[DISCONTINUED] MATLAB Answers Wish-list #2 (and bug reports)

NOTE: this discussion is continued at MATLAB Answers Wish-list #6 (and bug reports)

This topic is for features you would like to see for the MATLAB Answers facility itself, and also for bug reports about the MATLAB Answers facility.

This topic is the follow on to the earlier Wish-list for MATLAB Answer sections. That topic grew large enough to become unwieldy; and Mathworks has made enough changes to make a number of the past points no longer of relevance. There was also a more limited purpose <http://uk.mathworks.com/matlabcentral/answers/216662-new-design-of-the-forum-grey-on-white-wish-list-3-bug-reports

I suggest one wish (or bug report) per answer, so that people can vote their wishes.

[Image Analyst]

I imagine this one will eventually get long also. Maybe the bug list/wish list should be a wiki instead of a forum posting.

[Walter Roberson]

Let's set a limit from the start, of the number of Answers before we move on to #3.

I was about to suggest "25", but as I've already entered 8, that might be a bit small. 50 Answers perhaps? Or seasonally? Or start a new one every time a new MATLAB version is released? ;-)

[Image Analyst]

I think we should have a separate bug list, and feature enhancement (wish) list. That way we won't have to split them up so often. True, there are some gray areas where it's hard to tell if a behavior is just really annoying but operating as intended, or is in fact a bug. For example, when you want to bold or italicize a word and double click it to select it and then click the B or I icon. I guess you'd just have to make a judgment call in those cases.

[Jan]

@IA: I assume the waste of space and the further reduction of information density is an intended bug. But others might claim it is a question of taste. Anyway, I agree and there should be a separate list of open bugs. This should be accompanied by a list of fixed bugs, or even better a version history of other changes also. And finally this list should be maintained by the admin team of TMW: they are the professionals and payed for maintaining the forum.

[Lindsay Coutinho]

Thanks for creating Wish-list #2! We will continue to monitor and leverage the feedback and suggestions as we plan future releases!

[Richard Brown]

Perhaps when bugs/features are addressed, they could be deleted (saving space) and a corresponding post added to the changes thread

[Walter Roberson]

This Question is already large enough to be notably slow when I access from home :( A faster computer would likely help, but IMHO, people should not end up pushed into buying a faster system just to deal with HTML bloat.

[Jan]

It is not the HTML, but the JavaScript, which let us suffer. Waht about a new label for computers: Ready for Windows 9, DirectX 13 and MATLAB Answers 2.0?

[Daniel Shub]

@Lucas the point of creating a Wish-list #2 was the release of "Answers 2.0" which made many of the previous wishes obsolete. I think it is useful to keep all the wishes together.

[Walter Roberson]

Daniel, Wish-list #2 was created because it became impractical to navigate the many many entries in the first wish-list. The possibility that #3 would be created at some point was mooted early on in #2, in the comments above, but there hasn't been enough response to that to determine criteria for the next split (which will happen, in time.)

[Renato Costa]

Matlab lacks a more robust object oriented architecture that is related to how the majority of the myriad of functions are not structured in a hierarchical model, but rather exist on their own, loosely coupled one to another, even when there is a clear relationship between them.

In my simples example above, I compare the "Document Object Model" in a MS Office application (ie., Excel) with MatLab.

As you can see, if I want to graph a simple function, and at the same time change its axes, labels, and title... first, I have to know upfront the exact names of the specific five functions that would provide me those functionalities; Secondly, as I use the 'plot' function (the 'parent' function) by typing its name in the command window, the interface does not prompt me to the dependent ('child') methods and properties associated with the parent function; only allows me to complete the spelling (<Tab>)

What happens in more structured applications such as MS Excel, as you well know, is that beyond helping complete the spelling, there are more strict parent/child relationships between their (VBA) commands (objects). In such environments, a user could assume that typing 'plot' (or other meaningful command) in the command window's prompt, placing a period after the object handle and WITHOUT even pressing Tab, a dropdown list would appear revealing all of the associated / dependent commands (properties and methods) for the particular object/function to be immediately available for use.

In other words, there is no easy way to know what other commands I have available to use to manipulate/modify the graph/plot/parent object being used.

[Walter Roberson]

Renato, this particular topic is about changes to the MATLAB Answers forum software, not about MATLAB itself.

[Walter Roberson]

Please post new discussions to MATLAB Answers Wish-list #4 (and bug reports)

[Adam Danz]

For easy navigation and for the historians,

Wish list #1

Wish list #2

Wish list #3

Wish list #4

Wish list #5

Wish list #6

Anyone with edit privileges should feel free to update this whenever needed.

Answer 1

[Jan]

Pictures should be hosted on a TMW server, because other services will delete the pictures after some time and then the corresponding thread becomes meaningless.

[TAB]

I also want this feature because my most Questions/Answers are related to Simulink/Stateflow which are hard to re-present without pictures.

I asked about this feature to Randy on his blog (comments 10 & 11) and I think we have to still wait so long.

[Randy Souza]

This evening (2013 Sep 18) we released the ability for users to post images and files to our servers. Some additional details are available in this blog post.

[Matt J]

Great news!

[Image Analyst]

Randy, one problem that's bitten me several times. If you write a response, then click the paper clip icon to add a file, and then decide that you don't want to attach it then and click cancel, then it completely blows away the response you just entered! Thank goodness I have Lazarus installed ( http://getlazarus.com/download. It's saved me more times than I can count.

[Kent Millard]

Thanks for letting us know; we'll get to work on fixing it.

[Matt J]

It would also be nice to be able to upload .mat files more easily, see also

http://www.mathworks.com/matlabcentral/answers/88363-why-can-answers-only-accept-zipped-mat-attachments

Answer 2

[Matt J]

Apologies if this has been suggested. The list has grown long and difficult to search....

I think there should be a privilege (earned at 1000 reputation points or so) that allows contributors to transform an Answer into a Comment (and vice versa?)

All too often, newcomers to the site don't understand how things work and instead of responding to Answers with Comments, they respond with Answers of their own. It would be good for trusted contributors to have the power to fix this.

[Image Analyst]

I think that's a great idea, and I voted for it. And I've always thought that the wish list and the bug list should be separate, rather than combined into one giant list.

[Cedric Wannaz]

+1 !

Voting for comments would be a great feature to implement at the same time, by the way.

[Daniel Shub]

On my display this is currently directly over my duplicate suggestion.

[Image Analyst]

Same here. I always wondered how it sorted the items. Like how this one could be added at some arbitrary place in the middle of a big long list, rather than at the end.

[Daniel Shub]

@IA, I think it sorts by number of votes (high to low) and then date (oldest to newest). It looks like you up voted my answer and it is now higher in the list...

[Matt J]

On my display this is currently directly over my duplicate suggestion.

I knew I couldn't have been the first... Oh well, I +1'ed it. :-)

Answer 3

[Daniel Shub]

The tag system needs an upgrade. Ideally, when you enter a tag it should provide a brief overview of what the tag means. Low rep users should only be able to apply existing tags. Moderate rep users should be able to create new tags (with a corresponding definition).

Answer 4

[Daniel Shub]

A proper set of moderator tools that allows for merging duplicate questions and moving answers to comments when appropriate.

Answer 5

[Image Analyst]

I would like it if a person ended up on your profile (by clicking the link that is your name) that, in addition to the profile privileges, questions, answers, comments, and email, it also had a link to my File Exchange. If I didn't have anything in the File Exchange then the link wouldn't be there but it would be there if I did have something in the File Exchange. It makes sense that if someone is interested enough to look up a person's profile and all their answers, etc. that they might also have an interest in visiting the person's File Exchange to see what useful programs the person has uploaded. I'd also like to see my own. It would be convenient for me, if I want to recommend one of my File Exchange submissions to someone, that a link to my File Exchange were right there on the left side below My Questions, My Answers, My Comments. It would save me from having to bring up my bookmark toolbar, locate the bookmark to my File Exchange and click on it.

Answer 6

[Azzi Abdelmalek]

I want an Editor for Matlab Answers like the one on Facebook. On the top of your page you will have notifications related only to the questions you have answered

1. number of news comments
2. number of new answered questions
3. number of new accepted aswers

and when you click on the notification you will be redirected to the question.

[per isakson]

Why not to both

1. your own Questions and
2. Questions you have answered or have made comments on

A comment often is a kind of promise to return to the Question when OP has added more info

Answer 7

[Daniel Shub]

I am trying to find unanswered questions with 0 votes, but I want them listed newest to oldest. If I search for unanswered and sort by votes, I get all the questions with 0 votes sorted by date, but oldest to newest, followed by all the questions wit 1 vote, again sorted oldest to newest.

I am trying to close unclear and inappropriate questions which are unanswered. Basically I am trying to work through the unanswered questions. If the question is reasonable, I vote for it. If the question is inappropriate or unclear I add a comment saying what is inappropriate or unclear and close it. This leads me to needing the odd sort order/search capability.

I guess the first question is, is this filtering useful?

[Jan]

Does closing mean, that an admin should decide if the question is deleted? If so, an excessive closing of question would be less useful than spending the time to answer old questions, which have not been answered already.

Only 2242 of 51314 questions have been voted yet, what is a sad ratio in my opinion. Therefore more votes are something I appreciate. But I'm not sure if all not unclear questions without an answer deserve a vote. Anyhow, your idea is useful, I'd prefer the criterion "vote for everything which you, Daniel, is worth to be voted", and a more flexible sorting would be very important to handle such a large and growing database as the answers forum.

I've struggeled with the search in the FileExchang today: I've searched for submissions concerning Excel, but searching for excel or "excel" got 1604 hit, which mostly contain the term "excellent".

[Daniel Shub]

According to about closing means that if the OP does not edit the question within 10 days, the question gets deleted. My feeling is that when we add comments like "format your code" or "what is your question" or tag it "doit4me", we should close the question. This has two effects. First the question disappears from the front page and other won't waste time looking at the question. Second, if the OP doesn't deal with it in 10 days, it gets deleted. I think both might cut down on the noise.

I have decided that what I am saying when I vote for an unanswered question is: Hey other contributors this question is not rubbish. There is potentially enough information to answer it.

[Jan]

I've asked hundreds of times for code formatting, but I definitely did not want the questions to be deleted, the users to be scared or the editors to waste time for checking.

But to stay on topic: More powerful search options would support your useful project to cleanup old not answered questions. And I appreciate your work.

[Sean de Wolski]

@Daniel, thanks for doing this!

Let Randy know if you notice any trends or anything else noteworthy or that could be useful to you.

Answer 8

[Cedric Wannaz]

As mentioned here, I think that having the possibility for the OP and high rep. members to add a top entry in the thread (like an answer but with a different design, e.g. greenish background or some frame) called "Synthesis" or "Conclusion", that would contain a synthesis/conclusion of the thread, would be interesting. This should be optional and worth no reward, so we have only valuable information, but highly prioritized by the search engine. The name of contributors should also be recorded in the sense that, at least to me, they are often a search criterion as important as keywords.

You can find an example of what I have in mind here, where I edited the question with a top part that synthesizes the thread: http://www.mathworks.com/matlabcentral/answers/59491-is-it-possible-to-set-watchdogs-memory-exec-time-in-matlab

The idea is really to allow people who care for that to bring added value to their threads. This could be especially useful for complicated threads, where finally a person is able to draw a conclusion out of dozens of answers/comments. The conclusion is really important information, yet it doesn't appear in the thread ultimately.

As a side note, I think that having the option not to prop. the thread at the top of the list when we edit the synthesis could be useful.. in my case, for example, I am pretty sure that people will start being tired about my "watchdog" thread if it comes back at the top of the list each time I add a coma to the text.. ;)

Answer 9

[Walter Roberson]

The time-stamps for the activities log and the flagged content log appear to be in GMT. This is inconsistent with the other time-stamps that the user sees and so can lead to some confusion.

Not a major problem ;-)

Answer 10

[Jan]

As explained in the wish-list #1 already, the space on top of a section is larger than the one on the bottom:

 This block belongs to the sentence on top. It could be code also.

Now a new section starts, but the indent block seem to belong to this new section, because it is nearer. Because larger horizontal skipping is possible with HTML tricks only, it is hard to structure the text optically.

Solution: While I assume, that the spacing should be smaller on the top than on the bottom in most cases, making them equal might be the best compromise.

Another example:

This is line 1:

a = rand(1, 1);

This is line 2:

b = rand(2, 2);

While this is the 3rd line:

c = rand(3, 3);

[Randy Souza]

Thanks Jan, I'll make sure this gets fixed.

Answer 11

[Daniel Shub]

That someone for TMW would chime in about the Wish list format (with or without the standard disclaimers about personal opinions ... ). Should we be sending bugs to [e-mail], to TMW customer support, or posting them here. What about our suggestions for "product enhancements"? Is one long list better than multiple short lists? Is a list for bugs and a lists for wishes better? I think as a community we are pretty ambivalent about the format of our wish list, so if anyone at TMW who deals with this stuff has even a weak opinion it would be useful.

Answer 12

[Amro]

Syntax Highlighting

In the meantime, I created a userscript that applies MATLAB syntax highlighting using google-code-prettify (it was originally intended for Stack Overflow). Project is hosted on GitHub.

Install userscript directly from the following link: prettify-mathworks-answers.user.js

Answer 13

[Matt Fig]

I wish the answers software would automatically delete the tag: MATLAB.

[Walter Roberson]

I know what you mean, but it should possibly only do that if there are other tags. It is tricky for me to search for "no tags" in order to post the comment prompting people to tag properly.

Though I wouldn't mind if there were better tag prompting including a link to the tag guide...

[Walter Roberson]

Also "matlab code". And "help". And "1" and "123"...

Answer 14

[Azzi Abdelmalek]

The text editor can be improved. Beginners have some difficulties to deal with it. I don't like the preview in another window. It's more flexible if the window were we write the code is the same as the preview. I suggest when we click on the code button, a window or highlighted zone appears, then we are sur that our code is well formated

[Kevin Claytor]

I would love code highlighting similar (okay, identical to) the MATLAB editor. I think it would encourage people to make use of the code tags more.

Also, if the code tags could be actual tags; [code][/code], I think it would be much more intuitive.

Answer 15

[Daniel Shub]

The close/reopen system needs a rework. I don't know how to see the reason that a question got closed. I also don't know if the OP can see the reason or if they get an alert. More importantly, if a question get closed simply editing the question should not be enough to reopen it. For example, in this question the edit was "P.S. Why is it (The thread) closed?". Edits to the question should raise a flag and confirmation from someone with enough rep to reopen the question.

The only way to deal with persistent reopening is to either give up or delete the question. Deleting a persistently reopened question will likely result in persistent reposting. While the ability to close a question is useful for cutting down spam, the current system is ineffectual.

[Jan]

I agree, Daniel. While spams are deleted directly, closed questions have a chance to be updated. But the unclosing procedure is not clear.

[Walter Roberson]

Perhaps "unclear" close status should allow reopen on edit, but "inappropriate" close status should require intervention ? Editors should be able to reopen without edit but lower reps should require edit ?

[Daniel Shub]

@Walter In an ideal world I think closing and reopening should be done by a voting system where to be eligible to reopen an edit had to be made. We close questions so infrequently that I don't think it matters. It is just frustrating when you close a question to see it reopened with no real change of content.

[Walter Roberson]

Closing is the mechanism used when it is intended that the user be able to edit and reopen the Question. When it is intended to prevent that, the Question is Deleted instead.

Myself, I do not think that requiring the editors to vote on closing a Question is efficient enough in practice. We do not presently have a sufficient number of active trusted volunteers to sustain such a system. The volunteers are mostly here in pursuit of their technical interests, not to do administrative maintenance.

[Walter Roberson]

It is already asked... but it isn't displayed.

Answer 16

[Ryan]

Perhaps there is a method of which I am not aware, but I would like to be able to track questions that I commented on and not actually answered.

[Sean de Wolski]

Not ideal and will pick up other people with a stringmatched name:

commented_by:"ryan"

[Ryan]

thanks - will work I suppose. seems like it would be a simple feature to add.

[Star Strider]

Searching for comments from one's Profile page might eliminate the ‘string-matched name’ problem, since that would ideally use one's Contributors number.

I like Ryan's ‘comment search’ idea! +1

[Sean de Wolski]

This functionality has been added.

Answer 17

[Image Analyst]

New issue, I just noticed today. If I use the Link button to copy a link of a comment that is not one of the last 3 posted, then have that link be a link in another comment (referring reader to the first comment), OR even just paste that link into the address field (of two different browsers, IE and Firefox), it goes to the top of the posting, it does not scroll directly to the comment. An example of this is the link which is http://www.mathworks.com/matlabcentral/answers/42413#comment_102678. Some investigation leads me to think that the problem occurs when the comment referred to is not one of the last 3 comments posted, in other words, it's one of those that are normally hidden and you have to reveal by clicking "Show n older comments." Can this be fixed? Otherwise we can't link to "hidden" comments.

[Image Analyst]

Can I at least get an acknowledgement that the Mathworks has seen and reproduced this bug or undesired feature?

[Walter Roberson]

I have seen it.

Related to this is that now my browser Find function can only find content that is expanded.

[Image Analyst]

Well that I can understand because your browser only looks at what characters actually got returned from the web server. If they aren't there, it won't find them. But you'd think if you asked the web site server for a "hidden" URL, it should give it to you directly (all expanded), not send back the "parent" page with the actual URL hidden inside it and collapsed / not exposed.

[Walter Roberson]

The #togglecomments apparent URL is javascript. The contents are already on your system, and are expanded or collapsed by your browser. But something changed and now those sections are treated more like internal HTML than like something that can be acted on.

By analogy: you cannot search HTML &lt- comment -> style comments using your browser find function, even though the HTML is there.

Answer 18

[Walter Roberson]

This original wish-list is now so slow to load that Firefox and Safari now time-out the javascript 3 to 6 times for me.

Randy Souza indicates "We're aware of this issue and are investigating it."

[Walter Roberson]

The HTML for each Question page naturally has to include the HTML to render the formatted version of each Question and Answer and Comment. The new version that allows everything to be edited is implemented in such a way that (unlike the old version) it does not fetch the raw block of text at the time of the edit request: instead, each Question and Answer and Comment now has an HTML "input" field that is pre-populated with the raw block of text.

This would significantly increase the size of each HTML page, perhaps 35-40% for typical Questions once one accounts for all the other page elements. But the Wish-list Question is big so the page overhead would be a relatively small fraction of the total page, so the total HTML for that page must have be getting on to 45-48% larger than it was, not even taking into account all the extra HTML and javascript brought in with the new version. The style sheets for each element must have gotten significantly more complicated as well, and with the sheer number of fields that would appear, browsers must be taking a fair while to do the rendering.

A sufficiently large and complicated HTML page will take time to render. The Wish-list was already slow, but the extra size and complication must have pushed it to the point that most people's systems are timing out on rendering it.

[Walter Roberson]

A moment ago, this list, #2, timed out for me from home (Firefox)

[Walter Roberson]

http://www.mathworks.com/matlabcentral/answers/1325-what-is-missing-from-matlab also times out when I load it from home (via Safari)

[Walter Roberson]

Javascript timeouts seem to have been eliminated as of last night, at least within Firefox.

[Randy Souza]

We deployed a fix this evening (Aug 15 2012) that should eliminate the JavaScript warnings. Please post here or email me directly (<firstname>.<lastname>@mathworks.com) if you still see them.

Answer 19

[Walter Roberson]

The Link button is very convenient! But it is easy to end up clicking the link while it is being presented, which has the natural side effect of asking the browser to load that page... a bit of a nuisance as one is already there, and a Problem if the reason one was trying to copy the URL was that one was in the middle of composing a reply (bye-bye reply!)

I do not know if there is a solution to this that does not sacrifice functionality.

Answer 20

[Dr. Seis]

Has someone already addressed the change from having our most recent answers listed first to (now) where our oldest answers are listed first when we click on our profile? I usually check this out to see if people had made comments to a question I answered, but (having answered ~180 questions, which is not a lot compared to the top contributors) I do not want to have to page through all my older answers to see if anything recent had updated.

I wish we had the ability to sort through my own old answers, too. Sometimes I want to view older answers before answering newer questions... so this could be helpful.

[Walter Roberson]

Hi, Elige,

As of yesterday afternoon, My Answers is now "most recently modified first"

Sorting of your Answers would be useful.

Also useful would be to be able to search through your own Answers specifically ("I know I wrote about this before!"). And once that is possible, to narrow a more general search to a specific contributor or set of contributors ("I know Jan wrote about this before!")

[Sean de Wolski]

@Walter: Google hits it first page if I write my name usually. Also, it indexes comments, which is nice.

[Walter Roberson]

When I posted the above, I had forgotten about the commented_by: and answered_by: prefixes that now exist for searches.

Answer 21

[Walter Roberson]

The working area given to construct a comment (the built-in editor) is not very big. It is okay for short comments, but I find that in practice it ends up being common to post code in comments, code demonstrating how to apply the concepts of the answer or the comment stream, and in that situation the small size gets to be uncomfortable. I start looking for a drag handle to increase the size of the area...

[Jan]

At least in my FireFox I do have such a drag handle in the comment input boxes. But without doubt a bigger default size would be really useful: Currently I increase the size manually every time I post a comment of more than 3 lines. While white space is lost space when reading, it is free space when writing. (A little bit exaggerated, I know)

[Walter Roberson]

I am seeing the drag handle in the systems I using now. I cannot, however, increase more than another 5 or perhaps 6 lines.

Answer 22

[Walter Roberson]

Editing of (your own?) Answer is not recognized as Activity for the purposes of listing the latest activity against each Question, nor for the purposes of determining the age sorting order for each Question.

Editing of an Answer is recorded in the Recent Activity list, though.

[Randy Souza]

This is intentional--edits to answers and comments do not affect the latest activity. This is based on the premise that edits to answers and comments are more likely to be grammar or typo fixes, while edits to questions are more likely to warrant new attention.

Another possible way to handle this is a "minor edit" checkbox, like the one in many wiki programs. Minor edits would not affect latest activity, other edits would. Thoughts?

[Walter Roberson]

There are certainly some self-edits that are grammar or typo fixes. When, though, an Editor edits someone else's Answer, it is likely to be a reformat that might seriously affect people's ability to read the material.

The edits I do in the new Tags question are a mix: sometimes I'm just fixing up the text spacing, and sometimes I am adding new material. Likewise, edits in the How To Ask A Question topic are likely to be worth bringing to people's attention.

"Per", for one, adds a response and later comes back and edits significant new material into place. A few of the other posters have taking to using edits as a strategy.

Perhaps to some extent this matter is less serious now that Comments have full markup. Well, except for the "resource" topics where using Comments is not quite appropriate.

Answer 23

[Walter Roberson]

The deleted Question http://www.mathworks.com/matlabcentral/answers/43031 is not giving the Page Not Found error. Instead it is giving the left frame and only the "contact us" line to the right.

At the moment, 43031 is the newest Question, and it was deleted (by the poster) before a newer Question was posted, and (at the moment) no newer Questions have been posted.

The Page Not Found is given for other appropriate cases.

The situation exists on both .com and .co.uk

Answer 24

[Walter Roberson]

There is a logical bug with accepting someone else's answer. The determination of whether that option appears does not depend upon when the answer was posted, only upon when the question was posted.

[Walter Roberson]

I see that the documentation says that it happens after 7 days of inactivity from the poster, which is consistent with the behavior we see, but my feeling is that after 7 days of inactivity would be better.

Answer 25

[Ryan]

How about a link on the left hand navigation for FAQ and posts like Walter's on tags?

[Walter Roberson]

And "How to ask a question" and "How to use markup"

[Ryan]

I'll say it for you, "Where to upload your images"

Answer 26

[Jan]

When I ask a question, I see a very funny red splosh before "Question" and "Body". Is this a skeletonized dot, a fractal or a red fountain? If there is only one of them, I'd had checked my monitor for pixel errors of flyspeck.

I'm not convinced that the title line should be called "question". In fact, "question" is misleading here. And while I do not understand the reason, why this title needs at least 4 words, titles with the allowed 250 characters are a secure indicator of a bad question.

[Walter Roberson]

Yesterday, someone posted a Question with the title

Fourier-cosine transform (very important!)

After I removed the "(very important!") it refused to save because that was only 3 words. So I had to go in and add some noise words, making it "Fourier-cosine transform problem". Without repeating in the title the formula that the user wanted transformed, there wasn't much else to say. I guess the user could have asked "How to do a fourier-cosine transform of this formula?" but is that really any better?

I am getting the impression that 3 words is enough.

I will also add that since the interface mods, there have been a lot more people trying to put the entire question in the title.

[Image Analyst]

Looks like a red asterisk on my screen.

[Walter Roberson]

Jan, does the browser scaling you were doing explain this issue as well?

Answer 27

[Image Analyst]

Has anyone noticed that the counts for the "Contributors" have stalled? No numbers have been updated for several days now. I've been stuck at 607 accepted answers even though I see answers being accepted. Likewise, everyone else's numbers have not budged in several days.

And I say again that the bugs and the wishes should be in two separate lists instead of one long massive combined list.

[Jan]

Or the bugs are fixed soon such that the corresponding messages can be deleted...

[Sean de Wolski]

@IA, I have reported this.

[Randy Souza]

This should be fixed as of Sep 19, 2012. Sorry for the inconvenience.

Answer 28

[Albert Yam]

[From Lucas' answer]

About accepting a 'comment' that is in an answer box. It has more to do with the interface, in my opinion. Anyone coming from any other place, (intuitively) you see a chat box, you write there (like most forums), but to actually comment, you have to hit "Comment on this Answer".

Possibly change the 'Answer' text box, to "Answer this question" button, then open the text box or something like that. Which might alleviate the answering a comment thing.

[Image Analyst's suggestion]

Maybe you'd want it to recognize that the person submitting an answer is actually the original questionner and to ask them if they really want to answer and accept their own question or comment on another person's answer? That might not be a bad idea.

Answer 29

[Matt J]

Eliminate the "Answer Accepted" feature. Let reputation points be dictated entirely by votes.

The first problem with the "Answer Accepted" is that it puts the power to reward Answerers in the hands of the Questioners, where it doesn't belong. This incentivizes contributors to accomadate people looking for homework answers or to spoonfeed over-detailed solutions to people looking to do minimal work.

The second problem is, as others have mentioned, that a better Answer can always come along.

[Walter Roberson]

Hmmm. A potential problem, but not, it seems to me, a problem in practice: people would tend to "run out of gas" before getting all that far.

I have more Accepted Answers than nearly anyone else has Answers, but I actively refuse to doit4me on everything but short easy solutions. I may have a wee bit of a tendency to over-detail though ;-)

[Matt J]

Well, it could just be my imagination, but I think I see a greater preponderance of doit4me's here than in the Newsgroup and I think the leverage given to the Questioners is part of why.

You say you have more Accepted Answers than nearly anyone else, but might that be the reason you're more indifferent to doit4me's? You've already gained all the privileges available.

[Walter Roberson]

When I look at the top 50 reputation, there are only a quite small number whom I have any concern about whether they are deliberately going after "low hanging fruit".

You misunderstood a little about Answers: I currently have 9043 Answers, 2841 of which were Accepted. No-one else has more than 2907 Answers right now (735 Accepted) or more than 840 Accepted Answers (out of 2879 the person has given.)

Until a few months ago, there were no incremental privileges: the only level was 1500, at which point all privileges were granted. There is now a graduated system in which the final privilege level is 3000. In the time since then no-one has come even close to passing the old (1500) level, and everyone who was already past 1500 was "grandfathered" to keep all privileges. So next to nothing changed. A small number of people have crossed the new 500 privilege level, and in so doing have gained the ability to trigger an Accept on old Questions.

But with regards to my reaching the 1500 level and thereby gaining all privileges: in truth it was the other way around. When MATLAB Central decided to allow editors, they looked at my reputation at the time, rounded down, and used that as the trigger level. Thus, I was not aiming for anything, as at the time there was nothing to aim for :-)

[Jan]

@Matt J: I agree that the accepting answers feature and the homework questions interfere positively until a certain level. On the other hand an accepted answer is usually a reliable mark for a solved problem. This supports contributors who are here for replying, and users searching for an already found solution. These two points are more important than the side-effect of the homework cheaters.

Votes are rare in this forum, too rare in my opinion. I'm voting nearly any useful question and answer I read and perhaps I have distributed more reputation points than anybody else. If you do not like the positive interference of doit4me's and reputation points, I suggest, that you vote for good answers in these case: "What have you done so far"? As soon as we find a third co-worker, our 3*2 reputation points will top the 4 points of the accepted answer.

I would vote for answers, which explains the formatting of code. But unfortunately such instructions should appear in the comment section. What a pitty.

[Daniel Shub]

I find accepting answers to be very helpful. It lets me know if the OP is happy with the answer. It frustrates me when users don't accept an answer. I don't know if the OP is happy and has simply left or if they are waiting for a new way to solve the problem.

The majority of questions are technically doit4me, but most can be answered in five lines of code or less and are so trivial that they are unlikely homework problems. Every once and a while I get conned and solve what I later think is a homework problem.

While I would love to see more well thought out difficult questions, I like seeing answers for the non-homework doit4me questions (typically not tagged doit4me). There are so many tricks that can be played with things like bsxfun, ndgrid, regexp, that often you see multiple approaches to easy things.

[Sean de Wolski]

@Daniel, or even worse - did they read the answer?

[G A]

By the way, answering some (relatively easy) questions was my way to learn more about Matlab programming tricks. It stimulates. I concider myself as advanced beginner.

[Azzi Abdelmalek]

Matt J, I would say exactly the opposite, Let reputation points be dictated entirely by Answer Accepted, and remove voting points, without removing the voting option.

[Matt J]

Let reputation points be dictated entirely by Answer Accepted, and remove voting points

I don't see your reasoning there, Azzi. The idea of reputation points is to measure contribution to the site, to see who can be trusted with privileges. Why are the Questioners the only good judges of that? Why are they good judges at all? After all, they're not generally the experts. They're the ones coming to us with Questions...

[Jan]

In other forums, the admins select the editors manually based on skill and sympathy. They consider suggestions by other editors. I'd personally prefer this less automatical method, because the Answers forum has no way to refuse editor powers, when somebody is obviously not able to handle them professionally.

It is not difficult to fake the counting system. A user, I do not know, had voted for 700 of my answers during one weekend. Although I had full powers already, this did not change my privilegs, but it was strange. Fortunately the admins detected the peak of votes and remove it manually, after there was no plausible explanation for this. This means, that inspite of the automatic system for gaining privilegs, there is still a manual and human control in the background. And therefore I trust the TMW team to care for the working capacity of this forum sufficiently: Even with a modified reputation system, the main goal of this forum is to help users to solve their Matlab problems.

[Matt J]

I'd personally prefer this less automatical method, because the Answers forum has no way to refuse editor powers

That seems to contradict your Comment from Oct. 3, Jan. If it would be better to take the power to award privileges out of the hands of non-administrators, then surely taking voter power away from Questioners would be a good step toward that, not to mention that it would cut down on doit4mes.

[Jan]

@Matt J: I do not see the contradiction. Although I'd prefer no direct correlation between points and privileges, I participate on the current system TMW has decided for. Obviously it works sufficiently at the moment.

I do not vote to provide a further step to gain privileges, but to mark useful answers and questions. An active and useful voting system need not be directly related to the highest privilege levels. But for the low privilege levels, a manual decision would be too time-costly with a comparable arbitrariness.

Answer 30

[Randy Souza]

(This was suggested by Greg Heath in a separate question)

It should be possible to change and save the default sort order.

Answer 31

[G A]

I wish that questioner could have possibility to change his mind about his(her) acceptance decision. At least for a certain period.

Answer 32

[Cedric Wannaz]

I think that if people were reminded (e.g. weekly) on a verified email that they have to come back to "close" their threads (or to actively indicate that they could still use help), more people would at least come back and see what was answered/commented. I am saying that, because I really suspect that many people actually find some way to do what they want after posting the question, and never come back to check their threads. All of you folks who have been active here for a long time, have roughly a 1/3 ratio of accepted answers, but when I look at the threads it seems that a significant amount of the answers that were not accepted are just a consequence of people not coming back..

Associated with this mechanism, there could be a special type of threads for open questions, in some sense a "discussion thread", like this one or any of those that should not have a particular answer chosen to be The answer.

Cheers,

Cedric

Answer 33

[Cedric Wannaz]

I think that it would be better to have the forum adding automatically a target attribute

 target="_blank"

to links present in threads, because we often want to keep the question/comment under our eyes when we click on such links.

[Walter Roberson]

Firefox can be configured to either open links as tabs or windows. Then when I want to keep the original I open the new link using mouse-2 click (I think it is middle-button -- command-click on my MacBook Pro). Mouse-1 click (control-click, left-click) gives the menu option that includes the choice of new window or new tab for the link.

[Image Analyst]

In Windows I have to right click and select "Open in new tab". I'd like that to be the default. On most web sites if you leave that site and go to another totally different site, it will open in a new window or tab, and if you stay on the same web site, it will open in the existing tab. Answers doesn't follow that de facto standard for some reason.

[Cedric Wannaz]

@Walter: I know, but when it seems that we almost never want to open a link in the same window (which is often the case on forums where people answer questions), I think that it legitimately raises the question of whether it would be a good thing to have "open in new tab" implemented as a feature of the forum (by automatically adding a simple target attribute).

[Image Analyst]

I just put in my vote!

[Sean de Wolski]

I like it the way it is now.

Too_many_windows = clutter;

Answer 34

[Chad Greene]

I sure wish Answers pages would load faster. Navigating the Answers section and sorting forum posts is remarkably slow, especially considering it's only text. And with the recent redesign of the site, there isn't even very much text at that.

Answer 35

[Walter Roberson]

Before the June 28, 2012 Answers changes, if one was editing and one highlighted text and clicked on the Code button, then after the operation was done, the selection was removed.

As of those changes, the selection goes away for a small number of seconds while the reformat is done, but then the selection color comes back, highlighting a wider but shorter area, not covering all of the height of the original selection but covering wider (possibly even some areas that have no input.)

[Randy Souza]

Walter, thanks for reporting this. I will take a look at it.

[Walter Roberson]

Also, before the Answers change, one was left at the end of the selection after applying Code. Now, one is left at the beginning of the selection, which is annoying when one is starting at the top of some text and proceeding down reformatting parts of it.

[Randy Souza]

This selection bug should be fixed. After highlighting a section of text and clicking a button, the full text should be highlighted.

[Walter Roberson]

Selection bug is not fixed, in my tests in Firefox. In case the solution required a reload, I quit the browser and re logged in, but that did not help.

I see the same symptoms as before.

[Walter Roberson]

Selection bug might possibly have been fixed after I wrote the above.

Answer 36

[Walter Roberson]

For consistency, Questions themselves should have the Link button. Yes, you can go up to your browser bar and copy the URL, but now that you have the buttons, people are going to start relying on it and will think less about copying from the browser bar.

Answer 37

[Walter Roberson]

The Answers section has developed the ad-hoc standard of labelling some Questions as "tutorials", when those Questions are intended as step-by-step information about solving a particular task. There is also the off-site FAQ that gets used a fair bit (especially about numeric precision, file name loops, and variable name loops.)

I am finding that there is a category of often-repeated information that does not really fall into either of the above, and I am not certain how to deal with that category. An example of the category is my series of comments indicating why one should always uses specific handles for graphics operations, and showing how to do so. I refer someone back to it every week or two -- often enough that it should probably be extracted into something independent. But it isn't really a FAQ and it isn't really a tutorial. "Frequently Referenced Advice" ?

Some of Image Analyst's material probably falls into the same category, such as his color segmentation demo.

Suggestions on how to handle this?

[Image Analyst]

I've been considering adding a "chapter" to the FAQ on image processing questions. For example I'd refer them to the Vision bibliography web site when they ask something like "How do I detect/recognize characters/license plates/cars/fruit/faces/fingerprints/edges/movement?" Or "How do I mask an image?" Or "How do I extract and save all frames from a video?"

Answer 38

[Walter Roberson]

I think we should probably create a posting that discusses what Tags are and how and why to use them, and lists a number of the more common ones. I would include "doit4me" and similar content meta-tags, but I would also suggest that enough tags be included to allow people to see (for example) whether it is best to use "nn" or "ann" or "neural networks"

[Walter Roberson]

This work has begun, http://www.mathworks.co.uk/matlabcentral/answers/43073-a-guide-to-tags

Answer 39