(Yet another) suggestion to deal with lack of context

Nesrin wrote:

until the asker complies (by allowing them to add a note to their answer, rather than writing something in the discussion field), the "Answer" function is disabled

Heinrich Pesch wrote:
In rare language pairs the number of participants is very small, so the proposed method would not work but prevent only useful answers being supplied.

And there are sometimes reasons for askers not to be able to put context, or there is no reasonable context available. The lack of context may be the reason why the questions is asked, otherwise the asker would be able to find the translation herself.

Why does it bother you if there is no context? You are not obliged to answer or even think about the whole matter.

Nesrin wrote:

I think also that it's not good enough to say "they deserve what they get". Sometimes behaviour can be corrected over time, and surely that's for the benefit of all Kudoz users.

I like the idea of sending back the question for more context with the addition that was proposed in the course of the discussion, namely, that the eligibility to push that button would be based on a certain criteria (to prevent misuse).

I also agree that the KOG is an important aspect of KudoZ, and its quality should be high priority. Mechanisms that would help improving the quality of the entries, especially "on the way", would be good, and initiatives, efforts, ideas in that direction should be welcome. "On the way" I mean meanwhile the KudoZ question is active, before the glossary entry is actually made, as after they made their way into the KOG, it is hard to fix erroneous entries.

I believe that honest, but novice users who post questions without context will learn rather quickly, and they would appreciate quality answers over quick ones.

I don't see why the question could not be temporarily disabled. Would it really put the asker at disadvantage, since it would slow down the process?
Well, if someone so desperately needs a quick answer, I assume he/she is sitting by his/her computer, staring at the screen waiting for the answers. Then, when he/she gets the notice that the question is temporarily suspended until he/she provides more context, he/she could quickly provide that and put the question back to everybody's view.

I think not letting a no-context question sit around would prevent the potential answerers from doing guesswork (not good for the asker and not good for the KOG) and extensive, and often fruitless research (which is not fair as it could have been avoided had the asker provided more context).

I agree that there are a few cases (very few) where a single word should be enough for a true specialist to give the right answer (although I think in those cases the question should be targeted to people with that very specialization, and not to the general public).

However, the problem this proposal is trying to address is not about these extremely rare cases, but a phenomenon much more common these days, unfortunately.

Enrique wrote:
The main objective of normal (not GBK) KudoZ questions is to provide help to the asker.

Nesrin wrote:

....
We have (yet another) button under the question saying "Demand more context" or something to that effect. When pressed, the asker is sent a message explaining that without sufficient context, informed answers can't be provided and listing possible examples of context (as already explained in the guidelines).
But what's more important is that until the asker complies (by allowing them to add a note to their answer, rather than writing something in the discussion field), the "Answer" function is disabled - i.e. the asker will not receive any answers until s/he reacts to the request...

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BTW I've posted this suggestion here rather than in the "Ideas" section because, frankly, I'm not tooo impressed with that section and I feel that we get a lot more attention posting stuff on the regular forums than there.
Besides, forums include all sorts of things including ideas - I don't see why "ideas" had to be taken out of forums! Doesn't really make sense to me. Sorry!!

ildiko wrote:


I fully endorse this objective; however, I don't see how hasty guesses would assist any asker in producing quality translations. Such answers are not reliable and are very likely to *harm* the askers. I would not qualify that as 'help' but rather a 'disservice'. Therefore, allowing no-context questions is actually *not* in line with the objective of KudoZ, in my opinion.