Feature request: "Ask Question" on /categories page
We quite often have users who never find the "Ask Question" button.
I guess they stay on the front page of the forum (the /categories view for us).
Would it be possible to have the "Ask Question" button in the place where the forum admin currently has the "Edit Categories" button - for any user who's not an admin?
Linked from:
- CChristian Scheuer @chrscheuer
This together with the ability to turn off Direct Messages for certain users is a high priority for us :)
I keep getting unsolicited direct messages from customers because they can't find the "Ask a question" button and it's bypassing our attempts to streamline our customer support.
In reply tochrscheuer⬆:KajMagnus @KajMagnus2020-04-14 07:33:36.414ZThis seems like a great idea to me. I've been thinking about making Talkyard optionally look more like a knowledge base — and knowledge bases typically have a question field, then, below there're the different sections / categories in the knowledge base.
It didn't occur to me that Talkyard's categories page, + a question field or "Ask Question" button, could be this knowledge base page.
Some time later, then, optionally, I'm thinking the "Ask Question" button could instead be "a big text field" + Search button, in the middle of the page, where one can just start typing?
But the first & quick and simpler thing is, like you wrote, to have an Ask Question button instead of the Edit button, for non-admins.
- CChristian Scheuer @chrscheuer
This seems like a great idea to me. I've been thinking about making Talkyard optionally look more like a knowledge base — and knowledge bases typically have a question field, then, below there're the different sections / categories in the knowledge base.
Yea this would be amazing.
I was gonna do this myself as an JS addon to the forum, but even better if it gets central support.
I would love to send you over some design examples at one point so we can discuss.- CChristian Scheuer @chrscheuer
IMO this would work very, very well if it was based off of a tagging system, where tags can have hierarchies - so taxonomy system you could say.
Then taxonomies could be displayed on the KB front page, and also be used for advanced search.- CChristian Scheuer @chrscheuer
So in other words you have tag hierarchies.
Tags can then be used for:
- Internal development
- Milestones
- Triage of bugs, support requests, severity
- Classification of feature areas
- Forum Q&A's
- Assigning subject area to questions - so in "How to" forum we could assign "Pro Tools" if it's PT related, "iZotope RX" if iZotope RX related, and both if related to both. Now people looking for integrations between the two apps can choose to search for a combination.
- Both Pro Tools tag and iZotope RX tag would have sub-tags that could be used to further fine-grain tagging. We probably have 1000-1500 threads related to Pro Tools. If creating a "documentation" navigation hierarchy will be as easy as dropping tags onto existing questions then we would go from having a forum to a knowledge base in no time! And we could always later "convert" forum questions into "Article type" pages that were then used as a replacement, if we wanted to guide users to more static pages. This is where the power of TY really shines if we got such a tagging system, because it would add structured-ness.
- Forum Knowledgebase
- Create a "Getting started" tag with sub tags, for example "getting started -> how to install SF", "getting started -> creating your first macro".
- These tag groups will be displayed on KB front page.
- The tags themselves can be assigned to pages (and perhaps even posts can be tagged, if sometimes you want to link people straight to a specific post).
KajMagnus @KajMagnus2020-04-16 04:56:12.424ZMaybe in a way, then, it's good that the refactoring of the tags system hasn't happened yet
— it'll be good to think about how the tags can "help" the knowledge base, before starting with that :- )And the other things you mention too. Your post above might actually be a fairly comprehensive list of requirements for the upcoming tagging system.
I'd want a way to sort tags by some kind of priority number, so when listing issues, one could sort them by priority, i.e. the order in which one has in mind to address them, which might be different from the severity. (E.g. doing a few quick Low severity issues, before starting with a 1 week Medium severity issue.)
- CChristian Scheuer @chrscheuer
Great :) I guess for each tag you could add an optional sorting number, which would solve this use case :)
- In reply tochrscheuer⬆:KajMagnus @KajMagnus2020-05-29 11:47:02.430Z
If creating a "documentation" navigation hierarchy will be as easy as dropping tags onto existing questions then we would go from having a forum to a knowledge base in no time!
A thought: In order to know which topics would be valuable as knowledge base articles, it'd be good with some analytics — so you know which topics people spend time reading
- CChristian Scheuer @chrscheuer
Yes, definitely. And also perhaps (hidden) up/down votes in the sense "Was this article helpful? Yes/No". The results don't have to be visible, but I've seen that kind of feedback option available on many documentation sites, as it helps the documentation authors understand where they need to clarify things.
- KajMagnus @KajMagnus2020-05-29 11:55:14.670Z
"Was this article helpful?" — That's a good idea, then, one could get feedback also from people who haven't signed up and logged in yet.
- CChristian Scheuer @chrscheuer
Yea, and ideally, clicking "No" would give them a one-line text field to say what they didn't like. The no would still get recorded if they fill it out or not, but it could help point the author in the right direction, if the current docs aren't sufficient.
- Internal development
- In reply tochrscheuer⬆:KajMagnus @KajMagnus2020-04-16 04:52:38.103Z
send you over some design examples
Yes please
- Progresswith doing this idea
- KajMagnus @KajMagnus2020-04-25 12:19:43.958Z
The "Ask Question" button will be included in the upcoming version.
- KajMagnus @KajMagnus2020-05-03 14:30:54.758Zreplies tochrscheuer⬆:
Now it's there, on SoundFlow's categories list page
About having a question field, where people can just start typing and hit Enter to search or post a new question
— we can create a separate topic about that