JW Insider

Thanks.

The "best answer" feature works in forums where 10+ different people answer a question that requires some expertise, and the one with the most expertise can bubble up. I think that questions here are often intended to start a dialogue, and the best ones go one for several pages. No one is really looking for the single most "expert" sounding answer, they are usually looking to see how the idea was responded to by some and whether the answers, in total, produced a reasonable discussion. Taking any one answer out of the sequence makes it difficult to follow the conversation or dialogue.

There are a few exceptions, but these tend to be questions with fewer answers anyway, and therefore the best answer is already somewhere on the same page as the question.

So I don't know exactly what to suggest, except maybe to default to "Sort by date" and then have a message that might say: "Sort by votes to find best answers." Even that option might only be available when there have been some votes.

But that's the complicated way to do it. For 95% of the topics, just defaulting to "sort by date" would be sufficient. In the topics I've read it is almost never used. I'm almost afraid that when people start using it more often it can be abused, too. I think it would usually be used as a way to highlight most interesting, most intriguing, most important, or "most agreeable to voter's way of thinking." Most of the posts that people would vote on are, in my experience, not even intended to answer the original question, but just to share some additional information.

Insightful. Thank you both! @The Librarian and @JW Insider

I changed it to a "normal" forum .... let me know if it works better for you or not.