Add the ability to merge topics

w00t! Thanks, Amy.

(Great job title, BTW. I used that as my unofficial title for the Emerging Technology Conference. Too much Love Boat for you too?)

I'd love this feature too. Most new users don't take the trouble to search through old questions, and it would make life easier for support teams if we could explicitly say Question 1 and Question 2 are the same. 8-)

Am also happy to see that individual replies within threads have their own bookmarks now. 8-)

mdy,

This is something that we will be working on soon. We're just starting on a big effort to improve tools for companies using Get Satisfaction, and this is on the list.

We want to really start to bring in tangible value to our company administrators, and some curation powers in the system will be a big piece of that.

Thanks, Scott. 8-)

I will love this too. I transfered my FAQ here and it was great to use the Wiki style of cross referencing so that I didn't have to rewrite everything several times.

The Irony is delicious

Smart titles are cute and all but it does create problem for people wanting to avoid making duplicates

Fwiw, what I've been doing in the meantime is using the tag feature to tag similar or related topics with (what I think are) descriptive tags.

On the Twitter forum, for example, instead of just using "badge" as a tag, I'll use "wrong tweets in badge" so that those topics can be easily selected from all the other badge-related problems.

I figure doing this now will help company administrators later -- with descriptive tags, they can more easily find various related threads that are candidates for merging/linking when the merge/link feature becomes available.

------------------

Btw, Thor, I'd been meaning to ask -- when related topics get merged/linked in the future, will the bookmarks/URLs for existing replies within the topic pages be changed as a result? Or will the individual threads still remain intact and therefore retain their existing URLs?

I rely heavily on such links right now. For example, I frequently point people to specific replies in related GSFN threads if those replies are relevant. I also link to specific GSFN replies from outside of GSFN. So if a topic merge will be done, I hope the GSFN team will find a creative way to merge topics without breaking all those links.

P.S.
I wouldn't be surprised if you've already thought about this, since the GSFN team has consistently impressed me with its careful attention to detail. But I figure it can't hurt for me to mention it.

Any ETA on the merging feature?

This biggest drawback with using Satisfaction is that we get many many repeated requests for the same piece of support. There are two basic reasons for this

1. You only show six topics on the front page - this is kind of ridiculous. Why bother showing any, if you're only going to show six? It doesn't provide me much of a view of what is going on or what people are talking about.

2. I can't merge multiple topics into one

Howdy! As a workaround for now I have been opening related threads each in their own window, answering in 1, and then dragging and dropping the URL of my reply (the time I responded is linked) into the textareas for the related thread replies and that way quick-linking between them.

Hope that helps, Jeff!

Rael

Hello. Hope you don't mind me revisiting this old topic. 8-)

I just wanted to ask a couple of questions:

1. Will this link / merge feature be available only to company admins?

2. When I link several topics to each other, can I nominate one of them as the "master" or "parent" topic? My rationale for asking is this:

If I can nominate a "master" or "parent" topic, then perhaps all the related "slave" or "child" topics can be locked down to prevent the addition of further replies or comments.

Instead, the bottom of the "slave" or "child" thread would have an automatically generated link to the "master" topic (meaning the admins or the users won't have to manually input that link). And the master topic remains open for replies and comments.

Also, if we had the concept of "master" or "parent" topics, we can use that metadata to provide better search results. For example, when someone uses the topic search feature, the "slave" or "child" threads can be made to appear lower in the list of results (or perhaps be suppressed entirely) while the master topic can be the first to be displayed in the search results.

Yup, merging is highly needed. There simply are too many people, seemingly not willing, or too over ambitious to use the search function.
That problem is sadly as old as the internet and the first forum itself...

Glad to hear, it is being worked on.

Tyler out!

Not sure where else would be good to post this question, but would/will/does merging a topic cause everyone on the original topic to get notified that a merge has taken place?

For example, I have an old topic that has all the answers in it, and someone posits the same question in a new topic. I merge the new topic into the old one--does the poster of the new topic get an email notification that the merge took place? Otherwise, only a new (unnecessary) comment/reply in the old topic would generate a notification, no?

I hunted around to find this info elsewhere, but had no luck finding it; feel free to whap me upside the head if I overlooked something obvious. Thanks!

I just wanted to add my vote to the list for a full merge. It's a much needed functionality for us. No one is paying attention to the "Stop and look here instead" notes that appear when we redirect.

We definitely need a merge function. Here's what I wrote on another thread:

"The linking 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 to which I didn't even know which one was the official thread. 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 and at least make it available for people who paid for the service thinking that we would get this functionality.

To prove my point, I'm going to post this reply to the other threads."

Anyone have an idea when this functionality will come out?

Combine Topics?

Hi,


One of my clients started a topic (reported a problem) that is similar to another topic which already has an answer.


Is there any way to combine the two topics and make sure the new customer is directed to the original response, or do I have to copy and paste the old response into the new topic?


Thanks.

Is it just me.. or do i see a Merge Topic button now! Neat! Thanks!

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!

This reply was created from a merged topic.

Mark topic as a duplicate of another?

A lot of people don't check for topics that match their question and instead are posting duplicate topics. Is there any way company reps can mark a topic as a duplicate of another so that people watching one topic will be updated as the other topic is resolved?


It's a huge pain to resolve one question/topic and then try to find all duplicates of that topic manually and re-post the resolution.

This reply was created from a merged topic.

Merge Duplicate topics

There should be an option either for the company or for everyone to mark ideas as duplicate of another and somehow merge then together so that they are all under the same topic and followers are tallied together while the original topic is either closed and added as a link to the original, or added as another comment.


This is a classic functionality of most bug tracking systems and Ubuntu brainstorm has implemented it nicely as well and is generally a good option to have on any problem & suggestion tracking system as duplcates tend to occur regularly

This reply was created from a merged topic.

Look at you guys putting the feature in action... Awesome.. And it copies the "me toos" over also! double neat!