Is there any plan to improve or deliver user interactivity in the next version? (outside of comments/replies)

Question

Overall Q2A is a great platform and a credit to Gideon's capabilities... My thanks to that man!

 

However, the 'interactive' potential through the seemed 'promise' of the private messaging system should be abandoned imo, if it cannot radically be improved to include the options an average user of such a system could reasonably expect to see... (view, read, send and delete etc.) 

 

As it stands, PMing... Is little more than an email 'event or action notification' system and what little user interaction there is, is cumbersome and external when it should be internal and user friendly?

 

The 'wall' posting feature does at least offer the option to delete posts (to a degree) and as others have mentioned here, http://www.question2answer.org/qa/26446/why-the-admin-cant-delete-other-users-wall-posts Admins and mods, should be able to 'edit/delete' postings which might be inappropriate etc.

 

We live in an increasingly 'interactive' age and with that said... I for one would encourage Gideon to concentrate on this aspect of the 'product' though I accept that his priorities and my own. may be completely different and for very different reasons!

 

 

This posting should be read in the spirit of 'critique' and not criticism... What Mr Greenspan has produced in Q2A. Is a major credit to him and I applaud loudly his efforts to date!

Answer 1

There is no oficial roadmap or plan. Gidgreen asks from time to time which new features or improvements users want and depending of the input he adds the one or the other feature.

Besides, in my opinion You are fully right. Q2A is such a good product that it would make sense to open it more for community like projects. Within others a few features like all events on a personal wall page (fblike), mutual friends/followers, new post types like articles or blogposts, merged user pages, flexible media fields, more flexible email system, group or circle features (g+like) should be part of the core.

I like the plugin system, but many things still could be added to core. For example, having an article or blog-post feature could be done through plugins, but it would be much better if new post types like articles, blogs, galleries and such could be defined through the original script.

Gidgreens script is now installed on 10.000+ sites, great so far, but having the most wanted features like community, media and blogposts, could make q2a very fast one of the widest spread scripts ever.

I think gidgreen does see that very well and will, as before listen very well what we, the users have to say once asked for our wishes for the next release.

So, I stay with q2a waiting some really good stuff to come.

 

EDIT:

 

To get hands on a extended "core" community / media like edition I even would pay.

Answer 2

Well put. Agree on the social interactivity issue. I was once suggesting a friend request plugin, and other stuff. But I guess, gidgreen wants q2a stay "basic" and just use plugins to add features. This worked quite good so far, if you know how to write plugins.

PS: Greenspring → Greenspan :)

PS2: The wall feature - after existing for a while and considering it - I think should be a plugin as well.

Comments

Thanks for your reply Kai.

I really have no wish to 'flog this to death' but in considering your reply. I would add the following thoughts into the mix.

It's easy to see how concentrating on the core product, has a sound rationale to it and I cannot 'fault' the logic itself... However, and I may be being a little naive here?

It does seem to me that the core product is close to, if not already perfect. Certainly if the same were to lose the false lover's promise of the PMing system and relatively minor bug issues not withstanding.

Personally. I would rather contribute to Mr Greenspan's bank account for Q2A itself,  than to third parties for what I might consider essential elements in a 2013 context of basic user 'networking' capability.

The plug-in model is all well and good and it does not require a degree in rocket science, to understand a leaning towards 'plug-ins' From say a developer's perspective. (Sadly, I'm not btw) There would be opportunities to capitalise on producing bolt-ons etc. I can't say I knock that. (Incentive, is inspirational after all) But if, as I suspect will happen and to a degree already has. An essentially 'necessary' plug-in carries a prohibitive price tag. Then there is no point in our using supposedly 'free to use and adapt' software that cannot deliver basics without us being held to ransome elsewhere?

I can accept that something like the 'wall' feature might be a candidate for a plug-in and perhaps things like signing in using 'facebook' credentials and such. I might, or I might not 'buy' such 'enhancements' @ 3, 5, or 10 dollars, pounds or yen. That is a different prospect to 30, 50 and 100 respectively...

I commend those who have developed free plug-ins seemingly in the same spirit thet Gideon designed and released his baby under the GPL remit. But that is a whole different ball game to setting up effective 'companies' to profiteer from the stepping stone of goodwill... Not that I suggest such politics is afoot with Q2A.

Sorry about the meaty reply but I needed to vent my spleen seemingly?

Thanks again for your answer!

---

There are many free GPL plugins for q2a out there from:
• me: https://github.com/echteinfachtv?tab=repositories
• NoahY: https://github.com/noahy?tab=repositories
• Scott: https://github.com/svivian?tab=repositories
• jatin.soni: https://github.com/q2amarket?tab=repositories
etc.