How to endorse today? Did someone move the cheese?

[rproffitt]

I looked all over and can't seem to find where to endorse any longer. I see others have on the front page but it's eluding me.

[Dani]

Same as always ...

• Go into a member's profile and click the endorsements tab
• In the sidebar, click "Endorse Members" (this link used to be in the top navigation menu, which of course has been moved to the sidebar).

[rproffitt]

OK I got there but it's in some mine field display? Bunch of rectangles with member names and so on but not just that member whose profile I was on.

I haven't seen this area for some time but when I looked around there were no breadcrumbs to show me the way.

Marking as solved.

[Dani]

Sorry, I'm confused by your confusion. Can you try to explain to me why you're confused so I can see if there's some way I can improve the user experience?

[rproffitt]

Thanks Dani.

Currently you have to explore nooks and crannies to find features. If this was a thing that powers the machine in the back to connect folk. That is if your backend is looking for experts in spelunking then I'd think the endorsements would be how to find the match.

So again with my mind wipe approach, if I look at some user's profile, how to endorse isn't really evident and when you do find it, you get pages of folk to endorse and have to hunt for the person you wanted to endorse.

So, to summarize:

1. You have to know what screen to look at to get to the Endorse screen.
2. Then you have search for the person and topic you want to endorse.

I bet endorsements are rarer than ever.

[Dani]

The page that you're looking at is not designed for you to hunt for the person your want to endorse.

If you know who you want to endorse, you can do so directly from within their profile, by clicking the Endorsements tab.

The page in the screenshot is when you don't know who you want to endorse.

[rproffitt]

Then I get their current endorsements with a possible way to endorse same categories as others have endorsed.

I don't see how to add a category or skill.

So I'm guessing here that I can't pick the category? That is, "the machine" does that? I'm guessing because I went to a new member with no endorsements and it said (short version) "has contributed enough for us to gauge topics of interest. However, no one has endorsed any skills yet. Why don't you be the first?"

So the machinne sets what skills I think the member has and not me?

[Dani]

Yes, it’s always been the case that you can only endorse members for forums in which they have made at least one post and received at least one upvote.

That page with your personalized endorsement recommendations lists member/forum combinations in which you have personally engaged with that member in that forum.

[rproffitt]

Ok so if I find someone has expertise in AI but the machine that picks the endorsement category doesn't think so, I can't endorse them.

Odd but at least now I know.

[Dani]

You can only endorse people for skills in one of our top-level forums (e.g. Software Dev, Web Dev, etc.) How would you know that someone is skilled in Web Development if they've never posted in any of our Web Dev forums? It's been like this since we created the endorsement system.

[rproffitt]

There's such a thing as AI Web tools. It's fine. This is how it is and it just seemed like it would work something like Linkedin.

[Dani]

I guess my confusion comes from the fact that the endorsement system hasn't changed since it was created. From a user experience perspective, I'm trying to figure out what it is about the current design that made you first notice its functionality now, all these years later.

[rproffitt]

Why I noticed: The home page changes has an oddity where the last endorsement sticks around without any way to dismess so I went off to check out how to endorse and didn't find it. Hence this post.

It's like the folk who lived in some town know where a street or location is and don't see why a map or road signs are needed.