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Way to Update FAQ page & Karma point details?

I've been digging in to Askbot and I think the idea of rewarding active users is great. I think it is important to make sure it is clear and understandable to users WHY and HOW to earn these points.

It all started when I was trying to upvote a question and saw the popup message saying I needed 15 points (but no link or indication as to HOW I can earn them). I then searched this site but didn't find any clear indication about how the point system works.

After a bit more searching I noticed the tiny, tiny link on the footer of the website called "FAQ". This is a great start but think two things would be very helpful.

  1. Feature the FAQ link on the top bar by tags, people, badges, so it is more prominent and promotes info about points. We want active users.

  2. After reading the FAQ I felt that it would be helpful to have more details on this page. If the only way to earn points is by someone else upvoting your questions or answers then you have to somehow already have a base of users who can up-vote. How is this supposed to work? (Especially on new sites)

Thanks for all the hard work on this site!

gmustuk's avatar
83
gmustuk
asked 2012-01-17 11:30:36 -0500
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todofixthis's avatar todofixthis (2012-09-02 19:31:50 -0500) edit
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2 Answers

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We could have links to specific parts of the FAQ directly from the popup messages. Adding FAQ link to the top is a good idea (still imo faq page will not be read very often).

In the future it will be possible to edit FAQ entries and transfer forum posts to FAQ, cannot say exactly when though.

Evgeny's avatar
13.2k
Evgeny
answered 2012-01-17 11:37:01 -0500
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Thanks evgeny. I think most people who just ask questions won't care about FAQ...but users who want to contribute or dig deeper will want to know. To start adding a faq link to the up-vote/down-vote popup would help.

The question still remains if no one has 15 karma points...how do you start the snowball of allowing users to upvote? I'm guessing that right now a moderator/admin has to do this...but it's not clear.

gmustuk's avatar gmustuk (2012-01-17 11:43:43 -0500) edit

Ps. I love the idea of Karma points :) In fact we just released a new free online game called "The Karma Game" - http://www.sikhnet.com/karmagame

I know this is un-related...but couldn't help myself with all the talk of karma :)

gmustuk's avatar gmustuk (2012-01-17 11:45:42 -0500) edit

Nice, the word karma should sound natural in your community. The karma limits can be changed in the settings panel.

Evgeny's avatar Evgeny (2012-01-17 11:47:21 -0500) edit

One other thing to add is when you first visit aksbot it has the status message in yellow at the top which says "First time here? Check out the FAQ!" however there is no link with that message and no FAQ shows anywhere noticeable. Ideally this should be a link or have something on the top half of the page that links to the FAQ section.

gmustuk's avatar gmustuk (2012-01-17 15:21:47 -0500) edit
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I think that this askbot is almost like its own FAQ system. I have been looking for a good FAQ, Helpdesk (with canned answers & files), etc system, and saw a site with this, and thought it might be perfect for this. It seems that this might be a good thing for an integrated item.

First, an admin created faq. . . i.e. questions they want people to know. Then if people have more questions, they can ask, and see if its answered.

Finally, once its been active, the system can suggest other items that people commonly ask and suggest them for the "official FAQ"

We are a non-profit volunteer run organization, and this would help all members answer questions, and even would allow admins answer specific questions?

Currently, we use a mailing list, Facebook forum, our own static web page (and php based calendar), and web forms for specific questions. . . We've been looking to migrate to a CMS, but we wanted something to have a single login, and provide FAQ, and helpdesk type services -- also member colaboration which we added a wiki to the mix. They all got confusing, not able to work together, and/or expensive, so we have stuck with the basic static web page-phpcalendar, and archaic webforms.

We even looked at bug reporting and project management software, but this works with wordpress, and may be able to solve a few of our issues.

pmheart6's avatar
21
pmheart6
answered 2012-09-02 10:25:28 -0500
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