Question

Why are there so few featured answers in Socratic Meta?

I've realized that in Socratic Meta, there are few featured answers and the only ones were written by the Socratic team. Why? Thanks.

Answer 1

I think the Subject Features are all about the How of answering and the Meta Features are all about the Socratic-wide What/How/When of Socratic itself.

Explanation:

I think the thing to consider is the subject matter.

In the various subjects, there are Featured Answer Reviewers who are looking to take answers that exemplify how a question should be answered. Featured answers are there, in part, to demonstrate to others what a good answer looks like - a fully explained, easy to understand, visually appealing, etc... answer.

This answer from Becca M. back in 2016 talks more about what they are and the selection process:

https://socratic.org/questions/what-are-featured-answers?source=search

So now to the Meta category. Meta is focused on passing along information about Socratic. And so the focus of the Meta featured answers (I'm assuming, since I don't feature them and have never had a discussion with anyone about this... and with that said I'm still going to answer this!) is to highlight those questions/answers that are most relevant to the community.

For instance, an answer about the steps to change a profile pic, while important to a certain group of people, probably isn't something that will be featured. But a change in policy, such as the changes made to the "newcomer" accounts, did warrant a feature as it marked a substantial change.

And so, in the end, I think the Subject Features are all about the How of answering and the Meta Features are all about the Socratic-wide What/How/When of Socratic itself.