Suggestions for SQLA v2

[justin_willey]

1 New comments should promote questions back up the Active & Hot lists

2 No down-votes At the moment we are all playing nicely here, however once the new SQLA becomes the default public forum things may change. Those who use Stack Overflow and the like will have seen how perfectly reasonable questions and answers can get down-voted when some of the more self-satisfied users decide that they are too stupid / easy / obvious etc. Even a few down-votes could discourage a new user from using the site again.

While I'm no great believer in the "all must have prizes" school of thought, there seems little to be gained for the community in denigrating someone's honest contribution. By all means comment on it or correct it, but simple down-voting seems to me to be against the spirit of THIS site.

Spamming and frequent off-topic questions and answers would be better dealt with by moderation.

[graeme_perrow]

Thanks for your suggestions. I believe #1 has already been implemented. While I agree with the idea of #2, perhaps we could allow downvotes on community wiki posts so that polls like the one Mark posted (http://sqlanywhere-forum.sap.com/questions/1018/) would still work.

If anyone else has suggestions, please post them as answers to this question, and make sure to upvote your favourites!

[Breck_Carter]

I agree with Volker's sentiment (be polite etc) but I don't think SQLA will EVER be like Stack Overflow... so I say "let's wait until we see a problem before taking the drastic action of #2"... or have you seen a problem already?

[MarkCulp]

I agree that I don't like down votes, even on polls. The down votes on the poll that I posted has skewed the results so that I (we) can't really tell how many votes went to each option 😞 It would be better to not allow down votes at all, or if they are allowed then separate out the tally of up and down votes. I.e. show two numbers: total of up votes and total of down votes. But I think simpler is better so just disallow them completely. What do others think? SQLA is a community based forum so we should do what the community wants.

[MCMartin]

I think you already have two choices: You can up-vote or not-vote, so expressing your support for a question, answer or comment is possible. So down-votes are not needed.

[VolkerBarth]

@Breck: Though I try to be polite, too, it is Justin's suggestion:)

[VolkerBarth]

I agree with Breck that this is not (yet) a problem and should be watched for but not (yet) regulated. Interstingly enough, Mark's poll has "bagded" several members as "critics" - that seems not senseful for a poll. However, with this particular poll, I deliberately used both up-votes, down-votes and "no votes" to express three different opinions: "I prefer this", "I am against this" and "I don't mind". As such, a down-vote has its use IMHO.

[Breck_Carter]

@Volker: Doh! Advancing age is my excuse and I'm sticking to it! 🙂

[justin_willey]

@Breck - No, not seen any problem here - but I was searching for something on SO and noticed some of the behaviour there - not that I'm suggesting that SQLA users would ever behave like some SO users do - all together a more superior kind of ....etc 🙂 I sure that some people will have one try at SO and never go near it again,.

[graeme_perrow]

@Mark: On Stack Overflow, users with enough reputation (1000+) can click on the "score" of a question or answer and see exactly how many upvotes and downvotes it has received. So instead of "10" you might see "+12 / -2". I'm sure we can add this as well, if it's not already there.

[former_SQLA_member1694874]

I've up voted this for point one and down voted it for point two 🙂

I think been able to down vote is an important way for the users to moderate the site. I realise some people might get a bit precious about others down voting their comments but we're all adults so I'm sure we can take a bit of criticism, especially as it's usually helpful and friendly on here ?

Mind you this comment is totally useless because of point one 🙂

[Breck_Carter]

Don't move a question into the "hot" or "active" lists just because someone has edited the tags.

In some cases, someone will edit a LOT of questions in a global-tag-edit (like I just did adding "olap" to everything that talks about the WINDOW clause), and now they all appear at the top of the list.

[VolkerBarth]

Agreed:) I think it's inappropriate that re-tagging is treated as editing, particularly the fact that the question is listed with the re-tagger (and not the original poster) as user in the question list. - I do re-tag now and then (and feel there's some sense in that) but I don't feel I have contributed anything important to the question itself.

[Former Member]

I would like to also see better syntax highlighting/formatting of posted SQL code. Right now there are a ton of keywords that aren't recognized by the highlighter in Stack Overflow/Exchange.

[Breck_Carter]

I agree. I use Alex Gorbatchev's SyntaxHighlighter in my blog http://sqlanywhere.blogspot.com/2009/04/alex-gorbatchevs-syntaxhighlighter.html but only in "plain text mode" because the SQL highlighting does not work well for SQL Anywhere. It is JavaScript, and customizable, but I didn't have any luck... Mark could probably make it work in five minutes!

[Breck_Carter]

It does seem strange using something called "SyntaxHighlighter" in plain text mode... but it offers many features beyond highlighting, like line numbering and wrapping and copy and paste.

[VolkerBarth]

See my comment on Breck's suggestion:

Possibly an editor could have an option to mark the edit as "important" or "not" (as is possible in certain wiki systems, e.g. PmWiki).

That would help to "hide" simple edits (as re-tagging or correcting typos) from relevant ones where new/corrected contents has been added and other users should get attracted by placing the question at the top of the list.

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The same might be useful for adding comments w.r.t. to the question whether the according question should be posted on top: Adding a simple "I agree" or some funny remark should possibly not mark the question as "changed" whereas a comment like "I strongly disagree because..." should.

Though it might be less obvious how to decide that personally for comments - one usually writes something with the hope to get read...

[Former Member]

Maybe have a subset of edit reasons that the user has to choose from, and then that would dictate when to 'promote' the question back to the top?

[VolkerBarth]

For Mark: What a pity that SQLA2 has no taxonomist bagde anymore - now that even a meta-taxonomist bagde seems appropriate for your current task:)

[MCMartin]

I would like to see a watch list per user. So that a question which one might be interested in remains in the focus.

[graeme_perrow]

You do have the favorites list which is made for this purpose. If you click on the star underneath the score of a question, it gets added to your favorites list. You can see your favorites list by clicking on your name and then clicking "Favorites". It does not, however, affect the list of questions you see on the main page.

[MCMartin]

Thanks, I didn't understand that this feature is a "personal" favorite