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Get a [faq] tag, mods!
This applies on all meta sites, so hear me out. It would actually be nice if we had a new moderator tag in Codidact called faq.
What's the purpose?
Somewhere Else has this tag on their meta sites too, and it basically applies if the question is considered "frequently-asked" by users around the network. Strangely enough, Codidact doesn't have a FAQ tag at all, and it'd really help if we get such mod tag.
Where does the tag apply?
Like I said already, the tag is applied on questions considered "frequently-asked". An example is this popular question.
With those settled, can we have the moderator-only tag faq?
By definition, if a question is frequently asked, then it's also a duplicate. It seems to me that the proper way to h …
3y ago
There doesn't seem to be consensus for all communities, but any community that wants new moderator-only tags, FAQ or oth …
3y ago
I started to write this as a comment in response to @Canina's answer, but realized it's a different proposal on it's own …
3y ago
3 answers
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I started to write this as a comment in response to @Canina's answer, but realized it's a different proposal on it's own. Bit of brainstorming:
A FAQ is not necessarily some help page with everything written down. It could as well be integrated site support. Such a FAQ system would have:
- A way for nominating questions for FAQ status (flagging etc).
- A way of voting if such a nominated question should get/lose FAQ status. The voting would be automatically triggered whenever someone makes a nomination, resulting in a public poll.
- A way of presenting a collection of links with FAQ status. Preferably based on tags. So you could have an expandable view based on tags.
Suppose for example there's a question on Software Development describing how to implement toString for a Java class properly. Someone nominates it, the community votes and it gets FAQ status. Using tags from the post such "java", "tostring", "strings", it might be possible to build an expandable view: Java -> Strings -> toString.
Now if I have a question about string handling in Java, I could easily go check if there's a FAQ for it.
This would work in harmony with "canonical dupe", user-maintained FAQ and so on.
By definition, if a question is frequently asked, then it's also a duplicate.
It seems to me that the proper way to handle frequently-asked questions where each question post aims to be the one place where that question is asked and answered, is not to have a "frequently asked questions" tag, but rather to close repeat postings of the same question as duplicates of a canonical post (which, mind you, need not necessarily be the earliest instance) and possibly having a help center article (as a completely wild idea, maybe we could call it "FAQ"?) that links to such canonical Meta category posts.
Nominations of Meta questions for such a list could be handled through ordinary Meta discussions.
If a user has read through a relevant such question and its answer(s), and that does not address their concern, then they can elaborate in their own question on why the previously answered one doesn't tell them what they want to know.
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There doesn't seem to be consensus for all communities, but any community that wants new moderator-only tags, FAQ or otherwise, can have them -- just let us know (on your community's meta). The category definition includes a place to add such tags. (On our earliest communities, before we had some of the automation we have now, the status tags were created this way.)
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