All of us that have visited the question section know that much of the content there is of very questionable quality. It's difficult to see how many of the questions really contribute to the community or discussion on HubPages at all, ranging as they do from mediocre to banal.
Of course, there are some gems in there; insightful, well-reasoned, supported questions, with great, well thought out answers. I also understand that the Questions section is a valuable place for newbies to ask questions and get responses.
However, we know that Google indexes these pages as a whole and applies penalties due to thin, invalid or questionable content on a site; I would imagine that some problems with HPs performance in organic search could be alleviated by sorting out some of the problems in the questions area.
I've given quite a bit of thought to potential solutions, as you’ll see below. I'm not suggesting that all or some of these need to be implemented, I'm just offering a starting point for discussion from someone relatively new to the community and trying to offer a rational, objective way to begin to solve the problem.
But, where do we start? Well, I have a few ideas:
As far as I can see, there are five main types of people that ask questions on HP:
1. New hubbers that want answers to specific hub related questions (e.g. issues with AdSense, getting traffic etc.)
2. Other hubbers conducting genuine research or gathering opinions, perhaps for a hub or other article
3. People that have interest in a particular topic and want to ask questions about it
4. People that want to make money off of the ads that appear with questions
5. People that are bored and just like posting 'stuff'
Any solution needs to deal fairly with people in the first three categories and reduce people in the last two (as it's questions in those categories that are generally the worst offenders.)
What are the ways that we could improve the 'Questions' area?
I think there are several:
i. Have much clearer links to existing resources
ii. Limit the number of questions that can be asked over a specific period of time
iii. Force people to categorise - Why are they asking the question?
iv. Archive / No Index questions after a specific period of time
v. Have a section of 'Great' questions as a knowledge base that people can visit (as voted by hubbers)
vi. Remove advertising from some / all questions (reducing incentive to post for monetary reasons)
I'll go through each of these in turn:
i. Have much clearer links to existing resources
- Before people ask questions, there should be very clear links to the Learning Center and the most popular tutorials there (we all know the ones, get me traffic, get me approved for adsense etc.)
- There could also be links to relevant forum threads as well as other questions
- Make people tick a box saying that they have reviewed the LC, other questions and forum threads before continuing. (I know it already asks about looking at other questions, but this could be expanded out)
ii. Limit the number of questions that can be asked over a specific period of time
Some people often post lots of questions in a short period of time, in effect 'spamming' the question section; again, not ideal for Google algorithms or user experience; we could reduce this by placing a limit on the number of questions that could be asked, perhaps based on Hubber score as follows:
Score: 0-25 - At most 1 a day, no more than 3 in a week
Score 26-50 - At most 1 a day. no more than 7 a week
Score 51 - 75 - At most 2 a day, no more than 10 a week
Score 76+ - At most 2 a day, no more than 14 a week
That would make people really have to think about the questions that they're asking and would also incentivize them to ask questions that are likely to get lots of views / responses as it will only be those that get ad revenue.
I know that some newbies will have lots of questions that need to be answered and might have lower HubScores, so we can direct them to the appropriate sections on the forums / learning center as necessary.
iii. Force people to categorise / ask themselves why they are asking the question
There could be an option that asks *why* people are asking the question in the first place, e.g.:
- This is a HubPages related question
- I have a problem that I need an answer to
- I'm doing some research for a hub / article
- I want to hear other's views on this / curious
- I'm bored
etc. The answer to this question could then be used to rate the overall quality of the question. Perhaps some types of questions don't get ads shown on them...
iv. Archive / No Index questions after a specific period of time
Once a certain amount of time passes, a question automatically gets archived, no indexed and removed from the questions stream to elsewhere; this archival / no index could be based on the following:
- Unanswered questions - Archived after 1 week
- Questions because I'm bored - Archived after 2 weeks
- Questions because I'm curious - Archived after 3 weeks
- Questions from problems - Archived after 4 weeks
- Questions about hubpages - Archived after 2 months
When questions are archived, they also have the ads removed from them.
This would then remove all of those thin content quality questions from Google's index, helping the site as a whole. This could also be done alongside...
...v. Have a section of 'Great' questions as a searchable knowledgebase
Just as there are some poor questions and answers in the 'Questions' section, there are also some great ones, with well thought out, thorough and interesting answers.
The best of these (perhaps as voted on by hubbers or some other means) could become part of a permanent 'Questions and Answers Knowledge Base' that exists alongside the current Learning Center. This would become an additional resource for hubbers and questions / answers could be categorised into relevant sections (again, possibly by vote from hubbers). Sections could include: Getting Traffic, getting approved for AdSense etc.
This knowledge base would not be no index / archived and would be searchable by Google (and also possibly have ads in it so that people that ask great questions continue to get a few pennies from ad revenue, incentivizing more of us to ask questions that solicit great responses).
vi. Remove advertising from all / some / some types of questions
I'm certain that the fact people can earn small amounts from ads on questions without having to go through QAP is one of the reasons there are so many; one way to get around this might be to put some checks in and only enable ads when certain crieria are met, e.g:
1. HubberScore is above x
2. Average hub score is above x
3. Only get ads on first x number of questions posted by you in a week
4. Only get ads if they come under a certain category
5. No ads on archived / no indexed questions
These are all just ideas that I want to throw into the pot to generate more discussion. I think we all want to work together to make HubPages a better place for all of us, including getting us better search engine results, so I am sure any suggestions would be welcome!
Thanks for listening,
Paul M.
