expert becomes obsolete.
I have to stick my neck out here and mention that I was all for the Ask an Expert feature when we didnt have it, but the implementation somehow makes it not so useful given what I've already mentioned here. That and one can already PM through the forum (it just often goes unnoticed for a long time).
