Add another “similar to” search before creating the topic
@Mittineague, I don’t think that it needs to more intrusive or limiting than it is now. I’m also wary about making adding a topic more difficult or slower.
Except that there is a natural hiatus which is the moment I hit the + Create Topic button. This is the moment when you know that the user has finished typing and this is the last chance to prevent a duplicate topic. That is a good time to display a refreshed “similar to” list of topics.
Identifying similar topics needs improvement
If I create a topic with a title similar to another topic then it should show. It doesn’t always.
I started a new topic “Do not merge topics” and while I was adding the comment text the similar topic list appeared and this topic “Don’t merge topics!” was not in the list. The only changes that I made in the title were to remove the contraction and the exclamation mark. I would have expected the search to find this current topic.
I’ve read the various continuing topics on this issue. They indicate the many difficulties of getting this working well:
- https://meta.discourse.org/t/your-topic-is-similar-to-filter-or-improvement/21662
- https://meta.discourse.org/t/improving-discovery-of-your-topic-is-similar-to-relevance-search/35220
- https://meta.discourse.org/t/avoid-notification-warning/48303
I don’t know how many Discourse sites would want this extra complexity to save on redundant topics. But it should be worth experimenting with.
Standardise the linking of similar topics should take some pressure off merging topics.
I’d like to see standardised links after the first post of each topic for a group of similar topics. They could look just like the sequence of continued topics where links after the first post point to the previous topic. It wouldn’t need the continuity links at the end of the topic because, unlike a continuing topic, the similar topics would not necessarily be closed.
Example of the continuation link on the closed topic:
The “similar to” links at the end of the first post in the continuing topic:
