What do you want in Question2Answer 1.4?

Question

I plan to start working on Question2Answer 1.4 in March.

Please let me know the 5 most important improvements for you.

As in the past, your opinions will play a crucial role in determining what's implemented.

Thanks and I look forward to your feedback!

Comments

So ~when you plan to finish 1.4 and what features you chosed ? :)

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Please see: http://www.question2answer.org/qa/5037/question2answer-1-4-priorities

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I have been working on a way to replace the vote functionality with the google +1 buttons. I think it would be an interesting feature for future versions.  I also believe that an html sitemap would be extremely helpful. Could be based on categories and sub categories. I believe it would help quite a bit from an seo standpoint.

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I guess this thread is closed.  I really would love to see user groups.  users who can ask questions, and users who can answer them.  It would make it possible to create expert sites, where only registered experts are allowed to respond.

Answer 1

Here are some things that make Stack Overflow awesome, that would be nice to have :

- Points based permission

This prevents spam and motivates user to answer

- Image upload

For those who don't know how to upload a file on a third party site, copy and paste the link (or just don't want to)

- One page load question (not asking title first and then writing the questions)

Sometimes during writing, I think my title needs to be changed, and it's so cool to do everything on the same page (with ajax loading of related questions)

- Pages view displays next to "count"

So I see how many people checked my question, and which ones are "hot"

- OpenID support

Because logging in with Facebook makes me feel like "I'm going to be spammed/hacked" (even if it's not true)

- A markup editor

Too many icons options in the current one, it's a bit creepy, a markup editor is faster to use, nice. (with a wysiwyg)

Edit : A major one for user experience :

- Styled counters based on votes, view and acceptaion

I definately think it should be easier to "scan" the main page, and I think the "counters" displaying votes and answer should change colors (more green for more voted questions, red for bad questions, flashy yellow if accepted...)

Comments

Really like the NO facebook option. If facebook has no mysite button why should I have theirs ? Sad that too many sites are just slaves to FB.
There are really many more social networks and like Share button, if FB button is put there needs to be button for myspace, orkut etc too

Page view will be excellent as also one page form to fill up title and body

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Yeah OpenID is way better than Facebook.
And for the "one page load" for questions, I agree but we still need a way to show possible duplicate questions, probably using AJAX and appearing below the title field.

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Having all that (dynamic similar question and question details) on the same page would be great!

Answer 2

Add the answer form ( or atleast let the admin have this choice) at the page bottom instead of a new page, plus this will help to see all the answers while answering also

 

See the persons who have voted for example,

voted by Joe, Pol, Any and 23 more

Comments

There's already an admin option that lets you decide under what conditions the answer form is shown.

Answer 3

Sorting  Answers by Most Voted is a MUST.

Comments

That's already in Q2A, check the admin options.
Also, I removed your horrendous formatting ;)

Answer 4

Firstly, just wanted to say thanks for all your hard work on Q2A so far! OK here goes:

1. On-site notifications

In other words when a user comes back to the site there can be an icon by their username showing they have new answers on their questions or comments on their answers. Click the icon to show all replies (new ones maybe highlighted in some way). Similar to reddit or stack overflow. I would rather use that and see a list of replies instead of getting constant emails.

2. Points-based permissions

I think for this you can add a box on the right of each line in the current permissions. So you can now enter like this:
Adding questions: [Registered users] and at least [0] points
Voting down: [Registered users] and at least [20] points
Posting links: [Registered users with email confirmed] and at least [50] points
Hiding any post: [Moderators, Admins] (points box gets hidden here)

You will probably need to be more fine-grained in the permissions, eg separate up and down voting permissions and decide if there are any useful new ones like "posting links", "creating new tags" etc.

3. A good spit-and-polish ;)

It would be nice to work on some of the usability a bit more. For example, showing comment/answer forms immediately instead of needing a whole new page load. Currently if you are not logged in, you click "Comment" and a new page loads telling you you need to login in...then you gotta click "Login" to load another page, log in and come back to where you were.

I think now is the time to switch to something like jQuery to make it really easy to do AJAX, DOM selection, and showing/hiding forms.

4. Edit history

Being able to see edit history would be useful so that the OP can see what was changed in their post and maybe roll it back if they like. Stack Overflow does this well.

5. Badges!

Since no one else has mentioned it this time, I'll put in a request for badges/achievements. They are not vital for me but I think they would be a fun addition (especially for a gaming site like mine). See my recent answer for a suggestion on how they could work.

 

I originally put this at #4 but then remembered something more important. I would love to have multiple sessions. In other words, when I click "Remember me", it should remember me! And not log me out if I signed in on a different computer. (Also, a button in the user's profile to "sign out of all other sessions" like Gmail has would be cool.)

Oh and hopefully you'll move all content output into the base theme class :)

Comments

honest question: why don't you use OSQA? It's got all of this AND more. I've switched happily and I don't regret it.

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badges please

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@xatrix: That's kind of like telling someone to switch to a Mac if they want iTunes to stop crashing ;) I don't know about your site but mine already has 3900+ questions and 1200+ users. Not easy to migrate.

My main reason for using Q2A is it uses PHP/MySQL which I was already using on my site. OSQA uses Python plus a heavyweight framework, which makes it much more difficult for me to make changes. If Q2A added the features above then there would be zero reasons for me to switch.

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Badges are definitely needed to increase user engagement and 'stickyness'. It was one of the features i requested too.

Answer 5

I think  the function and logic of this QA is very good. My site lamtheo.vn using this now and grow fast.

Here is what i think more better feature QA site need to get more members :

1) Invite to get points.

2) Allow admin to create new nav-link-page that list : question-who-ask-but-not-get-good-answer, best-question, popular-question and so on.

3) Right now i have plan to purchase salary by real money for expert every months.

4) Separator tag by comma, remove unicode in url formatting and module to list popular tag at custom page and side bar

Answer 6

1. Moderation option. New users, or users without a limit of points to be first approved by admin before question / answer or comment appear.

2. Save this. Allow members to save questions (topics) in their personal/favorites list.

3. User rating. Allow users to rate other users on their answers.

4. Closed/Solved. Allow the user which opened a question to close it after he is satisfied with an answer.

5. Disable URL : disallow new members (there must be an option to set how many days from joining a user is new) to post URL in questions/answers/comments.

Answer 7

Hi gidgreen,

I've just started using Q2A on my site and have the following recommendations;

1. Create an official WordPress plugin for easy 1-click implementation of Q2A on existing blogs. Include database and SSO support.
2. Code support implemented through code-tags within the WYSIWYG editor
3. Badge support - ie; reach 300 posts and get "expert" status
4. Argument-Map support, like featured on CNN (same concept as VisualThesaurus) as an alternative to tag-cloud
5. Configurability to swap between having a vote-up/vote-down or a "like" button.

I hope you'll take my suggestions on-board.

Best regards,
A.T.
 

Answer 8

Hey Gideon,

Cheers from TLV!

Here are my requests:

- One page load question (not asking title first and then writing the questions)

Sometimes during writing, I think my title needs to be changed, and it's so cool to do everything on the same page (with ajax loading of related questions)

 

- 1st-Question-Registration

The user don't need to register in order to ask a question. The user asks a question and it registers him automaticaly. The next thing he should do is just click on the approve email. As soon as the user approves email, he registers and the question published. Same as http://appsmonkey.com

- Dynamic AJAX search

 

I really like the dynamic search feature at http://appsmonkey.com/

- Points based permission

This prevents spam and motivates user to answer

- Pages view displays next to "count"

So I see how many people checked my question, and which ones are "hot"

 

- Select an answer reminder

One of the things that annoys me the most is selfish users. User who ask for questions and once they got answered they don't even select the winning answer. I'm interested to send them auto follow-ups to remind them to choose the winning answer.

 

- Permalinks control

Pretty much same as wordpress. In non-english installs such as hebrew, the URL is a mess, full of URL_ENCODE stuff. Google doesn't index it properly. I'd like to have control on the permalinks for questions and tags. Pretty much like wordpress.

 

- AJAX Dynamic question Auto-complete/suggest

Same as google suggest. As soon as you start typing the question, it finds you relevant questions on the fly. Good example: http://appsmonkey.com/dare.question/

Thanks a lot,

Cheers again from TLV!

 

Answer 9

A views tracking counter for each question, next to the vote and answers counters.

Answer 10

1) Possibility to integrate with external tags/categories

This is something I need for my integration since we have a site with already a lot of tags and categories.  Reusing them like I'm already reusing users would be great. Since this is a must for me, I'm willing to contribute for that feature. Worst case scenarios would be providing an "import" feature that would have to be kept in synch...

2) One page question

Having two pages for the question is confusing for user and requires one more click. It would be great to have dynamic similar question on that page too.

3) Report as spam/innapropriate

4) If user isn't login when trying to perform an action, go directly to the login page provided and then back to the action instead of showing the error message would save time.

5) Possibility to close question

Answer 11

Send Emails to all Users.

Answer 12

First of all: Thank you for developing such a useful q&a app. We are just before going live with Release 1.3.1, altough it doesn't cover already all needs we have.

Here's our wishlist:

1. Image Upload.

2. New permission: Registred user can ask a question, but it get's not automatically published, before a Moderator reviewed the question.