Users (vs. Only Employees) Should Be Able To Suggest Topic Merges or Redirects, as well as Topic Breakouts

Users would be able to increase the efficiency of their contributions as well as the answers provided by employees by suggesting merges and redirects for topics. Additionally, users and employees should be able to not only comment on other people's comments under a topic, but also suggest a breakout of a comment to its own topic so that it doesn't get buried. For example this idea has been a sub-topic running under "Merge Topics and Get Rid of Duplicates" topic <http://getsatisfaction.com/getsatisfa...> which was regarding a feature requested for employee use only. Per the suggestion from a Get Satisfaction employee (Amy Muller) I'm breaking this out into it's own topic so that it can be more easily surfaced.

Below are the series of comments on the idea posted to the "Merge Topics and Get Rid of Duplicates" topic.

Xavier Grehant replied 5 months ago
Aren't users better placed to branch/merge topics? As a user when I'm going to post I check first if the topic exists. I might find several relevant topics. I might comment on one of them but I would prefer my comment to be visible on all of them. I'd do something like a merge. I'm reading a post. It gives me an idea. I hesitate to write the idea as a comment because it is kind of related but I don't want to interrupt the mainstream conversation. I'd do something like a branch. Links might be interesting. Say, after a comment you can check : "Detach and link" (would start a new topic and link it) or "Link to other topics". Whatever *link* means... In fact the whole thing could be a directed graph of single contributions... In fact that's relevant to every forum.

ebclosmore commented 3 months ago
at the very least users (vs. only employees) should be able to suggest a merge ( Delete or Edit for 15 minutes )

Eric Suesz, (Official Rep), commented 3 months ago
I like that idea, actually. Maybe users could suggest a "redirect" to other topics, which employees can then decide to turn into "merges" if they agree. ( Delete or Edit for 15 minutes )

ebclosmore commented 7 days ago
i'm still craving what i suggested three months ago (above) as a get satisfaction feature ( Delete or Edit for 15 minutes )

Amy Muller, (Official Rep), commented 7 days ago
Thanks for chiming back in ebclosmore. I do like that idea. ( Delete or Edit for 15 minutes )

Amy Muller, (Official Rep), commented 7 days ago
In fact it just occurred to me that it would be really helpful if you created a new "Idea" topic out of your idea of allowing users to suggest merges and redirects. (oh, the irony!) That way we can better keep track of this particular feature idea.