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How do you deal with users posting duplicate topics?
How do you deal with users posting duplicate topics? The issue is two-fold.
1. most importantly, the question has already been answered, yet users are waiting.
2. a company might want to keep fresh issues on the homepage, and not have questions that have been answered before taking up space.
I seem to remember in the early days of GS, that when you posted a topic, it first suggested some possible responses. What happened to that feature?
Thanks!
1. most importantly, the question has already been answered, yet users are waiting.
2. a company might want to keep fresh issues on the homepage, and not have questions that have been answered before taking up space.
I seem to remember in the early days of GS, that when you posted a topic, it first suggested some possible responses. What happened to that feature?
Thanks!
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Inappropriate?Hi John!
Sorry it took me a little while to get back to you on this.
When you create a new topic we still suggest other helpful topics, it's just buried one layer down. We saw a lot of confusion around the original suggestion system because searching and starting a new topic were too intermingled. So now we're still helping people find duplicate topics, but not confusing the search. Speaking of which, we'll be releasing a new version of the company home page that has a big ol' search box for your search convenience.
That said, we can't prevent all duplicate topics, and often having a few duplicates is a good thing! Sometimes the language a customer uses is not what you would have expected, you might not realize, for example, that some people are calling your 'tool' a 'platform', or that other people are calling your 'bag' a 'satchel'. So multiple version of the same issue, using different language can help more customers and prevent future duplicate topics. The other thing is that often on first pass an issue sounds just like another topic, but often on further probing that person really does have a unique case. So don't lose out on the opportunities to help those unique cases and provide really fantastic customer service and gain evangelists. So we'll keep working on the search and making sure that gets people to helpful topics before they even start asking a question, and you'll keep the conversation going with your customers, after all, sometimes they just want to connect with you!
On your second point you bring up an interesting issue. We've been pondering about this for sometime. We just added a featured company topic on the company home page to help companies with news or questions for the community. I'm curious what kinds of fresh issues you could see in your case? We're still working on this page so feedback is really valuable at this stage.
Thanks!
I’m thankful
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Inappropriate?Also, we're rolling out a feature in the next few months that will effectively allow company reps to merge duplicate topics.
I’m looking forward to this, too
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This answers the question
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It's been just over 2 months, I am really looking forward to this one. Can we also get the ability for people to suggest that this topic is a dupe, so company reps who didn't remember the previous one can see it on their dashboard or something, "Thor thinks 'Cats are better than dogs' is a duplicate of 'Dogs, still inferior to cats'. Read both and decide." and each one of those 'topic titles' is a link to the thread, but 'read both' is a link to a side by side (two column) copy of the first post in each thread, so it can be more easily decided. -
I know, we're behind on this one. But it is the next thing on the queue. I agree that a link approach similar to what you describe could be effective.
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Inappropriate?I posted this on another thread.
"This doesn't exactly make a whole lot of sense for a premium member of GS. I really hoped that paying for these better mgmt functions would make sense, but the simple merge function needs to be there.
As a site owner, I want to direct people to the one authoritative thread and I don't want false positives to continually pop up. Is the suggested course of action to redirect the topic and then bury it? That seems to lose the power of trying to figure out how many people "have that same question".
Ironically, this feature was requested on these duplicate threads. You guys could have used this same functionality for all of these threads (which supposedly was supposed to happen in September '08):
http://getsatisfaction.com/getsatisfa...
http://getsatisfaction.com/getsatisfa...
http://getsatisfaction.com/getsatisfa...
http://getsatisfaction.com/getsatisfa...
In total, it seems that there are over 32 site owners who would want a simple merge functionality. Honestly, the linking thing is a good step (and should probably stay an option for related topics), but what we need is:
A) Move those topics as replies to the original question which then would auto-increment it into "me too, I have this problem"
B) Get rid of those old topics.
C) Allow the site owner to reply and say, "hey, I moved this thread over to where it makes more sense"
To note, history is preserved because it's part of a bigger thread.
To prove my point, I'm going to post this reply to the other threads."
I’m anxious
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This answers the question
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Agreed that this is important. Will work on this with the team.
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Thanks Eric for the quick response. Do you have an ETA when this might happen?
I think you definitely see the irony in the situation, but just think if each of these responses was not me, but a different person.
We would keep our premium service going if we get this functionality. If not, then it's not worth very much to us because if we cannot get organized, then all of the other functionality does not matter. -
Trust me, it's one of our highest priorities. I can't give you an ETA right this moment, but it's driving us crazy not having this, too. I will try and publish an ETA when we settle on a timeframe for it.
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Inappropriate?This is now ready. We'll be blogging about it and announcing it soon. I hope you'll give it a try.
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