Changed Recommendations

A couple of times I have seen the recommendation request title and even body change after I have already made a recommendation. These changes make it look like I have made a bad recommendation, where in fact my recommendation was relevant before the change.

I can understand changing the recommendation for clarity and indexing, however I think the change needs to be broader if a recommendation has already been made. When the title and body changes to match the moderators recommendation, it makes the original poster, in this case me, look like I am making bad recommendations.

Dave

Yes, there are some recommendation requests that were fixed to improve the English of original poster, however those changes are not meant to change the nature of the request.

Can you give an example of a recommendation request that was fixed but that made any of your recommendations look bad?

I thought they would be obvious, so now I am second guessing whether I read the initial request correctly, however I still think I am on solid ground here.

The latest one is here...

phpclasses.org/recommend/380-Integr ...

The initial request was a broad request to integrate paypal into their website. The title was odd, but the summary and body where fairly clear.

After the change, it became a specific request for the paypal express checkout feature in both the title and body. My comments on the package I recommended talks about how there are plenty of options to choose from, which made sense when it was a broad request but doesn't now that it is specifically for express checkout.

Understand, that I am not freaking out here, as I mentioned, I understand the need to clarify sometimes. However, if broad requests becomes specific then I will just need to wait a few days before making a recommendation in case the request changes.

Dave

Oh, I see your point. Actually the user entered that it was for express checkout in the request keywords (that came from a search he did before getting to the recommendations page) but did not specify anything in the request body. He just mentioned he wanted to integrate it in his own site.

This is a challenging situation. On one hand some users, often those that are not native English writers, are not able to express their needs clearly. On the other hand, advisers like yourself take the challenge of guessing what the users are really looking for.

The clarification section was meant to let advisers ask for more details but many users get stuck and do not provide anything.

Sometimes I need to fix the request, so it does not look too bad with the limitations of the requesters English skills. But just like in this case it can change what advisers understand what the user request really was.

I am not sure what could be done to make this better. Do you have any suggestion?

As you may have noticed, I have no faith anymore that I will get a response from clarification requests.

I didn't notice the keywords, so I think the only solution is to do what I did with other, earlier change that affected my recommendation. I added a reply to my recommendation to point out the change in the request, and then just hope that 20 members don't decide to down vote me :)

Dave

I see, that is not ideal either.

I was thinking that maybe an adviser could withdraw or replace his recommendation at least for a given period of time. What do you think?

That would have saved me from some deserved down votes when I was at fault for misreading the request. I did try to change those, but it was too late. :)

You will have to consider the effect when they are the only recommendation and are allowed to withdraw.

I think in my situation, I would withdraw and up vote the more correct package since my current adviser philosophy is that it is better to recommend something than just leave a recommendation hanging for months.

Dave

The idea is not to make the recommender feel bad due to a misunderstanding.

I have added to my to do list the feature to allow removing or changing a recommendation at least for a period of time. I just cannot promise when I will have time to implement this.