We’ve received a lot of helpful feedback since the release of Questionland 4Q11 only a week ago and it’s been very helpful – so let me start by saying thanks. We’ve made quite a few changes based on your feedback. Here they are:
1. Notifications/Following (Too Much Mail!)
We’ve made significant changes to the following and notification features:
- Automatic following. You will no longer be automatically following a question unless you asked it. If you want to follow a question, just click the follow button.
- You will receive comments (automatically) if people comment on your answer or on a thread you have commented on. You will not receive other comments even if you are following the question. You can control comment notifications on your profile if you’d prefer not to get them.
- You will no longer get duplicate emails based on following a person and following a question that person asked/answered.
So you will now get fewer notifications that are more relevant and you can fine tune them using the notification settings in your profile.
2. Personalized View
Different people want the filters on lists to default to different things. Some people want to see latest answers, others want to see favorite answers etc. You can now set the defaults to your personal preferences on the home page (we will be adding this to the profile later).
To set the default you want, just choose the filter on the list (e.g. Latest or Greatest for Answers) and the hit the yellow pin to the right
. You are done. Next time you come back it will look the way you want it to.
We did not reverse the question/answer lists on the home page as many of you suggested. We will continue to see how we can make the page even more personalized. In the meantime, we hope these other changes will help.
3. Use the Questionland “Logo” as a Home Button Too
You can now press “Questionland” in the picture and it will act the same as the “home” button.
4. Preview Bug
There was a bug when rich content (pictures, links, etc.) were used and then previewed before posting. That’s been fixed.
5. List of Followers Didn’t Show
On your profile we’d show how many people were following you, but when you clicked on the link to see who they were they didn’t show. That’s been fixed.
6. Site Appears “Scrambled”
Many people have experienced a scrambled looking site when they go to Questionland. This is because your local browser is caching (storing) aspects of the old site. Browsers do this to make sites load faster, but it causes problems when sites undergo a significant change. You can solve this problem fairly easily or with a little more effort, depending on the browser and how aggressively it has cached the site:
Easiest: Hit the reload button and it will probably fix itself. The reload button is the circular arrow somewhere on the browser toolbar.
Next Easiest: Hold down the SHIFT (caps) key and click the reload button (both at once). This tells the browser to clear the cache (esp. Firefox).
Harder: Go to the preferences/settings of your browser and find the section where the cache is stored and clear it. This might be within the content, history or privacy sections of the preferences. e.g. Firefox is Preferences > Privacy > Clear Recent History (link) > Cache (check the box) and OK. Chrome is Preferences > Under The Hood > Clear Browsing Data > Cache. If you use Internet Explorer… you are probably already an expert at fixing things that don’t work.
Other Things We Are Working On
1. Expanding/Scrolling
In many cases you are not taken directly to a link location. For example, when trying to see a comment sometimes the comments area is not expanded and you are not scrolled down to the exact location of the comment. This can be confusing and a pain in the neck. We’re looking at it.
2. Personalization
As I mentioned above, we will continue to explore ways to make the site more personalized for the way different people like to use the site.
Feedback
At the risk of overburdening/boring you, I’ll put up a question on the site to get feedback about the updates.
Thanks for all the suggestions. I hope you like the changes.



