7 Things That Would Make GAG Better

[ghostqueen]

I've spent way too much time on the website and app and think of this often.

1. Being able to edit opinions and replies

This would come in handy for those awkward typo moments or when you reply with an answer meant for a different question.

2. Being able to like questions on the app

Why is this not a thing? I hate having to switch from the app to the site just to like someone's question.

3. Being able to mute certain users

The only options we have is to unfollow someone or stop receiving notifications from everyone we follow. Being able to temporarily mute someone would be so much better.

4. Being able to disable question invites

If you're a GAG user there's a 99% chance you've experienced invite spam and it's a headache. Turning off invite notifications helps but I'd feel better knowing people can't invite me to begin with.

5. Having time stamps after questions close

Maybe it's just me but I'd like to know when a question was posted even after it's closed.

6. Having the option to disable answers on polls

Sometimes you just want an answer without the time wasting "neither" answers polls can get.

7. Having a pet category

I know I'm not the only one who wants this one. Why pollute the Other category with animal related questions when they can have their own?

What changes do you think could improve GAG?

[beebella]

Yes. GaG totally needs all of these things.

[Offingapp]

great photos! ))

[CallMeDave]

I very much agree with #1 and #5. Maybe there needs to be some limits on editing, but it would be really nice to be able to go back and fix typos or things that aren't as clear as intended. It would also be really nice to know whether a question is 10 days old or 5 years old. I don't really understand why the age is removed on older questions and opinions.

I can see some use for #3, but I don't think that's as important as #1 and #5.

I probably wouldn't use any of the other things, but can see where they might be useful for other people.

[tangerinefan1050]

Pretty cool that you took the time and effort to write a myTake on suggestions that you think could improve the service. Props to you for that. I think @GirlsAskGuys really appreciates that.

#1. While I have my fair share of typos ("elder system" *cough cough*), I'm not completely against G@G's approach of not being able to edit opinions and/or replies, because it forces one to get it right the first time, which I think is a very useful skill to have, considering that society at large elsewhere relies way too much on error correction systems. It's kind of like their decision to shorten the period to pick the MHO, because it discourages procrastination, which is also a big private problem nowadays. But sure, I wouldn't mind if we had an error correction feature here.

#2. I don't use the app, but I think you're absolutely right.

#3. Again, I'm not against that, but at the same time I'm not sure. I personally think it's better to just unfollow them. I guess you're only trying to not come off as rude, but I think that unfollowing someone sort of makes it sink in better that you're not actually enjoying the quantity and/or quality of the content they're posting and you don't want to receive notifications for it, so it kind of gives them a better chance of improving that content and actually have the potential of having you follow them again in the future. Suggestion for everyone: If you want to unfollow someone but don't want to come off as rude, just send them a PM saying something to the effect "Sorry, mate. I'm unfollowing you now because I'm not really into your content, but I might follow you again in the future if that changes. All the best. xoxo"

#4. I personally don't mind invites, although only 4 people have ever invited me and that has not been done exhaustively. But if you want that, sure, I guess.

#5. That's a great idea! Although actual dates could also be a good option, or both!

#6. You mean, being able to see the results of a poll without voting on it? I think that might be a good idea. I'm sure it's very applicable in certain cases, but there are others where I think that not being able to see the results beforehand sort of stimulates more honest answers. I guess the peeps running G@G could look into that. But again, I'm not sure whether that's what you meant.

#7. Sure, I guess. =)

Good bye and good take! 👋

[StrangerByTheDay]

Hello dear Ghost Queen,
I do agree with you on the well made points you have mentioned. I apologize in advance if I am one of those annoying people you want to mute, just trying to share honest opinions and questions! No hard feelings, I appreciate your article a lot as for it is honest :-)

1. Being able to edit opinions and replies
I totally agree with you on that, but not after a certain time have elapsed. Otherwise, some people would be editing their questions for certain reasons and for many times.

2. Being able to like questions on the app
To be honest I discovered that many functionalities are not available in the phone app, yesterday night, as for I am always using my computer, even for whatsapp. If I may add, they also need to work on the messaging section because it jumps around on the phone, and on the computer it slows the typing sometimes.

3. Being able to mute certain users
I promise I will keep my mouth shut in the future :-P right after I finish sharing my opinion

4. Being able to disable question invites
That could be interesting, though I count on those notifications to make them a priority before answering other questions. Most of them are taking their time to write meaningful "MyTake" or ask good questions. Sorry if mine are boring, but sincerely there are too many questions being repeated. I feel like people just ask those questions to score some points regardless who is answering or what the answers are going to be!

5. Having time stamps after questions close
Me too!

6. Having the option to disable answers on polls
This is actually a good one. Why not have more than 7 votes and the option to disable sharing opinions. In case I am having a comparative study, would be glad to just have a clear statistic. Yes/No votes without any explanation or opinion. Good point well made here :-)

7. Having a pet category
I totally agree with you on this one. Many people happen to have a pet and need help, so why not have a category for a pet. It helps a lot!!

Those are good points well made, thank you for sharing taking the time to write and share them.

Cheers!!!

[ghostqueen]

Muting isn't about a person being annoying just the notifications of their daily activity. Only following 64 people gets a bit spam-y with notifications and such active people. I'm constantly looking through all the topics anyone, so it's not like I won't be seeing people's questions anyway.

[StrangerByTheDay]

I understand. I was just trying to make a laugh. I guess it did not work.
You forgot to mention those people who just follow all of your opinions just to mysteriously down vote with no reason! And the fact that G@G does not notify us who is down voting :-)
I don't down vote myself, I just vote in case I like, and share my opinion whether I like or dislike. Down voting is some kind of nice way to curse someone in this community in my own opinion!!

[ghostqueen]

That might be interesting but I also think knowing that information would start a lot of unnecessary drama.

[StrangerByTheDay]

You mean unnecessary "War" and "Battles" ?
lol
We do have enough people fighting about the same topic over and over again, right?
Why put more fire to fire!

[ghostqueen]

Yeah, I hadn't realized how toxic things can be here until I became a moderator. I can already imagine the endless bickering and block war.

[StrangerByTheDay]

Exactly my point.
Well dear Ghost Queen, always a pleasure to share my honest opinion to your questions and "MyTake".
Not everybody joined this community aiming to help and be helped I guess.
Though it is good to know there are still decent people around :-)

[IlyaTheImpaler]

How have u been here for so long and not be annoyed by the amount of duplicate questions... There is a distinct lack of quality control and duplicate check for questions asked here, that is what I came to notice within the first 10 minutes of making my account.

- No, most people are not gonna search whether their question has been asked and read the relevant answers lol they need an automatic check while typing their questions, and a warning that duplicates will be closed. The current duplicate report is probably a joke, or maybe people think duplicates mean words for words identical... OR understandably the relevant question has been closed and people want new perspectives... that is not good enough excuse for why there are so many questions that ask the same thing.

- ... Which leads to my second point, don't allow people to close their own questions, it belongs to the community, they can unsubscribe from it (not receiving notifications). But the discussion will stay open, someone (including the original asker) might bump that question to top of the Feed. The only people who should close questions are the janitors of the site, and questions should be closed when they are marked as duplicate (like the 9999th question about dick size). And everyone can report duplicate questions (like right now), which will notify the janitors, who will hopefully exercise good judgment.

Stack Exchange Network is a good QA site, they do very well in this aspect, their janitors are like Archons of Justice. You can try to ask a troll question at MSE it will be closed within 5 minutes.

[IlyaTheImpaler]

Why I dislike the current freedom to ask duplicate questions:
1. It discourages people from thinking before asking
2. It discourages people from reading previous good answers or learning from the collective experience of the user base
3. It discourages people with expertise from giving answers and discussing them
(The first time I read a question relevant to my experience I might care enough to post my answer, then 2 hours later the same question is asked, then 1 day later the same question is asked by someone with 100k followers, can I just copy my answer and post it again and again? yes, will I do it? not likely. And the latter question could get like 1000 replies and nobody really read my answer to the original question lol)
4. Makes it (too) easy to spread toxicity (like always asking the same question about your insecurity or radical world view)
5. I guess the site owner doesn't want to waste more money on data storage do they?

[IlyaTheImpaler]

BY THE WAY I haven't been annoyed by the things OP mentioned.

[errorgoodnameunfound]

I agree with some points, but I must say, Stack Exchange in my opinion, is shit. Absolute shit. You can ask a troll question and sure, it'll be shut down. But if you ask a smart question too, it will be not only shut down, but trolled into oblivion. Quora isn't perfect, but the mods are way better. SE is the Q and A site of the soup nazi from Seinfeld. Not like people on that site like criticism either. Never seen such shitty people online on a Q and A site in my life. Even Yahoo answers has better quality at some points.

[IlyaTheImpaler]

@errorgoodnameunfound "But if you ask a smart question too, it will be not only shut down, but trolled into oblivion" eh the SE sites I frequent are Math, Physics, Cross Validated and a few others and I have gained a lot of knowledge from them (people who answer are typically professors and experts). Typically I stay away from politics and relationship QA lol
I like Quora too but I haven't been there much.

[errorgoodnameunfound]

SE CAN be good, as if you go and look at already answered questions, you don't deal with any of the BS. If you DO ask a question, that's often where unnecessary trouble can start. I asked once what I thought was a simple stack question. Took an hour and all I got were down votes and accusations that "I didn't try to solve it myself" and that it was a "hw question" all that BS. It wasn't ofc. It was a question from a quiz i had done bad on, so I wanted to see what the ACTUAL answer was and WHY. Even after editing it, NOPE! Question CLOSED! As a new user unaware how "high quality" SE supposedly was, I vowed never to return and deleted my account immediately, even emailing their support for complaints about the site which of course, went unanswered. And ofc, any similar criticisms in the Q and A area were down voted and closed. Unsurprisingly, I went to Quora for the same question and, low and behold, 3 good answers in a HALF hour...

[IlyaTheImpaler]

@errorgoodnameunfound oh I see your point, yes SE is not friendly to new user who wants a quick answer to a simple problem, the experienced users (of MSE for example) always want you to show that you had thought about your question carefully before asking and you MUST show your work/effort/what you got so far + identify exactly where you are stuck. Most of them will not think for you, that much is certain. That is also why I love Math SE, Physics SE and Stats SE.
I asked a few exams and homework questions there too but they weren't closed or downvoted. In your case it might be too quickly closed and the janitors didn't account/care for new user who hasn't read the really lengthy guideline on how to ask a good question
(in fact my most upvoted question was a homework question about functional analysis lol)

[errorgoodnameunfound]

Yea but that is a problem. If I just have a quick question, having a loooong dumb "guideline" about "how to ask" is tedious. Why stay there when Quora will give the same accurate answer in half the time? I showed plenty how I tried to solve it and got no results. Others that had been there for years had the same issue. Asking it "in the right way" with "effort shown" is not always possible to be in line with "their rules" even if you try very hard. Ofc, every experience may be different, but mine was pitiful, especially when there are plenty other resources out there and they just happened to come up first in search results. What they should require is a thorough background check on each user, quizzing them on the guideline rules BEFORE they are allowed to enter, if they "bad questions" so much. Here's a vid to explain what new users encounter on SE basically. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M2lfZg-apSA

[Pamina]

1. Agreed.
2. I don't use the app, but from what I've gathered there are actually several things that you can't do on the app that you can do on the site. That's super lame.
3. Well, you can block them.
4. That's actually possible, I've disabled them long ago. Maybe that's one of the things you can't do on the app (you can disable a bunch of notifications on the site actually). I suggest you log in on the site and disable them there.
5. Agreed. There's absolutely no reason why we should not be able to see how old old questions are.
6. The problem with that is that a lot of users create polls that either make no sense or are heavily biased. So leaving them without comment would just create even more confusion.
7. I haven't even noticed that pet posts are popular on here, but sure.

[JSmuve]

8) better search feature: its god awful

9) making our past opinions searchable or being able to filter through them: some of us have thousands of opinions and maybe some of us wanna see opinions we posted months/years ago. I've been saying this since 2015 @gag. Get on it si vous plais

[Anon-ymous1]

Yeah I totally agree with that.

[AlphaGhost]

Your points seem to contradict the right of free speech to everyone and if you can't face the opinion from everyone and about every aspect, then you are chicken and mentally weak to be using this site.
I mean whats the point of asking a question, when you will only allow the people that supports your stance or say things you want to hear and mute all others.
I like some of them but if you can't deal with truth don't ask the question like female said,
Male are Shit ! and then only allow Feminazi to comment on ik is never going to help anyone and grow up MAM,
If you can't deal with online shit then life i going to be crazyyyyy for yea.

[ghostqueen]

You seem so bothered. The idea of muting people has nothing to do with not liking them. It's more of a spam issue to me. I can deal with the mess that the internet is as well as life. Crazy, huh?

[AlphaGhost]

No No you were talking about shutting them down so you can hear the guys tell the guys "you are the most beautiful thing in universe"

[ghostqueen]

You're making no sense.

[tangerinefan1050]

@AlphaGhost: You've got it twisted, mate. With "muting" she only means selectively disabling otherwise incoming notifications about the activity of someone you follow (because e. g. you follow many people and a number of them asks too many questions). Her suggestion has nothing to do with what you were thinking, so don't worry. Cheers and no hard feelings OK man ✌️ gg bb

[AlphaGhost]

I know She is talking about "muting the already present response, so that he can type more comments" but I know,
Femi shit is gona give spicy response and then mute the user right there, so that he can't reply and She can made it look like "She kicked his ass" to other users and its also active now by blocking mechanism.

[tangerinefan1050]

@AlphaGhost: You do use G@G's "follow" feature, yes? Does G@G give you notifications when someone you're following posts a question? (i. e. does an orange circle with a numeral appear over the little bell up there when you browse the website after someone you're following asks a question?) She is talking about being able to disable the receipt of such notifications for certain users you're following. As I said, it has nothing to do with what you are thinking -- why do you think she said "You're making no sense"? Because you're talking about something completely different.

[AlphaGhost]

@tangerinefan1050 Oh sorry asker I was talking about "muting people on Questions"
my Bad sorry @ghostqueen

[FatherJack]

1 , 3 & 4 heartily agree , I have posted about the needed edit function before !! 7 , yep good idea , love animals , but not in a position to keep any pets , FT working single dad , my 14 year old boy and 11 year old girl are more like wild animals at times !!

[xHoneyxBeex]

Thanks for this feedback! You made some great points here that we'll definitely take into consideration. :)

[Hispanic-Cool-Guy]

Please add a philosophy and science section.

[xHoneyxBeex]

@Hispanic-Cool-Guy Hi! I'll be sure to pass that idea along to the rest of the admin team. :)

[Hispanic-Cool-Guy]

Thanks. And finances too. Please. 😊

[ericclayton]

@xHoneyxBeex I especially like the idea of being able to edit opinions and replies (within a certain elapsed time) because autocorrect sucks. There is programming issues I'm aware, but that's something I think the majority of users would appreciate. :)

[xHoneyxBeex]

@ericclayton Yes, we know that would definitely be useful! Hopefully it's something we can look into in the future. :)

[MarianneF]

I totally support 5, I have already made a post about it when I first came to the site. It's so annoying to browse and find a question, and then try to figure out if you are answering something that is still relevant

[OldSchool_Metalhead]

right on girl! I had another user once (themetalhead) and wrote a ton of mytakes and was editor. I realized that becoming editor I had the ability to go back to a take and fix something even after it got submitted. I'm not an editor yet but it would be damn good if I could already come back to takes and fix them!

[DizzyDesii]

#1 Should have double read before posting
#2 The app sucks. Mobile browser is better
#3 Yes
#4 just unfollow us
#5 I don't know about after its closed but time stamps would be helpful if they lasted 30 days instead of just 7
#6 Yea maybe
#7 I rather have music/sports/addiction

[NYCQuestions1976]

"Pets" should be grouped with "How do I look?" because almost every "Pets" question would be "Awww... isn't my pet cute?" or "Awww... how does my pet look?" Besides... that's what YouTube is for. 😂

Also, there's already a "Pets" category. It's called "Other". 😂

[NYCQuestions1976]

I think 3 and 4 you can do already. You can do 2 on your phone in "browser/website" mode. 1 and 5 would be cool.

[DeeDeeDeVour]

I agree. Having the option to disable answers on polls and having a Pet or Animals Category plus having a Sports or Athletics Category would all be nice.

[AlexEfron]

Excellent 👍
I would definitely want to see #1 & #5 be a reality someday.
Don't quite agree with pets as a topic 😂

[ghostqueen]

No love for pets? Tragic.

[AlexEfron]

Who said that I don't love pets? But a whole new topic dedicated to pets - that's a bit too much

Read my tragic story about my pet 👇

Pets - Naming your pet!! ↗

[ghostqueen]

Fair enough. :)

[Phoenix98]

1# will probably never happen, we've been asking for that for years.

[ChocoLada]

I agree with 1, 5, 6 and 7.
Mute is not important, you can always block them.

[douride2]

Having time stamps period would be great. That is how it used to be.

[martyfellow]

There IS a way to block all invites to questions... But I find getting invites the best part of Gag, myself.

[ghostqueen]

You can disable invite notifications but that's it.

[smilingsunshine]

I just join. It is nice you think about make it better :)