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Suggestion: Community Quick Questions Thread

Oryx

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Was going to suggest this to the mod of this section, buuuut....

A huge amount of threads in this section are threads that are answered in one or two posts, and then left to sit because it was just a question that they had nowhere else to post. Then there are questions that actually spark a discussion, and suggestions that get bumped back to the second page due to the short question threads. The latter two definitely belong as their own threads, but the first one is kind of silly to have individual threads to ask things like "how do I post a spoiler?" and "X title is misspelled!". That's why there should definitely be a Quick Questions thread for this section of the forums. c:

To cut down on stickies, it would be easy to just edit the title/first post of the "Where do I post this" thread and include quick questions in there as well. Since that thread is barely used as it is, it wouldn't be eclipsing the questions already there, and would clean up the forum a lot so the suggestions and in-depth questions can be kept as actual threads, while the 1-2 reply threads can be merged into one thread.
 

Spectrum

In need of an oil change
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I think I remember suggesting this years ago, and using it at other forums I ran. It's not a bad idea in theory, but in practice, it doesn't really work.

Basically, common questions are already answered in the FAQ, and the ones that aren't can be found easily by searching. If people can't be bothered doing that, they usually can't be bothered reading a common questions thread, either.
 

Oryx

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I think I remember suggesting this years ago, and using it at other forums I ran. It's not a bad idea in theory, but in practice, it doesn't really work.

Basically, common questions are already answered in the FAQ, and the ones that aren't can be found easily by searching. If people can't be bothered doing that, they usually can't be bothered reading a common questions thread, either.

I thought the same thing thinking about it, but then I realized that they already put forth the effort to find the right section for it, it's not a huge stretch (if the notice on the top added something about where to put a quick question) to think that they would read enough in the forum to figure out where in the forum to put it. Keep in mind as well that this also applies to minor nitpicks on the site such as misspellings and such, so it's not just questions and it won't be just new people posting in it. :x

Some will get through of course, either through people not reading or people thinking their question is more important than it is, but it would make the forum have a lot less 1 reply/2 reply threads, which imo don't look very nice.
 
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You can't always tell what question/idea/suggestion will spark a discussion or not. Plus, some people get ignored in threads. A personal thread per question is the best way to assure that every one's question/idea/whatever get's answered/noticed to some degree.
 
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You can't always tell what question/idea/suggestion will spark a discussion or not. Plus, some people get ignored in threads. A personal thread per question is the best way to assure that every one's question/idea/whatever get's answered/noticed to some degree.

While I agree with you to a certain extend, on a staff side, it is very annoying when you have a million short question threads that just clutter up the forum and can easily be solved by one universal Q&A thread.

I think this would be a good idea, but don't know if anyone would actually post in it and just carry on their business posting the individual threads.​
 
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I agree with the clutter issue as well. Short question threads work in other sections... like Rom-Hacking. It should work as a universal thing to.

I don't think it would hurt to try. If things aren't working... we could always revert back to the old ways. I'm in favor of at least trying this idea out.
 

Cherrim

PSA: Blossom Shower theme is BACK ♥
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I think I remember suggesting this years ago, and using it at other forums I ran. It's not a bad idea in theory, but in practice, it doesn't really work.

Basically, common questions are already answered in the FAQ, and the ones that aren't can be found easily by searching. If people can't be bothered doing that, they usually can't be bothered reading a common questions thread, either.
This. I think we even had a quick questions thread for a while and it was never used anyway so we scrapped it. (But maybe I'm just thinking of somewhere else.)

:/ Page would still be just as cluttered imo from all the redirects anyway so might as well leave things out in the hopes that someone asking the same question will see it in a new thread.

I guess I don't care either way but I'm so jaded from seeing people ask the same dumb questions over and over despite them being in the FAQ, in a sticky and in a big notice above the forum that I just have zero expectations for this forum nowadays, haha.
 

Oryx

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This. I think we even had a quick questions thread for a while and it was never used anyway so we scrapped it. (But maybe I'm just thinking of somewhere else.)

:/ Page would still be just as cluttered imo from all the redirects anyway so might as well leave things out in the hopes that someone asking the same question will see it in a new thread.

I guess I don't care either way but I'm so jaded from seeing people ask the same dumb questions over and over despite them being in the FAQ, in a sticky and in a big notice above the forum that I just have zero expectations for this forum nowadays, haha.

Well, even if only one person used it, then that would be one less thread cluttering the front page, right? Besides, it would also include things such as minor typos and things like that, which are generally posted by people who are familiar with the site and would be more than happy to use a designated thread for it. Maybe I'm just optimistic but I'm under the impression that people don't want to break the rules, and there might be new people that don't understand something and aren't sure where to ask, and would post in a designated thread if they saw it there. I just figure if even a few threads were eliminated it would look much better, and that once thread get moved people might pay attention to it.

If people are worried about someone asking the same questions over and over, I'd be willing to handle answering the thread, there's plenty of that in the B/W Quick Questions thread but tbh I don't get tired of answering them. xD;
 
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I agree with this idea, but not necessarily in the light of clutter or dumb questions; when making threads like the one I made last week about a simple typo (as Toujours suggested) make you wonder why isn't there a faster, simpler way to ask simple questions and suggest simple things, like:

  • "There's a missing button on X theme!"
  • "There's a typo on the calendar day title."
  • "What does this badge mean?"
You know, maybe temporal stuff like GT8 ranks wouldn merit an explanation in the FAQ, yet neither a whole new thread to ask about their meaning.

And maybe assigning Q&F to an "all answers" existing staff member so they would always dedicate attention to new threads and questions and thus avoid topics and posts getting lost in the void?
 

Oryx

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What exactly do you guys mean by a typo thread?

I've seen a few threads where there was a typo somewhere on the site, and there's no quick way to do so. You have to make an entirely new thread just to point out one typo, lol.
 
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Ahhh. Well... I guess a thread for that would be pretty useful indeed. It could be used for typos/mistakes, and quick questions. Aha!
 

Melody

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I like this idea for questions and simple suggestions.

However there are some things that would, despite their simplicity, get lost in such threads. People won't like to read long threads to find their answer so this may easily fail.

I can see devoting several stickies to different question "classes" that are related in scope to cut the clutter of a single QQ thread. I think the whole staff reservation about "Too many stickies" is just stupid to be honest. If it takes 15 stickies to cover something, so be it. If a thread is valuable, stick it.

We could a thread for "Where do I post ___"
One for "Where can I find ___" (For anything That isn't covered in the un-dismissable notice)
One for "Why did the mod do ___ to my ___"
One for "Simple questions about the rules", because let's face it, not all of us will RTFM.

Complicated questions/suggestions that breed discussion can be split from those threads appropriately if needed, at staff discretion. Merges to one of the bigger threads can be made as needed too until the members learn how the system works, and locked thereafter.
 

Guy

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I think the whole staff reservation about "Too many stickies" is just stupid to be honest. If it takes 15 stickies to cover something, so be it. If a thread is valuable, stick it.
You may think it's stupid, but we do have our reasons for trying to limit the amount of stickies we have in one forum. If you just look at the stickies we have now, the one that garners the most attention is the Signature Rules & Review thread. There are stickies available for users who have questions about the chatroom and infractions, yet people still often make their own separate thread asking about them when there's a sticky already made for those type of questions. Stickies have a tendency to get ignored a lot, and you can see this in other forums too, not just here. In the Pokémon Gaming Boards, we have multiple Q&A stickies for people to ask their simple questions, yet they still often make their own thread for them. Also, while having some stickies is great, I wouldn't even like to see a forum with too much of them. Just as how some threads can make a forum look messy down below, too many stickies in one forum can do the same. And with so many, they can end up getting ignored even more or lost in the list of them. So, we try to keep the number of them to a limit.

Also, I don't know if you remember when all of the forum stickies from every forum got merged into one forum not long ago (...oops! n__n;), but it hit us higher staff who was moving them all back that we really do have a lot of stickies around the forum, some of which that was kind of hard to identify where to move. So, to kind of lessen the confusion and amount of time it took to do that, we don't want to overdue it with stickies when it's not necessary, if that were to ever happen again (not by me again, that's for sure!).

Honestly, I would have no issue with a Quick Q&A thread for all simple questions that only take one or two responses to resolve. We have so many successful ones elsewhere, that work around the forum, I would think we can make it work here too. Notices do help. Since we put up the ROM Hacking notice that remains permanent, the number of questions related to that have lessened down a bit compared to before. I personally think having one would work. I always thought we could have expanded the type of questions asked in the "Where do I post this...? / Where is this...?" sticky so it could be found more useful.
 
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This. I think we even had a quick questions thread for a while and it was never used anyway so we scrapped it. (But maybe I'm just thinking of somewhere else.)

:/ Page would still be just as cluttered imo from all the redirects anyway so might as well leave things out in the hopes that someone asking the same question will see it in a new thread.

I guess I don't care either way but I'm so jaded from seeing people ask the same dumb questions over and over despite them being in the FAQ, in a sticky and in a big notice above the forum that I just have zero expectations for this forum nowadays, haha.
We could merge it with the where do I post this thread, like Toujours suggested. I know there are a lot of threads that can be moved on over to that thread if we decide to add in simple questions to that thread and it'll reserve a thread being open and the answer being repeated 12 times in 4 different ways.
 

Masqueraine

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seems like overkill. 'please post in the quick questions thread inside the questions forum after reading through the faq and the rules'. lmao. anyways, ive seen people complaining about inactivity within this section. its just so convoluted and it doesnt make sense to make another sticky looking at what hiiro just said, even though he thinks there should be another one apparently...

like theres nothing wrong with this forum getting threads. its not super active to the level people are exaggerating it, and literally nobody is effected by there being an easy to answer thread in the questions forum. ive actually seen a blog where somebody complained about the lack of threads here.

Was going to suggest this to the mod of this section, buuuut....

hahahaha, 'ooh pick me pick me!'
 

Oryx

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hahahaha, 'ooh pick me pick me!'

Actually, I know why there's no mod of this section and I don't think I'd be qualified to mod here, considering it's an important area. :P It would be nice if they had some s-mod or something listed in the forum leaders for things like this though, that was what I expected to see.

I'm not sure what's so convoluted about it, tbh. If you have a question that's easy to answer such as "can I change my username" or something, it would go in a quick questions thread. If it's something that could be a suggestion or one that causes discussion such as the one about being against the rules to post on old threads, it would have its own thread. Besides, if they read the FAQ then there would probably be no need for a Quick Questions thread at all, because 95% of questions are answered in either the rules or the FAQ, so your assessment of the situation is slightly off.

I don't think the inactivity complaints have much to do with questions either. xD I mean questions are nice but the real activity in the section comes from suggestions, considering most questions are one-post answers and then have no more need for discussion. The extra threads don't hurt anyone, but neither would extra threads in any other area with a QQ thread - it just makes the forum look messy to have so many tiny threads with no way to discuss anything on them.
 

Melody

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You may think it's stupid, but we do have our reasons for trying to limit the amount of stickies we have in one forum. If you just look at the stickies we have now, the one that garners the most attention is the Signature Rules & Review thread. There are stickies available for users who have questions about the chatroom and infractions, yet people still often make their own separate thread asking about them when there's a sticky already made for those type of questions. Stickies have a tendency to get ignored a lot, and you can see this in other forums too, not just here. In the Pokémon Gaming Boards, we have multiple Q&A stickies for people to ask their simple questions, yet they still often make their own thread for them. Also, while having some stickies is great, I wouldn't even like to see a forum with too much of them. Just as how some threads can make a forum look messy down below, too many stickies in one forum can do the same. And with so many, they can end up getting ignored even more or lost in the list of them. So, we try to keep the number of them to a limit.

Also, I don't know if you remember when all of the forum stickies from every forum got merged into one forum not long ago (...oops! n__n;), but it hit us higher staff who was moving them all back that we really do have a lot of stickies around the forum, some of which that was kind of hard to identify where to move. So, to kind of lessen the confusion and amount of time it took to do that, we don't want to overdue it with stickies when it's not necessary, if that were to ever happen again (not by me again, that's for sure!).

Honestly, I would have no issue with a Quick Q&A thread for all simple questions that only take one or two responses to resolve. We have so many successful ones elsewhere, that work around the forum, I would think we can make it work here too. Notices do help. Since we put up the ROM Hacking notice that remains permanent, the number of questions related to that have lessened down a bit compared to before. I personally think having one would work. I always thought we could have expanded the type of questions asked in the "Where do I post this...? / Where is this...?" sticky so it could be found more useful.

Big Whoop. So what if it looks messy up top. It's still more organized than haphazardly scattered threads down below. If we had different threads stuck for different question types we could list common answers to commonly asked questions in the first post and then have more productive looking clutter down below. (The suggestions threads)

CQ&F is gonna be a rats nest anyway, and using the argument that n00bs are too stupid to get it is weak and tired. There's always going to be a clueless noob or two, that's where staff is supposed to step in and deal with.

Combining it into one thread makes it a headache to read through to find answers. If we split common questions into different classes, it might be easier to find the same question asked and answered before. I'm trying to encourage a more easily indexed and searchable system so even a clueless n00b can find something manually, assuming they know nothing of how to search or scan for it.
 
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