People coming here from the old OSM help site will be familiar with how that works - people ask a question, people can answer and comment on questions and answers, vote up questions and answers and accept one answer (in a similar way to StackOverflow).
Is this site similar, with questions, answera and comments in the same way?
It should be almost the same. Instead of votes you can âlikeâ the first message of the post and it will be shown on the top, you can mark topics as solved⊠etc
We have also implemented the âcanned responsesâ plugin where we can define predefined texts that are used recurrently to support users.
One of the main difference seems to be that there is no voting function similar to the OSM help site. Users can add emojis to posts but they canât vote for posts. This means that the top answer(s) wonât appear right below the question in contrast to the OSM help site.
Another difference is that the style of this site doesnât differentiate between answers and subsequent questions. At the OSM help site, there was typically just one question and multiple answers, similarly to how StackOverflow works. Here it isnât quite as clear if subsequent answers are allowed and how people should deal with them.
The reply marked as the solution will show next to the first message for reference and discourse lets you know that you are replying multiple times and recommends you to edit your original message to include all the information.
If a topic becomes too long, a button at the top to âSummarize this topicâ appears to allow you to just see top liked replies.
I guess marking a reply as a solution can only be done once? There could be multiple good answers to a single question. At OSM help and StackOverflow this can be made visible via voting up more than one answer.
Would it be possible to expand the available reactions ? Right now I find them quite emotional, I would prefer to 
, 
. I donât have to âlikeâ an answer (or a question) to approve it. Smileys donât convey much meaning IMHOâŠ
We can, but not sure if the summarize topic only takes in consideration likes 
and not other custom reactions.
⊠and when you do, a direct link to the answer is added below the first post.
The original topic author can do it, as when as moderators (maybe tunable to lower trusted users).
I did a quick test in the topic I started for tips, and when you set another post as âsolutionâ, it will replace the first.
Oh, and you canât delete your posts, it will only delete the content, sorry for the noise⊠
It fine, delete messages are autopurged by the system once a day I think.
Indeed. We could attempt to replicate OSM helpâs behavior as closely as possible, though, at least for the âHelp and supportâ category: Sorting by votes, to replace help.osm.org
(Looks like you already found that thread, but Iâm linking it for the rest of the readership. 
)
I really find that the answers / comments distinction is missing.
@nukeador Did you check the Question Answer Plugin ? It can be activated on a single category, sort posts by number of votes, and display answers of answers (probably comments) âthread-likeâ (ie. with indentation).
I feel like it would solve a lot of problems we have here.
Yes, we are talking about it here