How can we as users get the most out of UnityAnswers?

Question

It seems that this site could quickly turn into a big mess of unordered questions - making information gathering very slow and painful. While we're at this early stage with the system - is there any usage patterns we could adapt to ensure that this never becomes an issue or at least reduce its severity?

Answer 1

It's funny that you ask, because I just happen to have some thoughts on that ;)

First off, the little "First time here? Check out the FAQ." box is not as evil as it looks. Your first idea might be to dismiss the little bugger straight away since you "don't need no damned FAQ telling everyone how to behave", but its not very long and there's useful advice in there. If you did indeed dismiss it at first, the faq link is right up there to the left of the search field (another very handy fellow).

Now say you have a question you want answered and fast would be good.

Start off by deciding what the scope of your question really is "How do I make my tank fire bullets at the Eiffel tower" might actually be expandable to "How do I get my game object to launch propelled objects at a target?". By widening the scope of your question, you invite in more people with an answer and, in the context of this site as a whole, more importantly more people with a similar question.

Keep your questions formulated as informative questions. Questions titled "Moving my game object via GUI does not work" and similar are hard to sell to people in an answering mood and hard to match with people with the same question. "How do I move my game object from my GUI?" is immediately easier to understand for people browsing - both answering and asking people.

Use the tags. The tagging system is really good for categorising content. If everything is tagged in all the categories relevant for its content, then the right people will find your questions. Experts in specific areas will have favourite tags which they build a search on and people looking for existing questions will use the relevant categories also. This ofcourse does not mean that you should spam your question with tags as this completely invalidates the system and in the end leads to it being worthless.

Make sure that the question has not been asked already. When you ask a new question, an area with suggested matching questions will appear just below the title field. If someone already asked the question, why not go check out that question? You might find that it's already been answered or you could provide some additional information for the question - in form of a comment on the question or an edit of it.

Wohoo! You asked a well scoped and formulated question and by tagging it correctly, an expert dropped by and offered a spot on answer. So now you log out and happily use the answer straight off, right? WRONG!

When next you go looking for an answer, wouldn't it be a lot easier if someone had already asked and answered that question? I thought so. Now that you have your answer (and its a really good one), go and accept it as being so. Also, offer your vote on it (because it is so awesome) so that users dropping by will see it quickly and recognise its awesomeness. Wohoo! Quickly you sort that out and go apply the answer and the next time someone drops by your question, they can vote up your question and their favourite answer to it so that more people will see it.

Answer 2

Answer by Lucas Meijer 1 · Feb 18, 2010 at 11:23 PM

By voting the good stuff up, and the bad stuff down.

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Answer 3

Answer by duck · Dec 03, 2009 at 10:47 AM

I think for the most part, the Stack Exchange engine seems well designed to allow a natural order to emerge from what might initially seem like a chaotic mix of content, as long as users are aware of the small details that help it work.

I think the most important mechanisms to sort order from chaos here are the correct tagging (or re-tagging) of questions, and the voting up and clicking "accept" on the most suitable answers. The tagging is not so much of a problem, because re-tagging is something that many members of the community will be able to do retrospectively as they achieve the required threshold.

So, perhaps the most points that we should emphasise to those asking questions (and therefore adding to the question pool size) and new users are:

Make sure you search for an answer first, before starting your own question.
If you find an existing question and answer which solves your problem, be sure to vote up both the question and answer. This helps show the true worth of the information, and helps others find it more easily in future.
If you find an existing answer which comes close, but doesn't answer your question, do not add your question to it - neither as a comment, nor an additional answer. Instead, start your own new question, and refer to the existing one with a URL link if it's relevant.
If you do ask your own question, be sure to vote up any good answers, and click "accept" on the answer you finally go with.

If as many users follow these rules as possible, I think we should end up with a valuable and well-organised knowledge base. I know from experience that a lot of my general programming search queries have recently started throwing up useful results from Stack Overflow as that site has grown, so hopefully with proper usage, this site should follow suit!

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AngryAnt ♦♦ · Dec 03, 2009 at 10:49 AM 1

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Wowzer Duck. You're fast on the trigger. Next time I plan on answering my own questions I should probably have the answer prepared beforehand ;)

jashan · Dec 03, 2009 at 11:37 AM 0

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Hehe, Emil, that's what I thought when Ericksson answered "What is $$anonymous$$ono? Is it a compiler? A language? Or what?" while I was writing my answer right after I wrote the question (and I already had a draft because I originally had this as forum posting ... at least the first half). But you know: That's the thing with posting those elaborate, lengthy answers. Welcome to the club ;-) I think in the end, this means that the system works ;-)

duck ♦♦ · Dec 03, 2009 at 12:04 PM 0

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Heh, and there I was thinking that you'd started to despair of the stack exchange engine... o O ( this place is just turning in to a big mess! )

duck ♦♦ · Dec 03, 2009 at 12:55 PM 0

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Just added a bullet point, regarding NOT adding your own question to the answers of an existing question. Somthing I've seen happen a few times here already.

Answer 4

Answer by Ricardo · Dec 03, 2009 at 02:28 PM

Take time to learn the basics first.

There are Unity questions and then there are programming questions. Many of the programming questions being posted are very basic and not even Unity related, and the type of thing that belongs on a beginner programming tutorial. While Unity significantly simplifies game creation, it by no means removes the need to actually learn to program.

Keeping the questions focused on actual Unity issues will go a long way towards making this a vibrant knowledge base for Unity as a platform, as opposed to a StackOverflow where GameObjects are sometimes mentioned.

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AngryAnt ♦♦ · Dec 03, 2009 at 03:37 PM 0

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Would this issue not be solved by the voting system?

Ricardo · Dec 03, 2009 at 03:39 PM 0

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The voting system helps, but the questions still introduce noise. $$anonymous$$uch like having someone who's rude to others, the voting signals the problem, but it would be better if it doesn't happen in the first place.

Bampf · Dec 03, 2009 at 08:25 PM 0

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I don't think we need to worry about whether a question turns out to be a Unity-specific question, or a program$$anonymous$$g question, or a question about modelling. When someone has a question they don't necessarily know. Sometimes the issue turns out to be a typo in their code, sometimes a general principle with lasting archival value. That's the beauty of this approach: the inclusiveness invites participation, the voting and reputation systems promote some answers over others. (Though in the end, even the very narrow answers might help someone one day.)

Bampf · Dec 03, 2009 at 08:49 PM 1

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Personal gripe: when I figure out someone's coding issue and they never come back to confirm.

Ricardo · Dec 04, 2009 at 01:47 PM 1

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Oh, I don't even mean basic questions like "why are physics acting this way?", but the "what's a boolean?". I've seen several "What's the best way to do this?", where they get a description of how to do it and reply with "But I can't program, what would be the code?". I'd hate to see answers become "Write my code for me".

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Answer 5

Answer by Cyclops · May 26, 2010 at 06:11 PM

Getting Answers is a nice essay on how to ask a Question so as to increase the chance you'll get a good Answer. To summarize his points:

Explain what doesn't work
Provide everything up-front
Post your code
Do your research beforehand (and during, and after)
Don't post the same question repeatedly
Follow up after you get an answer
Treat the group like they are people, not answering-machines
Always consider the answer

The checkmarked Answer is great (no surprise), but it's also oriented towards asking Questions.

Here is a blog post on how to create good Answers: Answering technical questions helpfully by Jon Skeet.

(Just FYI, Jon Skeet is the top-rated poster on StackOverflow - with 179K+, of rep!)

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Proclyon · Nov 18, 2010 at 02:51 PM 0

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Well of course he is :) Nice link, Really like the part on proper code samples.

How can we as users get the most out of UnityAnswers?

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