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erichw1504's avatar

What would you think of a SORT BY option for answers to questions?

Asked by erichw1504 (26448points) September 1st, 2010

Don’t you think there should be an option to Sort the answers by…

- Newest Answer
– Oldest Answer
– Answer with Most Lurve
– Answer with Least Lurve
– Users with Most Lurve
– Users with Least Lurve

And even a Filter option to show only people in your Fluther?

What do you think about this?
Any other sort or filter option you would recommend?

Observing members: 0 Composing members: 0

18 Answers

Seaofclouds's avatar

I personally don’t see a need for it, but I’m sure there are some people that would. If the newest answer is in response to something someone said a while ago, it may not make any sense if you have not read the older answers. Sorting answers with the most/least lurve could be helpful on serious questions in general where you want to know which answers most people agreed with, but the discussions in social would be different due to the nature of the social section. Perhaps instead of sorting, there could be something to make an answer stand out once it has reached a certain number of GAs. Sorting users by their lurve would be pointless to me because I don’t think the users lurve has anything to do with their answer. I also wouldn’t want to only see the people in my Fluther. There’s too much of a chance of missing something really great if you start only paying attention to certain people (in my opinion).

marinelife's avatar

I think it is important to read the answers in the order they were given.

erichw1504's avatar

@Seaofclouds “there could be something to make an answer stand out once it has reached a certain number of GAs” – That’s a great idea!

@marinelife Why?

wundayatta's avatar

I could see sorting questions by topic. That might be helpful. I think sorting by age would be interesting, but only in an intellectual way.

You could sort users by lurve, but I don’t know what that would tell you. It would tell you how long people have been here, but you could do that by sorting by date of joining. Those with least lurve would certainly be the newest folk.

If you were looking for some indication of how efficiently someone collected lurve, you would have to look at how long they had been here, discounting for the max-out effect (which makes it harder to earn lurve since fewer people can give it to you). You’d also need to adjust for amount of time spent on the web site. Then, if you assumed that lurve was a measure of quality (by no means an unarguable assumption), you might have a reasonable measure of how much an individual’s answers are appreciated, generally speaking.

What that would mean, or why you would care about that, I’m not sure. In any case, it is unmeasurable, since we don’t know how much time people spend here, actively answering questions.

marinelife's avatar

@erichw1504 Because it forms a thread. Many times the answers are given in context of other answers around them. They form a narrative.

CMaz's avatar

All I know is we need a Follow/dont follow button at the bottom by the answer box.

MissA's avatar

@ChazMaz How would that be helpful because we already have that option.

CMaz's avatar

It would allow me to just click on it and move on. Instead of having to scroll back to the top to do it.

Think of it as a nice touch.

Actually, it would be nice if you clicked “stop following” it would stop you from following and kick you back to the home page.

MissA's avatar

@ChazMaz I understand now…“the Chaz button”.

CMaz's avatar

CORRECT!

OreetCocker's avatar

Yep, I’m for the chaz button ;-)

AmWiser's avatar

I could appreciate the ‘chaz button’ too. It’s not that difficult to navigate back to the top of the page but if the button were at the bottom, it would make things so much simpler;-).

zen_'s avatar

I thought the Chaz button was an erogenous zone.

MissA's avatar

Oohhhhh…

CMaz's avatar

@zen_ – What don’t you know? ;-)

MissA's avatar

@ChazMaz If @Zen knew what he didn’t know…wouldn’t he, by default, know everything?

I’ve learned a few things since my arrival. But, I don’t know what I don’t know.

CMaz's avatar

Yes, there is a bit of zen in all of us.

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