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 “like” 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 “canned responses” 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 can’t vote for posts. This means that the top answer(s) won’t appear right below the question in contrast to the OSM help site.
Another difference is that the style of this site doesn’t 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 isn’t 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.
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 don’t have to “like” an answer (or a question) to approve it. Smileys don’t convey much meaning IMHO…
Indeed. We could attempt to replicate OSM help’s behavior as closely as possible, though, at least for the “Help and support” category: Sorting by votes, to replace help.osm.org
(Looks like you already found that thread, but I’m 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) “thread-like” (ie. with indentation).
I feel like it would solve a lot of problems we have here.