How do I create a new topic in Confluence questions?

[Pelagia Papoulidou]

I am new in Questions and I am going to manage this particular knowledge. I would like to learn how to create/delete topics and restrict anyone else from being able to do so.

Cheers,

Pelli

[Nic Brough -Adaptavist- · Accepted solution]

To create a new topic, add it to a question.  To delete one, remove it from all questions.

You cannot restrict topics, that defeats the whole purpose of them.

[TomC]

Hi @Nic Brough [Adaptavist] and @Pelagia Papoulidou , Not sure if this is where Pelagia is coming from, but we (Fortune 500 organization) are moving from a forum-type tool for asking questions (it was launched over a decade ago and needed an uplift); we see a Q&A, upvoting, accept answer type tool like CQ as being a significant improvement. In typical forum-type tools like ours, moderators could create categories that were fixed, driving folks to ask and answer questions within those categories, and thus also limiting having thousands of users (in our case) create a plethora of categories. But that's also the wiki way of thinking right, to have the crowd determine where things go. We have been struggling with this a bit, probably because it's another paradigm shift, a shift we made successfully with our now widely grassroots-adopted instance of Confluence (it's now in use across most business units of our organization). We do see advantages for users to create their own topics but are early in our CQ journey and will have to see how it goes. We are also looking forward to seeing how we could utilize the new space-restricted feature that @Rodrigo Adami mentioned.

[Nic Brough -Adaptavist-]

The space-restriction thing is a definite improvement, as it means that topics will tend to group themselves into spaces naturally. I'd also like to see a way to pre-load topics (in a space), so that when a new question space is created, the admins can seed it with some preferred topics. Another improvement I'd like in Confluence (and hence questions) is a field for a category which should be a predefined fixed list alongside topics/labels. There's a definite use for that. But topics and labels really should be free-format. They're quite informative as they allow the user community to freely contribute to the list - they add information for all users and can inform the administrators and business users of what is really going on and how people are really talking about content instead of having a fixed set of jargon forced on them.

[TomC]

Well said Nic. If I could upvote your comment I would. I agree with your "like to see's" (really like the pre-load topics idea) and the value of the free-format approach. I added the tag 'confluence-questions' to this question with the hopes that CQ Product Management may peek in. Cheers, Tom

[Rodrigo Girardi Adami]

Hi Pelagia,

FYI, There was also a feature request to restrict the questions by space as seen here. 

It's implemented in version 2.0.10 of questions. 

Cheers,

Rodrigo

[Pelagia Papoulidou]

Thank you all! This is all useful for me to start with! I will be in touch because I am sure I will have more questions! That's the point isn't it?

Cheers,

Pelli