New version of Unity Answers unveiled today

Update: The new version of Unity Answers has been up now for a week. We're resolving issues that occurred after deployment and addressing visual and design changes. We read all the feedback that you provide and want to thank you for helping us out in this process! If you run into anything wonky or want to share your opinion, don't forget about the META space we set up for site-specific posts.


We have been working on improving Unity Answers and are pushing the new version of the site live today. You can read about the new features that have been added in this blog post.

A user guide has been provided describing the new features and how to navigate the site.

 

Good news.

I wonder if this will affect old questions/answers in any way? I never use it to ask questions but I find information there all the time via Google.

 

It will contain all the data from the previous version, it's a great place to look up content so we want to keep everything

 

Have you implemented a way to copy the source code without the line numbers?

 

Hey! I'm excited to see the new Answers, is there a new ETA yet?

 

Just don't reset our existing karma points please

 

I couldn't find any better place to complain on new Unity Answers design (aka suggest changes for public discussion) so here we go:
1) Speed downgrade. For example (excluding "visit site" step):
- Access moder queue - before 1 click, now 2 clicks.
- Check your answers (obviously, if you haven't saved them as bookmarks/favorites in browser) - before 1 click, now 3 clicks.
2) Missing things. For example:
- Reputation chart.
- Activity button in profile, you now need to visit direct profile link in order to see it...(not that I used it anyway, just seems illogical).
3) Counterintuitive. Why would I need to click "anon" picture to access moder queue? (it even should be a profile picture in first place, you can say that it is just in order to "fit" forum but hey why couldn't it be on forum as well? it shouldn't be hard to do).
4) Design (aka visual representation). Probably the reason why I started to write this post in first place, so here we go:
- Question, answers and comments almost like melded together (except the accepted answer), no way you could fast scroll now, IMO they should be visually separated a bit more. (e.g. it can be a "frame" for question/answer + their comments and a fat line separating each comment, or even better a frame as well and preferably with some bg color).
- I don't like the new "mini profile" on q/a/c and moder queue. Previously you could see karma and badges, now to see the first one you need to hover avatar/nickname and for the last one visit profile. (it kinda helped to distinguish new users) Nickname under/above avatar would be better as well.
- Where did colorization go? For example previously in profile page answers you could clearly distinguish accepted answers (green) and not, but now you can't. Why on questions answers count is green and after accepted answer it just becomes darker with green back-light? (if you want to distinguish reply with no reply just make it yellow or something and make back-light a bit darker.
- Why "Hide/Show comments" "button" uses IBeam cursor?
+Problems in META space


If you could make all of the above as a custom non-default style (haven't mentioned all but I guess you have saved an old one somewhere, so you have an idea) it would be great.


The only thing that old engine really lacked was some sort of a "private moder queue" where you could send a perfectly fine question that lacked some info to be answered properly without a guess (e.g. the user described the issue but hasn't provided unobvious for him information, like settings of some component), and you're imposing anti-helping behavior ("If you comment on a post in the moderation queue, you must immediately either publish or reject it.") instead of adding that feature (now I'll just leave that type of questions in mod queue without my comment [if that's what you want, though I still don't get why, it's not like moder queue will be increased by my comment], so that I won't feel bad for discouraging new users with perfectly fine questions to use Unity Answers), it would be fine for me if there was a question with lack of info hanging in my personal moder queue for half a month or so instead of rejecting question or approving it with lack of info. There were situations where I left comment in moder queue and it got rejected by someone and the ones which were approved, some of which got update from OP later and some of which are still being unanswered due to lack of info and no update from OP (you can find examples of those in my comments history), not even to mention that there was once a situation where user spammed few copies of same question due to some moderator rejecting his initial question or I think I don't even need to mention a usual "why I got rejected" question in moder queue.

 

Yes, I'm not a fan of hiding info. Anything important, such as the mod queue, needs to be right out in the open, not hiding behind clicks. Because even if you can figure out where stuff is, you tend to forget about it if you don't see it. If that makes the design less "clean", so be it. Anything to get the design world moving away from "clean" and back into "usable"....

--Eric

 

Despite the title, I'm not going to go on some rant or anything, just thought it was important to briefly give my feedback as to how much worse the new Unity Answers layout is.

It's more difficult to visually parse and navigate. You can't see your user points without clicking on the user symbol icon. You can't view your own badges without going to the user profiler...

The user profile page is a mess, it shows "your activity" which is just a jumble list of bullshit you don't care about. I have to click "my answers" or "my questions" to actually view the things I care about.

Everything is all rounded and post/point counts are minimalistic and not well outlined like they were previously. Fonts seem bad. No separation/spacing between an answer's user info and the answer content. No more downvote button? You think you're better than the most popular stack exchange sites which all have downvote buttons? Reply counts and answered indicator is on the right instead of the left where your eyes defaultly go to and thus the title and counts are totally separated.

There's more I've probably missed because I've used it for all of 5 minutes. It just looks worse. Why fix something that wasn't broken or even remotely problematic?

 

I have to say that I liked the old one better, too. It was far easier to read the thread summary.

 

Yeah, I think it would be better if they kept old answers look, but add new features and only do slight adjustments in look when features can't absolutely positively be added without these adjustments (such as button/box for "beginner" section, etc.).

 

The thing is, the old site was broken. There were several issues that needed to be fixed, which is the reason we decided to move on to the new system and move away from the outdated system we were on.

We also needed new features, such as Spaces, autocomplete when asking Questions, autosave, refined search etc. In order to add new features, we needed to get on the new system that supported these.

There are bugs now on the site that are being fixed, and yes, change is difficult. We are taking in all the feedback and evaluating what needs to change back to how things were, and what we will keep.

 

Well I gotta say that the new version has not done the expected effect.

Many infos are now hidden or too small...

A few examples:
- the plus button (became "like" ?!) is now at the bottom in the middle of other infos. When looking for help, the amount of likes (since it is now likes) is primordial. An answer with no "like" tells me right on that I should consider another one. Sometimes, an accepted answer gets less "likes" than a secondary answer.
- I guess the like situation goes along with the new following/followers. You should consider changing the name to Unity Social.
- The visual is clumsy, there is no separation between two answers.
- No more downvotes? or well hidden?
- But I found a reward user, this one is funny....and useless. No one will ever give away their precious.

This is just a few shots at stuffs I did not find convenient but hold on this is not all bad, there are some improvements. I have yet to find them though but I am sure there are there. Lurking in the dark.

 

I guess all of us do appreciate the efforts that were put in this during the last few months. But the first things that stroke me is this move towards social network something closer to reddit and such.

I think (but I could be wrong) you should keep it as an extension to the official Unity doc as it has been.

 

This.
Also, the indication that an answer is accepted was far, FAR better with the old system, when the whole question box in the overview was green. Now, it's just a small box to the right so I have to take a double-take when scrolling through the newest answers.

 

I'd suggest making space for each type of question (UI, physics, etc.). This will make answers more organized and much tidier - so someone who has experience in say AI and feel like answering some questions related to that field could do so without running into questions related to physics or UI.

 

Just noticed a thing that is extremely annoying to me: When writing an answer or comment, and trying to insert code, the new code window has a fixed size and can't be resized like the old one; the actual area the text is in can be resized, but not the window itself, as was possible previously. Now, when pasting large chunks of code, especially long lines, I have to scroll around a lot and it's pretty hard to get an overview of the whole chunk. The window is fairly small, too.

 

@darhog there are tags for that. If you click one of them, you only get questions related to the tag. Specific room is the beginning of the end, many will think their problem is physics when it is just language related or will claim C# when it is UI wrong usage.

I realised I helped someone on the help room but could not see what would be the difference with the main room. It has the same layout, the same workflow, the same type of questions.

 

It seems most people are not satisfied with the new vision, but I'm having problems finding anything at all! During the last year UA helped me A LOT, like, 90 % of what I've learnt came from there. I used to type some keywords and get all the relevant answers and find my info there, but now anything I try gives me "0 results". I find this new system not so user-friendly. Maybe I need to get used to it, but this sudden change in functionality is turning me down. At least a simple google search does the job UA used to do for me.

 

I'm not able to add any comments to anything, or do any mod stuff like closing/deleting questions.

--Eric

 

Also, I'm a huge non-fan of what seems to be a "request help" feature, where I have people bugging me about stuff I know nothing about. Probably because of my rep? It's a blessing, and a curse. I couldn't find anywhere to turn off notifications for that. I really don't like this, since it makes me look like I'm being rude and ignoring them. Which I am, but not voluntarily, since I didn't choose to be part of that feature.

The "like" system needs to be reverted to up/down voting. UnityAnswers isn't Facebook, it's a QA site. There's a good reason why StackOverflow etc. have up/down voting.

--Eric

 

I see no option to comment anywhere - and that is bugging me! I like the fresh look a little bit, but I liked the functionality of the old answers... cuz I was used to it.

 

We're implementing an "opt out" function for that, should be coming shortly.

Re: the "Like" function over the up/down vote. It's possible we will create this function for the new version, but will people contribute with the up/down vote? A big complaint in the past was that most users were not up/down-voting content, but perhaps there are other reasons for that feature not being used as much as we'd like.

 

The comment function has been fixed again.

Also, what functions in particular are you missing at the moment?

 

I think we should give the Help Room a chance, it's not even been a week. Once we've fixed major issues and made some visual and design changes, we're going to start working on new features. The way we handle content in the default/main site is going to become more strict as we move forward, moving/closing/deleting content will be happening more frequently than before. Mod guidelines, permissions and rules may become adjusted as well.

 

Oh good, thank you. I keep getting stuff like this, as the most recent example today:



I know just the basics of Mecanim, and have never indicated anywhere that animation is something I have any expertise in. So, urgh.

--Eric

 

I have nothing against it, just feel unclear about what is the purpose of it over the normal room.

A chat system may be more appropriate for people needing quick help.

Also, but this one would require loads of work, UA could try to gather Question/Answer that are revolving around the same topic. For instance, I just helped again on how to detect input on 2D sprite. This has been coming up every now and then. Create a "Most asked questions (MAQ not FAQ which is more about how to use UA)" section with professional answers to those.

 

Also, the fully green title when a question is answered and accepted was more visible. The pale tiny square is ...pale and tiny...

 

I really want this most common questions bit. We are looking into different analytics tools at the moment to integrate with Answers and Forum, in order to gather data on most used keywords and phrases (and also during set periods of time), posts with most engagement (views/comments/replies/etc) in order to start a commonly asked questions section.

 

It can be very hard to see. I also like the suggestion of moving the square to the left so it's right when the question starts, it could make it easier to see which questions have replies as well (and how many), even if not accepted. Will figure out which solution we use and hopefully make the change this week or the next.

 

I'm wondering if we should remove this function entirely until we have the "opt out" option in place, because I currently don't have an ETA on when it will be finished.

I have changed it now so that only Mods can us the Ask an Expert function.

 

Nice, proper up/down voting is back.

--Eric

 

I like it. It's a lot different for sure, but nothing we won't get used to.

Tried following some tags but turned that off immediately since it sends emails. Maybe there could be a space for these to queue up so you could look at them later instead of sending emails? Maybe there is and I just didnt see it yet... I did find the notification options to turn off the emails, though.

 

Slowly all new improvements are being reverted and the new UA is becoming the old UA back again

 

If the "improvements" that didn't make sense are reverted, while keeping actual improvements, then that's called "progress" (instead of merely "change").

--Eric

 

We switched the system entirely, as the one we were on was outdated and issues couldn't be resolved anymore. All of the changes are part of the Trello board I set up which you had access to, and I also set up accounts so that you could sign in and test it out in the staging environment. I don't understand how you see all these changes as a surprise, as they've been in place for months for testing and giving feedback.

 

We're working on an in-app notification system, similar to what we have here on the forums. There will still be the option to subscribe to e-mails, but we want to provide an alternative.

For following topics, go into your user profile then click on the "My Subscriptions" button. Let me know if that works for you, we are still trying to discover functions that haven't been put in place yet for some reason or other.

 

We have now finished re-indexing the content of the site, so the new Search function should be working. Please try out the refined search feature and see if there are any issues with it.

The new Search function enables two additional features:

• Autocomplete when asking a Question: it will suggest existing posts with number of replies
• Redirecting posts: as a Mod, you can now redirect posts into other more suitable posts

 

Little details, the Accept button could be back to where it was.

But more important, the comment input field should be at the bottom next to the last comment, so we can see the comment we are most likely replying to. At the moment, it opens on top and requires so up and down jumps if one wants to look at codes.

 

A Trello board I had access to??!!! Do I work for Unity now? Well, I will the bank details for paycheck then.

I have my own Trello boards to look after already, so no I did not see those. This is getting awkward, I'm out. Make the changes you want, I won't complain, pinky swear.

 

I have been very open with the changes of the site so that I could receive user feedback early on. We're not throwing out changes blindly.

Edit: Apologies for claiming you were making a snarky comment when you were in fact making a joke.

 

Thats gold mate

 

Eric how long had UA been around before you joined up? i.e did you ever experience UA 1.0?

Id like to know how UA x.0 (x being whichever iteration this is) measures up to 1.0. Looking at how broken it was before the update I'm figuring the new version in its infancy has to be a vast improvement on older versions.

There are no missing answers yet (granted that is because the associated functionality is missing) and Im yet to experience any day-crushing bugs. I'd say its better as font sizes and colour schemes are easily changable.

We just need to get the feedback in to help make it what it needs to be.

 

I was there at the dawn of the third age of mankind...er, I mean, before UA existed. At first we only had the forums. Originally UA was a StackExchange site, and had no particular issues, but I think due to licensing problems they had to switch to something else. There were various bugs and stuff, but it was improved over time. The latest version overall is the best, though there are still some bugs.

--Eric

 

Just as I'd hoped. Theres hope Cheers for the info, Eric.

@SaraCecilia it seems questions dont appear in the redirect queue until at least a comment has been made on that question.

 

@SaraCecilia There very much needs to be an option in ones profile/prefs to opt in or out of tagging and help requests. At this moment in time I feel glad I'm not an expert