Fellow GMATClub members,
I have often noticed that whenever a question is posted in the Math or Verbal section, it is picked up and answered by one of the moderators or experts like Bunuel.
I have been a active member of this wonderful portal for some time now and I find it a little concerning. Often looking at the answer posted by these experts makes me feel that the question is a very easy one. Since the answer is so easily available, I am unable to push myself to crack the answer myself.
However if the answer is not posted for a long time (say for 2 or 3 hours), I take it as a challenge and try to answer them. I feel if there is an option within this portal to hide the expert replies then it would force many to think harder and come up with solutions that are simpler and quicker.
The rule could be relaxed for the author of the post since I assume he/she would have spent enough time before posting the question in the forum.
I have a couple of options that could be tried out on a pilot basis.
Use the existing
tags to hide the entire post and only enable it when it is clicked on. This is a simpler, plain-vanilla solution and quite easy to follow without any change to the underlying system. The existing widgets could be reused to achieve this idea.
Hide the expert reply hidden and only open it up after some condition is met like. The condition on which the expert reply is opened could be when the answers posted by the members are random and no clear consensus is reached on the correct answer.
There could be separate widgets for the users to vote on the possible correct answer.
On a side note, I can help in setting up framework to get this idea working on a pilot basis, if required.