For what seems like years now, we've been seeing regular misplaced support request posts in the CIQ Showcase, always without mentioning the name of the app, and usually without mentioning the app's author. These would often (or maybe always) be for apps which already had an existing support thread.
I used to think this was mostly an issue with inexperienced forum users, but recently someone who posts here semi-regularly made the same mistake, so it got me thinking.
I believe this is a UX issue in the forums, caused by two things:
- The prominent placement of a big "New" button at the top of every page (including existing threads), which creates a new thread
- The fact that the Reply button is not at top of the page (or even the bottom), but it's only directly under the post. (Which makes it very easy to miss if the post is long and/or it has any number of replies)
Users must be pressing New in the mistaken belief that it creates a new reply, not a new thread.
Suggested fix for when you are viewing an existing thread:
- Remove the New button and replace it with large Reply button (so it's prominent and at the top of the page -- no scrolling required.)
- Another helpful tweak could be to have another Reply button at the very bottom of the page (not just below the OP), so that's it's always in a predictable and prominent place when you scroll to the bottom. (It may not work well in practice. Probably the kind of thing that would have be tried out first.)
I made a longer post on this, with screenshots:
