Though I'm a little late on this thread (late-night class
and slept in), I want to provide my arguments for the
timestamp-update issue.
Seekers of Perl Wisdom is a high-traffic area. Many monks
have told me that they generally ignore Categorized Questions and Answers, even though
its posts appear in Newest Nodes. When someone mistakenly
posts a question to Q&A (because the problem is far too specific
to belong in Q&A), (s)he needs an answer.
Though I attempt to be very responsive to Q&A (and other
Q&AEditors do, as well), I often wander across a misplaced
Question many hours, or even a few days, after it was originally
posted. There are often (usually?) no answers to that post,
in spite of its age. When I have moved those questions to
SoPW, manually, they almost always begin to receive responses
immediately. Where there had been no traffic in Q&A for hours/days,
there is now immediate traffic in SoPW because it is at
the top of the Newest Nodes list.
My concern about timestamps is related to this phenomenon.
As it currently stands, the relocated question will appear
in the Newest Nodes list (usually) "buried" below more recently
created nodes. This will cause many of our most responsive,
helpful, knowledgeable monks to miss the question. Many
monks will never see the question at all, because
the most recent "I've checked all these" timestamp will be
later then the creation date of the Q&A post.
If the timestamp on the relocated question were updated to
the "moved" time, the question would appear at the top of
Newest Nodes, garnering all the attention and expertise that
Perl Monks has to offer.
Since most mistakenly Q&A'ed posts are made by newbies, I
feel that this change would preserve the helpful reputation
of PM. Questions that are misplaced will not just silently
disappear, never to be answered. Instead, the full force
and fury of Monks' expertise will be brought to bear on
the question, with only the erroneous placement silently
corrected.
Many thanks to vroom for this feature. I have wanted
this for quite some time, and when Tim became aware of the
need, he implemented and rolled out the solution in just a
few hours. Once again, vroom, you are the man!
Russ
Brainbench 'Most Valuable Professional' for Perl |