Question by pako · Feb 23, 2018 at 05:20 PM · answers.unity3d.com

Suggestion to Reduce Posting Comments as Answers

There is a huge amount of posts in Answers that are Comments, or even new Questions, but are posted as an Answer to the original question. Of course, this is done mainly, or even exclusively, by new users.

Such practice is just not right! It messes things up, and when one is looking in the "Answers" section of a Question, will quite often, find comments, or more questions.

I suspect that the source of such bad practice by new users is caused by the fact that the link text for posting an answer is "Add your reply", and only after the "Reply" is posted the text "Answer by xyzUser" is displayed on top of the Reply/Answer.

Although I can see some logic that someone posting what seems to be an answer, is not really an answer, so it could be classified only as a reply, I think such logic has more cons than pros. Especially since after a "Reply" is posted the text "Answer by xyzUser" is displayed on top of the Reply, and after a Reply is accepted, it is displayed with the heading "Best Answer".

So, if it's possible, please change the link text for posting an answer to "Add your Answer". I think it will help tidy up the Answers forum.

Relative Forum Post: https://forum.unity.com/threads/unity-answers-suggestion-to-reduce-posting-comments-as-answers.517964/#post-3400898

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meat5000 ♦ · Feb 24, 2018 at 07:06 AM 0

Sara left pako. No longer works at Unity.

meat5000 ♦ · Feb 24, 2018 at 07:09 AM 0

This is partly due to some mobile devices having troubles with links and layout. Some Apple users even mentioned in the past that they were unable to see the Add Comment link and so had no choice but to use the Answer button.

pako meat5000 ♦ · Feb 24, 2018 at 09:15 AM 0

Aaah! I didn't know Sarah had left. Anyway, I thought I should put her in the loop, since she had posted "How to use the $$anonymous$$ETA space".

I understand what you are saying. There will always be a problem, especially because of mobile users, different OS users etc.

However, it's such a common issue, and personally, I just can't walk away when I see it, and to be honest, it has become quite annoying that I have to convert Answers to Comments, and message the OP "Please don't post your Comments as Answers", so many times a day...

So, I just asked myself, why would the new users do that so often? and then noticed the "Add your reply" link text, and thought that it might be easy to change the text to "Add your Answer", which hopefully might reduce the number of cases we are seeing this issue.

So, such a change targets only the users that are confused by the text, and not the mobile or apple users etc. It will not bring about a 100% reduction, but hopefully a significant reduction.

Anyway, there is at least one :-) user who replied to my relative forum thread, who admits being confused by the text. Of course, one user isn't much, but what if the link text is indeed the reason for such confusion? I believe that it's easy for new users to be confused, because strictly speaking a Reply can be either a comment or an answer, but an answer can only be an Answer.

Suggestion to Reduce Posting Comments as Answers

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