Visitor feedback
The thumbs under each answer, where the ratings show up, and how much weight to give them.
Under every answer in the widget are two small thumbs. A visitor can rate an answer as helpful or not helpful, change their mind, or take the rating back by clicking the same thumb again. A third button beside them copies the answer's text, as the visitor reads it.
What can be rated
Only real answers. The welcome message has no thumbs, since there is nothing to learn from rating it, and an answer that is still being written gets them once it is complete. After a page reload the earlier answers can still be rated.
Rating is anonymous. It needs no name or e-mail address and stores nothing about the visitor beyond the rating itself.
Where you see ratings
- Activity: a Helpful or Not helpful label under the answer in the conversation.
- Overview: the totals beside the quality bands, shown once at least one answer has been rated.
- API: the
feedbackfield of a message,1,-1or empty.
Ratings are not in the PDF export.
How to read them
Few visitors rate, and the ones who do are more often unhappy than happy. So read the thumbs as pointers, not as a score:
- A thumbs down on a confident answer is the most valuable signal you can get. The measurements said it was fine and a person said it was not. Open it. Usually the answer was correct but did not help: it was too long, it answered a slightly different question, or it sent the visitor somewhere they had already been.
- A thumbs down on a weak answer confirms what Overview already listed.
- A thumbs up tells you which answers to leave alone.
Do not steer on the ratio of up to down. With a few dozen ratings a month, it moves with a single grumpy visitor.