Questions and Answers forum desperately needed. AKA mark as solved.

[dotnetic]

@Pete I saw on the Invision Community features page, that this forum should have support for questions & answers.

Quote: Question & Answer forums enable users to upvote the best questions and highlight the best reply to give better visibility.

There are so many post with solutions and also dead posts; marking answers as best or solved would help us all to find working solutions quickly. It also would help to keep the forum clean. 

Can the PW forums be upgraded or switched to this type of forum?

[horst]

39 minutes ago, jmartsch said:

Can the PW forums be upgraded or switched to this type of forum?

I don't think that the existing threads and posts all can be updated to Q & A forums. For example all the modules support threads contain multiple questions and therefore multiple answers. Starting to vote posts as best answers in those threads seems to make not much sense.

I'm not sure if it would be of great benefit for any existing forum. So, it will be useful when starting new subforums or boards.

[kongondo]

1 hour ago, jmartsch said:

Question & Answer forums enable users to upvote the best questions and highlight the best reply to give better visibility.

We've tried this previously. It didn't work great.

[dotnetic]

@kongondo What where the problems? Why didn't it work?

@horst is right, that it would not make sense for support threads. But many threads here are questions, which have an answer or more answers. For these threads, this feature would be useful.

Maybe the type of the subforum can be defined, if it is a forum with voting option, or not, but I don't know.

[adrian]

32 minutes ago, jmartsch said:

@kongondo What where the problems? Why didn't it work?

If my memory serves, it was because it ruined the flow of the thread. In a lot of cases we are not looking for a single "best answer", but rather it's a discussion of different approaches. 

That said, it obviously works pretty well on StackOverflow so I think it's something to consider again, but I don't know which boards should use it and which shouldn't and I think that was part of the problem with the attempted implementation at the time.

[dotnetic]

I know that there is not only ONE answer to a question. Maybe we have to not see this feature as a "This is the answer" but instead as an "This is an useful answer".

StackOverflow was my reference also, because you can upvote multiple answers. Users would know that upvoted answers would/could work.

I don't know much about the setup of the forum software, if you can enable the voting function for specific threads or not. Even if not, I do not see why support threads for example should not have an upvote option for useful answers, because of what I mentioned before.

I really think, that upvoting answers would help everybody, because most times you (me) are searching for a solution in the forum/thread for hours and find many different solutions, try them out after once, and maybe one solution works. But you have to scan through the whole thread to get the correct one. There also is much bulk/clutter between the question and the answer, which may be a little bit off-topic, asks new questions or something else.

 I think everybody of us, had this problem more than once, right?

[adrian]

9 minutes ago, jmartsch said:

 I think everybody of us, had this problem more than once, right?

I agree - I am not saying that something like it shouldn't be implemented - just wanted to expand on @kongondo's answer and explain what we found about it that didn't work well, and the way it was, it really wasn't helpful.

Maybe Ryan could reconsider it (or another similar approach) with the website revamp. 

[LostKobrakai]

I feel like the Q&A style works for Stack Overflow, because discussion and order of posting is usually less important in a plain "here's the answer" context. There's hardly interaction between various answers besides the "xxx answer is wrong" every now and then. There are the comments for answers, but those are no longer answers by themselves and often hardly useful. Most topics here on the other hand are way more discussion heavy and afaik it's not like you can choose what you need, but rather certain subforums would have only Q&A style topics, while others would have normal ones. 

The other thing about Stack Overflow is that usually each topic just has just a single question asked. We have lot's of topics, which don't fit that pattern at all. Instead of one topic with 7 solution stack overflow might just have 7 similar questions with each a single different solution. I mean we certainly have duplication as well, but the problem isn't solved for anyone here.

Iirc that's what made the Q&A forums a non-starter for me when testing those. By removing the order of messages they just didn't work for any kind of content, which refered to prev. posted stuff and was more contextual than just posting a potential solution in isolation.

[Pete]

We can change as many forums as you like to Q&A forums but yes there were issues with it.

Here's where someone hits the nail on the head when requesting the forum devs make it more like StackExchange: https://invisioncommunity.com/forums/topic/438364-qa-forum-types-add-comment-feature-please/

So SE lets you comment on the chosen answer. The forum software pulls the chosen answer out of the topic flow (from memory) and the upvoting/downvoting means you can't have a meaningful conversation in a Q&A topic.

I will have a look on a local copy to see if they've updated the functionality since we last looked used it but I honestly wouldn't count on it - they seem to spend more time on implementing cross-device support for emojis than improving some useful features ?(okay so that's a bit harsh, but they do seem to have a weird priority to their feature rollouts).

[dotnetic]

@Pete I created an online test version of the actual forum, and the user can choose if he wants to sort by date or by votes.  So the upvoted answer is not pulled out of context.

I did not try to mark one answer as correct yet, will do later. If you want, I can give you the admin account and URL so you can test for yourself.

There is an option in the admin to set the default sort order, but as I logged in as a normal user, it seemed to not respect this order and I had to choose "Sort by date" by myself. Maybe I did something wrong. Have to take a look at it.

 

[Pete]

Thanks, I just tried it out on my local dev copy and they've not improved on any of the flaws.

• You still can't set more than one answer as the best
• You can't reply to answers (like StackExchange does) so there can be no discussion as upvotes/downvotes break the flow
• You can't mix and match QA topics and normal topics in the same forum (less of an issue for a Getting Support forum)
• Any of the sorting (by date or votes) is per-member and not set in the admin

So the big problem is it breaks the discussion flow completely still.

I'll have a poke around and see if there are any third-party modules that might do what we want because this is still very incomplete in terms of features unfortunately.

[Pete]

I've found a module that looks like it lets you set a "best answer" on a normal discussion topic, so as not to break the discussion flow. I've asked the author if he thinks it's technically possible to change the code to mark more than one answer as "best" and am awaiting his answer.

But the question I have is this: how should the best answer/answers even be displayed? When we used Q&A forums in the past people didn't like the fact that the best answer appeared right at the top and removed it from its original position in the topic, so should it be that the best answer appears right below the first post (the question) as well as where it originally was in the thread, highlighted in both cases? I think that makes the most sense and if we can get it to work for multiple answers then that's even better.

I don't mind leaving it that only moderators and the original poster select the best answers - I think there are enough moderators here to flag the best content without implementing voting buttons. I'm not suggesting voting buttons are wrong, but there's no easy way to use them to automatically turn a reply into a best answer without a lot of custom code - and Iike I say the forum code is very confusing! ?

Anyway, no promises on any of this.

[Pete]

Ugh... spoke too soon. I thought the software stored the "best answer" in a separate table maybe but it's a field in the topic table, so you can only set one post ID per topic and not multiple ?

[Pete]

There might be a way to workaround this though. What I really don't want to do is write a plugin for the forum software since they change stuff so often and I've seen plugin module developers over there get ticked off as they don't get any warning when core functionality changes or is removed.

What I could potentially do is add a button that only the topic starter and moderators can see (easy enough logic in the templates - survives upgrades usually too which is something you have to worry about with this software) that then sends an AJAX request to a standalone script with a standalone table that stores "useful answer" information. It should then technically be possible to check that table using as little forum-related code as possible.

It needs some looking into, but the question I asked here needs some debate first I think:

16 minutes ago, Pete said:

...how should the best answer/answers even be displayed? When we used Q&A forums in the past people didn't like the fact that the best answer appeared right at the top and removed it from its original position in the topic, so should it be that the best answer appears right below the first post (the question) as well as where it originally was in the thread, highlighted in both cases? I think that makes the most sense and if we can get it to work for multiple answers then that's even better.

I don't mind leaving it that only moderators and the original poster select the best answers...

Again, still not making any promises. I find that when I make promises sometimes years go by without me actually doing what I said I'd do ? The rare exception being the Dev Directory actually happening ?

[szabesz]

48 minutes ago, Pete said:

some debate first

I love debates ? Jokes aside, some simple features would do I think:

• a button to prefix the topic's title with either [open], [solved], [closed], etc...
• a button to highlight replies which – a forum users thinks – SOLVE the issue, rather than being "the best". What is "best" anyway? Ask the guys at Apple, they'll tell you what best is... ?

[dotnetic]

I think a button to prefix the topic's title with either [open], [solved], [closed], etc... would be a good idea and helps this forum becoming much more cleaner/organized.

Right now I am writing in many posts which seem to be solved, that the OP should add a [solved] tag to his post, so it is easier for other users to see if they can find a solution there or if an answer is still needed.

The voting feature should just show the number of upvotes and indicate what answers most users think are useful. It is not neccessary to highlight these upvoted answers and it would cause visual distraction when reading through the comments/answers. 

The flow and sorting of the conversation should not be changed.

The OP should have a button to mark an answer as his "accepted answer" or "best answer". This answer should be highlighted or there should be a link directly beneath the initial question to this answer.

[dotnetic]

On 10/31/2018 at 9:16 PM, Pete said:

so should it be that the best answer appears right below the first post (the question) as well as where it originally was in the thread, highlighted in both cases?

Yes, that would be a good idea.

[szabesz]

10 hours ago, jmartsch said:

the best answer appears right below the first post

I still think there is no "best" answer, at least we will not have Ryan and a team of "pro devs" at our disposal to decide what is best... Even if someone knowledgeable in the given topic provides a really good answer, that might not be the best approach in all cases. In short: seeking for the best or even just using the word "best" is not a good idea.

I would list "solutions" instead, a list of replies under the opening post, linking to the available solutions.

Also note that it often happens that the person providing a working solution revisits it, and later on provides a better one ? 

BTW, not all topics are about solving issues, we have quick tips, tutorials, etc... and even in those cases, some "very useful" comments could be listed under the first post.

We also have module support topics. Those would also benefit from such a list whereby module authors could list further feature announcements and such.

[horst]

When reading all the facts and ideas in the posts above, I think it would be a good idea to let the forum software as is with only following additions:

1) add one or more voting or tagging categories to the posts

2) provide a link to every thread that opens a popup with a hirarchical list or lists for the voting / tagging categories (number of votes followed by the link to the post) (This link should be reachable from every thread page)

3) a button to prefix the topic's title with either [open], [solved], [closed], etc...

 

@Pete what do you think? Handling those votes with an own script and own db / db-table(s), reduces the changes to the forums software to only inject the new voting / tagging buttons with ajax action to the external script, plus injecting a link to popup the rendered hirarchical jump list. 

This way, the additional functionality would be save on changes of the forums software. 

Edited November 3, 2018 by horst
changed some typo

[dotnetic]

3 hours ago, szabesz said:

I still think there is no "best" answer

Thats the same what I said in multiple posts here. You don't have to see the words "best answer" anywhere. Some other Q&A style forums use the words "Accepted answer".

I would not like a list of "solutions" under the first post, because there could be many (think Support forums), and the "solutions" could be evolved through further discussion, that might be different to the initial question.

A button/link "Most useful or upvoted replies" would be difficult to implement, because it makes no sense in support forums, and even for Q&A style forums, the list could be long, and what would be displayed? The last x replies with the most votes?

Please note that I use the word reply instead of answer now. Because not all replies are answers.

I think that changing the wording and thinking of replies instead of answer/s helps a lot in this discussion.

3 hours ago, szabesz said:

Also note that it often happens that the person providing a working solution revisits it, and later on provides a better one

Yeah, thats why the poster can decide which is his preferred "accepted or most useful reply".

We have to disctint between two types of forums: Q&A and support forums.

In the support forums the OP would not mark a reply as "accepted reply" because it was no question he had asked.

I hope that makes sense because you have to think a little different to how the forum software works right now.
One problem is, that if you change all forums to Q&A style the flow of the conversation is ruined as @Pete stated. Maybe there could be a plugin for keeping the sort order chronologically, without pulling the most upvoted or accepted reply out of the flow?
The other problem is that in normal forums we can not up- or downvote replies.

[kongondo]

2 hours ago, horst said:

3) a button to prefix the topic's title with either [open], [solved], [closed], etc...

?