Hi IATI Community,
As IATI’s new Business & Data Analyst I am pleased to be adding my first post to the Discuss forum!
Discuss is the main tool for members of the community to converse and engage about all things IATI. As such we need to ensure that it is presented in a way that best encourages productive discussion.
There are a large number of old/dormant topics that are currently visible to users when they access the platform.
For example, almost three quarters of all topics (totalling 182 topics!) in the Community Zone category have not been replied to since Jan 2018.
Please see this spreadsheet for more info (all stats correct as of 07/02/2019 PM). The ‘% Topics not updated since 01/01/2018’ in particular shows the volume of ‘old’ topics:
Because of this, when someone accesses Discuss, it can be difficult to understand where to start, and the especially important posts might slip out of sight.
Therefore, the IATI Technical Team propose a ‘clean-up’ of the platform, to ensure that only relevant and current conversations are immediately visible, without losing content or inadvertently closing down discussion.
Our proposal to achieve this consists of the following:
1) ‘Close’ all topics which have not been updated in over 12 months. Closing a topic essentially means the following:
o A ‘lock’ icon is displayed next to the topic
o Users are no longer able to reply to the topic
o Users are no longer able to use the ‘invite’ function on the topic
The following functions are still available on a ‘closed’ topic:
o Users’ ability to read all posts
o Users’ ability to delete a post
o Users’ ability to ‘like’ a post
o Users’ ability to vote on a poll
2) Create an ‘Archived’ sub-category within each existing category in Discuss. All closed topics will be moved to the appropriate Archive sub-category.
This will allow users to easily access closed topics, while ensuring that they are still in an easily accessible place for when a user wishes to retrieve an archived discussion.
Interacting with old topics
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Archived posts will still be available for retrieval via Discuss’ Search function
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If you would like to restart discussion on an archived topic, a new topic should be created which contains a link to the archived topic in the original post.
As ever, we welcome the community’s input on the proposed clean-up: will the suggestions have any adverse reactions on your use of the platform? Do you have any further suggestions to improve how topics/categories are presented?
We expect to begin the clean-up exercise on Monday 18th Feb, so please offer any suggestions for the process by then.
Many thanks,
Josh
JoshStanley:
Hi Yohanna,
Thanks for your response.
With regard to the date for commencing the clean-up, we are happy to push this back to 20th Feb to give the community ample time to offer their feedback.
In terms of the proposed 1 year window for closing topics that haven’t been replied to, please could you provide some examples of topics where there has been reply more than 12 months since the previous one, so that myself and the team can review these? This would help to determine whether simply referencing a closed topic is a feasible approach.
We are actually able to vary the ‘auto-close time’ between different categories, so if it makes more sense (for example) for topics in the Events category to be closed after a time-frame longer than 12 months, this is achievable.
Are there any other Categories where you think the 12 month auto-close time is not suitable?
Thanks,
Josh
Hey Josh Stanley , welcome!
I also agree with @YohannaLoucheur that locking topics is generally a bad thing (I think auto locking is also really unhelpful), because it means you cannot post updates in context.
I understand that moving to archive would remove the existing categories on posts, which I think would make it harder to look back and find such posts again? So I think that would also be a bad idea.
But definitely keen on the tech team having a more active role in curation and engagement with the Discuss community! I wonder if another useful thing would be looking back and pulling together a list of seemingly important but unresolved discussion posts?