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I was writing an answer to a question just now, and I couldn't remember the formatting rule for bullets. I searched everywhere, but I couldn't find a link to the formatting reference. I only found it when I came here to ask this question, and saw that the quick formatting box is available when asking questions, but not while answering them. The same goes for the "preview" box below the editor.

To me, it makes sense to have both of these available on the question pages as well, so replies can have the same benefits as asking questions. I also think that the link to the formatting reference should be on the FAQ, since that's the first place I looked to try and find it, and I'm guessing that I wouldn't be alone in this.

What does everyone else think about this? What other ideas do you have for improving the usability of this site? I am well aware that Matt is limited on what he can do, but as usability experts, we should be able to come up with a list of things that could be taken to the StackOverflow guys as ways to improve the system.

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There's a bullet-list icon right in the toolbar of the answer field. – DA Jun 9 at 14:27
Just as a side note. You can post your ideas here: meta.stackoverflow.com Then the developers of this software will incorporate it into the new versions. – Raffael Luthiger Jun 9 at 15:54
@Raffael - several of these items are already part of the platform, they just aren't used here at all, for whatever reason. – Charles Boyung Jun 9 at 19:14
@DA - at the time this question was asked, there wasn't. The site was still using the plain textarea for answers. – Charles Boyung Jun 9 at 19:17

5 Answers

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Be nice to be able to access the full list of existing tags when filling in the Tags field from within the question creation page.

The field auto-completes when a user starts to type a tag that already exists but it'd be useful to be able to see what other tags are available in case the user has already entered all the ones they can think of and hasn't hit the maximum 5 yet.

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Although there a few small issues, StackExchange is probably the best of its kind.

The design is clean and a lot of thought has gone into the user experience. For instance, when you're asking a question, it lists similar questions. This is not only useful for the user, but helps site admins keep the site free of duplicates.

The most important aspect of the site, the social interaction, seems to be the most worked on. The reputation and badge system works extremely well as incentives for participation. Any doubters only have to look at the huge success of Stack Overflow to see how well it can work!

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An ability to flag questions as potential duplicates would be useful. For example, a lot of overlap is currently happening in the "How to make UX more visible in an organisation?" questions being asked.

People could flag messages - indicate which message they think its related to and a moderator can decide how to manage the question, close it, or merge it.

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I know this functionality is definitely available because Stack Overflow uses it quite effectively. I have said several times here that for the size of the community and number of total questions, there is WAY too much duplication. – Charles Boyung Jun 9 at 12:30
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How about migrating from StackOverflow to Zoho Discussions (http://discussions.zoho.com/)?

Recently jQuery migrated their forums from Google Groups to Zoho Discussions (check out http://forum.jquery.com/)

More details here...

http://jquery14.com/day-07/new-jquery-forum http://blogs.zoho.com/general/zoho-discussions-is-now-free-for-open-source-projects-jquery-deploys-discussions

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2 
 Moving to another platform isn't going to really do much other than provide a new set of problems. Some will overlap, but others will be completely different. Switching platforms is rarely, if ever, the answer when all you really need is to fix a few things. If you don't want to stick with StackExchange, what reasons do you have? – Charles Boyung Feb 6 at 15:57
I just made a suggestion to team UX Exchange if they are looking for any alternatives. Evaluating them will be good to find out the missing stuffs that's present in StackExchange. – JK Feb 21 at 14:21
While the success of StackOverflow is directly related to the massive amount of quality users and traffic, that was due to the indirect benefit of a truly unique community based interface for Q&A. – DA Jun 9 at 14:28
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Something I just thought of would be the ability to 'watch' a question, if you had say added it as a favourite or voted up the question. This way you receive an email digest of subsequent answers to the question. Currently, this option is only available to the person asking the question.

Usually I read a question and the related answers when it's a new question. But once I've added my answer or comment, I don't generally go back to the question and read any subsequent activity.

The result is that contributors to this question that live in other time zones are then off my radar.

In short, adding a way to watch questions would be useful to watch the thread develop.

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1 
 Click the big star icon next to the question. – DA Jun 9 at 14:30

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