Forum:How to get help on a question that has been buried?

Question

[skbrimer]

Can someone tell me the proper etiquette for moving an unanswered question back into the first page? I could post it again, which I know is bad form. I could "answer" with a question so it pops up again. Is there a way to get help to a question after it has the left the front page or is it just dead?

I know that I can not be the first person to wonder this as I have seen many questions fall to the background. Is this something fixable?

[GenoMax]

Perhaps Istvan (other devs?) would consider adding a "re-activate" button without resorting to the techniques that you mention. Biostars account randomly (perhaps not really random since there must be some logic behind that action) seems to re-promote unanswered/answered questions to the main page but that does not help when you want to bump re-activate a specific question.

[Naren]

If it's your own, edit it frequently. That will keep it alive at latest tab.

[GenoMax]

True but if the question does not belong to you then you have to resort to other "tactics" discussed below.

Answer 1

[Michael]

A bump button might be very easy to abuse. But editing bumps your question too. If you could add some additional information, clarification, or details, this would also greatly enhance the chances of the question being answered.

Another option is to share your post on twitter, facebook or google+

[skbrimer]

I thought the form was to add additional information to the comment part, for example in the question I'm trying to work out I have 99% of the solution and added that into the comment section. So I should have added that to the original question?

[Michael]

Comments don't bump, editing should be ok.

See also Any Way To "Bump" A Previous Post?

How To Ask Good Questions On Technical And Scientific Forums

[skbrimer]

Thanks Michael, I was just reading that post as well.

[GenoMax]

I was thinking of previous questions that have gone unanswered but that you did not post/own. Now you have the same question but there is no way to bring it up again without re-posting as a new. Perhaps "bump" is not the right word there but a "request to reactivate" may be more appropriate. I now see that "bumping" has been discussed before.

[skbrimer]

That is a good point, also the original poster may have solved it and moved on and if you could bump or reactivate maybe then would chime in as well.

[Michael]

Yeah, maybe 'request to bump' would be ok. But there is no mechanism in place to notify anyone, or to flag anything yet

These are additional mechanisms which might be useful for this case and you might know from SE but which are not implemented here:

• Add a bounty
• Flag a post
• Links to share a post
• chat

Answer 2

[John]

Frankly, if a question wasn't answered the first time it was posted, it was probably lacking something that would allow the community to answer it. Going back to the front page probably wont be a whole lot of help. Editing the post to give it more info/background, and in the process bumping it to the top, is a much better idea.

Some questions, and this doesn't happen often, are so difficult that its unlikely that anyone could answer it off the top of their head. I'm talking here about really good, but nonetheless difficult to answer questions. Perhaps questions like this could be pinned to the top - or better, marked as "monster questions" that users who have a few hours spare and are up for a challenge could try and tackle. But that is very rare in my opinion...

[GenoMax]

While your comment in the first sentence may be true it is possible that
1. no one with the right expertise came by the front page while the question was visible there
2. there was no one with the right expertise to answer that question at the time it was posted (I assume new users join Biostars all the time and must bring some fresh expertise with them).
In both cases, once a question moves off the front page it gets buried, which brings us back to the topic of this post.

[A. Domingues]

To your list I would also add:

1. there was no tool/method available at the time of posting that could do the job. X paper has been published that now soves the issue. As an example, I asked this question a few months ago regarding MutsSig output and visualization, which was never answered. Just 5 days ago Obi Grifith shared a tool that could have solved it.

To be honest I haven't looked in detail what the tool does since I am no longer working in that project, but it looks like what I needed at the time.

[Michael]

Mind the timezone issue, if you post early in the morning in Europe, the message could have disappeared from the front page before someone even got up in the Americas and might be hardly ever seen in Asia. The more people see a post, the more likely it becomes that among them is the one who can answer it or at least post a helpful comment.

[GenoMax]

That could be addressed by a "New" (Since your last visit) category (like LATEST/OPEN etc at the top). It could only be used for those who are logged in, if not for all visitors.

[John]

Yup, that's another good point. All of these are good points. I would just mention though that of course we want to get as many questions into the faces of potential answerers as possible - however, there's a finite amount of space on the front page, so every time we bump a question up (for whatever reason) we also move a question off the top page. So I agree that users who are UTC +/- 12 will miss questions posted by users who are UTC +/- 1, but this works in reverse too, and the only solution I can think of is a higher auto-bumping of posts created in the last 24 hours. Some kind of exponential auto-bumping probability decay based on creation time.

[Michael]

Here is the conterpart from SE: https://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/7046/how-do-i-get-attention-for-old-unanswered-questions There is simply not much more to add to the discussion. From the moderators' point of view I would add that the most efficient way to make the questions be seen on the front-page, despite the limited space, is to get the questions off the front page that should not be there, e.g:

• questions with accepted answers (encouraging users more to accept questions, e.g. whenever they visit their own profile)
• old questions that just have had trivial edits (add trivial edit button)
• off-topic questions and spam, each of these take away a space for the questions in real need of an answer
• there might also be a include vote bonus in the probability of bumping

That's all I could think of, but certainly these will require much effort for implementing them.

Answer 3

[Ram]

Why not just create a new post and mention the older one in it? That will prevent being perceived as a duplicate, and will give renewed life (if deemed appropriate) to the old question as well.

[Michael]

I would not opt totally against it, if there is a new aspect to the new question or it is a follow up question, it might be a very good way. The downside I see is it might effectively leave at least one of the questions unanswered, or even both if the original one had serious issues. There would be more questions overall, but also the percentage of answered or accepted questions might drop. I think that the edit bump was originally there to reward attention to detail, and this is imho its prime advantage. The effect is just not widely known.

Answer 4

[Michael]

Another technical solution: some users might specifically look for questions with no answers to harvest reputation or simply to help. If there was a button to show only Unanswered questions... It almost feels silly but again stackexchange has it on some sites at least, e.g. https://drupal.stackexchange.com/unanswered

Edit: This was a well hidden feature, it's called OPEN here. Let's put it more prominently and call it 'Unanswered'

Another try: questions with accepted answer have a lower probability of getting selected for a random bump. If everyone would validate answers on questions they received, that would increase the probability of an unanswered question to be bumped.

[GenoMax]

Since you are talking about features I will sneak this observation in.
I see no way to search for a specific "tag" in the dynamic search box. You can do a search by clicking on the tag in one of the posts but not directly by specifying a "tag" in dynamic or classic search. If there is a different/hidden way to do this then I must have missed it.

UPDATE: Just discovered that a tag search can be manually done by including it in the URL in this format:
https://www.biostars.org/t/tag_to_be_searched/ (e.g. NGS )

questions with accepted answer have a lower probability of getting selected for a random bump.

This does not appear to be true (for the automatic bump at least) since I regularly see posts that are several years old (with satisfactory answers) make it back on the front page.
I would like to get some guidance from one of developers about what criteria Biostars account uses to "activate" an old post to display it on front page.

[Michael]

https://biostar.usegalaxy.org/p/7288/#7325

I found it, I think it might explain the large proportion of answered and accepted questions among the bumps, because at any point in time, the have been much more answered than unanswered question, such that once we decide to draw from all question, it will most likely be an answered one.

Answer 5

[Michael]

Another side effect I just was reminded of. We have no choice when we edit, there is no way of turning the bump off even for trivial changes. That means we cannot edit a bunch of posts without driving a lot of new posts off the first page.

[GenoMax]

Did you "re-activate" all those "forum" posts to prove this point or was the above observation after the fact?

[Michael]

I noticed after the fact, but I should have known better. I wanted to edit to add the tag documentation to them, because they document how the site can be used and what it can be used for. So, it was not intended to bump them, but if moderators want to edit anything they really have no choice.