In a forum like BOB being able to see the question and answer right next to each other would be great! Normally a user will edit thier original post and add the solution, but not always. Allowing admins and trusted users to edit a Q&A style posting seems useful to me.
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I tried adding a wiki style MOD to a forum I help with but the spam bots pretty much destroyed it’s usefulness. I didn’t have the time to “fix” the permissions issues on who could write to it.
*Any time you can make a relevant XKCD reference in public you score a point that applies to your permanent record.
That’s an excellent idea, and I’m in the middle of rewriting a number of items right now. (As an aside, I’m a huge fan of xkcd.com and I also though of the many times I’ve searched on Google only to find an unanswered topic…)
Here’s where I went with your concept.
Two new features.
First, a topic starter or a moderator can mark a topic as “solved” when it has reached that state. Note that there could be a number of discussions about this, because “solved” doesn’t always mean that a valid solution has been found. It could just be that someone noted that the question cannot be solved, and that closes / resolves the issue. We would have to think about how to promote this.
Second, a topic starter or moderator could mark a specific post as “best solution.” Google’s forums do this. A topic might span several pages, but the post that is marked as “most helpful” will be displayed immediately under the original posted question.
From a technical perspective neither of these would be difficult to implement. We might also want so provide the option to show “solved” topics ahead of “unsolved” topics in search results.
This has been suggested before, but I wasn’t writing code at the time.
I’ve got some time on my hands right now and want to keep in the swing of PHP coding.
I would translate your “solved” into a “closed” to differentiate problems that had actual solutoins from problmes that proved to difficult to handle. For instance if the solutoin to some reporting issue is to cerate a data-mart and one or more custom views then that might be beyond the scope of teh original asker. That problem can be clsoed with no solution.
Having a “solved” flag might also allow you to modify the search tool to include that status
-1 = closed with no solution
0 = open
1 = solved
A two column table with post ID and status. Perhaps a 3rd column with the post ID of the solution so that you coudl jump directly from the question (first post) to the selected answer) without having to read 4 or 5 pages of posts in between - just because it was listed as answered, but the answer is buried in the thread.
Your spin on it certainly aoids teh issue of spam bots being able to edit a wiki-style post or of creating the administratoive overhead to manage who can and cannot edit a wiki-style post.
There would be a new topic status field in the topics table to show whether a topic had been resolved or not, and to what level. There would be a new field on the posts table to show if the post was helpful or not. The post with the most “helpful” votes would show up as the “sticky” post near the top of the topic.
That’s how Google’s support forums work, and I figure it’s worth a try here.
I anticipate that the post voting would work much like our current topic “points” feature, where a post can be ignored or marked helpful. I don’t think we would have a way to “vote down” a specific post. Yes, there are posts that are less useful than others, but we want to focus on the positive.
The post status would be associated with the post itself, not the user. One of the things that we have tried to avoid here on BOB is any sort of “karma” or user-rating system, as that can be subject to abuse and lead to poor relationships and bad feelings. We want to keep the focus on the content, not the poster.
I am starting to code this now. Anyone with design suggestions / implementation ideas, please feel free to post them! If you want to see some of the changes that will be coming to BOB, feel free to click on over to our online “beta” site at http://www.forumtopics.com/bobbeta … but note that we use a completely different database on the beta site. That means you may need to register there if you have not done so before.
Would it be possible to flag the “best” answer part way through in a different colour/border as per MSDN forum so that it can be seen in the topic flow too?
Well, obviously it’s possible, but is it straightforward enough for you in phpbb?
Not sure how on/off topic I am, but I’m a huge fan of the Stack Overflow structure/workflow - and I believe most people for Q/A style boards are finding it work well too.
Of course, BOB isn’t necessarily QA etc, but some good ideas there…
(BOB member since 2003-08-19)
