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Merge Topics and Get Rid of Duplicates
See a duplicate topic? Try merging it into a more official or authoritative topic.
If you use the company moderation tools, you can simply click on the Merge button and directly associate the current topic with a more authoritative topic. When you're ready to merge a topic, you're presented with a screen that allows you to take a few simple steps:
1. Search
Enter keywords to find the topic you want to merge into. If a topic has already been merged into, you'll see it listed in bold. This is a visual indicator to help you spot your authoritative topics.
2. Include reply?
If there is no conversation already going on in the topic, the URL for your duplicate topic will simply redirect to the more authoritative topic. If there are already replies and comments in the topic you want to merge, you have the option of moving the original topic poster's remarks over to the authoritative topic. If you choose this option, the remarks will appear as a new reply in the authoritative topic.
3. Let them know
Give an explanation for why you're merging this topic into the more authoritative one. It helps provide context for your customers, so be specific if you can. We'll email the topic poster your explanation, along with a link to the authoritative topic.
That's the basics of merging a topic. Once you've merged a topic the "me too" numbers (people that have the same question/problem/idea) will be added to your authoritative topic, making it easy to spot your most frequently asked questions.
If you use the company moderation tools, you can simply click on the Merge button and directly associate the current topic with a more authoritative topic. When you're ready to merge a topic, you're presented with a screen that allows you to take a few simple steps:
1. Search
Enter keywords to find the topic you want to merge into. If a topic has already been merged into, you'll see it listed in bold. This is a visual indicator to help you spot your authoritative topics.
2. Include reply?
If there is no conversation already going on in the topic, the URL for your duplicate topic will simply redirect to the more authoritative topic. If there are already replies and comments in the topic you want to merge, you have the option of moving the original topic poster's remarks over to the authoritative topic. If you choose this option, the remarks will appear as a new reply in the authoritative topic.
3. Let them know
Give an explanation for why you're merging this topic into the more authoritative one. It helps provide context for your customers, so be specific if you can. We'll email the topic poster your explanation, along with a link to the authoritative topic.
That's the basics of merging a topic. Once you've merged a topic the "me too" numbers (people that have the same question/problem/idea) will be added to your authoritative topic, making it easy to spot your most frequently asked questions.
I’m combining things
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Inappropriate?Arn'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.
I’m philosophizing
6 Comments
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at the very least users (vs. only employees) should be able to suggest a merge -
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.
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i'm still craving what i suggested three months ago (above) as a get satisfaction feature
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Thanks for chiming back in ebclosmore. I do like that idea.
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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.
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great suggestion Amy, I created a new idea - see: Users (vs. Only Employees) Should Be Able To Suggest Topic Merges or Redirects, as well as Topic Breakouts <http://getsatisfaction.com/getsatisfa...>
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Inappropriate?This kind of content clustering is exactly what we're looking at going forward. You hit the nail on the head.
I’m grateful
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Inappropriate?We've been enjoying this feature at Songbird but one thing that's bumming me out is getting the search to find the topic I want to merge with. In one topic I was trying to merge the search results would not pull up the right thread even when I copied the exact thread title in. I would love the ability to provide an url like in the redirect feature.
I’m confident
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I have also noticed this, I had given the topic I was looking for a more descriptive name and that seemed to confuse things.
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Inappropriate?Yes, yes, yes, Laura. Right there with you. That was in the original design, but it had to be left out. We plan on adding it in.4 Comments Add a comment
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oh yay, happy news!
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just as a side note, shouldn't the search find a topic if you copy paste the title?
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Indeed, it should. We're looking into the search algorithm to identify why it isn't in some cases.
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just in case you need test examples, this is one i bumped in to:
http://getsatisfaction.com/spotify/to...
i was trying to find this old thread of mine, but had to browse thru my dashboard to actually find it - i assumed it had to do with the semicolon (?) -
Inappropriate?It's in the dev schedule!
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Inappropriate?Hi,
Does merging/superseding topic B with topic A also mean the followers of topic B become followers of topic A? Just want to make sure that if we merge/supersede B with A that any updates to topic A are disseminated to the followers of B. Hope that isn't too confusing! :)
Chris -
Inappropriate?Great question! I need to check with the dev team to be sure, but I'll get back to you tomorrow.
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Inappropriate?Thanks for waiting, Chris. The answer is yes. They do.
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Inappropriate?Hi, I'm trying to merge one topic into an FAQ topic that I created. On the merge page, I search for the topic I want to merge to and it doesn't show up in the search - even when I list the exact tags that I posted on the thread or search for the exact title. Is there anyway to just use the url?
This is the page I'm trying to search for:
http://getsatisfaction.com/outbrain/t...
Thanks,
Kate2 Comments Add a comment
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Just went to use this feature and failed like Kate did. The search function didn't return the topic I wanted to merge into, even after searching by URL and exact title. There must be an option to search for more, or enter in the URL you want to merge. Overall - you guys need to work on your search capability. It just doesn't function.
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Agreed, Marla. We need to do some serious work on search. We have a new developer who is doing some work on it as we speak. Er, type.
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Inappropriate?Hi, Kate. Yes, this is sadly a limitation. We plan on adding the ability to put in the URL directly. We weren't able to get that into the first version. I am experiencing similar frustrations and have had to try different, very specific keywords to find the right topic.
I’m sad face
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Do you have any idea what the timing is on that?
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We're aiming to deploy this early next week.
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Wow that's way sooner than I had hoped! Awesome. Thank you!
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Inappropriate?I'm kinda torn between if the merged topic should be removed from the search results or not...
Besides the fact that human beings are lazy by nature and feel it is more convenient to just ask a question instead of looking through posts (me included)... I think the main reason for duplicate topics is because people tend to formulate different thoughts on what exactly their problem/question is. When people see different topics pop up as they are typing out there question, the answer may be right in front of them, but they are ignoring it because it is worded/phrased differently from what they believe their actual problem/question is. (The brain is scanning for a specific word(s) to pop up, if they don't see it, they move on...)
So I think it would be best to keep the topics in the search results so you can get a wide variety of options available for users to choose from.. And once the user clicks on that chosen topic, they will then see that they need to go to the merged page for more info. So in retrospect, more duplicates are being created when you were trying to get rid of them in the first place ;-)
I’m thankful
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And that is why we have so many duped bugs in Bugzilla....1/2 of them from ME!
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Inappropriate?This is a tough one. I'm still formulating how I feel about this w/r/t search.
I'm not sure it's an issue, in some respect, because if you do go to a topic that has been merged into a canonical one, I believe you'll be auto-redirected to the canonical one.2 Comments Add a comment
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Hate to sound negative but search on GS is hit or miss at best so I don't feel confident that users will necessarily get to the canonical topic and totally agree with Michael's point that more options are better to help the user find what they're looking for, you know, when they bother to look. ;-)
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Agreed, Laura. Making search better is what I advocate the most. We have someone working on search now. It definitely needs to be much, much better. We have to surface these "official" or blessed topics to make the system work as efficiently as we want it to. Huge. I'll definitely bring this "more options" w/r/t merged topics to the dev team and see if they agree.
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Inappropriate?There are about five distinct issues that are being mentioned here and it's all too easy to blur them into one. To cut to the chase though, one of the weaknesses of our search until now has been the high signal-to-noise ratio as a community scales its content base. Merging topics is one important way to reduce the noise (e.g. duplicates) while using the merging action itself to identify important topics that should show up prominently. Thus, it is highly counter-productive to continue to show the merged topics in search as equals with canonic topics.
Let me give you an example, taken from our site. Here are five topics about the same thing:
- More languages
- Will Get Satisfaction get translated into other languages?
- supported languages
- Foreign language support
- More languages
One of these topics has an official answer, and we don't want to repeat ourselves over and over. I can't see any reason why we should promote two topics with *exactly* the same title, and three others with very similar titles, all asking the same thing. The best user experience is to reliably display the topic that matches any of these phrasings and leads to a clear answer. When a duplicate topic comes in with a slightly different name ("When are you going to get international?"), my suggestion is instead of letting a redundant, empty topic clutter up search, adjust the title of the canonic topic to make better sense to the searcher.
An example from the world's best search company: When you do a search on Google it hides "similar results" that come from the same web site in deference to 1 or 2 main results per site. BUT they do use the hidden similar results as part of their weighting algorithm for prioritizing search results. These are the kind of smarts we're aiming to provide with our search in the future.
We have much more work to do to get the updated system to produce optimal search results, as well as releasing a design change that dramatically impacts how users are exposed to the results, but please know there is a method to our madness.
All that being said, we have the Redirect feature, which lets you post a point users to another topic or page without removing the affected topic from search. If you don't like the way that merge works, you can always use that!
I’m confident
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Well said Thor, I see your point. In general I avoid the Redirect feature because it has caused frustration with our users. Merge is such a kinder, gentler way to combine topics from a UI perspective it has seemed thus far. In any case, it's nice to get some insight to the direction you're aiming for. :0)
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Inappropriate?I highly agree with all of what you said! And I think the best solution is for us to choose wisely what is merged and what is redirected (factoring in the topic, wording, and "me toos")
My goal is to lead people to the right topic and not be redundant as much as possible (Even though I enjoy replying to duplicate topics... they're pretty easy to answer after all :D ). And sometimes it is hard to change that main topic title to respect / be friendly to all users:
Here's a comparison of a problem for Songbird on Linux (on a larger scale) that involves removing a package (libvisual-0.4-plugins). If you do a Google site search, you will see 36 separate topics where that solved the problem. That's why I said I was torn between if they should be removed from the search results, because there are sooo many different ways of wording it. But I think that is where the "redirect" feature will come in handy and, in most cases, still be used more favorably than merge(for me, at least right now). And the stuff that get's merged will be to (1) help out our Idea Kitchen "me toos"
and to (2) minimizing redundancy, letting all the users know our best solution/point in one fell swoop (topic). So I guess I'm answering my own question here... :-P Thanks for the help Thor! ; )
Your insights on your future search algorithm and design are very promising and I think that is what will ultimately solve the problem ;) I like your guy's madness! Especially since you are relating it to how Google does it! I heart google, and trust them, especially since they know where my eyeballs are goin! haha
Thanks guys!
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Inappropriate?I just merged a duplicate topic into the (exact) duplicate -- now both of them are showing that they have been merged into... Themselves. Argh. I just want to delete the duplicate without deleting both of them!
Here's the topic I'm referencing: http://getsatisfaction.com/izea/topic...
I’m frustrated
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Hi Jamie,
Aack. I'm not sure what to do about that one. Unfortunately, merge can't be undone. I'm a little confused about what happened in this case but I'll ask someone to take a look to see if there's anything we can do. Sorry for the frustration! -
Can you just delete the duplicate? Basically what happened is there were two topics with exactly the same title and content (double-click on submit?) and I tried to merge them into each other so that there would only be one. I was afraid to delete because it might delete both of them. I ended up with two topics, which both show "merged" now.
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Sure. I'll remove it and hopefully that will help fix this oddity.
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Unfortunately now that topic is no longer accessible at all (either the original or the duplicate). I have another duplicate here, too. http://getsatisfaction.com/izea/topic... What should I do?
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Hmmm. I think this may be a different problem. Would you mind starting a new topic about duplicates sharing the same URL? If you don't have time, I can do it, but I want to definitely keep you informed.
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Will do.
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Inappropriate?So, when will this be fixed? I'm having enough trouble trying to keep up with all the hate mail since our website redesign to run into a wall like this. Not being able to find the correct thread to merge topics is a serious deal killer. Eric, 20 days ago you said "early next week", can we get an update? Still a serious problem...
I’m frustrated
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Inappropriate?Chris: Actually, I did not say that this would be fixed "early next week." Not me. I make it a point to provide firm information when I have it and avoid making promises I cannot keep.
That said, I will check with the dev team and see if I can get you an update.2 Comments Add a comment
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Looks like Thor said the thing about "early next week" further up in the thread...
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Yes, he did. That was my politic way of not naming names.
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Inappropriate?Chris, I checked with the dev team, and they tell me that this functionality has been completed. The ability to paste in a URL will be part of the merge feature. It's just waiting for a code review before we deploy it. Once I know when that will be, I will let you know as soon as I know. It appears that we are very close, and I will be very happy to use this, as it has hampered my ability to merge topics.1 Comment Add a comment
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And to be fair, I did say "aiming." We actually completed it then, but we had our lead developer on vacation and decided to wait until he returned to give it the once over before deploying.
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Inappropriate?Good news: we deployed this last night. You can now use a URL to reference the topic you want to merge another topic into. It looks like this:
Hopefully, this will make everyone's life easier!1 Comment Add a comment
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Awesome. This should come in handy. :)
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Inappropriate?I like the merge topic feature and plan on using it a lot, some suggestions for future improvements:
A) Merged-From Topic (screenshot: http://www.flickr.com/photos/roland/3... )
1. make the line at the top with Merge sign red or something more prominent
2. after a topic is merged, lock it so replies have to go
into the merged-to topic
B) Merged-To Topic (http://www.flickr.com/photos/roland/3...)
Showing the reply of the merged-from user and x hours ago e.g. "Niko replied 19 hours ago" is confusing. to readers of the "merged-to" topic. It makes it
look like there is a new reply on the merged-to topic when in fact it was an old reply from the "merged-from" topic. Need some sort of UI indicator to indicate
a) that this reply came from another topic i.e. the "merged-from"
topic (perhaps something like
"Niko replied on this merged topic 19 hours ago"
where "merged topic" links to the merged topic
b) Indicate in an non obvious way to the user that they should scroll up to look for the answer to this reply e.g. "Scroll up to
see the answer to niko's question" or somesuch
I’m happy to provide suggestions
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Inappropriate?+1 on "user suggested" links and redirects and merges and splits
plus +1 on admins being able to actually do splits
plus +1 on cleaning up the UI so that it's obvious to users that a merge, split or redirect has been done (IMHO this is not obvious at the moment)
when can we have a virtual or real life meeting to discuss improvements like this ? i personally don't need a meeting, just implementing a suggest feature for users and a split for admins would improve our support commmunity dramatically i think
but i think it would be awesome to have sort of GS-con (just thinking out loud :-) !)
I’m confident
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I love the way you think, Roland!
Splits and a new visual treatment for "moderated" pages is in the active pipeline, and we'll be rolling out moderator abilities for champions short term as well. We have to figure out the right way to handle "user suggested" actions--but I have some ideas.
As for GS-con, we've done things like this before, and I suspect we'll do it again very soon. Perhaps I'll start a separate thread on the subject :)
EMPLOYEE
