Timeline for answer to When will the opinion-based question experiment finish? by Hoid
Current License: CC BY-SA 4.0
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13 events
| when toggle format | what | by | license | comment | |
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| Nov 20, 2025 at 11:38 | comment | added | ChrisMM | @Hoid, you mention the opt-out should be working with a few exceptions? What are the situations where it does actually work? Because I am still seeing them every where I was before, despite being opted out. | |
| Nov 19, 2025 at 19:22 | vote | accept | John Bollinger | ||
| Nov 18, 2025 at 15:07 | comment | added | 0stone0 | @Hoid Yep, saw them on the js tag. So I'll assume thats one last bug to fix ;) Thanks! | |
| Nov 18, 2025 at 14:49 | comment | added | Hoid StaffMod | @0stone0 Where did you see one? Was it via search with a tag? That is the only spot they are leaking through to my knowledge. | |
| Nov 18, 2025 at 11:31 | comment | added | 0stone0 | @Hoid The opt-out improvements, are those shared anywhere? Still seeing those opinion based questions in my feeds. | |
| Nov 18, 2025 at 8:01 | comment | added | NoDataDumpNoContribution | "...this will not be turned off any time soon..." I think it should not be called experiment then. Feature is the better matching term. | |
| Nov 17, 2025 at 22:53 | comment | added | user400654 | @JohnBollinger my understanding is that will still be possible, through filtering. but you'll never be able to hide them from outside web searches unless they stopped existing (and i doubt you'll be able to get stacks "ai assist" to omit them from it's results. | |
| Nov 17, 2025 at 22:41 | comment | added | John Bollinger | As for opt out, I think you misunderstand. The decision process for whether to participate in A/B experiments and similar limited-duration tests is different, and may have a different outcome, than the decision process and outcome for exposure to bleeding edge features, however you want to label that. And for opinion-based questions in particular, I should like to be free of them even after the feature is no longer considered experimental. | |
| Nov 17, 2025 at 22:36 | comment | added | John Bollinger | With respect to support, I think the issue here is messaging. The announcement of opinion-based questions gave (me) the impression that channels for support for the experiment were limited in both time and location. That would have been tolerable for a limited duration experiment, but of course it's not for a permanent feature. One of the outcomes of this Q&A is that I take SO to be saying that the opinion-based question feature is in fact being supported via the same channels as any other SO feature, | |
| Nov 17, 2025 at 22:23 | comment | added | Hoid StaffMod | As for support, we have not stopped fixing bugs, and the opt-out, with a few exceptions, should now be working correctly. | |
| Nov 17, 2025 at 22:22 | comment | added | Hoid StaffMod | @JohnBollinger I definitely wouldn't call this a feature preview. In fact, there is somewhat of a chance that our next update will change the question type labeling as currently constructed. | |
| Nov 17, 2025 at 22:13 | comment | added | John Bollinger | Thank you. I am disappointed, but not surprised. This inspires me to observe that SO apparently has two very different kinds of things that they presently call "experiments". "We want to expose a feature preview" is not at all the same as "we want to test a hypothesis" or "we want to compare alternatives". I would much appreciate these being differentiated in the future -- at least in prose, but preferably also in mechanisms for opt out. And of course, any feature needs to have ongoing support, not the "we're only monitoring for a couple of weeks" purported for this experiment. | |
| Nov 17, 2025 at 21:57 | history | answered | HoidStaffMod | CC BY-SA 4.0 |