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IP.Board 3.4 Dev Update: "Best Answer" Feature

Posted by Matt , in 3.4.x 18 September 2012 · 20,752 views

We're always amazed at how diverse our customer base is and how many different uses customers find for their IP.Board. Many customers, ourselves included often have a forum that invites questions such as pre-sales or support forums. These forums often generate a lot of topics with many replies and it can often be confusing for other readers to know which reply definitively answered the original question.

The Best Answer Feature
IP.Board comes with a brand new 'best answer' feature. This enables the topic starter (when allowed), moderators (where allowed) and super moderators/admins to mark a post as the best answer.

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This screen shot shows a typical question topic and the best answer has been flagged. You'll also notice that at the top, a small excerpt of the post is shown with a button to go and read the full post. This is useful for when the best answer may be on a different page to the one you're viewing.

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Looking at the forum view, you'll see that the answered topic has a badge that when clicked takes you to the flagged post.

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You can also quickly filter the forum list to remove answered or unanswered topics. This will be handy for forums that have staff answering questions!

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As you'd expect, this can be enabled on a per-forum basis and you can choose whether the topic starter can flag a topic or not on a per-forum basis. There is also a moderator toggle to empower moderators to flag a topic as the best answer. This enables you to retain as much control over this feature as you need.

We hope you enjoy this feature new to IP.Board 3.4. We know that it's been requested many times and we're very pleased at being able to include it!

  • mortenz, Breadfan, thaivisa and 56 others like this



I like!!
    • ~SubZero~ likes this
Outstanding!!!

Can you have more than one best answer?
    • Nick², Amy T, ITpro.no and 5 others like this
was thinking about the same thing recently, nice!
a credit system (or even nexus in store purchase points) to add on top of this would be nice, for example:
when someone's answer is selected as best answer, he will be granted x amount of points that he can use to spend on vip membership etc
i think this will encourage members to answer other ppl's question
(note: if you gonna adopt a system like this, plz also add limit on how many thread they can open in a certain board in x amount period of time, just to prevent over-flood)
    • ITpro.no, Alex Brecher and Mert G. like this
Brilliant. Have been pondering on this very thing lately, wondering how to best implement a system like this. Saves me going to a developer and getting it coded now! 3.4 is becoming a brilliant upgrade, lots of new, USEFUL features :)
Are there data hook points on this?
Well darn.. I've been wanting to create a mod that does this for awhile now. Oh well.
I can see this being handy. Specially for some of the sites I go to.

I do not think my site needs it but still see it handy.

Keep up the good work.
Nice feature! :)
YES! YES!

    • TheRevTastic likes this
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bikedorkseattle
Sep 18 2012 01:02 PM
As a user of QA sites like stackoverflow I appreciate their existence, but I think in some genres (like anything computer related) they threaten forums immensely. Do you guys have a strategy beyond this feature that addresses the above, where people can get similar QA functionality (specific answers) but in a forum type of way (discussion) so it's the best of both worlds? This seems like a great start. Nice work!
    • Maxxius likes this
bike.. we tried something like that:

http://www.gamedev.n...ustry-standard/
Do you call it improvement?
Where the buttons are now, is that the 'final' place for them or is it likely to change before the release? Might just be me, but for the quote/multiquote buttons to be staggered to the left based on which button shows up (or if any show up at all) makes it appear inconsistent. So basically, I'm thinking it'd be better if it were to the left of the quote buttons. Not hating where it's at, just feel it's a bit on the inconsistent side.

Where the buttons are now, is that the 'final' place for them or is it likely to change before the release? Might just be me, but for the quote/multiquote buttons to be staggered to the left based on which button shows up (or if any show up at all) makes it appear inconsistent. So basically, I'm thinking it'd be better if it were to the left of the quote buttons. Not hating where it's at, just feel it's a bit on the inconsistent side.

Personally I would move the button top-right in the post area (on the same line of the date/best answer badge).
    • agnxnetworks likes this

Personally I would move the button top-right in the post area (on the same line of the date/best answer badge).

I guess that could work too. Just the staggering sort of catches my attention. One post, no button. Another post, it's there and everything shifts over. Another post, same thing but doesn't shift by the same amount of space.
This feature should have an option that select automatic the best answer at post with more Reputations points. Please consider it. Thanks for the feature!
    • Maxxius, Alfa1, Real Hal9000 and 2 others like this

This feature should have an option that select automatic the best answer at post with more Reputations points. Please consider it. Thanks for the feature!

The problem with that is that there could be a post that receives a lot of Likes but doesn't really answer the question. Not only that but what if the time period is set to too short or too long, and as a result one post is automatically marked as 'best answer' when it's not? It's one of the bad things about Yahoo! Answers, because a lot of the 'best answers' that were chosen by voters really only got a few votes and those were most likely from friends of the person who ended up winning. There are many instances of a 'best answer' by voters that when reading it, you wonder why it would have gotten voted up to begin with, as opposed to another one that really should have been marked as the answer.
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Real Hal9000
Sep 18 2012 02:32 PM

This feature should have an option that select automatic the best answer at post with more Reputations points. Please consider it. Thanks for the feature!


exactly, but as an additional feature and that's how we made in our plugin. If user didn't choose any best answer, then the post with more likes would be considered as the "popular" one.

Great work IPS Team !!

The problem with that is that there could be a post that receives a lot of Likes but doesn't really answer the question. Not only that but what if the time period is set to too short or too long, and as a result one post is automatically marked as 'best answer' when it's not? It's one of the bad things about Yahoo! Answers, because a lot of the 'best answers' that were chosen by voters really only got a few votes and those were most likely from friends of the person who ended up winning. There are many instances of a 'best answer' by voters that when reading it, you wonder why it would have gotten voted up to begin with, as opposed to another one that really should have been marked as the answer.


I say this because I use positive and negative points and in my case the answer with moré reputation points should be the best answer, I think the automatically selection by reputation points or likes should be an option in acp for activate or disable it
Nice... I don't see a use for it on any of my communities, but I do like this type of system on a support related community...

I can see, on the horizon, people using this system to act as a 'pin posts' option... A way to show multiple pinned posts in a topic on the first page.

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