Ask Fedora: Do we need to add a "solved" tag to answered questions to increase visibility in search engines

[Ankur Sinha]

Hi,

I don't think we had a formal discussion about this. We've noticed
questions with [solved] in the summary recently. 

There are two scenarios when this is being used:
- the question was answered properly, and the answer did actually help
- the person did something like a reinstall, and the question isn't
pertinent any more (the poster doesn't need it anymore, so he just adds
[solved] and moves on.)

We can always close questions with the "answer was accepted" solution,
but I'm not for using that. More answers can always be given, and
answers can always be improved. 

Here's the first proposal:

- Add "Please do not add the [Solved] keyword to your question
summaries. If you received an answer that solved the issue, please mark
the answer as correct and reward the helper with karma." to the user
guidelines.

Now, the addition of the term "solved" somewhere in the question does
help in a way: it helps improve search results, say google/bing/whatever
(This is based on my basic understanding of SEO etc, please correct me
if I'm mistaken). So, an additional proposal:

- Mods add a "solved" tag to questions that they feel are properly
answered, and the answer was accepted, just to ensure that search
engines associate the term with the question. 

This will ensure that the second case mentioned earlier doesn't occur
and improve search results too.

google search -> "site:ask.fedoraproject.org create desktop shortcuts
solved"

Now, I do see that stack exchange doesn't do this sort of thing at all,
so proposal 2 might not be required at all. 

Also, since we're now using instances for languages, shouldn't we have a
set of guildelines for moderators, if we don't already? To ensure that
everyone follows the same system etc.? I still need to talk to the
Spanish mods about the use of the "user group" functionality. Should I
ask them to join the infra ML, or is there a simpler way of speaking to
all mods? Considering that we do all our discussion here, maybe they
should be required to join the infra list? I think a separate ML for
mods would be overkill.

Comments?
-- 
Thanks,
Warm regards,
Ankur (FranciscoD)

http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/User:Ankursinha

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