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Comment by xemoka | Hacker News Reader

Just as bad is the Q&A section, for the life of me, I can't figure out why anyone would respond to a Q&A question if they do not know the answer, have not used the product, or just generally have no useful input to add. It's maddening to see the question you'd like to ask, only to find out some buffoon has provided non-answers-often to the point of burring correct (or at least, marginally valid) responses. This should be easier to correct...

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I think Amazon sends emails saying "someone has asked a question about this product," which can make it seem like someone asked YOU, even though they send the email to a lot of people.

This is correct. It's more of a UX problem by Amazon to non-tech users. Amazon phrases it like "martincmartin asked you, bluetidepro, blah blah blah." and a lot of times the non-tech user will literally reply back with "I'm not sure" or "I don't know" and then Amazon still records that response as an answer to the question. I wish their system was smart enough to recognize these replies like this that I often see and just ignore them.

It's not restricted to emails, I've seen mobile push notifications from the app (which were enabled b/c of shipping notifications) asking me to respond. Tapping the notification brought me directly to the question. I'm sure this is the main reason for the garbage answers, since it's as much work to answer as responding to a text.

Wow, gross. I hate push abuse. This is another reason why I have a strict policy that if an app works in a web browser, it should stay in a web browser. It only wants out of that web browser so it can get its greasy little fingers all over your stuff.

I especially hate services that intentionally break their mobile site and disallow forcing the desktop site to make you to install their greasy, slimy mobile app. Like Facebook and Reddit. So scummy.

You see the same problem with Google Guide questions these days -- in the last year or so the number of "I don't know" answers I see has risen tremendously. (Some respondents are even hostile, recently someone asked whether a nearby pub allowed pets and the answerer went on a tirade about animals in public spaces...)

Yes, they need two buttons in that email: "I know the answer" and "I don't know". That would sort this out pretty well.

The cost to develop that functionality is not feasable with curent silicon limitations.

I noticed that they ask the seller first, before making the question publicly available.

I got my first question yesterday and I really appreciated being able to give an in-depth answer before everyone else.

Yeah, I also puzzled why somebody would intentionally post "I don't know" for the world to see until I realized that was happening and I just have amazon's stupid emails turned off. What a spammy thing to bother their users with.

If you send that message to random people's inbox as if it's personally addressing them, you're going to get mostly noise in return. Really dumb. And they've seen how it works thus far yet they don't change it.

Like others mentioned, Amazon sends the question via email to verified buyers as "some user have a question and needs your help" and there is a button to answer their question (which opens the browser).

I saw lots of "I don't know" answers to questions, I guess Amazon realised this also as now they put "I don't know" button to emails.

Amazon sends out mails asking the question A not very tech savvy person could misunderstand that and post a q&a answer by answering the mail.

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