fof/best-answer

FriendsOfFlarum Best Answer

A Flarum extension. Mark a post as the best answer in a discussion. Original by @wiwatsrt.

Features

• Allow Best Answers to be set and highlighted within a discussion
• Set which tags support Best Answer/Q&A format
• Filter answered/unanswered/all discussions within available tags
• Send reminders to the OP to select a Best Answer after a configurable number of days
• Optionally allow the OP to select one of their own follow-up posts as the Best Answer
• Provides two layouts for the Best Answer controls
• Option to prevent reminders from being sent overnight

Requirements

• Flarum 2.x
• flarum/tags

These extensions are optional. When one is enabled, Best Answer adds:

• flarum/audit: an audit log entry when a best answer is set or unset.
• flarum/deck: Unsolved questions and Best answers columns. With flarum/realtime they follow best answers being set and removed as it happens.
• flarum/realtime: a live bestAnswerEvent broadcast when a best answer is set or unset.
• fof/user-directory: "Most best answers" and "Least best answers" sort options in the user directory.
• ianm/level-ranks: extra spacing beside the best answer label in post headers.

Installation

Install with composer:

composer require fof/best-answer:"*"

Usage

The settings are on the FoF Best Answer page in the admin panel.

Q&A tags

Best answers can only be set in discussions that have at least one Q&A tag. Choose these tags in Enabled Tags.

In a Q&A tag, the start discussion button reads Ask a Question. When a Q&A tag is selected in the composer, the title placeholder reads Question title.

Best answers can't be set in private discussions.

Permissions

The permissions are in the Participate section of the Permissions page. Grant them globally, or per tag for restricted tags.

The select control isn't shown on hidden posts or on the first post of a discussion.

Solved/unsolved filter

Turn on Display Best Answer filter dropdown to add a filter to the discussion list of each Q&A tag. It offers All questions, Solved questions and Unsolved questions.

In discussion search, is:solved finds discussions with a best answer and -is:solved finds discussions without one. is:question finds discussions in Q&A tags, so is:question -is:solved finds unsolved questions.

In post search, is:solution finds posts selected as a best answer.

Reminders

A reminder is a notification that asks a discussion's author to select a best answer.

To send reminders:

1. Set Reminder frequency to the number of days to wait after a discussion is started. 0, the default, turns reminders off.
2. Choose the tags in Reminder Tags. Pick tags that are also in Enabled Tags: the reminder command doesn't check whether a discussion has a Q&A tag.
3. Run the Flarum scheduler. Add a cron entry that calls php flarum schedule:run every minute, as described in the Flarum documentation.

The extension schedules the fof:best-answer:notify command to run hourly. php flarum schedule:list shows it. Each run reminds the author of every discussion that:

• has a reminder tag
• was started between N and N + 7 days ago, where N is the Reminder frequency
• has at least one reply
• has no best answer, isn't hidden or private, and its author's account still exists
• hasn't been reminded before

The author must have the Select Best Answer (own Discussion) permission. If nobody else has posted in the discussion, the author also needs Select own post as Best Answer.

Each discussion gets one reminder at most. Setting a best answer deletes the reminder.

With Prevent reminder notifications being sent during unsocial hours turned on, the command only runs between 08:00 and 21:00 UTC. With Append scheduler output to log storage turned on, the command's output is added to storage/logs/fof-best-answer.log.

Other settings

Notifications

Users choose how they receive these in their notification settings.

Updating

composer update fof/best-answer

Upgrading from 2.0.0-beta.8 or earlier

Before this release, choosing a different best answer in a discussion left the previous answer's author with one best answer too many. After updating, recalculate every user's best answer count:

php flarum fof:best-answer:update-counts

The command goes through every user, so it can take a while on large forums.

Links

• Packagist
• GitHub
• Original by wiwatsrt

An extension by FriendsOfFlarum.