Question

is it going to be possible to see the number of replies to a question? I think that would be useful to see from the browsing screen

Answer 1

Nice suggestion, we can perhaps decide whether or not to answer the question.

Answer 2

It's been there before. We opted to replace it with the medal count because we think that's usually a better measurement of whether a question's been answered.

What are your motivations for having it?

Answer 3

Maybe you could add both options?

Answer 4

Well, seeing the number of replies lets you quickly scan for the more popular topics. Sometimes, progressing beyond a question, answer, done, next style can be fun because it propagates discussion and more interaction.

But also, you can see the questions that need attention, or the questions that have a few replies but no medals. If you're looking to help those who got kind of buried, seeing the low reply count can be more useful than seeing the number of medals. Right now, three types of posts look the exact same from the dashboard - posts that have 1 medal and have a big, multiperson discussion (kind of like this), a simple 1 question 1 simple answer, and a question, followed by a mediocre answer that was medalled for effort but the poster still wanted more. Adding number of replies would differentiate these different situations.

Of course it's not a huge deal, but two measures (popularity AND usefulness/intelligence of response), would help more than one measure. Especially if these groups will expand to having, say 100 questions per day or more. It is sort of like on popular forums, they show number of replies, hits, and usually a rating of the thread or a thumbs up / thumbs down. The thumbs up / rating aspect is handled by medals, but so far, medals do not tell you enough about the nature of the post.

Adding sorting features would also be a plus - let's say we have a math professor on here with limited time. He wants to find the tough q's (he doesn't want to answer easy precalc questions, he thinks its better to leave that to you or me). If he can sort by replies, he can find the tough questions no one answered because no one knew, or the controversial popular questions that need an expert's input. If Math grows to say, 500k users in the next year, sorting will help a lot with these types of situations.