Is there a way to tag "Any Answers" so you find them again?

Is there a way to tag "Any Answers" so you find...

Didn't find your answer?

I love Accounting Web - it's very informative and useful,

When I read something - and think "Ohhh - I'll come back to that" it disappears for ever, sometimes no amount of searching by topic will resurrect it, - sometimes, I wonder if I ever read it - 

If I post an answer, it's stored in my account, if I get a thanks or post a question, it's stored in my account - I can find it

Accounting Web, is it possible to have a system where we can tag something we like, and keep a record in our own account to refer back to it - could we even give it our own label to remind ourselves why we tagged it - 

If it's already possible - send me a link - because that "Any Answer" has disappeared into the abyss of unsearchability.

Replies (17)

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By mrme89
12th Sep 2014 12:33

Short answer is no.

 

You could comment on the thread in the subject along the lines of “TAG RTI Penalty”. It will then show in your comments within your profile.

 

The search facility on Accounting Web is catastrophically bad. If I need to search anything, I use Google. For example, I would search “RTI penalty Accounting Web”. It seems to find relevant topics pretty well doing it this way.

 

You could also set up your own ‘library’ using excel. Set up a spreadsheet with two headings (Subject and Link). You could then enter the subject and copy the link into excel. You can then sort or find how you see fit.
 

Thanks (3)
By Dan Izzard
12th Sep 2014 12:45

Thanks for both your feedback :-)

The short answer is indeed no, but on the upside we are soon to launch a survey where we can really work out which features are missing and get a much better idea of how people use the site. Off the back of this we will get a really good idea of how we can develop the site in the near future (I can't giveaway much now, but we've signed off a sizeable chunk of time with the dev team to improve the site).

One way which I find is pretty accurate is to use the power of Google. 

You can specify a site that Google will search by using 'site:' so if you remember a certain topic or phrase this is a good way of finding something that may be buried in the archives.

An example which you could type in Google would be:

"RTI Penalty site:accountingweb.co.uk"

Hope that helps for now and we'll take a look at this in more detail for you.

Thanks (1)
John Stokdyk, AccountingWEB head of insight
By John Stokdyk
12th Sep 2014 12:49

Ouch! Hard, but fair

Sadly, mrme89, I know exactly where you're coming from. We're just as frustrated with the search mechanism here at AccountingWEB HQ as you are and have been lobbying for an upgrade for years.

AccountingWEB is part of Sift Media, which runs eight other professional communities like AccountingWEB, and the need to maintain a common platform means that simple development tasks take nine times as long.

The good news is that we are now, as Dan said, looking at improving the site and your suggestion is exactly the kind of info that we are looking to gather from our community to find out what you really want from the site.

Buttercup books, meanwhile, has come up with another useful suggestion for our development project - a space for the user to save favourite threads. Personalisation and customisation are also part of our upgrade plans, and this would fit squarely into that box.

mrme89's workaround is a clever one - if you paraphrase the post or make a relevant comment on the thread, you can access all of your previous posts by clicking the "buttercup books" link at the top of each AccountingWEB page [or your own user ID for other members]. You'll find all your previous comments, thanked comments and Any Answers questions listed on that page.

If that's still too much of a faff, you can use 3rd party tools such as Evernote or Diigo to capture useful pages on AccountingWEB for future reference. By the time we complete the platform overhaul, we hope you won't need to go elsewhere to do that.

Thanks (0)
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By monksview
12th Sep 2014 13:02

I'm sure there used to be a facility whereby  you could mark up favourites, but this disappeared a year or two back?  I agree, it is rather annoying that you can't do so now.

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Replying to Tax Dragon:
Euan's picture
By Euan MacLennan
12th Sep 2014 13:28

Favourites

monksview wrote:

I'm sure there used to be a facility whereby  you could mark up favourites, but this disappeared a year or two back?  I agree, it is rather annoying that you can't do so now.

There was indeed such a facility, but it disappeared the last time that Sift "upgraded" the website.  I have to wonder what will be lost this time.

Dan - you don't need to conduct a survey.  Even John recognises that the search facility is a disaster and he should be able to remember when we had the "favourites" facility.

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By ajmcorn
12th Sep 2014 13:12

tagging useful articles

Another obvious work around...

Copy & paste into a blank word document then add appropriate title. Drop into "useful articles folder" which can then be searched via windows explorer.

Also has advantage of being available 'off line'.

Drawback is that its a snapshot of comments at a particular moment in time.

but... also acts as aide memoire for if you want to return to the original article.

Thanks (0)
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By phoare
12th Sep 2014 13:15

Try using Evernote

As a suggestion...

Sign up for a free account with Evernote. With add-ins to your browser, you can then 'clip' entire web pages, or portions of any web page to them - and still be able to jump back to the web page at any later point in time. You can then apply tags to what you've clipped, it's searchable - and you can also add other docs, forward emails to Evernote etc.

Install Evernote on your own PC and it then syncs with their cloud storage so you can have a local copy as well if you don't want to rely on the cloud.

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By DMGbus
12th Sep 2014 13:49

Record webpage address OR user Aweb profile
Find a webpage that you'd like to go back toHighlight the webpage address in your browser address barRight click copyRight click paste the webpage address into (say) a word document - or an Excel spreadsheetName the word doc or Excel file "AWeb favorites"Want to find that article again? Open the word doc, highlight the text of the webpage address and paste into the webpage address box in your browserYes, it's a bit long winded but it does work

With the Excel version having easy to use columns this could aid searching by having columns such as "date" "web page address" "subject 1" "subject 2" etc.

Another solution is to click the "Receive updates when someone comments" message when you find a topic of interest, then you can go to your Aweb account in the future and click on "User notification settings" where you will find a list of Aweb questions / postings that you've subscribed to receive notifications of is listed.  I see that I currently have no less than 1,330 pages of these listed accumlated over the past 10 years or so!

 

 

Thanks (0)
John Stokdyk, AccountingWEB head of insight
By John Stokdyk
12th Sep 2014 13:53

Thanks for reminding me

Thanks @monksview and @Euan for reminding me of the old Library facility. I nearly mentioned it in my post, but I'm trying to break my normal habit of starting conversations, "Back on Aweb a long, long time ago..."

We did have the Library facility, and it did get dropped - because almost nobody used it. One of the great drains on site and software performance and useability is when you build in all sorts of features than no one can find or bothers about. Our philosophy last time was to pare a huge, highly complex site down to its bare essentials. The upgrade made a huge difference to the site's performance and has allowed us to grow significantly in the past three years without slowing down.

Staying on top of content proliferation and information management - as we're seeing here - is still quite a big challenge. It's good to know that there's demand for some personalised archving/better retrieval within the site, and as Dan suggested, we'll be keeping your suggestions in mind.

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By jndavs
12th Sep 2014 14:07

Another suggestion

Create an 'Aweb' category in your bookmarks folder (or equivalent in non Mozilla browsers) and bookmark the URL of the web page. Firefox allows you to add metadata (tags) to facilitate easier searching.

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By Chipette
12th Sep 2014 14:33

I use "receive updates when someone comments"

and it is then stored on my contents notifications.

 

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By Martin B
12th Sep 2014 15:14

Flagging

I put the title of the  post- in the subject line and make a comment - 'flagging'

This is then in my posting list under my username and can be referred to. Not ideal but works in a round about way.

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By Democratus
12th Sep 2014 15:22

Yes the missing facility...


There definitely was something where you added the article to your library (I think it was called) for future reference. Definitely useful.

Search could be improved also

Thanks button for the OP could be useful, though perhaps a button to state if you found the answer useful. Then answers could be ranked and the more useful ones rise to the top.

 

Edit - beaten to it GRRRR

 

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Replying to Duggimon:
By mrme89
12th Sep 2014 15:28

.

Democratus wrote:

 

 Then answers could be ranked and the more useful ones rise to the top.

 

Edit - beaten to it GRRRR

 

 

This just wouldn't work. For the threads that attract lots of comments, you wouldn't be able to keep track if the comments were sorted by thanks.

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By dnicholson
12th Sep 2014 15:40

Also OneNote
Microsoft's OneNote also has a facility similar to the Evernote method described above.

Thanks (0)
Jennifer Adams
By Jennifer Adams
12th Sep 2014 20:13

My Company Library still exists onsite if anyone's interested!

https://www.accountingweb.co.uk/article/uk-company-law-library/547609

A while ago John asked me to collate the articles I had written on corporate governance matters (directors duties, incorporation, shares, share buybacks, company filings etc etc) in one place and it is still onsite at the link above (see main page mid way down under 'Hot topics')

This month I will be updating the Company Law Library, looking through past articles and if they have anything to do with corporate governance placing them in the Library. I will also be updating articles that are already there should the law have changed since the articles were originally written.

Here's a list of the headings...

CONTENTS - click links to see listings of detailed guidesCompanies Act 2006 overviewFormationDifferent corporate structuresFiling mattersDirectors’ responsibilitiesCompany meetingsShareholdings and dividendsClosing a companyCompany law tag page - lastest updates and queries

Thanks (1)
keep calm and have a cuppa
By tbk
12th Sep 2014 23:29

email the link or page?

If I am interested in any articles, on Aweb or elsewhere, I use the 'file-send link by email' or 'send page by email' option to email it to myself. it automatically populates the email subject with the page topic. You can then have a rule set up in your email software to detect emails from yourself or some wording in the body that moves them to a reading folder when you receive them. simple but it works....

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