Question2Answer 1.6 Progress

Question

Hi all. Q2A 1.6 beta is being readied. These changes have been implemented and can be seen in action on this site:

• Allow users to post public messages on other users' pages (if admin allows it)
• Full protection against cross-site request forgery attacks on all forms (CSRF)
• Allows names to be added to anonymous posts
• Add panels in user page for recent user activity and all user questions and answers.
• Highlight user favorite questions, tags, categories and users wherever those entities appear.
• Make it clear why each item is listed in the user updates page (you should see this for all events from Jan 31 in your 'My Updates' page).
• Allow moderation to be reapplied when a post is changed (filter modules can also now apply remoderation)
• Allow privileged users to see who voted posts up and down, and who flagged them, by mousing over.
• Allow custom user profile fields to optionally be shown on the registration form, and to have restricted permissions for viewing them on user profile pages.
• Allow user moderation - either to prevent unapproved users doing anything, or to have different permissions for unapproved and approved users. Emails can be sent to admin notifying of new users. Also fast one-click admin interface for moderating users, which shows their profile fields.
• (Slight) improvement to plugins section of admin panel.
• Edits can be made silently by users with appropriate permissions.
• New BLOBs (avatars, uploaded files) can be stored on disk rather than in the database - see QA_BLOBS_DIRECTORY in qa-config-example.php. It's OK if some old ones are in the database and some new ones on disk. Uploaded files can be migrated between disk and database on the admin/stats page.
• File and image upload API (for plugins) in qa-app-upload.php
• Per-category level settings for users (e.g someone can be a moderator for a specific category only).
• Lots of small tweaks and fixes

Q2A 1.6 beta 1 is complete, and barring any surprises, it will be released tomorrow (June 6th).

Gideon

Comments

I know this is probably way late Gideon, but what would your thoughts be on a 'Listener' module type?
I just posted a long wafted response to Mehede Hasan's post here that could give you an idea of what I'm thinking.
Cheers
 http://www.question2answer.org/qa/19183/anonymous-posting-by-name-and-email

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You can't select best answer it brings up error message Please click again to confirm

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Divide the My favorites page after 30 issues.  And then my selected questions on one page, very long.

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>Can you make the voting plugin to allow people that are not loged in to vote?
Agree. In pligg it s allowd to vote for anonimous visitors

Answer 1

My suggestions:

1. Separate "experts" from normal users and add a section "experts". Filter experts by location or expertise (categories).  Show Best Experts under categories according to their points.

2. Allow ask question privately or puclic. When asking private questions and after selecting a category show for example 5 best experts to be ask and enable to asker to ask one or more expert at the same time. (I know there is a plugin but I think this feature must be a part of q2a).

3. In experts profile show answers statistics. For example:10 private answers --20 public answers

Thanks for all your efforts.

Comments

+1 for #1 about experts.

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Yes. Category/Tag specific experts would be useful.

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vbulletin or other foruming apps are more suitable for per-category groups / permissions. Example: for a "request for quotes" subforum, create an "RFQ experts" (or whatever) usergroup and only assign vetted (and / or paid) users to that group. Members of this special group can read/reply to any thread in the subforum, but all other logged in users can only start new threads and read the content of threads they started. Vendors (experts) may choose to compete by posting, or may elect to present their proposal via private message. Site staff is not expected to intervene nor adjudicate any disagreements which may arise between the parties.

In regard to trust / reputation, how reliable would you (as a site owner, or as a participant) expect the list of "5 best experts to ask" to be? Shilling, gaming... it's a long row to hoe, a razor's edge for the site owner, especially if participants are engaging monetary transactions.

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#1 experts would be nice feature!

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testing ~~ this topic is marked "closed 3 days ago".
In this closed topic, I was permitted to EDIT my previously posted comment.

Answer 2

Sorry for my bad english..

1 - Login tab : users can choose login type. Example : facebook, twitter, vkontakte etc..

2 - Additional fields : admin can choose it to only admin can see.. Example : telephone number. only admin can see this.

Thanks for all your efforts.

Answer 3

A lot of people have been asking for better image controls so I think what would be great is a more general image upload plugin/API. I see there is qa-wysiwyg-upload.php in the WYSIWYG editor plugin - if I was to use that for the Markdown editor I would be copy-pasting a whole bunch of logic and permissions-checking that could be done automatically in the core. This could then be used by any plugin, say a plugin to allow a user profile image or whatever.

Also along with this it would be great to have an option to upload files to the filesystem instead of the database (e.g. a qa-uploads folder, perhaps structured by month/year like Wordpress). Also, resizing images.

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Q2A is getting targeted by spammers now so I think some better spam control is necessary. A few options to consider:

• Run posts through Akismet.
• Allow admins to specify keywords to mark post as spam or send post for approval (i.e. instead of having to create a plugin).
• Addition to the filter plugins to be able to send a user account for "approval" - e.g. if multiple accounts sign up from the same IP or the username/profile contains certain words.

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Regarding the My Updates: it would be good to have an icon at the top that shows a number of replies/messages you've received, like on forums. Something like this. I would not include "updates to favorites" in that number, just post replies, private and public messages. On this subject it would be nice if private messages worked more like forums too. We have the PM store, but it only shows when you go to send a PM to that user. A basic page listing all recent PMs would be better IMO.

Can we also make the censor apply to user profiles as well as regular posts? Plus the public/private messages of course.

Edit: a request from my users - listing the exact join date in the user profiles. "2 years ago" is quite wide-ranging. I'd suggest something like "Member for: 2 years (joined 01 Jan 2011)"

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I'd love to see unobtrusive Javascript. I posted about it here, it's much better practice to have one script block that adds all events to elements than use onmouseover, onclick etc. And using jQuery's event handlers prevents issues like this. And also Kai's suggestion to keep the hover effects in CSS. There is no need to have JS events for that, I don't think we need IE6 support any more (and IE can just have graceful degradation anyway). I'm happy to help with any of this if you need!

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The ability for plugins to list privileges on a user's page would be a bonus, for example "Banning users from chat" or "Creating new tags". In fact, hooking into most tables in Q2A is a PITA.

Also on the subject of privileges, I just found that only admins can edit user profiles. It would be nice if we could set that privilege and give it to moderators too.

May add more later if I think of anything...

P.S. it would be nice if you added my User Activity Plus plugin to this site, or made it core... I'm constantly trying to find old questions/answers I posted here ;)

P.P.S. It would also be great if you committed more frequently to the git repo. You can set up a branch to do 1.6 work on so that the master branch isn't polluted with incomplete code, then merge that back in when complete. Would also allow you to accept pull requests for bug fixes etc. Take a look at http://git-scm.com/book/ 

Comments

+1 to image upload plugin to allow image uploading in markdown editor
+1 to better spam handling

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another +1 from me for image uploading in markdown editor

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"it would be nice if you added my User Activity Plus plugin to this site, or made it core... I'm constantly trying to find old questions/answers I posted here"

+1
amen

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A lot of good ideas there. It might have been better to have each idea as a separate answer so we could see exactly which idea was the most popular. +1 spam +1 image plugin

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Agree with Scott suggestion!!

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image upload++

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+1,useful as reference for creating my own system

Answer 4

Anonymous Posting Process:

I think there should be a temporary registration form just below the posting form with Name, Email and Website for Anonymous Posting. [ http://www.question2answer.org/qa/19183/anonymous-posting-by-name-and-email ] So, Anonymous guys will able to select a question as a answer and make the post 'Solved' in other hand, their name will be there instead of post by Anonymous ....

Category Pages:

Way to add desription with full HTML access in category pages.

Category and Tag Subscribe:

A simple form to subscribe under categories and tags using email address.

>Easy way to add more fields in ask form

>Easy way to disable answers for a specific category

Make It More Social:

• Add a Follow button to posts, users etc
• Register using Twitter, Google, Ymail etc
• Facebook Style Notification

** Top Users Under a Tag

** User Expert Badge for his/her most contributed Tag.

Example: John is expert on 'PHP' he has 10k up-votes, and 2,020 answers in 'PHP'

Comments

+1 for the Top Users Under a Tag and Way to add desription with full HTML access in category and tags pages.

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Also +1 for Top Users in Tag

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Really? Bend the entire community-centric Q2A app to accommodate "Anonymous guys"?

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[ X ]..."Registered users only".

Answer 5

Thanks Gid! This is my suggestions:

1. Remove accents from all URLs and working with all languages

2.Bounty award for question

3. Inbox and Notifications for member, like this :

4. Limit characters of tag, works in tag so long not good for layout web.

5. Shared Users system with Wordpress

6. Login options for user with gmail, yahoo, facebook...

7. Add friends to the list on the members page, receive notification when a new activity from friends.

8. Upgrade CKEditor version 4(Standard editor is recommended) Demo. Nice plugin!

Comments

@Scott: Yes! I know! But it's not working with tags, users and categories Urls. Here : http://www.question2answer.org/qa/19496/remove-accents-from-question-urls-work-tags-user-categories

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OK that makes sense. Good suggestion.

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Thanks Scott! Thanks Q2A developer! :)

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#2, #3 and #4 seems very good features for me.
Especially featured questions (a.k.a. bounty award) is a must feature.

Answer 6

Hi gid.

Great idea.

These are mine :

• easy way to Update or upgrade to newer version from older version
• create an advaced badges (Improve current mode :If users achive a score , they can for example edit posts or create a role management by badges

 

Answer 7

And from me to be possibility to vote (optionaly) for anonimous people. Thank you!

Comments

And implementing an option: number of questions, comments, votes, edits per day for all (users and anonimous), antispam. Rechaptcha isn`t so practical and convenient.

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+ http://www.question2answer.org/qa/19748/how-to-create-limit-for-number-of-questions-per-day

Answer 8

1. Edit history

There's a plugin for that but I just can't get it to work. The idea consists in having access to every edit version of a question or answer, similar to SE.

2. Activities Log - Moderation

Every action performed by moderators and admins should be listed in a page only accessible by super admin. You can see chronologically every action of moderation, each of them followed by an UNDO button.

3. Flagging content

A small box containing the reasons to flag is missing. It should also have the option to set a limit of minimum characters.

4. Bounty

Offer a reward of additional reputation points after a number of days after the question was asked. 

5. Notifications

Email alerts can get messy quite fast. A notification on the top bar displaying the number of unread activities is a lot better, such as Facebook's.

6. Combine logins

A person who's made a regular account can add his Facebook account as a secondary login.

 

7. Pay expert to answer

Quora features an interesting way to invite experts to answer questions. Right after asking your question the page displays a list of people who've already answered something in the selected area of expertise. Some of them are free to ask, some of them require a given amount of reputation to ask.

And for the website

• Feature Suggestion Voting

A list of all suggested features, each one of them linked to a place where everyone can place their review. Every registered member can cast a +1 or -1 vote.

Comments

"1. Edit history" -- what problems are you having? Feel free to open a ticket on https://github.com/svivian/q2a-edit-history/issues?state=open

Answer 9

1. Notifications - Every time an user upvotes, comments on, or answers your question, you should receive a notification. Something similar to Facebook's would be great. This would massively increase user engagement. 
2. Change home page to 'My Updates' page if the user is logged in. 
3. Add reCaptcha to send feedback page even if user is logged in. There is a big problem with spam, especially since there is no way to enable reCaptcha for logged in users. 

Comments

I totally agree with point #1.

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"Every time an user upvotes, comments on, or answers your question, you should receive a notification"

Ouch! Careful...

my webhost has a strictly-enforced antispam policy:
If a domain sends more than 200 emails in a given hour,
the related webhosting account is automatically suspended

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I meant onsite notifications, not email ones.

Answer 10

I have some idea   to make q2a better  and different from other QA

1. Enable user to add their Portfolio on profile

2. Add as connection or friend. (enable private message if friend confirmed )

3.  Status Update like twitter or facebook with votes like in Q2A.

4. Notification for question answered, voted.

Thanks 

Comments

RE: #1 what do you mean by 'Portfolio'?

Answer 11

1. Akismet

2. Easiest Image upload with automatic width resize

3. Additionnal fields on answers. For example, I need user to add a source link on each answer and cannot easily add it without programming. There is extra fields on user profile, easy to configure. It would be fine ta have the same on question and answer.

4. IMHO for mobile , a good responsive theme is simplest, usefull and faster than developping an API.

5. Ask users to describe only one idea or request per answer on this question, so we can vote and see most expected functionnalities ;)

Thank you very much to all devs for this great and usefull tool!

Answer 12

 

- My suggestion is that 'facebook login' module should be improved. When the users logged on to the existing 'facebook login' module, the log on data extracted from the facebook are recorded on a database which is alright. However, when the user that logged on through 'facebook login' logs out, the facebook session is terminated.

 

My suggestion: The facebook session should not be terminated but only the site session when the user logs out through 'facebook login' module.

 

- On the other hand, links embedded in the site seem to be 'nofollow'.

 

- We are can be created special pages within the site(in Admin Panel -> Pages). However, the tags can not be added to these pages.

Please fix them. Thanks.
 

Comments

the facebook logout module even from facebook terminates the connection with your site and facebook always.. once a user has authorized your site, as long as they are logged in on facebook, facebook issues your site an authorization token which helps users from having to click "login" when returning to your site.