Experiment: Collaborative content gardening hub for meta

[Andrew_Rowe]

@ToddZ

I’m inclined to mark this myself because it’s old, rather than poke the OP as Nate did with a more recent one. Thoughts?

If the reply is ‘technically’ the correct answer to the original post, then I think it would be ok for a moderator to mark a post as the solution

especially if:

• the original post asks a very specific question
• extra points if the question is in the title
• it is an older post (maybe create a period where a topic is consider ‘old’, say 6 months)
• if there has been no activity in the topic (same thing, maybe 3 months)
• the mod is quite certain the answer is correct

Does being marked as a solution somehow make it easier to search for the correct answer? Does the search or AI bot give more weight to topics marked as solution?

[Moin]

@Andrew_Rowe

Does being marked as a solution somehow make it easier to search for the correct answer?

I think that depends on the prioritize_solved_topics_in_search setting. For me, it’s already helpful that you can see in the search results that the topic is solved. You can also filter the search for solved topics.

[Andrew_Rowe]

@Moin

You can also filter the search for solved topics.

that was my next question and good to know

Seems like the concept of ‘content gardening’ is focusing on making the forum a more easily searchable for solutions

Should solved topics take more priority in the search results? Maybe have a banner or obvious way of stating ‘this topic has a marked solution?

[Moin]

@Andrew_Rowe

this topic has a marked solution

I don’t think I’d prefer a larger banner. It needs space while not adding more information than the green checkbox.

Does it make sense to separate this discussion from the gardening requests?

[Andrew_Rowe]

@Moin

Does it make sense to separate this discussion from the gardening requests?

if you care to continue this discussion as to not clutter the general content gardening discussion.

Do all support related categories (here on Meta) employ the ‘mark as solution’ option?

Edit to add:

but I did not intend to imply that

@Andrew_Rowe

Seems like the concept of ‘content gardening’ is focusing on making the forum a more easily searchable for solutions

was to say this was off topic. In fact the opposite

I feel like the ‘mark as solution’ option may be quite helpful in the process of ‘content gardening’

[ToddZ]

@Andrew_Rowe

Do all support related categories (here on Meta) employ the ‘mark as solution’ option?

That’s used in a number of areas where multiple possible solutions might be suggested:

@JammyDodger

For Solved, there are quite a few categories where it’s active rather than just the generic Support category. Pretty much any category where the majority of topics are going to be questions that can get a solution. #support, #installation, #dev, #data-reporting, #sso …

[Moin]

I think Creating form templates could be tagged with form-templates

[ToddZ]

re. mods marking solutions:

@Andrew_Rowe

• the original post asks a very specific question
• extra points if the question is in the title
• it is an older post (maybe create a period where a topic is consider ‘old’, say 6 months)
• if there has been no activity in the topic (same thing, maybe 3 months)
• the mod is quite certain the answer is correct

Good list!

JammyDodger used a shorter time window:

@JammyDodger

I would often … clean some outstanding ones up after a couple of weeks or so (once they were deemed to be ‘abandoned’)

Would be nice to start with a rule of thumb somewhere between 2 weeks and 6 months

[Andrew_Rowe]

@ToddZ

a rule of thumb somewhere between 2 weeks and 6 months

yeah, I was just throwing a number out there

2 weeks seems closer to fitting

also if op responds and says it fixed their problem but didn’t mark it as the solution, that is a slam dunk

[mcwumbly (Dave McClure)]

@Moin

I don’t have permission to create topics in these categories and because of that edit_all_topics permissions don’t help me.

@NateDhaliwal

@mcwumbly

Are you able to add those tags yourself

TL3s cannot edit titles/tags/category for Documentation, where it is read-only.

I’ve implemented a potential workaround that we can try out and see how it goes.

• granted create privileges to trust level 3 users
• turned on “require approval for new topics”
• added the following topic template

<!-- Please do not create topics in this category if you are not part of the team. -->
<!-- Trust level 3 users have create privileges to allow them to edit titles and tags -->

I think that should allow TL3 users to fix up titles and tags in those documentation categories without introducing too much confusion about who can or should create topics in those categories.

Let’s see how it goes.

(I did this for each Documentation subcategory except for Documentation > Developer Guides which is managed via a sync from a git repository)

[darkpixlz (Pyx)]

@Andrew_Rowe

also if op responds and says it fixed their problem but didn’t mark it as the solution, that is a slam dunk

I’ve been thinking of this a little lately because I’ve observed a lot of cases when an OP says something like “Thanks, this solved my issue” but doesn’t mark as solved. Yesterday I stepped in and marked as solution, but if we’re waiting a couple of weeks to do this does it apply?

I’m not sure how people are missing the big green button that says “solved” but if it’s something we need to do in order to keep the site tidy I think it should be a valid course of action even if it was recently

[mcwumbly (Dave McClure)]

Something to consider doing would be to:

1. mark the solution
2. drop a comment saying you did so

Alternatively, we just added this feature recently: Notify OP and answerer if staff accepts an answer

Perhaps we could/should try turning that on?

[mcwumbly (Dave McClure)]

@Moin

@Andrew_Rowe

Does being marked as a solution somehow make it easier to search for the correct answer?

I think that depends on the prioritize_solved_topics_in_search setting.

@Andrew_Rowe

Should solved topics take more priority in the search results?

For what it’s worth, this has been enabled here for some time:

[darkpixlz (Pyx)]

That option isn’t a bad idea in my opinion, the only other viable option that I’ve seen around here historically is marking as solved and just locking the topic, but I’m not one to instantly want to lock a topic the second it’s served its purpose in case there is a follow-up question/problem. Letting the user know in a lock message seems a lot better to me than a full reply but I think we should avoid arbitrarily locking topics if possible (especially support topics)

Letting the OP know seems like the right option but I also feel like there’s a case for just having mods/staff mark as solution and letting the topic auto-close? I remember seeing a feature suggestion somewhere for being able to suggest solutions but that isn’t a today thing.. enabling that may be better in the meantime

[mcwumbly (Dave McClure)]

@darkpixlz

Letting the OP know seems like the right option but I also feel like there’s a case for just having mods/staff mark as solution and letting the topic auto-close?

Yeah, this is already configured as well:

That’s pretty generous (30 days?).

So if we turn the other option on, I think “mark solution” is sufficient:

1. Mark solution
2. OP is notified
3. (They have 30 days to respond and clarify “nope, not solved”)
4. Topic auto-closes

And if 30 days feels like too much, we could lower it…

[NateDhaliwal]

I’ve added the tag to that topic.