Introducing Questions and Answers

The new forum software we are using has two different formats available.  The first one is what users of MBGT have been using for years.  It allows a user to create a post and others reply.  You can add a Poll, attachments, etc.  Game on, same as usual.  The second type is a little different.

Similar to Stack Exchange (you can look up the history of this here – https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stack_Exchange), the new forum type is used for Questions and Answers.  The Advice section of the forum is set up that way and the header looks slightly different as you can see in these two pictures:

Question and Answer Header

Typical Forum Post Header

As you can see, the Q&A Header shows Questions, Answers and Posts counts (which is the total of questions, answers and comments) which the standard forum lists the number of Topics and Posts (which is the total number of topics and replies to topics).

Let’s Dig A Little Deeper

To get started, a user would ask a question.  This is done almost identically to how a topic is created.  The user would select “Ask a question” from the top of the forum section:

This opens up the dialog box to ask the question.  It looks pretty much identical to the New Topic dialog box:

The user would enter the subject of the question, the relevant text, attach files, create a poll, or set the topic (question) as Private (which makes it so only forum administrators and moderators can see.  Also, the Set Topic Sticky is only for me, sorry).  The user can then add relevant question tags (like golf course name).  The option to subscribe (which is default) or unsubscribe to the post by de-selecting the “Subscribe to this question” checkbox.

When the question is posted, the look of the post is also different:

The user who posted the question (and the answer or comment) is shown on the right side rather than the left.  It also shows the number of questions, answers and comments for that user which makes up their reputation.  On the left side are some arrows and a number (which is 0 for now).  This allows for a group vote to move answers and comments up or down.  Higher ranked answers and comments will be shown closer to the top as they are considered to have better reputation and therefore should be more accurate.  Other than that, if a person feels that they have the answer, they would click the answer button and fill in the answer as a post.  Similarly, should someone have a comment or a clarifying question, they would click on Add a Comment and fill out that post (which can also be voted on).

Like all of these, I have added a post in the Tutorials section of the forum (https://myrtlebeachgolftalk.com/community/mbgt-help-tutorials/), so you can make comments here or there.

Thanks for being a part of the MBGT community.