Help users start better topics

September 14, 2016, 9:42 am

≫ Next: Login modal does not show on 1.7.0-beta4

≪ Previous: Ability to add tags when moving post to new topic

Question
When I use StackExchange, I'm able to help someone who has problems with English or who isn't used to discussing things in a technical setting with their question phrasing by editing their question. How do I accomplish the same thing with Discourse?

Context
My lab currently runs a Discourse instance for our research topics and supporting our software package Nengo. Because Nengo is so small, we can't really make a tag on StackOverflow for supporting it. Additionally, there are many subjective or open questions about Nengo, so having a Discourse instance makes sense. Academia being the international thing it is, we occasionally get international posters who haven't totally grasped the subtleties of effective technical communication. This is totally understandable, however I would like some guidance on how to approach teaching them these guidelines, just as I was once taught them via StackExchange.

When I say guidelines, I mean things like:
- Correct spelling
- Not using greetings/sign-offs/signatures
- Writing a good title
- Breaking their question into understandable chunks
- Inserting links to clarify obscure references

Possible Solutions
How should I go about informing them about these guidelines? A link to community guidelines as the beginning of a public reply feels a bit impersonal/rude. Messaging them directly seems better, but a bit impractical, since if I suggested an edit to them they wouldn't just be able to hit a button to accept it. Would a "suggested edit" message template for moderators make more sense?

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Login modal does not show on 1.7.0-beta4

September 14, 2016, 9:46 am

≫ Next: Link "comments number" to topic page

≪ Previous: Help users start better topics

@clement.bouillier wrote:

Hello,

I just installed latest 1.7.0-beta4 and login modal does not show anymore. It was working on 1.7.0-beta3 (I have one installed on my computer).

As I suspected a CSS/JS problem, I looked at the code in navigator debugger, and I think I found the problem.
The modal show is done with a "display:block" set on div id=discourse-modal, in beta3, it takes precedence on any CSS class, but it beta4, you now use https://cdnjs.cloudflare.com/ajax/libs/twitter-bootstrap/3.3.6/css/bootstrap.min.css, which contains a definition of 'hidden' class with 'display: none!important', so the display:block that was used to show the modal does not work anymore.

Regards
Clément

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Link "comments number" to topic page

September 14, 2016, 10:06 am

≫ Next: Template for category replies

≪ Previous: Login modal does not show on 1.7.0-beta4

@CamilleBesse wrote:

Hello everyone,

For a custom project i need to link the number of comments (of homepage) to topics; instead of the date range popup.

Capture d’écran 2016-09-14 à 19.00.18.png2370x1014 247 KB

If someone has a trick, I'll be very grateful.

Thank you in advance
Camille

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Template for category replies

September 14, 2016, 10:09 am

≫ Next: Help for non-technical site admins, moderators, etc

≪ Previous: Link "comments number" to topic page

@hross wrote:

Howdy - One of my favorite Discourse features is that you can create templates for topics within each category. This has really helped us guide discussions proactively. I would like to do the same for replies. I don't think this exists currently, but if it does, or there's a workaround, I would love to know.

Here's the use case:

We get lots of technical questions in our community, and most users engage only when and if they have something broken that they need help fixing. Then we don't see them again, maybe ever. We are trying to expand the scope of the community into a true community of practice - where you can build your product skills by asking those break/fix questions, but you can also level up your career skills, and build a professional network. We need people to be more active more frequently to make this shift.

Part of how we're going to make that shift (in addition to lots of new content, etc) is by changing the tone of many of our replies to those break/fix questions. Right now, most provided answers do not greet the person who asked the question, and they rarely ask clarified questions, assuming a set of circumstances that then need to be explained one clue at a time over a series of several posts.

We would like to provide a template for replies that would encourage people to ask questions, to greet each other, and a few other best practices.

We have considered that this feature might be best only for our staff, but it might be useful for the entire community.

Thanks for any guidance!

Holly

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Help for non-technical site admins, moderators, etc

September 14, 2016, 10:14 am

≫ Next: HTML in site settings field for a plugin

≪ Previous: Template for category replies

@hross wrote:

Hello!

I've been lurking here for a couple of months. I just started in my role as the Director of Community and am learning Discourse as I go. First - huge thanks to all the folks here who have filled this site with so much useful information. I'm here a lot searching and digesting. However, I am not a technical person (though I can hand code HTML as fast as I can type... old school!).

As a site admin who can really only CONFIGURE Discourse, it's often a challenge for me to find the answers to my questions in the community. There are a LOT of discussions that are aimed at technical audiences, and I can't tell if they pertain to my questions or not. I assume that as Discourse grows, there will be more non-technical users like myself who will need a more curated experience to the kinds of content here.

It may mean a new category for admins with non-technical posts and how tos. Maybe it's a whole different community that could cover the "soft skills" of community management too. I don't know, but I would love to figure it out. I would be happy to spend some time helping to figure out what that would look like if any others feel like this is also useful.

Thanks,
Holly

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HTML in site settings field for a plugin

September 14, 2016, 1:31 pm

≫ Next: Disable the quote reply popup

≪ Previous: Help for non-technical site admins, moderators, etc

@pmusaraj wrote:

I'm trying to figure out how to have some custom HTML added to a plugin setting and then display that HTML safely in a widget.

My widget code is the following:
import { createWidget } from 'discourse/widgets/widget';
import { h } from 'virtual-dom';

createWidget('sidebar-custom-content', {
  tagName: 'div.sidebar-custom-content',

  html(attrs) {
    return h('div', Discourse.SiteSettings.sidebar_custom_content);
  },
});
and the plugin settings.yml has this:
  sidebar_custom_content:
    type: text
    default: ''
    client: true
As it is, if I enter HTML in the setting field, it gets output as regular text.

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Disable the quote reply popup

September 14, 2016, 2:07 pm

≫ Next: Global popular links?

≪ Previous: HTML in site settings field for a plugin

@kgish wrote:

I've developed a plugin which allows the user to select text, but the quote reply popup appears and gets in the way.

Is there someway that I can disable it?

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Global popular links?

September 14, 2016, 2:09 pm

≫ Next: Enhancement Request: User Menu UI Shortcuts for Notifications

≪ Previous: Disable the quote reply popup

@Daquantics wrote:

I see popular links in threads, but I was hoping to see a list of links for our entire community. Am I missing it?

Thanks!

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Enhancement Request: User Menu UI Shortcuts for Notifications

September 14, 2016, 3:04 pm

≫ Next: Beta testing the Android mobile app

≪ Previous: Global popular links?

@JMichaelTX wrote:

Enhancement Request: User Menu UI Shortcuts for Notifications

My main workflow with Discourse forums is to display the User Menu (aka Profile Menu?) to see changes (notifications) to my subscribed topics.

Please enhance the UI to make it easy to use keyboard shortcuts to view, select, and display each item on this menu. My preference would be these:

"p" -- display/hide the User Menu (this already exists)
Actually I'd prefer "u" (for User) or "m" for member, but I see "u" is already used for "back" (I don't get the connection between "u" and "back").

"UpArrow" and "DwnArrow" -- move the selection up and down the menu

"RETURN" -- display the selected item/post

I have read that "TAB" and "SHIFT-TAB" are provided for navigation of the menu, but I have two issues with that:

It is not reliable. Sometimes TAB moves the focus in the web page, sometimes in the menu, even while the menu is shown.

IMO, most users would expect the arrow keys to work for navigation here, like in all menus. Although technically it may not be a "standard" popup menu, to the user it appears as if it is a popup/dropdown menu/list.

When the User Menu is displayed, I think it is reasonable that the user would expect the primary navigation to be focused on the menu/list, not the web page.
So if the user wants to navigate the web page, a simple "p" will close the User Menu

Many thanks for your kind consideration of this request.

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Beta testing the Android mobile app

September 14, 2016, 3:27 pm

≫ Next: Any plugin support showing one level threading?

≪ Previous: Enhancement Request: User Menu UI Shortcuts for Notifications

@sam wrote:

We have been testing our iOS app for a few weeks with great success and are happy to open up Android for beta testing!

Pasted image1440x2560 232 KB

I am going to keep a list of known issues updated in this post, so be sure to check the first post in this topic prior to reporting stuff.

How it works and what it does.

The Android app is an open source react native application. The vast majority of the code is shared between our iOS app and it. Source code lives at: https://github.com/discourse/discoursemobile

The app takes care of keeping track of unread/new counts and notifications counts across multiple Discourse sites.

For sites we host you also get "push notifications" for every notification you get.

For the Android port we needed to implement a native library for public/private encryption, custom internal implementation of push notifications and a native library for chrome custom tab

Known issues

Android has no concept of application badge it is a shame to miss out on this feature but unclear on how we can implement it, feedback on how welcome

When you login via Google/Facebook the auth flow is interrupted, you must close site and reopen to reconnect.

Unlike iOS, Android really dislikes lots of discrete notifications, instead it expects 1 notification per app that is updated, we will redesign. At the moment notifications are out of control.

Background fetch is not yet implemented, this means there is no fallback on Android for push notifications on sites we do not host. We plan to address this somehow.

The app normalizes on Chrome stable for all browsing. If you do not have Chrome stable installed you can not use the app. Chrome beta and canary are not supported. Built in browser or custom browsers are not supported. This is entirely by design and a great normalizer.

Big thanks to @joffrey_jaffeux for lots of the work on the app and you all for testing.

Please reply to the topic if you would like to beta test and I will send out an invite!

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Any plugin support showing one level threading?

September 14, 2016, 5:23 pm

≫ Next: Anyone still using Discoursehosting?

≪ Previous: Beta testing the Android mobile app

@walker wrote:

To my surprise, there are already some discussions on threading and it's seems like a genius way. I understand that the default discourse put post in chronological order and each post can display its child posts.

But I want something different.

Just like stack overflow or piazza, I would like user can reply to certain posts or reply to the original questions or simply read other replies . Of course, nested comments are not what I want. One level threading seems the most reasonable way.

Captura de pantalla 2016-09-02 a las 17.09.48.png1580x1048 174 KB

Captura de pantalla 2016-09-02 a las 17.11.45.png1648x826 131 KB

Is it possible in discourse?

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Anyone still using Discoursehosting?

September 14, 2016, 6:07 pm

≫ Next: Refresh database after modifications via SQL

≪ Previous: Any plugin support showing one level threading?

@needhelp wrote:

Hi All

1) Anyone still using Discoursehosting.com ? I sent them a pre-sale question and it has been over 24 hours already and still nobody gets back to me. Are they still offering hosting for discourse forums?

I can understand tickets for technical support may be answered late, but Pre Sale questions should get answered very promptly, makes me a little nervous if they are still in business and how responsive their tech support is if they won't even answer Pre Sale questions promptly.

2) Besides Discoursehosting, are there other companies that also allow us to host the forum on the hosting company's subdomain ? So far it seems that Discoursehosting is the only company that allows the following:

" Get your own forum, completely running in the cloud. Either on our subdomain or on your own domain. Safe, secure and simple."

Thanks.

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Refresh database after modifications via SQL

September 14, 2016, 7:22 pm

≫ Next: Thumbnails just disappeared

≪ Previous: Anyone still using Discoursehosting?

@whza wrote:

hello

according to e.g. https://meta.discourse.org/t/best-way-to-combine-merge-categories-when-importing-topics/21353
I have moved several thousand topics to other categories. Some of the left-over-categories were even empty then and could not be deleted.

Now I could delete them by manually setting categories.topic_count to 0, since discouse says that categories that are non-empty can not be deleted because it did not refresh that value when I emptied the category by moving all topics to another.

Using the method mentioned in the link above, the counts are not being updated nevertheless.
Somewhere I read to wait until some job does that. Is this true?
If so, how can one issue that job manually?

regards

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Thumbnails just disappeared

September 14, 2016, 8:54 pm

≫ Next: Avatar Flair Image not showing up

≪ Previous: Refresh database after modifications via SQL

@ron_jeremy wrote:

Not sure what just happened, but was viewing my forum (while not logged in) just a couple hours ago and everything was fine. Now when I view it (logged in or not) I see the thumbnails are not displaying.

What could've happened and how do I fix it (ELI5)?

singletrackbc.com-thumbnails-issue.jpg1080x1897 190 KB

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Avatar Flair Image not showing up

September 14, 2016, 11:46 pm

≫ Next: How can I get the topic status

≪ Previous: Thumbnails just disappeared

@kuba-orlik wrote:

We've set up a few groups and added a Flair icon (using a font-awesome class). But flairs are not displayed for any user... Is there a switch somewhere to make them show up?

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How can I get the topic status

September 15, 2016, 1:32 am

≫ Next: Password change is impossible for staff due to old email addresses

≪ Previous: Avatar Flair Image not showing up

@kgish wrote:

How can I get the topic status?

I see that the method topic.closed? is available, but I'd like to get the status string back.

Similar to topic.category.name.

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Password change is impossible for staff due to old email addresses

September 15, 2016, 4:52 am

≫ Next: Discourse blocking with password reset

≪ Previous: How can I get the topic status

@whza wrote:

hello

I am encountering something that is really a show stopper for our very young forum.

first, as mentioned sometimes here, it is obviously not possible for an admin to change some user's password.
okay, so then trying to change the user's email to another, so that he may update the password. what happens is that confirm_old_email is being sent to the old email, which is unavailable in my current case.

even when impersonating that user, the behavior is the same. it sends confirm_old_email and - even as admin - the email stays unchanged.

use case is for example what I just encountered that some email address is old/unavailable at the present time. the server still sends to that old one the confirm_old_email message, which can not be delivered.

I really wonder why one needs to confirm the old email as an admin, also why one can not change the password of users directly. at least confirm_old_email should be something that can be turned off.

We've got over 10k users from some old forum and I decided not to import the old passwords here, so that case will occur for sure more than once.

PS: the phpbb3 import script with the password-import simply did not work, so I skipped this anyway. Sorry, can't remember the error, but it was something with the import script from phpbb 3.0 to recent discourse.

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Discourse blocking with password reset

September 15, 2016, 7:48 am

≫ Next: Add ability to filter by both username or group on /admin/email/sent

≪ Previous: Password change is impossible for staff due to old email addresses

@Socioneers wrote:

We imported a group of 45.000 users on a discourse installation and send them an invitation link with a separate mailing program. After activating and password resetting about 300 users about 40 people could not reset there password during the registration procedure. We admins tried to reset them via the admin panel, but we got 422 error messages.

Who knows what goes wrong? Something in Sidekiq?

Cheers,

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Add ability to filter by both username or group on /admin/email/sent

September 15, 2016, 8:03 am

≫ Next: Change the homepage or select a default category when creating a topic?

≪ Previous: Discourse blocking with password reset

@tobiaseigen wrote:

It would be a help to me to be able to filter by both username and group on /admin/email/sent. We're using groups alot more to manage members involved in various activities and events, and so we have some time sensitive info we want to make sure they get and act on. Troubleshooting whether they all got their message is sometimes a challenge!

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Change the homepage or select a default category when creating a topic?

September 15, 2016, 8:26 am

≫ Next: Why are some people on two trust levels

≪ Previous: Add ability to filter by both username or group on /admin/email/sent

@Steven wrote:

Hi !

I'd like to know if there is a way to change the homepage other than the top menu option ?

I work on a project that use only one public category and uses the links category plugin.

It's pretty complex to explain (especially when you are not totally an expert in english ), I hope it'll be fine :

The issue :

When we create a topic, we have to default composer instead of the link composer

And we have to manually select the only category available which is a bit weird

Pasted image919x229 12.3 KB

I tried :

setting the uncategorized section with the link topic option and use only this category, but the link composer isn't activated, it's the default topic composer

setting the Liens category in the top menu (category/Liens). The option works on the 2nd (or more) position, but when I put it first on the list, I have a 404 error

My ideas

I think I have two options to make this work :

change the homepage http://domain.com/ to make it redirect to http://domain.com/c/liens

or set the Liens category automatically on the composer with his special composer

Thanks in advance if someone has a lead

(I think it's a general issue, more than a issue related to the plugins, that's why I posted on support)