You can edit it for 15 minutes after you post it. The idea being that it gives you time to correct any errors etc. but after that other people may have answered/commented and at that point it is part of the context of the whole "discussion" and if we allowed it to change it could render other answers/comments meaningless.

We always try and strike a balance between the person answering and the community should they ever have different demands.

We actually think this is a little too restrictive on the contributor and have discussed changing it for a while. One idea is to allow it to be changed as long as there are no other contributions related to it. I think that would be a better solution.

In the meantime, you can always email feedback@questionland.com and have us change things (keep in mind our guidelines above if you do that). We don't ever want people to feel they are stuck with having written something they'd prefer wasn't there. Typically it's dealt with very easily and quickly.

Thanks for asking and for being part of Questionland.

p.s. It's not "The Stranger's Questionland", although given that we are such close partners it's an understandable thing to think. Questionland is independent and, as I'm sure you have noticed, quite different although much of the core membership of Questionland are also readers of The Stranger. If you ask me, that is a simple IQ test and so we get the people who passed. What other paper would you read in Seattle?

I think the "experts" killed Questionland.

It went from being a fun community interacting with itself to a forum asking questions of "experts." By anointing people as the most qualified to answer on certain topics, the site stripped agency from its user base.

Too bad. Everybody has a perspective to offer.

Hey Russ,

We stopped doing these on a regular basis due to a lack of resources. That said, we are open to having them if you have a special topic in mind and are willing to round up experts.

Let me know if you're interested and I can provide more details on how we went about it.

Thanks,
Marty

This is a pet peeve of mine and I've once also started a thread about it here in Questionland.

"Googling" isn't always the "Answer" which is why Questionland has validity.

First of all, my contention is that say around 2005, it was valid to tell a person to "Google it" because many hadn't yet formed the mindset to use a search engine.

But now, everyone knows about Google, so if I come to a site like Questionland or any forum site, it's because I do not want general knowledge, but specific knowledge or real life experience.

I don't want to know what Yelp thinks of a restaurant, I want to know if you've actually been there, how many times, and what it was like.

So, yes, no "google it"s any more.

Sometimes an apparently simple or easy question comes along where the answer would seem to be easy to find. So you take up the challenge and find yourself using 20, 30, or more minutes of time seeking the solution, changing search terms, using different permutations and numbers of words, looking through sites and databases. The chase becomes a task to which you don't want to admit defeat. Why can't I find this? You know the person must have looked, but they gave up - I can get the better of this task!

This was one:
http://questionland.com/questions/23354-does-anybody-know-what-book-if-any-begins-with-the-line-it-was-100-degrees-in

The disappointment comes when you either don't get an answer back or like in this case they say thanks, I'll pass it along and you never hear anything back, oh well.

http://bit.ly/yvZum3

Some things that seem like straightforward questions can be hard to Google because its algorithms keep locking onto something else much more common, but not at all what you were looking for.

For example, a few days ago my iPhone wasn't seeing any of the new songs I added to iTunes Match (their music cloud thing), so I wanted to know how to force the phone to update and see my new songs.

Googling "force iphone itunes match update" or any combination above gets you about a million results that have nothing to do with my problem. Most on setting up Match for the first time. Eventually, I figured it out by myself.

I am not shy about sending someone a passive aggressive "let me Google that for you" link, but I honestly don't feel the urge to all that often at QL.

A lot of the time it's not necessarily "I can't be bothered to google it" it's "google did not provide a sufficient answer."

If this question is directed at me for my Spanish language ferry boat question I can tell you that we googled it with a crowd of English and Spanish speaking people on iPhones and could not find a clear answer.

I would support this if it were rephrased as "i tried to google it but google wasn't enough" or "I need help googling this."

The way you have phrased it is a little snarky.

I like Russ's idea. Only problem is making sure people know it exists. Would it be a top level category, or what would it be a sub-category of? Doesn't fit into any of the other categories it seems.

Maybe include one term and make it "History, Legend & Lore"?
That way you can cover fact as well as perceptions, notoriety and common tales.

Good idea!

Kick ass idea! I second the motion

I think this would be great! I've been trying to catch up on Seattle-isms, weird history, ect. since moving here. It would be nice to have a place to ask questions and learn more. :)

The only times I've ever been moved to give more than three downvotes in a 12-hr period is to express disgust with one or both inflammatory participants in an "extended way-too-long" tit-for-tat comment war.

Based on the existence of such threads, however, it's clear the downvotes didn't matter much as a deterrent. So I suppose 3 every 12 hrs is plenty.

I'm fine with it. It's a good troll-bar so we don't have big ugly downvote vendettas (see Russ's answer).

The only problem it could cause would be in not allowing normal contributors to hand out well-earned downvotes, but this is a pretty responsible community and it's never come up for me...I do maybe one downvote every month, maximum. I'm not at risk of even approaching that limit.

The statistics reported show just about a 50% reduction in downvotes.
Of course, only part of that could be attributable to the limit of downvotes per time period. I believe the more important factor is making sure people who sign up here have to become contributing members to a predefined reputation level before being able to hand out downvotes.

I didn't know it existed, and frankly, I'm running low on give a shit... but if I really scratch my head and think about it, I'd say it's unnecessary to limit. If people give shitty answers, they should be downvoted. We don't need to sit around the campfire and sing koombayah, and make sure everyone gets a trophy. If somebody says "Sure, you can drink 20 beers and drive across the 520 bridge safely" or says something that's just plain wrong, like "Seattle is an ancient word that means a whale's vagina" their stupid ass should get all the downvotes the community can muster.

Stop the butthurt. If you give a shitty answer, you should get the downvotes.

I'm a part time contributor at best, so take that into consideration. But I've never found reason to hand out more than three downvotes in a day here. If there are that many bad answers out there, I think enough people can hand out downvotes without it become some dogpile. (I know one user who used to get them all the time - it was probably gratuitous and unnecessary for everyone to do that.)

great question - been wondering that too!

word. Some of us love the emerald city best when she's gray -- its what makes her green after all.

Russ,

Sorry for the insane sort order. The sort order is a bug pure and simple - it's prioritizing incorrectly.

Maintaining the selected search type is a good idea and pretty straightforward.

It turns out that this search bug is a bigger deal than I had thought and the Gnome will hopefully be able to dig in very soon to resolve it.

Thanks as usual for the great feedback.

Charles

I'm chiming in a month late to echo others' concerns about the emphasis on answers rather than questions. I really think it would make more sense to feature questions in the wider left hand column and answers in the narrower right hand column. If I see a question that interests me I'll click on it to read the answers. I don't want to see "disembodied" answers before I even get to read the question.

Also, I'm not a big fan of the crowdsourced header photo idea. I feel like Questionland has lost its branding, since the main imagery associated with the site is always changing. Also, some of the photos being used just aren't strong images. Maybe I'll feel differently in a month or two...

Hey soundslikepuget,

I'm gonna try to add a picture now...

Seems like it worked. The picture has to be on the internet and some sites restrict embedding so it could be that unless your linking to a picture that you uploaded to flickr, etc.

We can always add the picture for you. Just email it to feedback@questionland.com and tell us where you want it.

Thanks,
Marty

I usually have to go back and find the link and instructions to attach a photo or image. The instructions were included in the elaboration paragraph on the Food Porn contest. Search using "food porn" and you will find the listing.

Here are the instructions copied from there:

How to attach a picture:

Post it somewhere on the interwebs. You can email it to temmik98@tumblr.com and then go to questionland.tumblr.com and it'll be there (in 1-30 min). Right click on the picture and choose "copy image location" (or the equivalent).

1. Choose (at the bottom of the answer box) and then click the picture icon .

2. Paste in the image location you just copied and hit the "insert" button. Voila!

Doing an image or photo probably is the most involved. Imbedding a link is fairly easy you have to select the Add blue bar at the bottom of the section you write in and then highlight the part you want to link to and cut and paste the link in the dialog box that appears.

I find the most problem in getting the text to format correctly in doing that. There seems to be the tendency for lots of extra line spacing to be introduced. I don't delve in at the html level and that would probably be the way to go. One point is to attach your link to more than just one word. The faint blue color is not always easy to see in one word, but if you include a phrase or even a full sentence it really is obvious.

Write and ask about it but also consider that your own computer may be the source of the pop-under ads. Mal-ware can be at fault.

I haven't noticed pop-ups, and I'm not using any ad blocker.

That said, this is what it says on the "Contact" page:

FOR SALES AND DISPLAY ADVERTISING INFORMATION
adinfo@thestranger.com

I'd probably Cc the editor:

FOR GENERAL AND EDITORIAL CORRESPONDENCE
editor@thestranger.com

(http://www.thestranger.com/seattle/Page?oid=21506)

Oh I fully expect we will see some great shots of life going on in here in the typical Northwet [sic]. After all, we are just entering the season and all those shutterbugs out there are trying to figure out how to take well composed 1x8 format photograph. Kudos to Kate so far in the effort.

Having said all of that I have yet to have anyone share a photo album with me where everyone is glum or crying, usually photos we want to see and remember are those with smiles all around - the epitome of a happy disposition is that sunny day.

I'm loving the balloons of the questions that pop up, without having to load a new page.
hope that makes sense, I've lost my words.

Now you can set your default preference for the question and answer lists by clicking the "pin" to the right of the filters. You can read more about this feature and some others we recently released on the blog (http://blog.questionland.com) and thanks again for the feedback.

I'm coming to this a little late, but here goes:

First, while I miss the homey old woods and mountains design, this one looks good too.

I have to agree with others, though, on the way questions and answers are displayed and emphasized. My first impression was confusion because I always go looking for new questions.

Maybe I'm slow but it took me a few visits to realize where the new questions were. I kept thinking I'd mistakenly ended up on some special page, not the main page. Okay, so I can learn the ropes but...

I think stressing answers is a mistake. I know that you said that most people come to the site looking for the best answer. This may be true, but there will only be "best" answers if you have people to answer them, and so you need to stress the new questions to generate answers. Unless you are shifting to a heavier reliance on experts and "professional QLers" (that is, the top contributors). I personally appreciate a range of answers from non-top contributors too. Attracting readers while discouraging answerers will be disastrous in the medium to long-term.

What I imagine happening is more people coming to find top answers, but fewer people getting around to answering, so then the answer-quality declines.

As an example, on the main page currently, my eye goes right to "Should Something be done about the new layout" and an answer that doesn't make sense out of context, but has received a mushroom. This just seems strange to me, and no where on the page do I feel encouraged to chime in my own thoughts.

Personally, I am not typically interested in finding a good answer, I am interested in finding a good question that I have never thought of before, and then finding an answer, OR finding a question that I might actually be able to answer.

In sum, I suggest at the very least making the default "latest", not "favorites", but I really support putting the newest questions back front-and-center, for the reasons I describe above.

Oh my god, I have been way too long-winded, but those are my thoughts.

Kip,

We've heard you (and the others) and are working on a better solution as we speak. I'm literally on the phone with Gnome right now. He's hard to understand over a phone btw.

We're looking at a more personalized approach and have narrowed it to two options:

1. Allow people to configure it the way they want it. Upside is great control and downside is it involves some set up by you guys.

2. Make it so that whatever view you had last on the site shows up next time you come to the site. Less control but zero effort.

In anticipation of your next question...

"Why don't we just do it 'right' to begin with (i.e make it latest answers and put them on the right, and latest questions and put them on the left)?"

let me say this...

If you are an active contributor to the site (and we love you for that) then your needs are slightly different from the people who are browsers of the site (i.e. readers). The latter prefer to have the favorites appears so they can focus on the best stuff - and usually they wouldn't know about what the best stuff was unless they read everything.

So...

The changes have not sat well with the active contributors (did I mention how we feel about you?) and we are going to fix that so you get exactly what you want (to the best of the Gnome's ability/time constraints).

Finally,

I'd like to say how much we appreciate the way you have all given us feedback. In true Questionland style, you have been kind when you were annoyed and always found something good to say to us. We really appreciate that kindness.