Just released! The Answers.com mobile version now features a ‘Random Question’ button when you’re logged in. I don’t know about you, but I’m addicted to that thing. Check it out here:
The profile pages have also been optimized for mobile:
What are you waiting for… Grab your phone and get answers!
Thanks to your great feature requests, we are proud to present a few new ones this week.
Recent site activity, recent category activity, user contributions, question history… these lists have been a part of WikiAnswers since the dawn of time (on our timeline, anyway). They contain everything from adding an alternate to changing capitalization; editing an answer to writing on a message board. But they are underused because they can be overwhelming and hard to keep up with.
Enter action filters, and these same pages become extremely powerful, time-saving tools. Now that you can filter lists for your favorite action, you can dive into all kinds of projects. For example:
Those were some pre-set filters, but if you want to dive in deeper, you can use filters in any combination you like. Here’s how:
You may already be familiar with answer snippets on the search results page, recent site activity pages and category pages. Now we’ve added them to the recently answered questions page, making it that much easier to comb through new answers for bad apples.
Here’s what they look like:
Splelling is sometimes a probelm on WikiAnsers, and we like to encourage contributors to take advantage of their various options: IE spell check, Firefox spell check, WYSIWYG spell check…
But in case these aren’t enough, we’ve added one extra push for spell check – a little gradeschool reminder to Spell check your answer! (In case you tried to click on that, well, it’s not a link.)
Next time you edit an answer, just click on the Spell check your answer link near the Save button. It’s fun, it’s fast and it helps!
We hope you enjoy these new goodies – post your thoughts, comments and other feedback below. And once you’ve had a chance to get creative with filters and snippets, send me your most creative ways of using them (pickleshy @ wikianswers.com). The most helpful and creative will be published here for the greater good (or the greater laugh!)
Updates: Corrected the email address – apologies to all those who emailed me at the wrong address!
You may have noticed some small changes to the site today – and if you did, well, you’ve got sharp eyes. Much of today’s release was focused on bug fixes and performance improvements, and if your answers load faster than usual, feel free to tip your mental hat to our engineering team.
Meanwhile, we’ve added a few handy tools to the menu on the left-hand side of the page. (To access the full version of the menu pictured here, sign up/log in and it will appear immediately.) The new tools are:
So, what else is new in this release?
We’ve made it even easier to answer new questions on your favorite topic by adding a FAYT (find-as-you-type) search box to the unanswered question page. Just start typing and related categories will appear.
The Community Forum also saw a small but significant change today. Scroll down to the bottom of the forum, and you’ll see a new section called “Viewing this forum.” Listed there are all the other members and community assistants who are currently browsing the forum. If you need help with the site, or just advice from another WikiAnswerer, you can turn to these folks for help.
The category page was treated to a modest makeover to improve readability and flexibility. See if you can spot the differences between the old and the new designs!
That’s a wrap! Until next time… onward and upward!
UPDATE: Thanks to Matthew for pointing out that a fix for the missing bio pages didn’t, in fact, make this release. We apologize, and it’s on the way.
I love the ‘R’ word. That’s right: release. There’s just nothing like waking up in the morning, stretching, opening a browser to WikiAnswers and noticing that the WikiAnswers team has put out a release of new features and site updates while I was sleeping.
