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This is about improving the Get Satisfaction forum which was designed to provide customer support for software and other companies. You can see the original discussion there at http://getsatisfaction.com/satisfaction/topics/we_want_comments_about_our_new_comments_feature#

We should learn from the success of Wikipedia and create topic articles (at the top of each topic) to summarize and continually refine the best understanding of the topic. The original question/problem/whatever with its replies and comments constitutes the Talk page for the topic article.

The largely time sequenced replies and comments just make the topic LONGER. The gems of value get buried. The article at the top can get BETTER over time. That's a tremendous advantage.

Treat the article as in a wiki so damage can be reverted and attribution for changes is hidden in the history. You can make the history a third part of the topic at the bottom if you like.

The forum style replies and comments should, I feel, remain subject to deletion and revision by only their authors, but not for a mere 15 minutes, forever. History? I don't know. We don't even have access to the goals for the whole Get Satisafaction process. Let's have explicit goals and an actual user's manual highly visible (by link) at the top of every single topic. Links don't take much room.

This is a major comment and suggests to me that, again like wikis, it should be made easy to fork off another topic from any existing topic, leaving a link to the new topic at the location of the reply or comment which fostered it. This is a more complex system than we have now, but visualize how much richer and easier to understand things could become if this were done. It could make GS into a truly remarkable and compelling resource for participating companies and their customers.

If the idea intrigues but seems too complicated for you to accomplish on your own, I can help you find experts who can accomplish this from scratch in a matter of months, and not so many, either. Private comments can be sent to dick at cfcl dot com, but to get past my spam filters, please include Nitpicker in the subject line

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