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Should points be assigned for responding to General Discussions RRS feed

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    I'm beginning to question if points should be given to those who respond to General Discussions, because there really is no "answer" to one. People responding are just sharing their views.

    Thoughts?
    Web Designers for Obama/Biden 08.
    Sunday, September 14, 2008 10:28 PM

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    Oliver:

    I would agree with you if it were not for the fact that the vast majority of General Discussion posts are due to user error.

    We have discussed this issue before. IMHO it should not be so easy for a novice user to mistakenly select General Discussion. See the thread

    http://social.expression.microsoft.com/forums/en-US/suggest/thread/2e527255-a0ba-42f7-a706-2c99446ad262/



    David Wilkinson | Visual C++ MVP
    Monday, September 15, 2008 2:00 AM
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    To clarify, points currently aren't given for general discussions

    Matt Fraser, STO Forums Software Developer
    Monday, September 15, 2008 5:18 AM
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    Matt:

    Are you planning to do something about the fact that General Discussion is almost always selected in error?

    David Wilkinson | Visual C++ MVP
    Monday, September 15, 2008 11:49 AM
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    David, can you explain what leads you to this conclusion? I know the old forums 2.x ui enabled users to be given a thread type default, and the problem there was that users were continually not bothering to change it, flooding the system with the default, which was question.
    Brent Serbus STO Forums Program Manager
    Monday, September 15, 2008 11:31 PM
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    Brent:

    When you select "New" from the toolbar, you get a dropdown that gives you the alternative of "Ask a question" or "General discussion". Many novice users have no idea what these mean, and often pick "General discussion" in error. If you were an Answerer rather than a Developer, you would see this happening over and over.

    Since "Ask a question" is the correct choice for most people, and almost invariably the correct choice for a novice, the interface should not be this way. I would suggest that by default you should get "Ask a question" and "General discussion" should be an advanced feature that could be selected on the right side where you can select other options for the new thread.

    I never really used the old forums, but I would say that your description suggests to me that the old way was better. What do you mean by "flooding the system with the default, which was question"? Since this is almost always the right choice, what was the problem?

    I have made this suggestion before ...

    David Wilkinson | Visual C++ MVP
    Monday, September 15, 2008 11:51 PM
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    The other thing is that last time I looked you couldn't mark an answer in a General Discussion thread as an Answer.

    This means that you could never "close" a Gneral Discussions thread by making people aware through the green tick icon that it included an answer.

    As the "Mark as Answer" function is there in the UI for a reason, surely you want it to be used. So long as using it is only possible in threads of a Question type, everytime people select General Discussion it won't be used.


    The other point is having a Question type does not prohibit various people coming in with their comments - i.e. a general discussion. In fact that's the usual situation.

    In my opinion the General Discussion button should only be used for things like announcements (such as Sticky announcements you want to be at the top of the threads rather than being massively highlighted above the threads) and leave *all* the rests of the threads as Questions.

    If you don't like the terms used in the present UI change them !!
    Tuesday, September 16, 2008 6:12 AM