As a team manager using Discourse, I often describe tasks and subtasks in a medium-to-long post, and I put checkmarks where I suggest things should be completed and marked as done. It’s been very helpful for both me and the team, for both sides to track the progress and not miss/forget any small detail.
Now, the only way for me to make others check the checkboxes is to make my posts wiki. This is wrong conceptually: I do not want them to edit my posts; but I want them to be able to check the checkboxes.
So my suggestion is to add a setting to a topic (or an individual post, or a whole category, or a tag, etc) that would allow certain group(s) to check checkboxes within my posts, or within posts of anybody.
The only purpose of the checkbox is to check/uncheck it, so a little bit more flexibility over who can do that would be very helpful.
Checking those boxes is editing your post by definition. So you are actually asking limiting editing rights and one setting more: who and when can mark checks, and where.
And as usually when I can’t offer useful answer, quite often actually…, I’m asking a meta thing: which one is actual issue now: tuned ability to edit a wiki, or you can’t trust your team members are following your orders and guidelines?
Sorry but your questions are off-topic and frame the feature I proposed in a negative way.
Although this doesn’t sound like you are genuinely curious and are welcoming sane discussion around the issue, I can still elaborate a little bit for the readers.
First of all, this is nowhere being a question about trust. We don’t have any such issue, and I’m not asking for any help with establishing trust in the team, and am not interested in any discussion digression in that direction.
Secondly, I do know that checking a checkmark equals editing a post. This doesn’t automagically make my request invalid or useless.
So, to address your question (that I for some reason found a little bit insulting and questioning our internals rather than the technicalities of the proposed subject matter):
it is an extra step to make some post a wiki; and it is easy to forget too, which is happening quite often to me;
making all posts with checkboxes wikies is conceptually incorrect; but that’s what I have been doing in the absence of a better way to do it
my ask is for the workflow that we found out to be very natural, enjoyable, useful, and having minimum noise; while sharing the workflow itself, I’m proposing some improvements to checkboxes that we empirically found out could be useful
it is not about trust and/or micromanagement; checkboxes are about having a tool that makes everyone plan while discussing, and then execute while being more confident that nothing is missed/lost/forgotten. Had not I put those checkboxes in places, the team mates would have to go through the conversation on themselves, and simply create those checkboxes somewhere on the side, linking back to the forum posts; and also distract everyone in some other channel by posting messages like “done this and done that”.
And that’s why you have an option: wiki. But that is not an option for you for some reason. As you said, is not a trust issue.
But I’m sure you can get that functionality using plugin. Well, perhaps even a component can do that job. A case more suitable for marketplace perhaps?
I’m just wonderin how should this work as part of Discouse, because this is a feature request. Should everyone has ability to mark everything everywhere? On will we give that ability per groups? And if team-level group can mark checks can they do it on every topic os will we have another group restriction there too? And all the time we have wiki option there too.
Well, my response was totally on-topic, because there must be some reasoning and actual reasons why you just can’t use tools that are already there. Those reasons tells what you really need and that isn’t automatically same thing what you think you need.
And having different opinion is not same as beeing negative. You just upset because I didn’t like your proposal.
I know about that option and I am using it, that’s what I literally said in the original post:
Now, the only way for me to make others check the checkboxes is to make my posts wiki.
If it had worked well for our team, I would have not created this proposal. And in the next post I elaborated even further: making a post a wiki every single time as we are in the discussion is 1) an extra step; and 2) easily forgotten. So I’m here with a feature proposal that would make it easier for the scenartio described. What’s the point in re-stating the fact that a wiki is an option? Yes, making posts a wiki is an option, I can confirm that. Now let’s discuss the propsal please.
Your negativity and being offtopic is implying that we have a trust problem in our team.
I need (actually, I wish for and I propose): for the post author to make it possible for some group of people to check the checkboxes in his posts without needing to make them wiki.
We discovered a very efficient workflow, i.e. to checkbox actionable items as we discuss an issue in a topic. Those checkboxes are spread across multiple posts in a thread. It is then very easy for the executor to mark points as completed, and for the rest to catch up when they want to, without extra noise. I’m now attempting to find/suggest a way to make checkboxes accomodate for this workflow better.
Not sure how viable for you this is, but you could have the members of your team be TL4? They can edit most posts (PMs are weird), so they could check the check boxes without it needing to be a wiki.
I worry about introducing this level of fidelity into the permission system. It gets very complicated. (all check boxes on all posts vs some check boxes on some posts)
That said, I guess there is some precedence here when it comes to polls and policies. But unlike polls/policies the checklist plugin does not have a bounding block where you can define permissions.