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connect-posts for duplicates and and multi-language content

By @Mr.Nobody
    2022-04-16 15:20:04.370Z

    It would be really nice if users could “link” one post to another, which would add a link to the “main” post on the duplicate, and would add a link to all duplicates on the main post.

    It would then also sum all the votes/likes from all child-posts on the main-post, so that ideas and bug-reports can be better tracked and prioritized.

    This idea would solve 2 different use-cases:

    • duplicate/similar posts about the same issue,
    • multiple posts in different languages about the same issue,

    I think this would solve lots of issues with ideation, FAQ etc, without hurting SEO. Usually, duplicate posts have to be deleted to avoid sending search results to the wrong/incomplete post, but with this approach every version of the question, phrased in different ways, can be kept, which makes the forum come up under more search results and allows users to search for the solution using different search terms, which all end up pointing to the same "parent".

    And it could also allow the forum to be multi-language without some weird “automatic translation” (auto-translate is not quite there yet). So instead of having one post with people commenting in multiple languages, the forum could have multiple posts, in different languages (even in different categories for each language), but all connected to the same parent. The forum could even implement hreflang-tags to tell google which language the duplicate content is in.

    Read more on hreflang-tags

    Expected process/permissions:

    • post-authors should be allowed to link their child-post to a main post,
    • any user should be able to suggest posts to be linked to one-another (in this case send a notification to the post author and to the category’s forum moderator).
    • for multi-language forums, allow users to select the content as duplicate->translation and then select the language of the duplicate post. The forum would then automatically add the hreflang-tag to the post's header.

    Linked from:

    1. support-chat
    • 2 replies
    1. with this approach every version of the question, phrased in different ways, can be kept, which makes the forum come up under more search results and allows users to search for the solution using different search terms, which all end up pointing to the same "parent".

      That's interesting. Because when there was already a post (page) about the bug, and another person posted about the same bug — then that indicates that the first, "main", post, isn't that easy to find. And that it might be helpful for the community with another title and description, to "double the chances" of finding that issue when searching for it.

      I like the idea about adding together the votes from the duplicated posts. (Votes from a single person could still count just once, even if one upvotes all duplicates too.)

      instead of having one post with people commenting in multiple languages, the forum could have multiple posts, in different languages (even in different categories for each language)

      Yes, maybe can be a good idea for some communities. E.g. forum.example.com/se/ and /en/ and /de/, would all be the same forum, same user accounts. And a bug report in Swedish /se/ or /en/ could show how many people had reported it in all languages, like you wrote. And if clicking it, one could see a breakdown per language.

      ***

      I think there aren't that many communities that are large enough and uses-many-languages, to have use of the language parts of this feature. The child/duplicate post and main post, and adding votes together, seems more directly useful — soo much to do though, so I wouldn't expect this to get implemented anytime soon

      1. @Mr.Nobody
          2022-04-21 08:37:06.883Z

          Yes I agree, the multi-language would just be an additional use for this. The main gain would be the vote+addition and easier navigation for users and SEO help (multiple phrasings for the same subject, all pointing to the same place).

          Which are features I can't find in any forum at the moment, so that would be pretty cool ;)

          And yes, probably quite some work. Adding the votes together is probably easy but then:

          • making sure double votes aren't counted twice (people who voted for both posts)
          • creating some interface+procedure to "link" those posts
          • UI changes to display that the posts are related
          • permissions
          • notifications

          Quite a handful xD