I have a new discourse install and would like to modify the Wiki functionality. I’ve got a good grasp on creating wikis, having the first post automatically be a wiki, etc. What I’d love is to have the second post automatically be a wiki, and the first one not.
I don’t think the functionality exists, but maybe I can get half way there. Can I configure the software to automatically create a second post whenever a new user posts? Then, a moderator can step in an simply flick the Wiki switch for that second post?
Or is there a way that I can insert a post into the second slot of a topic and then make it a wiki?
This is an interesting issue that I have faced too. I am not sure about the idea of the “Second Post Wiki” being the solution however.
The issue I have, which I presume is the same for you, is where a user creates a New Topic with a long, interesting and varied post. The answer to this MIGHT be to create a wiki post, but the admin (or person suggesting this solution) isn’t always the first to reply.
It means that the original post either needs to be completely re-written to present the issue and store the ‘wiki’ information, or a whole new thread needs to be started. Without asking a member to do a lot of work, Admins are required to write the post as a reply, add the initial content, move this to a new thread and then re-assign the post to the original member (who may not understand how the admins have posted on their behalf).
Would it not be easier to re-organise some threads so that any post in a thread (particularly for wikis) could be made to “jump to top”. I realise that this messes with the clean post-in-order format, but it isn’t hugely different to showing the content of a reply or in response to post out of order.
“Jump to top” could also be useful in the case of new threads being started by moving an existing post into a new thread. Unfortunately some “off-topic” replies that need to be moved are sometimes worth keeping, but do not make sense as the first post of a new thread without context. It would be good to be able to write a brief “this is the issue” post that could then be made to appear at the top for new readers.
You might find that it would be helpful to create a category that makes it possible to have “accepted answers”, where posts in topics in this category can be selected as an answer to the original post. You can find it in use here in the support category.
The “Discourse Solved” plugin provides this kind of functionality, more information here:
And more discussion on this plugin in its dedicated category #plugin:solved.
thanks @DeanMarkTaylor but this is a bit of a different use-case, but I see (& like) your thinking
I know the ‘solved’ plugin, but had not tested whether it was possible to convert the specific ‘solved’ post into a wiki that could then be the reference response to any thread. Have you tried this yet?
Of course even this solution would require you to make all categories where you might add wikis have “accepted answers” and that would be OTT if the threads were almost always conversational rather than Q&A
One manual way to make this happen would be if we could “insert” posts, for lack of a better word. If I could simply have moderators insert/inject a second post, and then make it a wiki, I’d have the functionality I’m looking for.
Ideally, some type of bot would exist to do this automatically. Every time someone starts a topic, WikiBot autoposts the second post and populates it with something like “This is the Wiki Post. Anyone can edit this post with relevant information about the topic.”
Does the OP Wiki stay at the top of the page for longer topics? If so, that’s one reason to keep the first-post Wiki convention (lest users have to switch back to the first page of a topic to see a second-post Wiki.
So this feature was actually something I funded last year before I joined the Discourse team. I needed it for my previous job.
Unfortunately it’s not going to be as simple as making the first post a wiki, and you’ll need to implement it in a plugin, but here’s the code for the implementation of first-post wiki in case it helps. https://github.com/discourse/discourse/pull/4609/files
Thanks for sharing Joshua! For the time being, I’m having all OPs be Wikis and see how that works. If someone write a verbose OP that isn’t amenable to editing, I’m encouraging users to append “WIKI” to the OP and make the OP half OP and half Wiki. So far so good.
If worst comes to worst, I could sacrifice the second post on threads (move them elsewhere, or delete entirely if they don’t add), and make that post a Wiki.