New Q&A feature: deleting questions?

1. 87

   theraggededgeposted 6 years ago

   I really like the new Q&A feature on individual hubs. What I'd like to know is if there's a way to delete a question if it's inappropriate?
   
   For example, I have one now. Let's say the hub is about apple pies, their origin and history, and the question is 'What is apple?' That's just a made up one, but the question nor the answer helps anyone or adds value to the article.
   
   So how would a hubber deal with it?

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   1. 99

      DrMark1961posted 6 years agoin reply to this

      Just click "Hide Q&A" and the question will be gone.
      I got one on my "How to convince your parents to let you get a dog" last Saturday that said "Why did you write his? I already have a dog."
      I deleted it, of course!

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      1. 87

         theraggededgeposted 6 years agoin reply to this

         
         
         Aren't they weird? I got a comment last week that just said 'bored'. OH...Kay.

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   2. 83

      Marketing Meritposted 6 years agoin reply to this

      I thought you could hide the question Bev?
      
      I have been struggling to keep up with answering all the questions, to be honest. Then I read a thread somewhere, where Paul made a statement that you don't have to answer every single one. So, I tend to only answer the generic types that may apply to most readers. Does that make sense?

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      1. 87

         theraggededgeposted 6 years agoin reply to this

         It's only my second one They just started coming in today. Okay, so hiding it does the trick? Thanks.

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      2. 99

         DrMark1961posted 6 years agoin reply to this

         I read that too, and since a lot of my questions are very similar I edit them to remove a lot of the specifics. It saves a lot of time.

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2. 90

   alexadryposted 6 years ago

   Does anybody know how to edit an answer once it's published? I see how to edit the question of the person asking, but not how to edit the answer. I went to edit a question that was full of typos and then went to add my answer, published it too fast and then as I re-read it, I noticed I made some stupid typos as well, LOL! Well, really no more laughing after I couldn't figure out how to fix them

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   1. 83

      Marketing Meritposted 6 years agoin reply to this

      Go onto 'filter' and select 'show all.'
      
      Answered questions should appear and the facility to edit is there also.
      
      Hope this helps.

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         alexadryposted 6 years agoin reply to this

         Worked like a charm, thanks so much!

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3. 84

   Venkatachari Mposted 6 years ago

   What feature you are talking about. I couldn't understand it.

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   1. 87

      theraggededgeposted 6 years agoin reply to this

      I'm not sure it's been activated across all hubs yet. Have a look at the bar on your stats page where the labels begin with: Stats, Violations, Broken Links. Go along to the far right and if you have it, it says Q&A. If it isn't there yet, don't worry, it will show up in due course when they implement it fully.
      
      Basically, it is simply another comment form where readers are encouraged to leave questions for the hubber to answer.

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      1. 99

         DrMark1961posted 6 years agoin reply to this

         I may be wrong but I do not think the Q&A is even showing up on Hubpages articles. It is only on those that have been moved to niche sites;

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      2. 87

         Jean Bakulaposted 6 years agoin reply to this

         Bev,
         
         I was told not to answer anything I felt uncomfortable with, or that strayed to far from the article topic. The Q & A function is only for hubs on niche sites.
         
         I always get so many comments, I spend at least two hours once a week answering them. But I notice that both comments and Q&A are on my A/C page. Aren't they the same thing? Most of the comments I get are questions. But it's fun and I generally like the interactions. The audience is a lot more sophisticated about my niche than it was when I first came here. So I get some interesting comments or questions that actually make me think.
         
         I was told I could put a disclaimer that astrology questions don't include free horoscopes, as yours won't include free tarot readings. But I'm not ready to type that on about 80% of my hubs yet! I know there is always bad with the good.Time will tell.

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         1. 87

            theraggededgeposted 6 years agoin reply to this

            They're coming in like crazy now, but most of them are really silly And repeated over and over. It's as if they think the more often they repeat the same question, the more likely they'll get an answer. Out of the batch I got this morning, only one was worth an answer.
            
            Oh well, I'm sure they'll improve as time goes on.
            
            That's a good idea about the disclaimer. I'll probably use it.

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            1. 87

               Jean Bakulaposted 6 years agoin reply to this

               I am still getting my usual "comments", but no Q & A yet. But it's OK, I want to get writing new material again.
               
               And if I continue to get as many comments as I do, the Q&A is just a duplicate of that. It's worth a try though. I really don't want to begin a "disclaimer" thing now. I finally had all my articles up to date, except those not on niches.

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   2. 76

      TIMETRAVELER2posted 6 years agoin reply to this

      I was told this was a beta test that would only include certain authors...so I'm surprised to see that so many people already are answering.  I was asked specifically if I wished to join in the test.  If it's successful, then I assume everybody will be doing it at some point.

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4. 60

   reviewexpressposted 6 years ago

   This is really helpful.

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5. 92

   EricDockettposted 6 years ago

   It would be helpful to have a little alert on our dashboards when we get a new question. I know we get the email and can check the Q&A section, but it would be a lot harder to miss a question if there were a number or symbol that pops up like when we get a comment.
   
   I have this active on another account and I've only gotten two questions so far. I get a lot more questions on this account and to be honest I am kind of dreading having Q&A active here. I already get tons of "Help me!" questions on my aquarium articles in the comments, and often they are asking about something I already addressed in the Hub.
   
   Not sure I see the advantages of this yet as opposed to people just asking questions in the comments, but I'm trying to be open minded.

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   1. 99

      DrMark1961posted 6 years agoin reply to this

      I think one big advantage is that we can edit the question. If the grammar is terrible, the words are misspelled, or if it runs on about something you already addessed in your atricle, it can be changed. If the question is better I think it is more likely to be read, and thus the answer you give can be something that would help more readers, not just the person that is asking.

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      1. 87

         Jean Bakulaposted 6 years agoin reply to this

         I don't see an advantage either, since I already spend hours on my comments, mainly people trying to get free astrology charts from me. Some of them are considerate and I enjoy those.
         
         I had two questions on the Q&A about an hour ago, and they were so stupid, they could have answered them if they had read the article. I already have misgivings about saying yes to this, especially if the comments section still stays. I stay very engaged with my readers that way. I get paying clients on my personal site. So it's really seeming like a time waster.
         
         Plus, most of the niche articles are ones written long ago, and our time is best spent writing new material.

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6. 94

   Bedbugabscondposted 6 years ago

   I have the opposite problem. I hid a Q&A question by accident and I cant figure out how to get it back.

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7. 87

   theraggededgeposted 6 years ago

   Ugh... so two of those original duplicate questions just won't go away. They are there every time I open the Q&A. I hide them, they disappear, and then they reappear.
   
   I initially thought this was a good idea, but now I'm not so sure. Out of all the questions, only two or three have been decent. The others are irrelevant or inane.

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8. 92

   EricDockettposted 6 years ago

   I just realized the Q&A questions themselves are each separate pages on the niche sites. The url suggests I should be able to navigate to it from the same subfolder where the article is located, but I can't see any way to get to it other than through the article itself.
   
   Am I missing something? Is there a way to get to a Q&A question other than through the article where it was asked?

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      DrMark1961posted 6 years agoin reply to this

      Why would you want to get to the question pages other than through the article?

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      1. 92

         EricDockettposted 6 years agoin reply to this

         I assume the intent is that the questions will be crawled and indexed and will bring in some search traffic. The link to the article is on the bottom of the page so that means readers can get to the original article once they find the question. That link wouldn't be there if the only way to get to the question was through the original article. It would be like having a doorway in a room that you can only access through that same door. So there must also be a way for the reader to navigate back to a main list of questions that may lead to other articles they are interested in.
         
         Or, there must be a way for the reader to navigate from the main niche site page to a page or pages that lists all the questions on a specific topic (as we had with the old Q&A on HubPages) so they can discover articles.

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         1. 99

            DrMark1961posted 6 years agoin reply to this

            I think I noticed the extra search traffic and (I think) it is displayed to us each time we answer a question. There is a chart on the top of the question that lists the number of questions, the articles they appear on, and the number of page views that question has.
            I had not noticed that link you pointed out. If it does work the way you are describing it, that will be another good reason for having a Q&A section instead of just comments.
            (I will try to look up one of my questions on Google and get back to you.)
            edit: When I copied and pasted one of my questions into Google it did come back to that question page, not my article, so it does appear to be indexed separately.

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            1. 92

               EricDockettposted 6 years agoin reply to this

               I agree - it made more sense to have the Q&A after I realized the pages are separate.

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            2. 87

               theraggededgeposted 6 years agoin reply to this

               I'm not seeing any of that. Am I in the wrong place? And even though I have answered questions those Stats still say 0
               
               
               
               Edit: Ah okay, I see what you mean now. It's on the article page itself, next to the Stats. I was going crazy trying to fathom what you meant

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9. 87

   theraggededgeposted 6 years ago

   They are all together under a Q&A tab on the stats page. After the 'copied articles' tab.

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   1. 92

      EricDockettposted 6 years agoin reply to this

      I can see my own answered questions there, (I only have one right now ) but how could a reader access a question besides going through the actual article? Maybe the only way is through a search engine? It seems like there should be a way to get to them through the niche site home page, which would then lead readers to the article.
      
      Maybe that's not the intention. I dunno.

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         DrMark1961posted 6 years agoin reply to this

         Since you pointed out that they were separate pages, I also noticed that the question pages have no ads on them. Maybe HP intends to add them later, after this beta program is over. As it is now though, with no ads that means no Hp nor the author has any revenue. One of my articles has about 6000 question views. If there is no income the only advantage I can see is that when people stop to read they are increasing page retention time.

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         1. 92

            EricDockettposted 6 years agoin reply to this

            The advantage, possibly, is that they find the question in search or otherwise and move on to the article, where we do have ads. In other words it is just a way to increase traffic for articles, but I agree it would be nice eventually to have shared ads on the questions.
            
            I'm not sure I understood what you meant in another post -- have you seen an increase in views on the articles associated with questions that have a lot of views? This might let us know if people are reading the question after reading the article, or finding the question in search and moving on to the article. (Hopefully its the latter.)

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            1. 99

               DrMark1961posted 6 years agoin reply to this

               It is hard to say. Traffic is up on all of the niche site articles on my account so I am not sure if it is due to the questions or not. According to Google Analytics session duration is improving, but I have also been doing some editing so there are too many variables to know if it is all, or even partially,  from the questions.

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      2. 87

         Jean Bakulaposted 6 years agoin reply to this

         Comments I get come from readers on Google, and they definitely read the article, judging from the questions they ask. So this is good for us.
         
         But I still get comments, no Q&A. So it's not clear if that's how people got used to reaching me.

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10. 99

    DrMark1961posted 6 years ago

    No, I also see mine is on that "top questions" chart. It shows the number of questions answered, the article they appear in, and the traffic for each of those questions (1,7,30, ever). Most of them do not generate many views, but I have one that has had over 3000.

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    1. 87

       theraggededgeposted 6 years agoin reply to this

       for you but for me.

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11. STAFF

    Paul Edmondsonposted 6 years ago

    Ad impression share is coming soon.
    
    Yes, there are individual pages and there are amp versions on mobile.
    
    In general, the stats look promising. We look at lots of metrics, but one is the ratio of article views to QnA views.
    
    There is a good chunk of internal referals which is really good. More reader engagement. Search traffic to pages are growing. The QnA we believe helps keep articles fresh, so it’s symbiotic.
    
    This feature is getting enhanced but by bit. So more to come.

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    1. 92

       EricDockettposted 6 years agoin reply to this

       Thanks for the insight, Paul! The more I think about it the more it seems like this will be a very useful feature.

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    2. 87

       Jean Bakulaposted 6 years agoin reply to this

       Paul,
       How does the Q&A section differ from the comments section? I checked since I was invited to join this test. I get comments on my A/C page everyday, but nothing on Q&A. How are they divided? Because I don't get paid for the hours I spend answering comments, I do it from the goodness of my heart . But then shouldn't "Comments" be moved to Q&A, so I get a chance to make some money, since I spend a lot of time answering people?
       
       I guess I can go back to write to Emily, the one who introduced this idea to me. I am not getting answers.

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