Duplicate/Should Have Searched flags

ساهم ميزة
1

For forums with feature request / bug report categories, it’s not uncommon for duplicate bug reports / feature requests to be filed. For all forums, there’s the issue of people not liking to use the search feature and immediately jump to posting whatever is on their mind. The forum I’m part does have feature requests / bug reports, and while we don’t use Discourse (yet), both the existing forum software and Discourse do not provide good ways for dealing with both duplicates and people who neglect to use the search feature (yes I’m aware Discourse suggests similar posts when you’re drafting your own, but more on that later).

With duplicate reports/requests, I’ve noticed that even when someone points out that it’s a duplicate feature request, no matter how nice or mean they word it, and regardless if it’s the first reply on the topic or not, discussion still continues. Forum members will prefer to discuss features / bugs on the most recent topic, probably because one or all of the following:

  • it feels wrong for them to resurrect a topic that hasn’t been posted on in so long
  • they want to respond to someone’s suggestion/outlook but it’s only on the new topic and not the old one
  • they didn’t see the “this is a duplicate topic” post and continue leaving feedback on the topic

It’s really difficult to manually moderate that kind of stuff and merge topics so often – I really like the way Discourse headed with the automatic flagging system that took the workload off the moderators’ backs, and duplicate post flagging could do some good.

As for posting topics before using the search feature, it becomes a problem because:

  • People make a goof every now and then and forget to use the search feature, but similar to how even though birthdays are rare, only taking 0.27% (a single day) of the entire year, so many people exist on Earth that there are countless birthdays per day, because of the volume of members on the forum it’s not uncommon to see posts that could have been answered by searching because there are such a large amount of people tripping up occasionally.

  • Since there isn’t a “should have searched” flag to slowly eat away at their trust level and boot them out if and when they continue to ignore the search feature because they don’t feel like using it, manual moderation is the only way to get rid of these people. “Oh you should have used the search” isn’t exactly “this guy should be removed” material, so this results in these people never being removed and they continue to poison the forum. This manual moderation babysitting is also the exact opposite direction of the one Discourse is going in the event that moderators actively work to oust these types of people.

  • Just linking to topics where the question has already been answered does not motivate people to use the search feature in the future (this comes from personal experience – they don’t realize they’re inconveniencing others when they could have just searched it themselves), telling them “please use the search feature” (either on their topic or in a PM) comes off as rude, and since you’re calling them out they get super defensive about it or they just don’t care that they’re inconveniencing other people and in either case telling them doesn’t work.

Looking back at “Your topic is similar to”,

forum members may forget that it exists after a certain period of time, ignore it and not care about it, or close it because it gets in the way. It also may not provide perfect matches to similar topics and posters would assume there was no similar topic even though they would have found it through the search feature. Additionally, we’ve had problems with topics where they start repeating themselves ever couple of pages – people are lazy and don’t want to read the whole topic before posting so they end up asking the same questions over and over and over. We can’t start booting people left and right for this because so many people do it, and just telling them not to doesn’t stop them from doing that in the future. I’d also like to point out that StackExchange has the “your topic is similar to” notification as well, but the community can still flag topics as duplicates – it’s because the “your topic is similar to”, while helpful in solving the problem, does not solve the problem completely.

Getting a PM that says your post/topic has been hidden because it was flagged by the community and knowing that if you continue that behavior you will eventually get booted from the community provides excellent motivation to improve behavior, and I’m sure the Discourse team knows that very well. It would be amazing if there were flags for duplicate posts / should have used the search feature or read the topic in general so duplicate posts and people who are too quick to post manageable, and preventing moderators from having to babysit the forum with manual moderation every time this occurs. When flagged for being a duplicate topic, it should automatically either be merged with the original topic or closed and linked to the original topic (merging it directly might result in weird results). When flagged for not using the search feature / reading the topic, the post should be hidden automatically like if it were spam and the poster notified in their inbox that it had already been answered (with links people provided to the post(s) that had answered their question).

إعجابَين (2)
Mark a topic as duplicate, close and or merge
2

This is a lot of words to process. What is your proposal? Can you post a visual mockup of how it would work?

إعجاب واحد (1)
3

My TLDR, he is asking for a new flag type.

Honestly I do not think its such a big deal to reply with a comment and flag for moderation.

إعجاب واحد (1)
4

Thank you for the quick responses! You are correct in your summarization of the original post (actually two flag types though). The forum software I use currently requires manual moderation of duplicate threads / posts. I am speaking through personal experience that manual moderation does not work.

Asking things that have already been answered on the same thread seems innocent enough that forum moderators won’t delete them (they’d have to micromanage the forum to do that even if they opted to, so they wouldn’t want to bother with it), and then a couple of pages later it’s grown out of control and further pages are almost exact duplicates of previous pages. This is why I ask for an automatic way to deal with people who don’t read threads before posting – threads that repeat themselves are not useful for feedback, and when you get to the point where people are saying the same thing repeatedly the forum staff bail out since it’s not worth the effort to sift through duplicate posts (again, coming from personal experience). After the thread is abandoned by the forum staff, further feedback by forum members is for naught. Flags were created so the moderators wouldn’t have to get involved in every little problem – this seems like it fits into exactly what flags were created for.

As for the duplicates, ask yourself why they are a problem. It separates discussion on the same topic into multiple threads, making it difficult and more time consuming for developers to gather feedback. In the case of the forum I’m a part of, the developers and staff members are the same, so with reporting duplicates and having the staff take care of it, does that really help? Instead of spending time sifting through duplicate threads, they’re now manually having to micromanage the forums. Manual reports sadly do not solve the problem. This is why I am requesting a flag to mark posts as duplicates.

tl;dr duplicate flag and “use search / read thread” (for lack of a better name) flags

5

Just for reference, I’m assuming the “Something Else” under flagging does not automatically hide posts and that moderators have to manually jump in if a post is flagged for something else. Is this a correct assumption? As the forum I used hasn’t switched to Discourse yet, all I have to go on is this topic on flags, and codinghorror mentions:

Since “something else” can be an infinite number of reasons, I thought filing a flag under “something else” did not apply to this since three different flags could be for completely different things. If 3 “something else” flags automatically hides posts, then there is no need for two new flags – users can still help keep the community clean with something else without having to wait for moderators to manually clean up posts.

6

The modal currently has 5 options
3 Flags in the proper sense

  • Off-topic
  • Inappropriate
  • Spam

and 2 Messages

  • to the poster
  • to Moderators (the “something else”)

The Messages do not “Flag” nor count as Flags against the member

The “something else” can be a lot of things, including
The post needs MarkDown formatting
The member didn’t Edit a prior post but made another, identical but with additional text
The replies have become redundant and the topic should probably be closed
The member had poor luck in a category and instead of asking for the topic to be moved started another cross-post in a different category

I may be a “softie” but IMHO though they do cause more work for Moderators they are for the most part not “offenses” unless and until a member intentionally continues the practice.

I’d say that for our Moderators the most common issue is posts needing MarkDown formatting. (well, that and asking “please provide more information”)

إعجابَين (2)
7

Yes. (Just in case that wasn’t clear from @Mittineague’s explanation of the options.)

It’s a useful option, because it lets the member flagging explain what they think is wrong, but leaves it to mods to deal with. So duplicate topics, “should be merged with …”, “should be split”, “should be moved to…” are all suitable here.

8

على https://community.signalusers.org/، لدينا حوالي 15 موضوعًا مكررًا يوميًا. سيكون من المفيد جدًا إذا أمكن لمستخدمي المنتدى الإشارة إلى أن موضوعًا أو منشورًا ما مكررًا مع توفير رابط للموضوع الذي يُعتبر تكرارًا له. الإجراء القياسي عندما يوافق المشرف هو إخفاء الموضوع وقفله، وإضافة منشور يقول: “هذا الموضوع مكرر لـ [رابط إلى موضوع آخر في المنتدى] وقد تم إغلاقه لذلك.” }

9

هذا ممكن بالفعل، أليس كذلك؟

  • اختر زر “وضع علامة”
  • اختر نوع العلامة “شيء آخر”
  • اكتب “مكرر لـ”
  • الصق الرابط
إعجاب واحد (1)
10

هذا، وكذلك، إذا كان هذا سببًا افتراضيًا للإشارة، فسيجبر المجتمعات التي ترغب في استخدام هذا البرنامج على عدم السماح بالمواضيع المكررة كدليل إرشادي. في حين أن المواضيع المكررة عادةً ما تكون غير محبوبة في معظم الأماكن، فقد لا يكون ذلك هو الحال بالنسبة لجزء صغير جدًا منها. ربما سأؤيد السماح للمشرفين بإضافة أسباب مخصصة للإشارة مسبقًا، على الرغم من أنني متأكد من وجود طلبات بذلك بالفعل. عادةً ما يعمل خيار «شيء آخر» بشكل جيد.

إعجابَين (2)
11

ما ينقصني ليس فقط العلم، بل أكثر من ذلك الإجراءات التي يمكن للمدراء اتخاذها للتعامل مع المواضيع المكررة. أود وجود خيار للموافقة على العلم، يتبعه:

  1. إخفاء الموضوع
  2. قفل الموضوع
  3. نشر رسالة من النظام: “هذا الموضوع مكرر لـ [url].”

وهذا بهدف منع اقتراح الموضوع عند البحث عن مواضيع،
وإيقاف الناس من مواصلة النقاش في هذا الموضوع المكرر،
وعرض منشور للجميع الذين لا يزالون يزورون هذا الموضوع يوضح سبب قفله وإخفائه، وأين يقع الموضوع الأصلي.

حتى اليوم، نقوم بهذه الخطوات يدويًا في كل موضوع مكرر، لكن هذا يستهلك وقتًا طويلاً.

ما أبحث عنه قد لا يكون العلم، بل هو الإجراء “إغلاق كمكرر لـ [url]”.

12

نعم، ولكن بما أنني مؤسس Stack Overflow، يمكنني أن أخبرك أن ما تطلبه أصعب بكثير، بل أصعب بشكل هائل مما تتخيل.

ما يريده الناس حقًا هو زر سحري يقوم بـ “اكتشاف تلقائي للتكرار وإصلاحه للمستخدم”، وهذا أمر .. صعب التنفيذ بشكل مذهل. فبشكل عام، لن تتمكن أبدًا من هزيمة جيش لا نهائي من الأشخاص الذين يكتبون عشوائيًا وغير راغبين أو غير قادرين على بذل الجهد للبحث أولًا قبل النشر.. كل ما يمكنك فعله حقًا هو جعل النشر أكثر صعوبة عليهم، وبالتالي إجبارهم على القيام بالبحث الذي كان ينبغي عليهم القيام به من البداية.

إعجاب واحد (1)
13

لكنك الآن تقول إنني أطلب بالفعل ميزة آلية من هذا النوع. لا يتعين عليّ التعامل مع ملايين الزوار كما يفعل Stack Overflow. نحن نتعامل مع ما أعتقد أنه حوالي 30 موضوعًا جديدًا يوميًا، وبعضها مكرر. هناك مجال للمراجعة البشرية وحتى نقاش بسيط. ما أطلبه ليس سوى تجنب تكرار فعل الضغط على “موافق” ثم “إخفاء”، ثم البحث عن الموضوع مرة أخرى والضغط على “قفل”، ثم كتابة منشور يقول: “هذا تكرار لـ [انسخ والصق رابط URL]”.

إذا كانت العلامة تسمى “تكرار لـ” وتطلب من صاحب العلامة تقديم رابط URL، فهذا يعني أن الرابط متاح للمُعدِّل جاهزًا، وعليه فقط الموافقة أو الرفض. إذا وافق، فإن الإجراء القياسي يمكن أن يكون قفل الموضوع وإخفاؤه ونشر رد آلي يقول: “هذا تكرار لـ [الرابط]”، دون أن يحتاج المُعدِّل إلى مغادرة قائمة المراجعة.

إنه ليس نظامًا آليًا بالكامل، بل هو مجرد زيادة طفيفة في الأتمتة عما لدينا حاليًا.

14

تجربتي مع المستخدمين هي أنهم لن يفعلوا أي شيء تطلبه منهم، ولن يقرأوا أي نص تضعه على الشاشة.

مع وضع هذا القيد في الاعتبار، يمكن تحسين أدوات المشرف، لأنني أعتقد أن المشرفين (عادةً) سيفعلون ما تطلبه منهم، وسيقرأون ما هو موجود على الشاشة.. لذا ربما نركز على ذلك.

إعجاب واحد (1)
15

عظيم. بالمناسبة، الفكرة وراء وجود علم منفصل هي فقط لتشجيع المستخدم الذي يرفع العلم على توفير رابط الموضوع الأصلي. في المنتدى الذي أديره، عادةً ما يقوم المستخدمون برفع علم على شيء آخر مع وصف يقول “مكرر لـ [الرابط]”. وأود أن أستخرج هذا الرابط وأن يقوم النظام بنشر بيان “رسمي” يؤكد أن هذا الموضوع مكرر بالفعل لهذا الرابط. ولتحقيق ذلك، اقترحت وجود علم منفصل باسم “مكرر لـ” بحيث يكون المدخل هو الرابط المطلوب فقط.

في عرض المشرف، سيكون من المفيد رؤية عنوان وتاريخ الموضوع المشار إليه (المفترض أنه الأصلي).

وسوف يكون رائعًا أيضًا إمكانية تصفية قائمة المراجعة حسب نوع العلم “مكرر”.

16

بالتأكيد، إذا كان بإمكانك تقديم نموذج أولي تقريبي يركز على ما يمكننا فعله لتحسين أدوات المشرف هنا، فسيكون ذلك مفيدًا.

إعجاب واحد (1)