Community Improvements - "Create" Questions/Discussions/Articles

Mirek
Community Leader
Community Leader
Community Leaders are connectors, ambassadors, and mentors. On the online community, they serve as thought leaders, product experts, and moderators.
April 6, 2018

Hi everyone,

I am wondering about your opinion about the way that Questions/Discussions/Articles are created and managed. Below is part of my current feedback about each..

Questions

When people create questions I expect that they fill out some minimum number of information that will reduce time of providing a good answer.. Currently it is not quite as supposed to be... On most questions I need to very often wonder is the user talking about Cloud or Software. Which product and version he might be using. Maybe talking about a plugin.. Is it a development question or not. Instead of one single answer that is targeted we need to make answers more generic or ask for more details.. When creating a ticket to support we fill so many details and support does not need to ask basic questions. Can we somehow improve this also here at Community? Maybe one or two additional (optional) fields on "create screen" for Questions that will give more details? Not only tags.. Tags are very often confusing and people do not know many times how to use them. In addition those are added automatically depends on the page you are when clicking Create.. Would be really got to just see what user is using from the begging and not wait to see this later in a description or comment. Not sure if you have similar feelings...

Discussions

Yeah.. This is something that I am creating now. What is a discussion? I my opinion is something that requires some simple feedback, not a direct answer like a "How to.. " that will end after one or few answer that some one will accept.. When I create discussion I expect a really good discussion on arguments what is good/bad with ability to like single comments (opinions) that are a part of whole picture. There is no good or bad answers. I expect only feedback if I think correctly or not. So the problem is that when filtering discussions I see not much of that.. People simply create Questions as Discussions!.. That is really annoying.. Not sure why I see so many of them.. Is this really hard to ask a question if I really have a question and start a discussion if I need someone's opinion? I think not.. For me it is really hard to find a good discussion that is going on. There are so many discussions that should be simple questions.. But how to improve this? I should be also done on the "create screen" since people makes mistakes there.. Maybe a simple wizard with 2-3 questions instead of buttons next to each other that will point to what user really want to create. Wondering what is your point of view on this. Do you see that problem too? Do you even read discussions? Is it needed or questions might be enough to answer questions and provide feedback.

Articles

Lastly.. articles. This is something special, that not everyone can create. Is this really a good idea? There are pros and cons.. Users cannot create them but on the profile they see badges on how many articles they have created.. Maybe badges should be removed form the profile page unless there is a good explanation how to get them or articles would be visible on the "create screen" but grayed out. So it is confusing since begging for all new users.. How to create an article and get that badge?.. They ask themselves: "Where is the Create Article" button, so questions like this show up (https://community.atlassian.com/t5/Questions/How-to-create-Articles-in-Atlassian-community/qaq-p/763197). You say - "please post a discussion", but is Discussion a good place to post some achievements or something that people would like to share with the world?  In general maybe there is a new user that would like to write and article and express himself in a more official way or maybe a person that is not good in helping others but have a really good writing skills to write articles. In my opinion articles should be somehow allowed from the starting point (might be moderated for really new users or provide ability to write only one article per month which will increase every month, so older users can create more articles per month then others). I am personally with community for couple of years already, having enough skills and experience to write and article but I do not have ability to create it yet. Fair? That is why I am not quite sure if current model is good or bad for everyone. Do you agree?

Thank you in front for all of your suggestions and feedback. I hope that someone will read this up to this point and we can have a real discussion how to improve things :)

FYI - @Monique vdB , @Erica Moss and others that make this Community a better place :)

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Jonny Adams
Rising Star
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Rising Stars are recognized for providing high-quality answers to other users. Rising Stars receive a certificate of achievement and are on the path to becoming Community Leaders.
April 6, 2018

@Mirek I am with you on adding some prompts for additional information when creating a question. I don't think that any fields should be mandatory aside from the question itself. New visitors to the community might be intimidated by a series of required fields and that could have a negative impact on their Atlassian experience. 

Discussions...Discussions seem to be a catch-all and that can be tedious at times. I find that a lot of questions are created as discussions. I think that most of the time that is a mistake made by users that come here to ask a quick question and get on with configuring their instance. I am sure the Community management team is aware of the issue and would know, better than I, how to proceed.

I like that Articles are reserved and limited. Questions pour into the community and they can be difficult to weed through. You get to pick and choose which ones you want to view, spend some time researching, and provide whatever knowledge you have that might help a fellow Atlassian. Sometimes I find that I better my own instance while helping others better theirs. Discussions are fairly prolific here and I tend to scroll past anything that doesn't grab my attention. Articles are the Rainicorns of the Community. They should be too compelling not to click on and read to completion. I feel that the moderators do a great job of spotlighting interesting community members and writing compelling content worth reading in Articles. 

I see from your profile that you have made a great many contributions to the community. Have you requested to become a Community Champion? Perhaps, that would give you enough clout to submit material for an article.

Mirek
Community Leader
Community Leader
Community Leaders are connectors, ambassadors, and mentors. On the online community, they serve as thought leaders, product experts, and moderators.
April 6, 2018

Thank you @Jonny Adams. So we mostly agree. There is a small difference between every category which we both see, unfortunately it is not clear for all users (especially those new here). The key point of some improvements is to reduce confusion, so that everyone can easily create and later manage content. If this is a questions the goal should be to get one or more accepted answers or at least some votes.. discussion to get really valuable feedback answers that people can like (like yours but unfortunately there is not option to do it on a comment, so I give you a like here -> Like +1) and articles to like overall so that everyone could benefit of finding quickly the one that gives the most interesting information.

Thank you for you kind words. Hmm.. requested to become a Community Champion? I think that this article that you refer clearly define how to become one but maybe nobody from the current Champions likes me or I do not qualify yet :) . Maybe some day :) Anyway to be honest with you I am not here to count points but to help people and provide feedback like in current discussion. If Community Champion would jump in to my profile some day would be great but it is not required to share some knowledge with others like I do now. This is what I like to do and will continue with our without Community Champion profile badge. In the past there was karma now are badges. Things like this change but the overall idea of the community is not.

Monique vdB
Community Manager
Community Managers are Atlassian Team members who specifically run and moderate Atlassian communities. Feel free to say hello!
April 6, 2018

I'll be following this discussion with interest! One thing that is already in the works is better differentiation between Cloud and Server questions.  @Test User KL is working on an updated design for the creae experience now, and soon we will also be launching subcollections for Confluence Cloud and Jira Cloud to help segment the content more helpfully.

Mirek
Community Leader
Community Leader
Community Leaders are connectors, ambassadors, and mentors. On the online community, they serve as thought leaders, product experts, and moderators.
April 9, 2018

Thank you @Monique vdB! Cloud and Server solutions are in couple of things different so it would be a massive time saver when someone could simply check a radio button (eg. Cloud/Server) when creating a question and we would just see that later without asking "reporter" (like tags). Same with products that people are referring to however in case of product people give some clue, only the version is a problem.. Making this required might solve problems of not filling that information but it should be more like a suggestion to fill it. We do not want people to fill confusing forms. It should be maybemore like a wizard that will guide people towards correct output and fill it for them.

Speaking of following.. Is there are way to set some questions as favorites so that we can get quick access to them? :)

And by the way - Do you have any roadmap (on Trello for example like for some roadmaps or other place like JIRA) that we can refer and she what is coming in next release of community version?

Erica Moss
Rising Star
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April 9, 2018

Really appreciate your thoughtful feedback here, @Mirek! We're always looking for ways to improve the experience.

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