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Understanding Topics in a Get Satisfaction Community

Overview

A “topic” is the general name for any new question, idea, problem, or compliment that gets posted in the community. All the responses from the community become part of that topic.

Topic types

There are four varieties of topics: Questions, Ideas, Problems, and Praise. Setting the topic types helps other users find information quickly, and helps the company prioritize their responses. There is a fifth topic type available only to employees of communities, called “Company Update”, which appear in both the general topics list, and Community pane on the right of your Get Satisfaction community page.

Searching Topics

Users often have similar problems and questions, so it’s usually best to search existing topics before creating a new one. The easiest way to search for topics is to go to the main community page, select your topic type, enter your issue or concern into the main field at the top of the page, and then click "Continue". Get Satisfaction will show you the most likely matches at the top of the page. If none of them are a good match, you can click “Nope. Finish posting my question”, and start a new topic.

You can also search for any topic directly, using the Search tool at the top of each community page. Search for topics from within this interface using advanced search options with operators, such as:

  • AND for results that only contain all words. (Portland AND Oregon)
  • OR for results that contain any combination of words. (liberal OR democrat)
  • NOT to exclude specific words. (Oregon NOT travel)
  • Quotation marks to return exact phrases. (“Boston cream pie”)

Creating a new topic or post

Users often have similar problems and questions, so it’s usually best to search existing topics before creating a new one. The easiest way to search for topics is to go to the main community page, select your topic type, enter your issue or concern into the main field at the top of the page, and then click Continue. Get Satisfaction will show you the most likely matches at the top of the page. If none of them are a good match, you can click “Nope. Finish posting my question”, and start a new topic.

You can also create a topic directly, by clicking the “Start a Topic” button at the top of each community page. On the new topic page, do the following:

  • Choose a Topic type
  • Compose a one or two paragraph topic that explains your thought in as much detail as you can. You can add images, and format your paragraph using a set of HTML elements.
  • Add a descriptive title that could help others recognize your issue.
  • Select which products or services your question relates to, if appropriate.
  • Add text tags and facial expression “emotitags”. Text tags help organize the information, and emotitags are used to give community administrators a quick sense of the mood in the community.
  • Click the “Post your topic” button

Flagging an inappropriate topic

Openness and transparency are core values at Get Satisfaction, so we don’t support arbitrary deletions of posts or replies. However, there are a few instances where we will remove a post or reply, in order to keep the community healthy. When a topic is spam or crassly commercial, contains private customer information, or uses inappropriate or abusive language, you can flag it for removal.

If you see a post that you think falls into one of these categories, click the “Inappropriate” link, select the category it falls under, and add some explanation to give us further insight into why you think it should be removed.

We’ll review the flagged topic within a couple days, and remove items that violate our community guidelines. To preserve transparency, we make a note of the removal in the community’s Change Log.

Following a topic

Registered user accounts are automatically set to receive email notifications when topics they’ve participated in are updated.

You can also receive email notifications of any topic by clicking the “I have this problem too”, “I have this question too”, or the “I like this idea too” buttons at the top of a topic page. You can also click the follow link under the “Follow” tab in the top right corner.

If you don’t want to follow a particular topic any more, you can click “Stop following this question” in the upper-right hand corner of a topic page. Or, you can click the “Stop following this problem” link that’s in the notification email.

Editing or deleting a topic or post

You can delete or edit your own topics or replies at any time, with the exception of topics or replies that have been replied to already. This is to prevent continuity problems in the communities. When you do delete a post, there’s a record of the post in the change log, but the post itself is deleted.

Community members and Community administrators of free accounts cannot delete topics or posts from other users, however. If you see a topic that is clearly spam or is crassly commercial, or contains private customer information, or uses inappropriate or abusive language, you can flag it for removal by Get Satisfaction.

Community moderators for communities with paid accounts have access to moderation tools that allow for removal or redirection of topics or posts. We require that companies using these moderation tools do so responsibly and in the spirit of our Community Guidelines and Company - Customer Pact. To preserve transparency and integrity, we also make a note of the removal in our Change Log, and allow anyone to dispute the change. In the event of a dispute, we do our best to moderate disagreements and try to come to a fair and reasonable conclusion.

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