Couple small issues unfortunately make this unuseable.

Hi @jhebbel,
Thank you for your feedback.

The differentiation between comment/answer when posting in a Q&A forum is too small

I don’t think this is a small differentiation between comment/answer:

Your problem is not in differentiation. As far as I guess some of your users click on [Answer] button and answer instead of just leaving a comment using [Comment] button. This may happen even on popular Q&A websites. This is hard to prevent. And I think wpForo doesn’t deserve 1* rating because of this small issue. You don’t suggest any solution, we’d gladly help. So, instead of complaining here it would be better if you provide with some idea or suggestion.

Whatever, we still love you and are improving Q&A layout every day. I’m sure, you’ll be supersized with the wpForo Q&A layout very soon.

Thank you

• This reply was modified 6 years, 5 months ago by gVectors Team.

“I don’t think this is a small differentiation between comment/answer”
Not talking about viewing posted comments/answers obviously. I am talking about when people reply, they see the big textbox at the bottom and just start typing away responses which by it’s default behavior posts as an answer making the workload for moderators huge and pisses people off to the point where they have just started using the general “chit chat” forum for support.

“Your problem is not in differentiation. As far as I guess some of your users click on [Answer] button and answer instead of just leaving a comment using [Comment] button.”
That’s what I said…. Hence why I said “when posting”.

“This may happen even on popular Q&A websites.”
As an avid StackOverflow user, of course it happens, but they have several measures in place to curb it to a manageable level. For starters SO has the comment text box in the actual comment area, not at the bottom that is shared dual purpose with the answer box. Additionally SO makes it so users below a certain reputation cannot answer only comment, making it so that only people who have gotten a feel for the “forum” can actually answer. In addition there are several other UI cues to direct people to the right option depending on what it looks like they are doing.

And I think wpForo doesn’t deserve 1* rating because of this small issue.
It may very well be a great forum, but if the issue is bad enough that it prevents me from using your solution and instead I have to look for alternatives, then I don’t see how it could be anything other than a 1 * in my specific case.

You don’t suggest any solution, we’d gladly help. So, instead of complaining here it would be better if you provide with some idea or suggestion.
Actually I did make these suggestions before, in your forum, your guy’s response was to just disable the feature as was made perfectly clear when I said “I tried to bring this up to the developer and their response is to just disable answers”. I even waited several months before coming to the decision to leave a 1 * review, nothing, no answer, no fixes.

• This reply was modified 6 years, 5 months ago by jhebbel.

Just hide the [Answer] button using CSS and you’ll get almost the same UX like your mentioned StackOverflow. Thus only [post a comment] button will be available on question and answers and below of all posts people will see the “Answer” Textarea like it is on StackOverflow. This will do 90% of the job.

• This reply was modified 6 years, 5 months ago by gVectors Team.

That gets it maybe 10% of the way there, not 90%…. There is no one small thing to change that will make this work better, it needs to be a combination of things. SO has spent many years to hone in on their current style, it would make this plugin much more useable to mimic the result of their years of trial and error.

I don’t think so, this issue will be fixed by hiding the Answer button. Just try and you’ll see the difference. We’ve already seen this many time in our users forums. wpForo is not the StackOverflow, so please don’t search StackOverflow in wpForo. Try to customize wpForo to get what you need.
In your case people ask some developers to add custom features. wpForo already does the huge part of job for you. You just need to spend a little money to get your custom requirements. Suggestion to mimic something to meet your requirements is not the suggestion I was talking about.

• This reply was modified 6 years, 5 months ago by gVectors Team.

Since the “Answer” text area is what is already visible by default, hiding the answer button will not make nearly the difference as you would expect; the specific suggestions I made were as I recall “…For starters SO has the comment text box in the actual comment area, not at the bottom that is shared dual purpose with the answer box. Additionally SO makes it so users below a certain reputation cannot answer only comment, making it so that only people who have gotten a feel for the “forum” can actually answer. In addition there are several other UI cues to direct people to the right option depending on what it looks like they are doing…”, The mimic what works comment was more advice than suggestion.

Considering I would already have to spend money to add much needed file attachment and image embed functionality, I dont see the appeal of spending even more to “hack” in reputation requirements for access, but rather I would more likely just select a different system.

• This reply was modified 6 years, 5 months ago by jhebbel.

Hi @jhebbel,
We just released wpForo 1.6.0 with lots of Q&A layout improvement. Please follow to this support topic: https://wpforo.com/community/qa-layout-how-to-and-troubleshooting/issues-with-answer-and-add-a-comment/#post-24174