Assuming it’s possible to create new flags with Discourse, it’d be great if we could have a flag for duplicate posts (mostly for bug reports / feature requests, and possibly for threads to automatically merge if successfully flagged as duplicates) and “should have searched” for questions/etc that have been answered on existing threads that could have been found with the search feature. I don’t know how to politely say “Hey please use the search feature”, especially when I have to tell the same person/people repeatedly, and I’d rather not start anything on those threads so it’d be nice when we make the switch to Discourse if we were able to flag posts for not using the search feature before.
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Duplicate is fine with me, but the ‘Hey, use the search option next time’ is just rude… Sure, you can tell them. This is the answer, but if you looked using the Search options you know that there is a topic about that.
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Which is why I’m asking for it to be a flag… Posting that on a thread or PMing someone is way too personal and people get super defensive about it. They inconvenienced whoever had to answer them, especially if they drafted out a long and thoughtful post, and they need to know that whoever answered took time out of their day to help the OP when the OP could have saved them that time by spending less than a minute searching if it had already been answered.
Publicly calling someone out on a thread for not using the search feature is rude – privately, anonymously, and politely pointing out someone’s mistakes so they can improve is not. Refusing to correct peoples’ actions because god forbid it might hurt their feelings is silly – when people make a goof they need to know about it so they can take steps to ensure they don’t make the same mistake in the future. Not letting people know what they’re doing isn’t good only slowly corrodes the community.
After posting this I realized that this is probably something that should be implemented on Discourse’s end, and made a post about it on their forums. You can access the topic here if you want to contribute to the discussion.
It’s very often that I see super short summaries of other people’s more in-depth answers in the #development-support category. This would be a very nice flagging option to have as posts like this will only continue to increase due to the recent automation of developer forum trust levels.
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I find myself needing to flag posts that contain little information while a post above will have more information and explain things more clearly. While this isn’t a high priority, it would be greatly appreciated to use this as an option rather than the Other option and adding an explanation.
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