Question Answer Plugin

[exetico (Tobias)]

That’s fair.

I’ll share our plugin list here, so other people are able to see, if there’s a match. Else, i need to create a local instance and see, if i can find our which plugins are conflicting. (I’ve reproduced the bug in both Chrome and Firefox).

# > Docker Manager https://meta.discourse.org/t/discourse-docker-manager-plugin/12655/19
          - git clone https://github.com/discourse/docker_manager.git
          - git clone https://github.com/discourse/discourse-solved.git
          - git clone https://github.com/discourse/discourse-data-explorer.git
          - git clone https://github.com/discourse/discourse-cakeday.git
          - git clone https://github.com/discourse/discourse-staff-notes.git
          - git clone https://github.com/jgujgu/discourse-guest-gate.git
          - git clone https://github.com/discourse/discourse-backup-uploads-to-s3.git
# > Trading buttons: Buy, Sell, Exchange https://meta.discourse.org/t/trading-buttons-buy-sell-exchange/71308
          - git clone https://github.com/jannolii/discourse-topic-trade-buttons.git
# > Topic List Previews https://meta.discourse.org/t/topic-list-previews/101646
          - git clone https://github.com/angusmcleod/discourse-topic-previews.git
# > Hamburger Theme Selector https://meta.discourse.org/t/hamburger-theme-selector/61210/25
          - git clone https://github.com/SamSaffron/discourse-hamburger-theme-selector.git
# > Retort - a reaction-style plugin for Discourse https://meta.discourse.org/t/retort-a-reaction-style-plugin-for-discourse/35903
          - git clone https://github.com/gdpelican/retort
# > Affiliate https://meta.discourse.org/t/discourse-affiliate-plugin/101937
          - git clone https://github.com/discourse/discourse-affiliate
# > Assign https://meta.discourse.org/t/discourse-assign/58044
          - git clone https://github.com/discourse/discourse-assign
# > Checklist Plugin https://meta.discourse.org/t/checklist-plugin-interactive-checkboxes-made-simple/36362
          - git clone https://github.com/discourse/discourse-checklist
# > Discourse Patreon Integration https://meta.discourse.org/t/discourse-patreon-integration/44366
          - git clone https://github.com/discourse/discourse-patreon
# > Legal Tools Plugin https://meta.discourse.org/t/legal-tools-plugin/87966
          - git clone https://github.com/angusmcleod/discourse-legal-tools
# > Who's Online https://meta.discourse.org/t/whos-online-plugin-discourse-whos-online/52345
          - git clone https://github.com/discourse/discourse-whos-online
# > Topic Rating plugin https://meta.discourse.org/t/topic-ratings-plugin/39578
          - git clone https://github.com/paviliondev/discourse-ratings
# > Discourse Encrypt (for Private Messages) https://meta.discourse.org/t/discourse-encrypt-for-private-messages/107918
          - git clone https://github.com/discourse/discourse-encrypt
# > Question Answer Plugin https://meta.discourse.org/t/question-answer-plugin/56032
          - git clone https://github.com/paviliondev/discourse-question-answer
# > Discourse Voting https://meta.discourse.org/t/discourse-voting/40121
          - git clone https://github.com/discourse/discourse-voting

[sunjam (james.network)]

Hi, thanks for this plugin. I’m wondering what tags other have been using to call Q and A layout besides question. Using question right now, but sure other tags would make more sense depending upon the use case.

• Is there any way to combine this plugin with Solved plugin?

I’d like to be able to list answers as Solutions within the Solved plugin since that plugin is indexed by Knowledge Explorer plugin and adds a check mark to a topic’s title.

[Fantom31]

Hi. How can I translate this plugin into Russian?

[exetico (Tobias)]

Hi

Our page is returning error 502, if I try to post an answer.

I’ve updated our instance with no luck. Still throwing error 502, after a few seconds…

[Curtis_Kephart]

@exetico

Our page is returning error 502, if I try to post an answer.

Filed an issue here Error 502 with new Answers · Issue #34 · paviliondev/discourse-question-answer · GitHub

Nearly certain the issue arouse with one of the Aug 2 updates. One idea for a resolution would be to step back the version.

[angus (Angus McLeod)]

@exetico @Curtis_Kephart After some digging it turns out that the issue you both reported will not occur if you run Discourse on any commit after (and including) this one

https://github.com/discourse/discourse/commit/92b7fe4c62094275c5dd09b1f3dac5c5cbcad1c0

If you’re running Discourse on an older commit you’ll get this error

Unexpected error while indexing post for search : PG::NotNullViolation: ERROR: null value in column “private_message” violates not-null constraint

The plugin (unchanged) works as expected on the latest version of Discourse.

[exetico (Tobias)]

Huh, wierd. But wierd.

I’ll rebuild our site again

[Faizan_Zahid]

Amazing plugin indeed, i would love if we can somehow add UX like Quora and SO style, with sticky votes numbers when scrolling. Please continue supporting and updating this plugin, I love it.

I am going to use this plugin in conjunction with discourse official solved and feature voting plugin.

Please continue upgrading this plugin as discourse updates to avoid any compatibility issues.

[Faizan_Zahid]

I have few suggestions to improve this plugin UX.

It would be very nice

1. if you guys remove the extra white empty padding/space it shows below the upvote arrow toward the left side of post, it just distorts the entire post look and feel, the post/look feel should be exactly as its in default discourse layout but just the sticky upvote/downvote arrows should show. right now the post content pushes on right side below the upvote arrow and it causes annoying blank white space on left side of the post

2. Also, there is a bug that when I’m reading answers , and if an answer has an image in the post, the image cuts towards the right side of the page. Again this bug is related to the unnecessary left padding on post content which I mentioned in my 1st point.

3. The upvote buttons should be sticky and stay fixed and visisble if I’m reading a long post and as I continue scroll down, I should be able to still see the upvote button and count as I scrolldown through the post. it is very annoying when reading a long answer post I forget hhow.many upvotes this answer had… to see that I have scroll again to top of the post. to either see the count or upvote it.

4. there should be an option to make 1 answer as best answer by author or staff/admin, that way we dont need to use discourse solved plugin and this will become independent full QnA plugin.

5. I think this plugin is missing Google structuredata and schema.org markup to render the question and answers parse correctly in Google search snippets like it shows for Quora and Stackoverflow. this will definitely boost SEO scores of.the topics. which r QnA

I think you guys can get inspiration from Quora or stackoverflow current layout and learn how effectively readability and UX they provide even for long answers.

@angus @mbcahyono

I hope someone can follow my suggestions in the next plugin update. I promise u , users will love these improvements.

[angus (Angus McLeod)]

Thanks for the suggestions!

@Faizan_Zahid

remove the extra white empty padding/space it shows below the upvote arrow

This was originally added as a number of people asked for it, so I think you might be outvoted on that one.

@Faizan_Zahid

if an answer has an image in the post, the image cuts towards the right side of the page

Could you send a screenshot of this?

@Faizan_Zahid

upvote buttons should be sticky and stay fixed and visisble if I’m reading a long post and as I continue scroll down

Interesting idea, what do you think @mbcahyono?

@Faizan_Zahid

there should be an option to make 1 answer as best answer by author or staff/admin, that way we dont need to use discourse solved plugin and this will become independent full QnA plugin.

As this functionality already exists in another plugin, I’m not sure what the issue is here? What would be the advantage of duplicating that functionality? As you say, you can use both plugins at once.

@Faizan_Zahid

I think this plugin is missing Google structuredata and schema.org markup

Yes, that would be good to add. I’ll leave that up to @mbcahyono.

[Faizan_Zahid]

1. images cutting screenshots on mobile

2. tables stars cutting and mis aligning due to extra padding on left side

3. The text is pushed to right side too much due to unnecessary left side padding
   
   

Please see this topic on your mobile and try skim through the answers you will understand my point

What is life insurance?

Also, compare our plugin UI with Quora and Stackoverflow UI on mobile, u will see we can do lot of improvements

Look SO also has padding but its Answers look 100% easy to read and the images, code, or tables none of it is cutting, anything rich except text cuts on right side of screen.

Also, look SO has implemented schema.org correctly and all its answers and it’s best answer shows in Google serp, it looks nice

but in discourse QnA plugin the QuestionAnswer schema markup is missing.

Now look how well and easy to read layout is of Quora on mobile,

Also, the best answer thing will allow to have schema markup show inGoogle serps. I think this plugin should be a complete QnA solution so if we use this, we dont need the solved plugin as this QnA plugin has morefeatures then solved. but Its upto u guys.

Yes, the sticky fixed upvote button and count as i read scroll through long answers will be helpful.

Also, the left side extra padding makes me hard to read user answers. The full width default discourse posts r much easier to read, you can have the count and upvote button on top.left of the topic like the heart icon is at bottom left of the answer. That way the upvote arrow will not take extra empty space and distort the post readability in mobile view and will not push content and cut content on right side.

The full schema.org markup for Google structuredata will really boost SEO visibility in search engines for pages using this plugin. I’d love to have that. Like you guys did on rating plugin. Any other testing needed, I’m happy to help.

[angus (Angus McLeod)]

So, in short, you’re saying:

1. There needs to be a tweak of the responsive (i.e. mobile) UX to slightly decrease the padding.

2. Add Schema markup.

I think those are reasonable requests. We’ll take a look at implementing them when we can.

[Faizan_Zahid]

yes exactly, thanks for summing my thoughts up and if possible to show the sticky fixed upvote arrow and vote count as I read through the long answers and scroll down, they will be good.

Also, i think the upvote arrow should be bigger solid, bolded and more visible, something like Stackoverflow or like that:

Basically the arrows should be bigger and easier to spot, and same goes for the count, the answer count should be a bit big visible number so we can easily see it, how much voted an answer is. Especially for desktop and mobile screens. right now arrow and count is too small and hard to read. You can also make them have rounded circles if it looks cute.

Something like,

Many Thanks for accepting my suggestions!

[mbcahyono (Muhlis Cahyono)]

[1.4.0] - 2020-10-05

Added

• German translation (thanks to DerFetzer)
• Ability to move comment to answers (post admin actions → Move to answers)

Changed

• Fix compatibility issues with Discourse latest tests-passed branch

[dfriestedt]

I recently installed this plugin and replies to threads started to appear out of order in all parts of the site. A few others seem to have the same issue. The moderators moved the post into support but maybe the issue needs to live here? Not sure so, I’m linking to that support post from here. If this is unnecessary, please let me know so I can delete this post.

Replies in thread showing out of order

I don’t understand it either, I couldn’t find any reason for it when looking through the code. Something seems to modify the sort order, but I can’t see what. I thought that they had gone out of order when I ran an upgrade, as the messages that were out of order were generally much older, and had previously appeared in an expected place. When I fan the SQL above all seemed well, but then the other week a couple of brand new posts have also now appeared out of order. I think the posts it affects…

[dfriestedt]

Moving this discussion over here from support

I’m running 2.7.0.beta1 and when I installed the Q&A plugin replies to posts started to appear in random order. Others started to exhibit the same issues identified in this thread.

Replies in thread showing out of order

I don’t understand it either, I couldn’t find any reason for it when looking through the code. Something seems to modify the sort order, but I can’t see what. I thought that they had gone out of order when I ran an upgrade, as the messages that were out of order were generally much older, and had previously appeared in an expected place. When I fan the SQL above all seemed well, but then the other week a couple of brand new posts have also now appeared out of order. I think the posts it affects…

@AJDurant came up with this query (below) to fix the order issue, but it did not solve the problem. The plugin still seems to post replies to posts in the wrong order. I uninstalled the plugin and ran:

rake posts:reorder_posts[1896]

but it did not reorder the previous posts.

I’m afraid to run this query without further investigation by someone qualified to evaluate the fix. Any thoughts on how to fix this?

 SELECT
    id,
    ROW_NUMBER() OVER (
      PARTITION BY
        topic_id
      ORDER BY
        created_at,
        post_number
    ) AS new_post_number
  FROM
    posts
  /*where*/
)
UPDATE
  posts AS p
SET
  sort_order = o.new_post_number
FROM
  ordered_posts AS o
WHERE
  p.id = o.id AND
  p.sort_order <> o.new_post_number

[sunjam (james.network)]

Hi all, just wanted to mention I ran into this problem on current TestsPass and removed the Question Answer plugin to resolve it.

Job exception: Couldn't find Category with 'id'=61

Here is the error log, which is blowing up. Any suggestions appreciated. 2.6.0.beta6 activerecord-6.0.3.3/lib/active_record/core.rb:177:in `find' /var/www/discourse/plugins/discourse-question-answer/jobs/update_post_order.rb:6:in `execute' /var/www/discourse/app/jobs/base.rb:232:in `block (2 levels) in perform' rails_multisite-2.5.0/lib/rails_multisite/connection_management.rb:76:in `with_connection' /var/www/discourse/app/jobs/base.rb:221:in `block in perform' /var/www/discourse/app/jobs/base…

[angus (Angus McLeod)]

Hey guys, @mbcahyono will respond in more detail soon, but in the meantime, can we clarify a few things.

@sunjam Did you see that issue after deleting the category? Also, did you just notice that issue in the logs or did it affect your site in any way?

@dfriestedt @AJDurant Please check if you have the plugin enabled in the category where the posts are appearing in a different order. The plugin will automatically order posts according to the QA order in categories where it is enabled (that is the intended behaviour). If you disable it in a category it will reorder the posts according to the normal post order.

For example, I just toggled the “Make all topics in this category QnA.” setting back and forth in the question and answer category on try.thepavilion.io and the posts re-ordered as expected (and no non-qa category topics affected). No custom queries involved.

When enabled

When disabled

If that’s not working for you, could also give us some more detail on

• How long you’ve been using the plugin for (i.e. did this just happen recently?)
• What other 3rd party plugins have you been using now or in the past
• What custom sort queries you’ve been using?
• Does your site use tags? If so does this only happen in topics with a tag?
• Is the site setting qa enabled enabled?

If you just want to fix it

If you just want to fix the issue, regardless of whether this plugin has caused it or not, you don’t need to run a custom query, rather remove this and any other plugins that might be changing your sort order, then in your server run the following

./launcher enter app
rake posts:reorder_posts

That task will set the order of all posts on your site according to the normal order (when they were created). If that does not work for you, you have some other issue that is unrelated to this plugin. I can help you diagnose that further, but will need some more information.

@dfriestedt if you’re trying to pass a topic id in there (the task takes a topic id as an argument if you want to target a specific topic), try running it like this instead:

rake "posts:reorder_posts[1234]"

[mbcahyono (Muhlis Cahyono)]

@sunjam

Hi all, just wanted to mention I ran into this problem on current TestsPass and removed the Question Answer plugin to resolve it.

Here is the error log, which is blowing up. Any suggestions appreciated. 2.6.0.beta6 activerecord-6.0.3.3/lib/active_record/core.rb:177:in find' /var/www/discourse/plugins/discourse-question-answer/jobs/update_post_order.rb:6:in execute’ /var/www/discourse/app/jobs/base.rb:232:in block (2 levels) in perform' rails_multisite-2.5.0/lib/rails_multisite/connection_management.rb:76:in with_connection’ /var/www/discourse/app/jobs/base.rb:221:in `block in perform’ /var/www/discourse/app/jobs/base…

Sorry for the issue. I’ve created a PR for this, waiting to be merged:

FIX: UpdatePostOrder - fail-safe for non-existent category

@angus

When enabled

When disabled

@dfriestedt Is this what you experienced? If not, I will look deeper into this and possibly fix the issue today.

[angus (Angus McLeod)]

@mbcahyono

@sunjam

Hi all, just wanted to mention I ran into this problem on current TestsPass and removed the Question Answer plugin to resolve it.

Here is the error log, which is blowing up…

Sorry for the issue. I’ve created a PR for this, waiting to be merged:

github.com/paviliondev/discourse-question-answer

I’ve merged the PR