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Forum: Should The "Unanswered" Tab Also Include Questions Having Answers With No Upvotes?

On the Stack Exchange sites, the "Unanswered" section shows questions with no upvoted answers. Biostar's "Unanswered" section only shows questions having no answers at all. I prefer the former, but I'm not sure what others think. I do think it's a worthwhile discussion if TPTB at Biostar would consider changing this based on community feedback.

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updated by Ram Ram • written by Dan D Dan D

2 answers

I prefer the Biostar way. Unanswered should mean what it says: no answers. There are, unfortunately, many cases of perfectly good answers for which no-one can be bothered to vote.

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written by Neilfws Neilfws

At the risk of getting into a mind-numbing semantic debate, "unanswered" doesn't necessarily mean no answers. If I ask "how do I replace the timing belt on a Volvo 1988 240DL?", and someone answers "potatoes," I think it's safe to say that my question remains unanswered. But I know what you mean about a lot of questions having acceptable answers which are not upvoted.

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written by Dan D Dan D

I'd argue that "unanswered" in our context means "no responses". Hence "potatoes" is an answer. Not a good answer, not one that you want, but it is a response.

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written by Neilfws Neilfws

On the flip side, some people break convention and answer in comments. That means a question may sit apparently unanswered, but actually the answer has been received, discussed and thanked for. The solution to this is, of course, people having a better understanding of when to answer and when to comment. Perhaps the mods could get the power to convert a comment to an answer where relevant or vice versa, and perhaps inform the culprit why they did it so they don't do it again?

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written by Emily Emily

this is an ongoing issue, I understand why it happens, sometimes a comment feels more appropriate as the scope of the question is unclear. Then when it turns out that comment is actually the answer. Having to come back and add it as an answer is just extra work.

There is a mechanism implemented that can move posts to different categories, answers to comments and vice versa - but ended up with too many options. The UI needed both a source and target (moving it from and to) and that also was nontrivial as required rewiring all the children of the post.

Writing this out made me realize that I over complicated the tasks. What would be a simple solution is this, comments to a top post can be moved to be answers to the top post by clicking a small icon that when clicked will move the post into the answer category. Similarly there will be a small icons at the bottom of answers when clicked will move the answer to be a comment on the main post.

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written by Istvan Albert Istvan Albert

I think some people (myself included) sometimes use a comment when they feel that the answer is very trivial. I guess this is bad practice and if my comment is the answer, then I should post it as an answer.

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written by Neilfws Neilfws

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