Google Groups feature: Questions

[Tony Gravagno]

This is a follow-up to Kevin's note where he mentioned a new Google feature: Questions.

 

(Please forgive a bit of "disjointedness" in my notes here which have been sewn together from various other notes I've written on this topic elsewhere.)

 

Background:

 

Google has introduced a number of new features, but we're reluctant to simply unleash features here without some amount of vetting beforehand. The "New" groups thing is still in a beta rollout and some of these features are under-documented, incomplete, and could be buggy. This Pick group tends to be less inclined toward a "featureful" forum anyway so I don't think people here will care much about jumping quickly onto some new gadget.  From what I've seen, some of the new features do not seem to be of interest to this audience. For example topics can now be flagged as Questions rather than as Discussions.  Since Kevin brought up the topic, I might be wrong about how useful people might see this feature.  I'm hoping a decision can be made on this through some discussion...

 

When using the browser interface, you can classify posts as being a Question in addition to the customary Discussion.
http://support.google.com/groups/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=1046523
http://support.google.com/groups/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=2467048

The feature allows topics to be assigned to specific people. Permissions must be granted to allow assigning, and to allow someone to be assigned a topic. I think this is more for collaboration within a smaller group, perhaps a development team working on features. People being assigned to questions might include department heads, lead support people, product managers, etc. That doesn't fit this audience so I haven't been eager to add this feature here.

I tested this feature and “it’s my preference” that we not use it, though as always we're just clicking the buttons you folks want to be clicked.  Consider that some people here might believe a questionis resolved when it’s not (chronic issue at GetSatisfaction). There’s also the thing about assigning questions to specific people, which I think changes the nature of this forum where anyone with an answer (or not) is likely to chime in.  What if people assign questions to someone who just doesn’t feel like providing free consultation? Does the question go unanswered?   I'm guessing this feature will require some amount of manager intervention.

 

So, unless there is strong objection, I believe we're still moving forward with Tagging and some other features to be discussed soon, but I won't even continue to test the Questions feature unless there is strong demand for it.

 

This can also be released as a beta where a specific group of people are flagged to ask and accept questions. These people can beat up the feature for some time here and let the rest of us know if it's something that should be opened up to a wider audience.  Or maybe someone has experience with another group that's recently adopted it?

 

Just tell us what you'd like to do...

 

T

[Dawn Wolthuis]

FWIW. I agree with your assessment on this one.   --dawn

 

T

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Dawn M. Wolthuis

Take and give some delight today

[Kevin Powick]

On Tuesday, 27 March 2012 17:19:09 UTC-4, Tony Gravagno wrote:

 

> The "New" groups thing is still in a beta rollout

Like almost all Google services, it has been in beta rollout for a very long time.  GMail was a "beta" for years.

> For example topics can now be flagged as Questions rather than as Discussions.  Since Kevin brought up the topic, I might be wrong about how useful >

> people might see this feature.  I'm hoping a decision can be made on this through some discussion...

One advantage to a post being designated as a question is that when, using the web interface, one begins to enter the subject of the question, Google will try to match it against existing posts, perhaps reducing the number of duplicate questions.

  

> The feature allows topics to be assigned to specific people. Permissions must be granted to allow assigning, and to allow someone to be assigned a topic.

I agree that this may be overkill for this group.  However, the idea of differentiating between discussions vs. questions need not involve tasking, assigning, permissions, etc.

  

> So, unless there is strong objection, I believe we're still moving forward with Tagging and some other features to be discussed soon, but I won't even

> continue to test the Questions feature unless there is strong demand for it.

I'm happy to start with tagging only.  I just threw out the  "Questions/Discussion" feature as something to consider.

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Kevin Powick