Mark,
First of all, congratulations on selecting a great board, for users, moderators, admins, and owners.
I’m not sure what Discourse admin/setup documentation you have, but it seems sparse to me.
So the first thing I’ll share is this:
Discourse Documentation
You might also look at this on the meta.discourse.org forum site:
https://meta.discourse.org/t/a-community-effort-to-improve-discourses-documentation/29129
###Suggestions for Features to Enable
- Discourse Solved (Accepted answer plugin) – aka “Best Answer” or “Issue Solved”
- If it is not clear/obvious what this does or how it is used, let me know. I have a brief tutorial.
- Would allow you to identify when a help question is answered, a bug is fixed, a feature request has been implemented.
- Enable Tags – See Tagging support is now part of Discourse
- Used to be a plugin, but I think it is now part of the forum software
- Creation of Tags
- It is tough to strike a balance between having a good comprehensive set of tags, vs having too many tags to be managable.
- While it can be opened up to all users, I highly recommend against it. Allow uses to select tags, but not create them.
- I’d suggest that you appoint a “Tag Master” (moderator) to manage tags
- First solicit suggestions from a closed, trusted group.
• Then announce to users that they can suggest tags (but no guarantees) - I’d suggest starting with a limit (admin setting) of 50 tags, and only go above that if you really have to.
- After you get an initial set of tags, allow moderators to create tags as well.
- Encourage all to use tags, and moderators to assign tags if needed
- Tags vs Categories
- Sometimes it is hard to decide/distinguish
- IMO, Categories (really sub-forums) should be broad classifications, where it is very unlikely that a topic could fall under more than one Category (because it can’t)
- Tags, OTOH, are designed to cut across categories.
- Each Topic can be in only one Category, but can have many tags
- Each tag can be used in all allowed Categories
- Categories
- Name
- Best to keep Category name short, and use one word
- If you must have multiple words, then use underscore to separate words
- Otherwise Searches won’t work properly.
- Types
- You can have at least these “types” (restrictions):
- Public read/write (like most of the categories that users post to)
- Public read only, restricted write (Announcements)
- Restricted read only (except for admin) (Site level instructions)
- Restricted read, restricted write (Beta, Moderators, Staff, etc)
- You can have at least these “types” (restrictions):
- Sub-Categories
- Can be useful
- Some people like them, others don’t
- IMO, design it for what you think works best for your users
- Main Categories
- I suggest keeping this to a small number, or users can get confused or just won’t go to the trouble to post in the right Category. IOW, make it easy on your users.
- OTOH, create a many as you really need to keep the users, you, and your free helpers organized.
Please let me know if you have any questions.