Now taking requests for Question2Answer 1.5!

Question

In September I plan to start working on Question2Answer version 1.5, with a view to (hopefully!) releasing it before the end of 2011.

As for previous versions, I am interested in knowing what new features would be most important to people using the platform.

So please post up to 5 prioritized feature requests in your answers below.

FYI, the following are already planned, so you can skip them in your lists, but feel free to elaborate on them if particular aspects are important to you.

• Closing questions (due to duplication, or other reasons)
• Optional moderation mode (admin approval before post appears)
• Ajax-style interface for answering and commenting

Thanks and I look forward to your feedback!

Gideon

Comments

This question can now be considered closed. Please see the Q2A 1.5 roadmap:

http://www.question2answer.org/qa/9322/question2answer-1-5-roadmap

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Nice to see "closing questions" feature working, but comments are still acceptable ?

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hybridauth is a great features to allow user registration with other social accounts than just facebook .

Answer 1

Once again: Thanks for sharing this great program --
   and thanks for asking for input!!

My wishlist starts with:

• enable anybody who answers or comments a question to add and change the question-specific TAGs. Hopefully this increases the TAG quality
• improve search function. At least add wildcards for TAG-search
  (see this try and fail....)
• tiny but usefull: improvement for question workflow --> mousover for similar questions
• button to display more items per page at once like:
  
• if user changes / edits his question: possibility to mark the changes as only minor changes (like typo correction) - if changes marked as "minor" - don't send email to all the users 

 

Answer 2

1. Better Mailing system - user can check messages from Q2A site.

2. Badges.

3. Make Sticky Post/ announcement!

4. Answer Pagination.

5. Polling system.

 

thanks for the awesome software! :)

Answer 3

Ok, my TOP 5 is:

1 - Following system - Give ability to users to choose which tags they follow, which users and / or categories, and so the questions that would match would appear with a different color. It's a missing feature in Q2A, so in big communities, we would have a chance to "visually filter" the questions.

2 - Polls system, integrated into questions.

3 - Default onsite notification system, to create a standard for notifications.

4 - Enhanced private mensaging system.

5 - Possibility to create new plugin modules types with plugins: this would be really awsome! :D

Comments

+1
For the following system idear :D

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To your first request :-)

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FYI, there's nothing stopping you doing #5 now - just invent a $type value!

In qa-base.php, qa_register_plugin_module($type, ...) doesn't restrict the $type parameter, and you can use qa_list_modules($type) and qa_load_module($type, $name) to list and load modules of your desired $type.

I'd only suggest using a two-word name for $type, so that it doesn't restrict future module types defined in the Q2A core.

Answer 4

Thanks for this incredible software and thanks for give us the opportunity of bringing our opinion about the features.

1 - Sort: I agree with sorting questions by time and other filters commented by other users but i think it would be great that categories and subcategories could be sorted too.

2 - Delete user: Due to the spammer or trolls we need to delete user and all the information related(question, answers, comments ...).                                               And in the same way it is important to let users "delete" their user to preserve privacity. In other software this is done changing the personal data  of the user and giving a new name(like 102023030) in order to maintain the information.

3 - Plugins: pluggable functions, hooks, filters, more events ... summarizing, extends plugin system in order to have more flexibility and bring to Q2A many plugins for adding quickly features.

4 - Theme: Template Files List similar like wordpress in order to custom specific category, page, question result.

Thanks,

Regards.

Comments

I vote for 1, 2 and 4.
No. 4 is HTML templates, which seem to be problematic in connection with the plugin layer. I hope it is doneable.

Answer 5

Hi Gideon,
and thanks for the oportunity to inspire improving ways of this great software :D

This is my wishlist of features, someone are little details that can easily be integrated :)

 

Delete user:

User had to be able to delete his account. And it will be easier for administrators.

 

Ranking options on categories and subcategories:

If we have categories and subcategories, the questions on they could be sort with the same options, users expects this behavior.

 

Feeds for rankings:

There are a lot of interesting feeds, but for rankings there isn't one for each one.

 

Moderators:

Different style for moderators answers (add a class with the role will be cool).

Change privileges of Experts; now, they can upgrade users role. This feature is better only for moderators.

 

Duplicate questions:

All the actually features are greta, but it will help to have a button like "Show original/duplicated" where users could paste the url of the original questions. Without do a related answer.

 

Thanks for your time and effort!

Answer 6

1. Duplicate button with field to enter duplicated url question
2. Possibility to merge similar questions into one (flexible) merging the body of the question adding votes and/or answers and/or comments.
3. In the user profile page, divide Recent Activity into three subsections: questions, answers and comments.
4. When sending a private message, enable option to send a copy to sender's email.
5. Rankings that take time into account.

Thanks for this wonderful tool.

Answer 7

1- A button that shows problem solved. similar to best answer button. (actually I made this.)

***2- Ability to (I think it is neccessary).

Also possible to be invesible.

 

Comments

"every user should gain only once points for answering the same question".

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3- an ability for admin to send notification for unappropriate questions or answers. by email.

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4- Possible to now if users online or offline.

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I vote No.1, adding a button for the problem solved.

Answer 8

Hi Gideon,

My suggestion is that you switch to github for the repository and establish a policy for approving people as potential contribnutors to the project. That is, create a form whereby they agree that the license for their contributions is xyz, that they assign all rights to you, etc.

Then you would also establish your own "pull request" criteria. This would enable you to easily pull in updates/features/bug fixes from the community while enabling you to maintain full control over the source. Or you could decide on your pull criteria on an ad hoc basis--accepting the updates that look good while declining others.

Benefits to you:

• easily include people's contributions which meet your goals for Q2A while not worrying about licensing issues.
• Lowers the bar for people to contribute--enables the project to grow faster

Benefit to the community:

• Easy access to development version. 
• Easy to propose new sw to the project developer (Gideon)
• Easy to maintain a private fork for changes that are not accepted into the mainline of the code.

Comments

I've just started using Github and I *love* it. I think the pull request method is the way to go, that way Gideon can test and approve everything before it goes live on the repo. (Since Q2A is a GPL license you don't need any sort of agreement to merge others' changes.) I'd certainly love to help with some minor changes, although most of the stuff I changed on my site is now in the core anyway :)

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Q2A moving into github was already suggested few times, i thing Gideon just want to write independent code.

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@DisgruntledGoat -- in the past Gideon has made ref to possibly, some day, offering q2a under a dual license--so he has been careful to not take in orig additions to the core to maintain his IP (intellectual property) rights.

Requiring contributors to assign IP rights to Gideon would take care of that issue.

@Another one, yes, this has come up before. I believe that one of the main issues of this request, from Gideon's point of view, is the time that it would take him to research and decide the various issues that would be involved in a move to github. Since feature requests are all about "where should I spend my time," it is always appropriate to re-raise issues. It is ultimately up to Gideon how he will spend his time.

My interests in re-raising this issue is that I think this feature would be a powerful additional feature that would help to assure the ongoing success of the q2a project.

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I certainly agree with that move! Github provides great way to know what has changed and everything can be merged when desired or use by other people in the meantime. I'd love to see question2answer on it!

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Thanks - I agree that it's time. Q2A from 1.5 beta onwards will be on Github with some kind of contributor's agreement - details to be worked out.

Answer 9

Here's my simple list since my top two features are already planned (close question and moderation):

1) Improve search (search for a specifics works in the question or answer with "" like Google would already be a good improvment)

2) Maybe once 1.5 is done, move to Github for all the reasons point out by larryk! :)

Thanks for your work Gideon!

Comments

+1 improve search

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I'd say the better way to improve search would be to use an external algorithm. So many years of research have been implicated in those, the best thing to do would be to rely on them! :)

Answer 10

Possibility to easily "connect" a question to other existing questions, i.e. a kind of user-generated "Related questions" feature. And something like the "Synapse" button on Spacecollective mentioned by Raúl Solano in a comment.

Answer 11

One more request :-)

I think that should put in each category a different e-mail

If I want to give to others to manage some of the categories i Need that all emails will be to other managers and not the webmaster

And then you can manage the site smarter 

Answer 12

A plugin that shows a mobile theme when the site is accessed from a mobile phone.

Similar to WP Touch for WP.

Thanks :)