Choosing the community to post a suggestion to

[pauamma]

Title:
Choosing the community to post a suggestion to

Area:
suggestions

Summary:
Allow posting autogenerated suggestions (including the poll) to another community than dw_suggestions, when the suggestion topic would fit that community better.

Description:
Some suggestions of a specialized nature (eg, technical support tools) may be better discussed in a community dedicated to that purpose than in a general user-facing suggestions community, because similar or related discussions take place in that community already, and because people interested in that subject may not track or read dw_suggestions consistently. (The volume can get a bit overwhelming at times.) However, bypassing the suggestions generator and writing a freeform entry about the suggestion loses some useful features such as the autogenerated poll. Having a way to send the suggestion to one of a limited list of other communities would give he user the best of both worlds.

Edit 20090815, clarification: The kind of suggestions I have in mind are for specialized tools or features (eg, diagnostic tools for tech support, or a better FAQ editor), which would likely be discussed in a specialized comm anyway, suggestions generator or not. So this wouldn't shift suggestions away from dw_suggestions, it would make the suggestions generator available to discussions that would be likely in another comm to begin with.

Edit 20090816, spec tweak: Overall response is that dw_suggestions should keep its dedicated generator page. Beyond that, having a separate page offering a clone of the suggestions generator targeting specialized communities may work. One way this may be implemented is the posting template idea someone suggested.

Drawbacks:
- Extra effort required to maintain the community list and access control (not everyone may be allowed to post suggestions to all communities in the list).
- Unwanted, abusive, or offtopic entries, to those communities that don't have moderated posing.
- Handling suggestions sent to the wrong community, since there's no way to move an entry between moderation queues or between communities.

Poll #1006 Choosing the community to post a suggestion to

Open to: Registered Users, detailed results viewable to: All, participants: 29

View Respondents

This suggestion:

View Answers

Should be implemented as-is.
1 (3.4%)

Should be implemented with changes.
5 (17.2%)

Shouldn't be implemented.
16 (55.2%)

(I have no opinion)
5 (17.2%)

(Other: please comment)
2 (6.9%)

Comments

[7rin]

While I understand your perspective, surely it'd be better to keep all the suggestions posts in the suggestions community, and (for example) have a ticky box attached for maintainers/mod's to be able to auto-post a link to whichever the other relevant community might be. That way, while it does come down on the mod's/maintainers to have a clue where else such a post may be useful, it means there'll be less confusion as to where the discussion should take place (the link post should (obviously, now that I'm writing this) have comments removed so that the discussion all heads over to the suggestions comm.), and it means the posts to the other comm's should end up in the relevant comm's.

?

[kyrielle]

I like this, and also perhaps appropriate tags added to the suggestions generator as ticky-boxes. ("user interface" / "support" / "accessibility" etc.) Unlike moving posts between places, re-tagging if the tags are wrong would be fairly easy?

[cesy]

+1

Also, for those who want to follow all suggestions, it would be awkward to have to track them across several communities, if there are suggestions that are not being posted here.

[pauamma]

See clarification: does that change your position?

[cesy]

I think I see what you mean, but I still suspect it would lead to suggestions that were more appropriate to here getting posted elsewhere.

[pauamma]

Hmm, yes, maybe. What if only communities the user has posting access to were in the drop-down? (Or whichever UI is available to select a community.) To minimize changes from the current UI, there would be no comm selector at all if no other comm (on the approved target list) is available to the user.

An alternative is to have a dedicated suggestions page for each relevant community, but this strikes me as more clumsy and harder to maintain.

[triadruid]

Maybe add a cleartext link to the suggestion post on the success screen, so that it can be crossposted to those other communities?

[pauamma]

See clarification. In the use cases I'm considering, the (freeform) entry would be posted to the other comm only (without benefit of a generator), and would never appear in dw_suggestions. The idea of a poll template discussed in another comment is interesting, but it would need to also include a posting template to work for this. (It would be essentially a duplicate of the suggestions form as it currently exists, posting to a different community, possibly selected from a dropdown.)

[triadruid]

I like the idea of being able to use the *model* of the Suggestion Generator in other communities (via Posting/Poll templates), but it's a separate suggestion from this one. :)

[pauamma]

See spec tweak edit.

[pauamma]

The kind of suggestions I have in mind are for specialized tools or features (eg, diagnostic tools for tech support, or a better FAQ editor), which would likely be discussed in $specialized_comm anyway, suggestions generator or not. So this wouldn't shift some suggestions away from dw_suggestions, it would make the suggestions generator available to discussions that would be likely in another comm to begin with.

[7rin]

While I understand that discussion'd already take place in $other comm. anyway, I don't think it'd be wise to be appearing to split suggestions off (even if that's already realistically what happens).

Don't get me wrong, I don't disagree with your idea in principle, but I think it could confuse people too much.

That said, I have no problem with the idea of being able to use the suggestions generator template within other communities - along with having (possibly, probably) other templates available for use too.

[pauamma]

See spec tweak edit.

[adalger]

When you make a suggestion through the form, you get a notification when it's posted. I think if you feel some other community should be aware of the suggestion and involved with the discussion, it's certainly appropriate (depending on the rules of the community) to post a link to the suggestion there, but limiting the discussion to one specialized subgroup loses out on the wider perspectives that can be brought by a more diverse group, especially with respect to how this suggestion might impact others who are not part of that subgroup.

[pauamma]

See clarification: does that change your position?

[ninetydegrees]

However, bypassing the suggestions generator and writing a freeform entry about the suggestion loses some useful features such as the autogenerated poll.

I think maintainers of some contest communities would love to be able to create a poll template which could be automatically/optionally attached to future entries. Could this be turned into a feature?

[triadruid]

A separate suggestion, but a really cool one. :)

[turlough]

Poll templates would be an awesome idea.

[ratcreature]

I'm not sure whether this doesn't complicate things for the average user going to the suggestion form. How would I know in which of these communities my suggestion fits best and pick the right one? This sounds discouraging.

[archangelbeth]

That would be my major concern, yes. Being able to select a "notify X community of this Poll, with a link" automagic option would seem (to this average user) a reasonable compromise between the average user, above-average user, and power-using code wiz.

[pauamma]

See spec tweak edit. Does that answer your objection?

[ratcreature]

Yeah, I have nothing against templates for the other communities, or easier usage for people who know about them. Mostly I don't want it to be harder for casual users to find out where to post what when they want to contact DW with something. There's already so many options available.