Mark support helpful/reactions

[sukafia]

Hi,

I think we can improve the support forum by adding a feature that allows users to mark comment as helpful. Quora uses 'upvote' for this and it helps people to easily find helpful replies base on users vote.

I particularly like the Google's support articles approach to this. They simply have 'was this useful' with a tiny yes/no button.

We could add a counter that shows the no of people who found a comment helpful. This will encourage people who have similar issues in future to try out the suggestions in the comments.

I know some people may not like the idea since it appears like some sort of gamification feature. But let's look at it beyond that, this could also be used to track how useful comments (support) in the forums are. We could use this for feedback.

Here's a screenshot of what Google's looks like - ​http://bit.ly/39c0WJt

Currently, a user who created a topic can mark the topic as resolved, but there's no way for other people who find the support provided helpful to indicate they found it useful.

Also, it's only the person that asked a question that can mark it as resolved and some people don't, which sometimes give people the impression that the support provided wasn't helpful. But if other users can indicate that a support is helpful, it makes that support evergreen, even if the topic is not marked as resolved.

We can come up with a unique catchline for ours.

It'll also be great to be able to like (react) to comments, this can help reduce tension in the forum and spice things up.

Let me know your thoughts on this. Cheers!

PS:
I am also moving on to suggest this for helphub. The helpful part.

[SergeyBiryukov]

Previously: #164, #1324, #4529.

[dufresnesteven]

GitHub indirectly supports this feature by allowing users to add emoticons to responses. While I recognize the current community sentiment may be that support forums are meant for supporting and not emoting, emoticons in this sense don't necessary reflect emotion but instead outcomes.

[dufresnesteven]

@sukafia Thanks for joining the community!

[valentinbora]

Inspiration screenshot of Google's support articles

[valentinbora]

Inspiration screenshot of Amazon's reviews

[felipeloureirosantos]

I agree that it's a great idea.

I'm the one that created #4529. I believe that your way of approaching it is actually better.

I just don't think that there should be a non-helpful option. I suggest just a helpful one (like the Amazon screenshot).

Besides making things more dynamic and less boring, it will allow us to know if individuals other than the OP are getting help.

[sukafia]

It's great to be here @dufresnesteven, Thanks!

Yeah, @felipeloureirosantos, I also feel the Amazon approach is great, the above screenshot was merely to communicate the idea and spark conversation around this. If we have a "no" button, it shouldn't output negative feedback on the forums so it doesn't discourage people from providing support.

I believe this feature can spice up the support forum and help people easily find help, which is what the forums exist for. This can also be leveraged for feedback.

[mrfoxtalbot]

This is a good idea. Big +1 to offering only an "upvotes" button but no "downvote" option.

If we implement Elasticsearch at some point in forums, we could sort results by number of votes.