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[web] New Request Form

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This is a feature request. Feature requests can be voted up by supporters.
Current Priority: +44
Topic Starter
Oinari-sama
** Please do not star this thread **

Requires New Requests to be submitted through a form (with feedback) system. See the photoshop below (apologies for the quality):




Dropdown Boxes

Dropdown A:
  1. The Game (includes Skinning and Gameplay/Ranking)
  2. The forum (includes all web activities)
  3. Both
Dropxdown B depends on what's selected in Dropdown A. If "The Game" is selected:
  1. Menu Screen
  2. Song Select Screen
  3. Multiplayer
  4. Skinning
  5. Chatting
  6. Others
If "The Forum" is selected:
  1. Login/Accounts
  2. Forum
  3. Beatmaps
  4. Contests/Tournaments
  5. Others
Dropdown C is another expansion of Dropdown B, I won't go into details now. Will expand on the idea if the devs show interest in this Request.

After the dropdown boxes are selected, it'll perform an auto search based on the criteria (or tags added by forum mods, if peppy decides to go down that route) and present them them as "Recommended Results." (Similar to Google's recommended result, but based on current Forum Search function, listed by Topic)

Immediately following the Recommended Results are search results based on the "Describe your request in a few words" box. You'll notice a tiny refresh button to the right of the box, the user should be able to refresh his search (unless the devs choose to implement a "search as you type" system). This mechanism will likely be based on the Google Search (which is more tolerant to "conversational English").

Final Dropdown ask the user if similar requests are presented above. The form will ask the user to post in an un-tagged thread above if Yes is selected; the compilation field will only activate if No is chosen.
I am hoping that this rework will reduce future duplicates and make things easier to manage in the FR forum. It is a growing problem as osu becomes more popular and it's better to be early than late in tackling such issues.

Another thing worth noting is that this maybe a potential solution (with some modification) for the Tech Support forum as well. It may go well with t/207459.

Please discuss.


EDIT: Lanturn pointed out that the dropdown boxes can also be used to organise forum topics (though it'll likely take some major tweaking to make this work). I'll leave the PS here for easy reference:
deadbeat
i love you. do want
silmarilen
apart from the dropdown menus this sounds like a really good idea.
i've had bad experiences with pre-set descriptions like what you are suggesting with the dropdown menus (the thing i was looking for just plain not being there)
Topic Starter
Oinari-sama

silmarilen wrote:

apart from the dropdown menus this sounds like a really good idea.
i've had bad experiences with pre-set descriptions like what you are suggesting with the dropdown menus (the thing i was looking for just plain not being there)
Actually me too! The frustration of not knowing how to bring up the item you want is really painful.

That's part of the reason why I added the "Describe your request..." as a fallback.

It's just an idea though, totally open for discussions. At the end of the day, it's the devs who'll decide how they wanna implement it. All we can do is to give them more ideas :D
Lanturn
Having an auto search feature like mentioned above would be amazing. Instead of "Describe your Request in a few words" at the top, Maybe something like Tags or Keywords would make the auto-search function easier to find duplicates with.

You'll be describing the feature in the subject field at the bottom which is plenty more than enough.

----------
Somewhat related to this topic, but probably another feature on its own. It stems from this idea though.

If the dropdown menu selections were to be implemented. It'd be great to have them on the feature request screen as well, to make searching somewhat easier? Maybe allow users to enter keywords to search by:

Topic Starter
Oinari-sama
^That'll be great!

The thing with Tags is that it requires something like t/158601 to run.

Who knows, maybe it'll be considered this time ;)
-Neipezi
good idea, i agree here:3
abraker
bump

My related suggestion: p/4090332
Bara-
Nice bump
I wish I had stars
xxxafiqxxx
It would be good :D
Topic Starter
Oinari-sama
I actually had an alternative idea to the dropboxes described in the OP, but didn't post back then because it seemed too outrageous just for the sake of requesting stuff or submitting bug reports. Guess it doesn't hurt to post it and see what people thinks now that the topic is bumped.

Instead of relying on the users to "categorise" their request/problems using dropboxes, what if the users are able to click on (screenshots of) pictures to reduce guessing works?

For example, clickable regions can be assigned to the screenshot of the osu main screen, eg (pardon the quality of PS):


(1) Brings up user menu screen,
(2) Brings up a menu says "Player" and "Jump To" menu,
(3) Brings up a search box already containing the keyword "menu background" (since menu BG is unclickable in game),
(4) Brings up the menu (opens the next screen shot).

Clicking on the osu cookie (4) will bring up the next screen (once again containing clickable regions) just like in game:
...etc.


Say on the Song Select screen when the user clicks on (4), the search box pop up will auto contain the keyword "leaderboard/ranking;" (5) will add keyword "filter/group/sort" etc. The users will search normally using their own keywords (eg "each mod" or "by date"), but the "auto keyword" will (hopefully) make the search more accurate. Of course, this is only to replace the top half of the "new request form" described in the OP, the user will still be given the opportunity to write if a duplicate cannot be found.

Another example will be when someone clicks on (image of) editor timeline, the keyword "editor timeline" will be included in the auto search. Hopefully you get the idea by now. I left out some details (eg "I don't know where to find it" button) for the time being, those can be discussed later if this idea is deemed worthy of discussing.


I once proposed tagging every requests with keywords to make them easier to search, but that takes a lot of effort and maintenance to keep up. This "clickable form" idea allows support team members to Tag each clickable regions, which can then be fed through search engine to refine the search result. Still laborious, but a lot easier to do compared to tagging every topics manually.

This "clickable form" idea will probably work better with Tech Support reports than Feature Request; imo it can potentially take a lot of guessing work out of a lot of new posts. Of course the big downside is that it seems like a lot of work just for requesting/reporting stuff (thus the main reason why I never posted it till now). But with new designs being worked on everywhere, maybe the devs can find some inspiration (or a healthy laugh) to take with them? :D

EDIT: Hi peppy (doh ninja'ed while editing)
peppy
This all seems crazily over-engineered.
Bara-
Oinari, that looks pretty cool
But I think that's only really usefull in TS right?
Or to say where it'll be active
Topic Starter
Oinari-sama
I think it's an overkill myself tbh, but who knows... maybe something will show up somewhere in some other way lol

EDIT: And PLEASE do not star this ;w;
Bara-
Baka Deadbeat
abraker

Oinari-sama wrote:

<stuffs>
Interesting, but a bit overkill.
deadbeat

baraatje123 wrote:

Baka Deadbeat
<3
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