What recommendations for on-boarding Sages would you want included in a Sage-page?
For instance, I didn't know I could only accept one answer when there were two, equally good and complete. I would've at least tossed a die, but didn't know it was "Pick only one". What have you run into that would be helpful to know about Sage as a Sage?
Answers ( 4 )
I've been a strong advocate of onboarding users on all Q&A sites from day one.
There need to be two sides of onboarding, obviously - how to use the site as a Question writer and as an Answer writer.
In a world where gaming mechanics are uniquitous, it has seemed to me to be self-evident that the easiest way to teach people is to institute a game model of onboarding, with basic, intermediate and advanced game scenarios that run before you do anything.
When a User comes on for the first time, they can pick a path: Q or A? Are you here to ask a question or are you here to answer questions? That path would set up the next set of "challenges," or however the team would want to term it.
For Q, things that ought to be covered immediately are: How Do I ask a Question? How Do I Choose An Answer? Do I Have to Choose One Answer? My question has already been asked, can I ask another version of it? Pick one to three of these "challenges" (I'll stick with this terminology for now) that a user has to get right - and gets points for - to move on. Each time they log on for the first few uses, they can get their sagepoints, which will unlock new abilities - ability to ask, to answer, to whatever.
For Answers things that ought to be covered are How do I find a question that needs answers, how do I discover questions in my expertise area? If a question has a "chosen" answer can I still answer it? Again, as person gains experience and gets the skills right, they get new access.
The key is to put behaviors on the right path, make sure people understand how to use the site, when and where it's appropriate or not to do things and what will be rewarded...and then reward quality, not quantity.
One of the things that you quickly learn as a teacher is that things you think are obvious or common knowledge are not to many people. You have to be prepared to explain things you were quite sure are obvious far more often than most people would assume. You can't subject everyone to a nuts and bolts breakdown continuously, but you need to have an obvious, convenient "handle" to pull in order to signal the bus driver to pull over, and you'd better paint it a vivid red. Everyone else can just disregard the doohickey.
In the three bar menu I would very much like to see a link named "New?" or "New to Sage?" This page would give a summary and provide links for greater detail for askers and one for answerers.
People don't reflexively go to Help for onboarding, many people think of Help as something used for situations such as "I screwed up, something is wrong, etc." Even FAQs may be focused on solving common problems.
If you want to attract and retain users you have to make it easy to understand and easy to remind yourself how things work. Until someone has been using a system if any type for a while, they forget some of the nuts and bolts.
Tl;dr: You're sure something is obvious.
It isn't. Paint it bright red and label it PULL.
I can see this as a good way to design on-boarding.
Well, see? I thought this might be a comment section to comment on Erica's answer, and thus be able to refine questions asked if an answer was too broad. But, no- the "Type Response Below" box below an already written answer means now I get to answer my own question, not refine the question I asked, to receive a more refined answer....
If the "Type your response below" box is not for comments, you need to get rid of it on someone else's answer page.
The idea of gaming mechanics is a good one. I like the concept and I've seen it implemented in a few other websites. I'll think through this in more detail and see what might be fun, while also not being too cumbersome for new users to ask questions. I don't want to discourage someone from asking questions that are pressing in order for them to go through several steps to unlock their ability to ask a question. :)
As for the original question from Jae, if you look at the "Help" page at the top of the menu, we've started populating various things that we do want Sages to know as the on-board. It's missing a lot of documentation and I haven't focused on it in these early stages. I will spend much more time on this in the next week to build out our how-to guides!
In the meantime, the things I'd like a Sage to understand in no particular order are:
That's probably a good start for now. Thanks for the question!