Topics like announcements about new feature / plugin / theme face this problem.
Usually the first post in an announcement topic has all the features explained (as per the status during announcement).
Later features / functionalities are updated based on the feedback and usually new posts are created in the topic to update everyone.
Many times, the first post is not updated to reflect these latest changes.
While it is possible to get notifications (for those who are tracking the topic) for these new posts , it is going to be hard for anyone who is seeing the topic for the first time to understand the new changes happened later.
Example
(I love the work done by the pavilion team and thankful for it. I am just using it to illustrate the problem)
The first post (Nov-2017) talked about the overview of the plugin with links to appropriate places. A new feature (API integration) was added later (Oct-2019). For a new user to this topic, it is quite possible to miss this new post and therefore an important new feature of this plugin. Even if you summarize this topic, this post appears as 23rd among 33 posts.
Suggested Solution
Make it easy for the topic owners to link any new posts to the first post.
While topic owner can update the first post at any time to add an update, it is an additional step to complete and therefore usually missed. If there is a button which can automatically link a post to the original post, it could potentially solve the problem stated above. This can work for multiple posts in a topic (for any new updates) unlike a answer/solved plugin for single post.
Essentially noise has to be deleted from topics over time, and any relevant info edited into the first post. Not the kind of thing that can really be automated.
However, this sentiment is covered in @sam’s proposal to make all replies auto-delete themselves after {x} time in certain topics.
I was hoping to replicate the solved plugin functionality where the first post gets a link to the actual solved answer post (chosen manually by user). In this case, it will be multiple links to posts chosen by the topic owner.
These post links can be used as a signal (along with indicators like likes) even if sam’s proposal is implemented to remove noisy posts automatically.
Where this issue really bites is in plugin topics, like the one you’ve linked, which are non-typical, in that the first post is a sort of instructional wiki, rather than being the start of a discussion.
I agree with @codinghorror, that it’s really one of curation, rather than one of functionality. I’m not sure having a button like what you’ve described would really solve the issue as the links in the first post would be in the context of other outdated information.
I appreciate the nudge to update the custom wizard plugin topic though, which I’ve been meaning to do!
