[Bioc-devel] Moderating "answers" into comments on other answers/comments on the support site?

Hi Ryan,

----- Original Message -----

From: "Ryan C. Thompson" <rct at thompsonclan.org>
To: bioc-devel at r-project.org
Sent: Thursday, October 8, 2015 1:09:06 PM
Subject: [Bioc-devel] Moderating "answers" into comments on other

answers/comments on the support site?

Hello,

On support.bioconductor.org, we've seen a lot of instances of people
using the answer box when they should be adding a comment on an
existing
answer. I don't necessarily blame uses, since the "Add your answer"
text
box is far more obvious than the "add comment" button on an existing
answer. However, as far as I can tell, it's impossible to use the
moderator tools to convert an answer into a comment on another answer
or
comment, so when I see this happen, I just have to leave it as is,
since
converting the answer to a comment on the question would just make
things even more confusing and out-of-order. So, given that this is
probably the most common moderation action  that I would want to do,
could this feature be added to the moderator tools?

Also, I will note that this problem happens almost exclusively on
whichever answer is listed last, i.e. the answer with the "add your
answer" text box immediately below it in the position that one would
look for a "reply" text box. For answers that are higher up, useres
almost always find the "Add comment" button since they are not
distracted by an existing text box. So I think we could greatly
reduce
instances of this issue by putting a much clearer visual separation
between the last answer and the "add your answer box", and maybe
doing
like StackOverflow does and popping up an "are you sure you want to
answer your own question" dialog when a user tries to write in the
answer box for their own question.

I've forwarded your email to the author of the software that the support
site is based on. Ideally he will want to add the features and can do it.
Otherwise we can look at doing it, but we prefer to keep the drift between
his version an our version to a minimum.

Thanks,

-Ryan

P.S. I hope bioc-devel is the right place to ask about how to do
moderation on the support site.

It's ok. Some of you may be wondering where the moderator functionality is
and the answer is that moderation privileges are only granted to a select
few.
There are several FAQs about moderation at the bottom of
https://support.bioconductor.org/info/faq/ .

Dan

From: "Michael Lawrence" <lawrence.michael at gene.com>
To: "Dan Tenenbaum" <dtenenba at fredhutch.org>
Cc: "Ryan C. Thompson" <rct at thompsonclan.org>, bioc-devel at r-project.org
Sent: Thursday, October 8, 2015 2:05:51 PM
Subject: Re: [Bioc-devel] Moderating "answers" into comments on other answers/comments on the support site?


With regard to moderation of this, see the issue I reported a while
ago: https://github.com/ialbert/biostar-central/issues/353 .

On Thu, Oct 8, 2015 at 1:15 PM, Dan Tenenbaum <
dtenenba at fredhutch.org > wrote:


Hi Ryan,



----- Original Message -----

From: "Ryan C. Thompson" < rct at thompsonclan.org >
To: bioc-devel at r-project.org
Sent: Thursday, October 8, 2015 1:09:06 PM
Subject: [Bioc-devel] Moderating "answers" into comments on other
answers/comments on the support site?

Hello,

On support.bioconductor.org , we've seen a lot of instances of
people
using the answer box when they should be adding a comment on an
existing
answer. I don't necessarily blame uses, since the "Add your answer"
text
box is far more obvious than the "add comment" button on an
existing
answer. However, as far as I can tell, it's impossible to use the
moderator tools to convert an answer into a comment on another
answer
or
comment, so when I see this happen, I just have to leave it as is,
since
converting the answer to a comment on the question would just make
things even more confusing and out-of-order. So, given that this is
probably the most common moderation action that I would want to do,
could this feature be added to the moderator tools?

Also, I will note that this problem happens almost exclusively on
whichever answer is listed last, i.e. the answer with the "add your
answer" text box immediately below it in the position that one
would
look for a "reply" text box. For answers that are higher up, useres
almost always find the "Add comment" button since they are not
distracted by an existing text box. So I think we could greatly
reduce
instances of this issue by putting a much clearer visual separation
between the last answer and the "add your answer box", and maybe
doing
like StackOverflow does and popping up an "are you sure you want to
answer your own question" dialog when a user tries to write in the
answer box for their own question.

I've forwarded your email to the author of the software that the
support site is based on. Ideally he will want to add the features
and can do it. Otherwise we can look at doing it, but we prefer to
keep the drift between his version an our version to a minimum.

Thanks,

-Ryan

P.S. I hope bioc-devel is the right place to ask about how to do
moderation on the support site.

It's ok. Some of you may be wondering where the moderator
functionality is and the answer is that moderation privileges are
only granted to a select few.
There are several FAQs about moderation at the bottom of
https://support.bioconductor.org/info/faq/ .

Dan