Put more requests for help & advice on requests into public

[garethrees]

We could have a public "get help on this request" link somewhere on request pages, which goes through to the user support inbox but also gets posted on the request thread (perhaps behind a tabbed interface).

We could then allow admins to answer the help request in public, with the aim of being able to point people towards existing answers rather than using canned responses to reply privately.

Possibly, on viewing the help request, admins could also mark it safe for public comment (rather than admin-only reply) to enable other users to contribute. We could have a feed of these help requests similar to #6939.

[RichardTaylor]

Already ideally admins (and others) will provide advice in public via an annotation.

Exposing per-request tags #2302 would enable the use of a tag to flag a request for help. Ideally we'd have a button to add the tag, and a page listing requests on which help has been sought.

Related:

Consider presenting the "next steps" / refusal advice publicly #6286

Previous discussion on offering help in public via a mailing list, an option it was decided not to pursue:

mysociety/whatdotheyknow-theme#262

[RichardTaylor]

Often users who write to the support team seeking advice have not classified their response (or they've classified it as needing the attention of the team) whereas if they had classified it eg. rejected or awaiting a response the system would have automatically offered advice.

Doing more to encourage classification could prevent users seeking human help:

#5999 (comment)

[RichardTaylor]

If we could flag up admin annotations providing advice and list them on the site that would be a good starting point for using the existing annotation system as a kind of FOI advice forum.

Perhaps annotations from others could be flagged FOI advice too - maybe if they were by trusted users.

This might help promulgate advice provided by admins and others more widely.

#34 (comment)

[HelenWDTK]

This issue has been automatically closed due to a lack of discussion or resolution for over 12 months.
Should we decide to revisit this issue in the future, it can be reopened.