Firefox browser version 3 and QnA

Wed, 18 Jun 2008 15:23:36 GMT

Yesterday, as many of you know, the Firefox version 3 browser was released to the public. We wanted to proactively notify our community that the Live Search QnA beta site does not yet offer support for Firefox 3 so you will not be able to post a question or answer to QnA in the Firefox 3 web browser.

This was not intentional, but as with all new product and software releases, we need to test and evaluate this new web browser to understand the changes we need to make to QnA to support it. In the meantime, we wanted to ask members of our community to either stay with Firefox 2 or use an alternative to Firefox such as Internet Explorer version 7 which are both supported browsers for the Live Search QnA beta site.

We apologize in advance for any inconvenience this may cause and will update you once we have an update on our Firefox 3 support plans.

Thanks,

QnA Team

Question: Why was the QnA site down for maintenance? Answer: Read on…

Tue, 29 Apr 2008 23:09:53 GMT

I am very excited and proud to announce that the new & improved Live Search QnA Beta site refresh is finally available for your viewing pleasure!

When I first joined the team late in the fall of 2007, we spent a lot of time debating the goals and priorities for this first “re-birth” release of the QnA site. We reviewed the mounds of feedback from you, our valued beta community, and combined this feedback with our business goals, priorities, and timeframe for the release.

I’d like to introduce you to our “Renaissance” release of Live QnA Beta – it’s our re-birth and signifies the beginning of a new set of features that we will continue to release to the QnA site on a more frequent basis moving forward. We know we’ve been a little “dark” with new feature improvements over the past year, and know we have a lot more to do, but we are excited to be breathing life back into the site… there’s more to come!

To give you some background, once we agreed upon the release theme of rebuilding QnA, we developed three goals:

Goal #1 -- Focus on the QnA experience for new users. These are the features new members will experience when they come to QnA for the first time. You’ll recognize some of these features as many of them were requests from you. Here are a few examples of some key improvements made:

Signing up for QnA – We have partnered with Windows Live ID to launch an updated version of the Live ID sign-up page where you can create your own Windows Live ID. This is now a straightforward 1-page process (instead of the previous 3- or 5-page process).
Registering for a QnA account – One of the most common issues is that new users are often not familiar with the “rules” of QnA. So we’ve re-designed the QnA registration page so that new members must view and agree to the Code of Conduct.
Getting to the QnA site – Some of you have already noticed that we’ve been getting a lot of new users on the QnA site since it’s now featured on the MSN Election channel and also on the bottom of many Live Search results web pages. As we move forward, we’ll be promoting QnA more frequently in more places and bringing in more new users.

Goal #2 -- Encourage users to discover content and functionality in new ways

Completely new look & feel – We revisited some of the navigational and user interface feedback we’ve received on the “Features & Support” message boards and tried to address some key navigational issues in the overall site design.
Making it easier to discover questions and tag content on the QnA site – This is a general improvement we made to the way the site navigation works. You’ll notice a few different metaphors to help you surf and browse the site including “tag clouds,” which show clusters of the most popular tags.

Goal #3 -- Highlight and award higher quality content by featuring members who are Top Contributors in given areas of expertise – Another piece of feedback we’ve heard is the frustration that many community members experience when they see “point chasers,” so we’ve addressed this feedback in a number of ways:

We introduced a new Superstars page where members are featured based on their reputation (the number of stars they have, which is an indication of their Best Answers to Total Answers ratio).
We’re now featuring members who are Top Contributors in the most popular tags. So if you click on most of the ~200 most popular tags on the site (you’ll see those in our new tag clouds), you’ll now see a “Top Contributor” featured on that page, and you’ll also see a new banner for “Top Contributor” that appears above their avatar.

These are just a few of the changes you’ll notice on the new site.

Want to know more? We’ll go into more details on these changes on this blog in the upcoming weeks. In the meantime, we want to answer a few questions:

Why are you still in beta? It’s been two years – what’s the deal? Well to be honest, there is still more improvements we’d like to make in a number of areas especially our infrastructure and moderation. So until we have a chance to complete this work, we’re keeping QnA in beta.
Why do you still have points on the QnA site? While we understand and have read the feedback from the community both for and against points, we are not yet at a point (ha ha – get it, points? Making my point?) where we’re ready to give up on the points model altogether. Based on our research, points help motivate members to participate and contribute quality content. Given some of the complaints we’ve heard about “point chasers,” we made changes to the Superstars page, to the way points are awarded on the site, and to the Superstars featured on the home page. We will continue to monitor community feedback around these changes in helping us continue to improve this system moving forward.
Why does the new logo say “Live Search QnA Beta” when it used to say “Live QnA Beta?” Well our URL is the same (http://qna.live.com) but we’re now called “Live Search QnA Beta” – this is because the QnA team is part of Live Search. QnA is strategic to Live Search’s vision of enabling people to find what they’re looking for (after all, that’s what search is all about). Sometimes you can find what you’re looking for by entering search terms on Live Search and getting algorithmic (computer generated) results. But sometimes it may be better or easier to get your answers or tips from a live human being – and that’s where the QnA community comes in!
What else will you release in the future? You know we can’t say, but please trust us when we say we’re listening to you and taking on exciting new ideas for the site moving forward.

This is just a short summary of some of the changes you’ll notice… there are more, much more, from Alerts, to QnA points, to “Your QnA,” to the backend servers that sustain QnA, the home page, and everything in between. So I invite you to join us on the QnA Message Boards with any feedback or suggestions on the release. And please remember to go easy on us. Rome wasn’t built in a day.

-Heather, Lead Program Manager, QnA

P.S. This work is the result of many long hours, late nights and weekends. Special thanks to everyone on our team who committed themselves and pulled out all the stops. I know that I am very lucky to be working with such a talented bunch of folks – thank you QnA product team!

Live QnA remodeling on Monday (4/28/2008)

Wed, 23 Apr 2008 19:08:14 GMT

On Monday, April 28, 2008, at about 8am PDT, Live QnA Beta will be temporarily closed for some remodeling.

Fortunately this remodel should be less complicated than David’s new skylight which took two days to install – but nonetheless we regret to inform you that the Live QnA web site will be unavailable for about a day or so.

As many of you know, we’ve been re-investing in QnA. We’ve spent the last few months planning, learning, and preparing for a set of updates to the Live QnA Beta community site. Along the way, we’ve grown our QnA product team and on this blog, we’ve introduced 3 of the many new people who have joined our team in the last few months, and we plan to introduce a few more soon.

In response to your feedback re: some of the uninvited guests on our site, we tuned the way we handle content that is reported for abuse and improved the response time to review issues reported by the community. In parallel, we’ve also been hard at work these past few months, improving QnA, and I hope you will enjoy what you see when the remodel is complete. There’s still plenty left to do, but we think this is a good start.

So again, Live QnA will be temporarily closed on Monday April 28, 2008. Please feel free to check back later on Monday or early Tuesday to see when we re-open. We’ll definitely update this blog when your Live QnA community is open once again.

Thanks a lot for your understanding. See you soon!

-Live QnA Team

Live QnA: QnA Updates

Firefox browser version 3 and QnA

Question: Why was the QnA site down for maintenance? Answer: Read on…

Live QnA remodeling on Monday (4/28/2008)