Suggestion: Add 'category' dropdown to question submit

[CynthiaMoore]

As new user, I made a mistake in submitting my first question. First, I did not enter any tags. There is no indication that they are required and I didn’t know what they should be, so I didn’t enter any. When I clicked on Ask Your Question, I got an error message that a tag is required.

I then entered a tag that I thought was descriptive. I then had to go through the tedious Not a Robot process again and only then did I get a second error message telling me that I have to include one of the required tags.

I selected “common” as I thought it my suggestion was common to all of LibreOffice. After going through the exceedingly tedious Not A Robot process a third (or maybe fourth) time, my post was accepted. I then got a message from ajlittoz telling me that my post had been retagged as “meta”.

I think all of this confusion and extra work by both me and ajlittoz could have been avoided. I would like to suggest that the admins add a dropdown ‘category’ list that allows (requires) submitters to choose the category. The list could provide a short description of the required categories so that newbies like me can tell difference between “common” and “meta”.

This would also allow the posts to be easily categorized and sorted / filtered. Making these categories just another tag is misleading, error-prone, and results in extra work.

The Microsoft Community does this very nicely.

link text

[Hagar_Delest]

Hi,

The Ask site is quite horrible indeed. It is to be replaced soon. I just tested and the next system will allow questions even with no category and no tag at all.

The pro for not having separated sections (but tags instead) is that you can see all the questions if you want. And filter them with keywords if you prefer. It seems to be the “new norm”, more modern to handle discussions. At first sight less organized than a forum but if tagged correctly, then you get the same behavior in the end.

It requires a learning curve (I’m still on the steep portion of it) but this is where the power users have their role to provide the advice so that users adopt the reflex. There is a getting started guide for this Ask site but hardly visible (right of the question list). It should be more prominent in the next system.

So, don’t worry, some improvement ahead.

[CynthiaMoore]

My suggestion is to switch to Xenforo. I followed dozens of forums and, IMHO, it is the best forum software available.

I also suggest abandoning the “no discussions” policy. Only the simplest, most obvious questions can be adequately handled with a single answer. The MrExcel forum, which I consider one of the best, has extensive discussions, from which I have learned most of the most valuable lessons about Excel. I will feel a great loss if I cannot get something similar when I tackle the various apps in LibreOffice. We will all be less well off as a result. And LibreOffice will absolutely lose followers.

[ajlittoz]

Your examples (Xenforo and MrExcel) don"t seem to address OP’s question. They look like sites for commercial products and I could not find demo pages.

Have you tested StackExchange? It is based on the same engine as AskLO but it is much better configured (because there is a managing team behind it). Its tag feature is also more user-friendly because every registered tag has a clear description for its usage. And, not the least valued point, you can’t create new tags unless you have a rather high karma: this avoids typos and proliferation of “noise” tags bearing little or no added-value.