398483 - Encourage users to create new threads rather than using another user's thread

Status: VERIFIED FIXED

(support.mozilla.org :: Forum, task)

Description

[Jason Barnabe (np)]

We want to enforce one user seeking help per thread. Users reusing others' threads

-Makes the user not go through the info gathering process (bug 396581)
-Can be confusing to the user, because their problem may not be the same even if it sounds the same (ex: lost bookmarks can be caused by many things)
-Can be frustrating to the original poster because attention is diverted from them

To help prevent people from doing this, we should include text near the reply box if the user posting isn't the OP. The text would encourage them to start a new thread.

Comment 1

[Jason Barnabe (np)]

I'll handle this, but I need to know what URL I can point to for creating a new thread. Right now, the new thread stuff is shown by JavaScript on http://support.mozilla.com/tiki-view_forum.php?forumId=1 . Nelson, do you have any insight?

Comment 2

[Nelson Ko [:nkoth]]

I like the fact that the forum posting is on the same page as the list of threads. I will modify the javascript though, to show either the form or the list of threads (rather than one on top of each other).

Can you point it to tiki-view_forum.php?forumId=1&postform=y

Comment 3

[Nelson Ko [:nkoth]]

sorry about this. Use tiki-view_forum.php?forumId=1&openpost=1 instead

Comment 4

[Jason Barnabe (np)]

Nelson, since this is only supposed to apply to the one forum, are we just going to hardcode the forum ID in the code, or do you have something else in mind?

Comment 5

[Nelson Ko [:nkoth]]

tiki-view_forum.php?forumId={$forumId}&openpost=1 should work

Comment 6

[Jason Barnabe (np)]

I understand, but when I'm putting in the code that will include this text, should I just say

{if $forumId eq 1}
  Please create a new thread.
{end}

or is there some more general solution?

Comment 7

[Nelson Ko [:nkoth]]

It may be too much trouble to make a general solution for this kind of simple thing.

Comment 8

[Jason Barnabe (np)]

Attachment: patch

I'm not able to test this for threads started by anonymous users because captchas don't work on my machine.

Comment 9

[Nelson Ko [:nkoth]]

patch looks good and committed. The forumId=1 for the main forum on support and support-stage.

If you want to "pretend" captcha on your machine, add the following line to tiki-random_num_img.php near the end:

$smarty->assign('img_number',$number)

and in your template, replace alt='{tr}Random Image{/tr}' with alt='{$img_number}'