Template text in new topics

(I don’t remember how to split a reply into a new thread so feel free to split this)

Discourse supports templates to posts in each specific category. In there you could put a friendly reminder of where to go for support, etc.

I bet no one reads the guidelines, so just put a slim version of the guidelines as a comment when people do their new posts. Then people would see up front where they’re supposed to go, and if they’d have to explicitly delete it, which would mean they’d have to read it.

Also maybe a set of canned replies might be useful for this: https://meta.discourse.org/t/discourse-canned-replies/48296

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Bit late, I know, but I have time now so I’ve split this off.

I think this is a great idea and would like to see it done but before I get stuck in with ideas and creating a working doc I was wondering do you have any thoughts/ideas to start things off @jorge ?

I.e what messages map to what categories and why? Where to start? How you’d use the canned replies

I thought I would be clever and just steal what the website says, but that is also confusing:

Selection_004

Maybe something like this for a start:

Welcome to the Ubuntu Community Hub!

In order to focus our efforts, we use this site for discussions about Ubuntu, contributing to development, $other_on_topic_subjects. Ubuntu team members post status reports, release notes, and other important information here regularly.

For technical support please use Ask Ubuntu. This allows our engineers to concentrate on one place for technical support by leveraging the tooling in place to manage a large knowledge base. You can check out the hot topics for the month to get a sample of technical support topics that the community is most interested in.

Thank you for understanding!

I suspect @teward would have opinions on this wording, so tagging him for input.

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Ha, yea, that’s going to be changing soon too. You took that screenshot from /support/community-support, correct? Or is there somewhere not on my ‘to change’ list?

I like it, a good start. I made some tweeks and changes, what do you think:

Welcome to the Ubuntu Community Hub!

We use this site for discussions about Ubuntu, contributing to development, documentation, and translation, for starting new projects, discussing the future, and much more. Ubuntu team members regularly post status reports, release notes, and other important information here too.

For technical support please use Ask Ubuntu . This allows our engineers to concentrate on one place for technical support where they can leverage the tooling in place to manage a large knowledge base. You can check out the hot topics for the month to get a sample of technical support topics that the community is most interested in.

Thank you for understanding!

We can definitely wait for @teward to weigh in too.

Critical observation: the Discourse messages ended up in my spam quarantine. I have NO IDEA how that happened so I never saw this until late when I was checking things to try and chase down a Community Team email I didn’t get.

If we want to make sure I don’t have to close users’ posts as an Ask Ubuntu moderator (which I’ve been longer than I’ve been anywhere else in Ubuntu leadership positions), we need to also clarify “technical support” to adapt for the fact that Ask Ubuntu does not support releases that have gone past End of Standard Support (EoSS) or End of Life (EoL). We can do that by simply adding a link to the Help Center stating that there are rules about what is on topic, and to read their help center document about it to determine whether to post. As Rhys is aware there’s been confusion RE: EoSS and ESM and such, and we only recently got clarification from Rhys and community support on Ask Ubuntu for restricting our scope to what’s actually still supported. (ESM is not, nor is EoL, anything past EoSS is offtopic now for the most part).

Other than that, which is an optional change or addition on your side, I think you’re good to go with the changes that are in the latest revision. No objections pointing people to Ask Ubuntu. The other place you can route people to is the Ubuntu Forums, though I don’t know how active those are with active support - I’m not frequently active on the forums anymore…

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Critical observation: I hope that’s fixed :sweat_smile:

Good point, we want to be helpful to people and sending them somewhere just to have more people say they’re in the wrong place isn’t very helpful. I’ve made some more revisions to make it more approachable and to be more helpful

Welcome to the Ubuntu Community Hub!

We use this site for discussions about Ubuntu, contribution, starting new projects, discussing the future, and much more. Ubuntu team members also post status reports, release notes, and other important information here too.

For technical support please see the Ask Ubuntu Help Center. There you’ll find guides to ask your question in the right place for the fastest and most relevant response. You might even find your question is already answered. This separation allows our engineers to concentrate technical support where tooling is already in place to manage a large knowledge base.

Check out the Top Questions page for a sample of technical support topics that the community is most interested in this month.

Thank you for understanding.

I won’t implement this template until I get a thumbs up from both of you (@teward @jorge) incase you have any more changes or feedback?

Looks like noreply@u.c got flagged in a specific Reputation database and pushed it over my spam detection threshold. That’s fixable since the DB is… stale. Just decreased that rule’s spam score and all works heh.

Suggest you use:

For technical support, please visit Ask Ubuntu, and read their Help Center for guidance on how to ask a question in order to make sure your question is on topic there. You may also find that your question is already answered. …

… or similar wording. I’m being picky because the Help Center says whether or not something is on topic, it won’t point users to ‘alternative’ support sites for their issues.

Good to know @u.c is out of spam :wink:

You’re right to be picky, this will get a lot of eyeballs so we want to be as accurate as possible.

Take 3 :film_projector: :

Welcome to the Ubuntu Community Hub!

We use this site for discussions about Ubuntu, contribution, starting new projects, discussing the future, and much more. Ubuntu team members also post status reports, release notes, and other important information here.

For technical support please visit Ask Ubuntu, and read their Help Center page, for guidance on how to ask your question in a way that stays on topic, and gets you the most relevant response. You may even find your question is already answered. This separation allows our engineers to concentrate technical support where tooling is already in place to manage a large knowledge base.

Check out the Top Questions page for a sample of technical support topics that the community is most interested in this month.

Thank you for understanding.

Link probably should be this: https://askubuntu.com/help/on-topic

That’s the on-topic list/page. My 2 cents, but either way works.

Consider it done. I’ll wait until I see a like or a reply or something from @jorge then set this in place :blush:

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Alright, I’ve set the template in the community category so you both, and anyone else, can see what it looks like before we try and roll it out into other categories.

My concern is that it’s a barrier to people wanting to post a new topic, making them question whether or not they should create the topic at all. Maybe we need to be more encouraging in the template? Or maybe I’m being overly cautious?

I’m aborting this :frowning_face:

I’ve had a couple of people mention that the template text is just an incumbrance to be deleted and not actually read. I felt the same when I last created a category too honestly.

Maybe we need something smaller? Or maybe we need a different way of communicating the proper purposes of the various Ubuntu discussion platforms. Regardless, I’ll revert to no template for the time being.