Forum: Sticky/Pinned discussions

From Martin Dougiamas (martin at moodle.com) Friday, 25 April 2003, 09:55 AM:

Which would pin it at the top of a forum?

From Gunther Dippe (dippe at ncm.gu.se) Friday, 25 April 2003, 02:51 PM:

You got it!

From Gustav Delius (gwd2 at york.ac.uk) Wednesday, 15 March 2006, 03:39 AM:

Re-classified as forum feature request

Assigning to me temporarily because Vy-Shane no longer works for Moodle HQ.

I'm surprised we don't have a sticky option already. It would be a really useful addition to the forums. I have quite a few important posts that need to be stickies and the only way to do this right now is go in and make an edit to the topic. This can get very time consuming.

Yeah, considering how vital Forums are to the 'best practice' use of Moodle, it seems strange this facility (so comom on bulleting boards for many years) is missing. Would be a good addition

I guess it's more important in bulletin boards because they have just forums only.

Moodle has other ways to capture information for later use:

• you could move the discussion to a special "sticky" forum
• you could capture the data in a wiki, glossary, or database

I'm not saying we shouldn't do it, just explaining that alternatives existed.

>> Moodle has other ways to capture information for later use:
>> - you could move the discussion to a special "sticky" forum
>> - you could capture the data in a wiki, glossary, or database

Are these two new features planned for Moodle 2.0? If so, I believe the "pinned topics" request would be handled, if an admin or teacher could redesignate an ordinary forum into a "Sticky" forum. Then be able select the topic(s) which would become "sticky" (fixed at the top of the list of topics). Presumably, if more than one forum topic is selected as sticky, the teacher could fix the order of the sticky topics (first, second, third...).

On the data capture feature, that is another great idea. It needs to be automated or semi-automated, though. With a teacher clicking on a "capture data" button, she/he could select (copy to wiki, copy to glossary, copy to database) and the data would be moved into a pre-existing or new wiki/glossary/database.

Actually I was just talking about standard Moodle ... an ordinary forum can have important discussions moved to it from other forums. And for the other stuff: cut and paste, like we do now for http://moodle.org/useful/ -> http://docs.moodle.org/en

But your ideas are good anyway!

If anyone's still interested in taking this up I've implemented this functionality in a limited way for 2.0. Users with the new mod/forum:pindiscussions capability can "pin" a discussion so that it goes to the top of a forum. Patch here: https://github.com/mackensen/moodle/compare/mdl-372.

"If anyone's still interested in taking this up"...
I think people ARE interested in it - it has almost 30 votes and watchers.
I must admit that I'm somewhat perplexed by the way the 'Suggested feature' works.
There are a lot of requests here that are many years old.
I'm not sure how we (as a community) have new features added to Moodle each release, and yet <i>some</i> of the ideas here ("New Feature", Improvement) AND resolution = unresolved ORDER BY votes DESC) are REALLY good but it seems almost random how they are actually addressed ?
I'd like to see a policy where we tick off at least one Feature Request each month (so that would be 6 per Moodle release).
It may be that some are too difficult, so in that case we pick 6 of the top 8, and delete the ones that are never going to be done.

Thanks, Stuart, for reviving this urgently needed new feature. Yes, sticky forums/pinned topics have been batted around for ages, even before 2006 when this issue was first listed. I think it deserves a push again, because the core of Moodle has always been the forum,and Moodle has the best forums of any LMS. I am really proud of that and it is actually the reason I chose Moodle in 2003.

The reason we need pinned topics for an admin/teacher is because it aids in knowledge creation. Forums often suffer from an meandering, petering-out syndrome. That is OK in some cases, but sometimes the topic is so critical, that periodic summarizing and focusing can help, and literally create structured knowledge. I see two workflows in such a teaching scenario--one top down, one bottom up.

• Top-down pinned topic/sticky forum: the teacher or discussion moderator selects a main topic and pins it so it stays at the top of the list, and visually appears slightly emphasized (color or shading). As posts are added, the moderator grabs relevant content and summarizes what the group is learning from each other.
• Bottom-up pinned topic/sticky forum: Any forum that starts out in a normal, serial pattern, can be switched to a pinned topic mode. A person or persons can be selected or volunteer to summarize the discussion and keep that summary at the top of the discussion. Also, within a large forum, multiple pinned topics can be selected to rise to the top, either by moderator-choice or participant-voting. And of course, a pinned topic could serve as a directory within a large forum, where the key topics can be listed and visitors pointed towards them.

Another reason we need pinned topics is because knowledge creation is extending beyond a single semester-single co-hort model. As we create learning communities that exist with ongoing purposes beyond merely granting credits for passing a course, we need to keep forums active and growing for many years, even after students graduate. Ways to capture the knowledge can include wiki, but a pinned topic is more organic, and can flow from the discussion. Moodle.org would greatly benefit from this, and give more specific roles for volunteers to help moderate some forums.

There are similar requests from MDL-14938. Maybe the issues could be linked.

I've resurrected my old patch for 2.3. The only outstanding issue is that I can't make the Pin/Unpin button align properly.

Hi Charles this works great! I've uploaded image to show that in Afterburner I floated it to LEFT and looks OK...would be nice to have a little icon instead, but for now looks to be working as expected.

Thanks

Is there any chance to add a class selector to the pinned topic starter something like

<td class="topic starter pinned">

so that a small 'pin' icon could be added via CSS in the theme setting? See image above.

@Charles

When you set this for Peer Review, are you not supposed to ask someone to do this then add them as Peer Reviewer?

If you want to you could add me as Peer Reviewer, however, if it were me I would submit it for Integration Review.

I personally think this is a great addition to the forum.

Thanks
Mary

@Helen

I have just added you as a watcher on MDL-372 - Pinned forum topic

This would be a great addition for the new forum!

Any chance you could get this added

I agree that this would be a great feature to have in Moodle and have voted accordingly.

Charles, thanks for your patch.

Linking to MDL-14938 as suggested by Andrea.

131 sleeps until this Tracker item will be ten years old - surely that has got to be some kind of record?

Seriously though, should this also be linked to http://tracker.moodle.org/browse/MDL-21538 on the assumption that this will resolve this one?

This would be a useful feature to have on the Moodle forums for Moderators to pin temporarily popular issues / information to the top.

I think that MDL-8 might be the oldest open tracker issue

Hi,

Is this ready for 'Peer Review'?

Cheers,

Gareth

Was there not work being done on getting ForumNG into core? When that finally lands it does allow teachers to Pin posts
Julian

@Julian. ForumNG in core in the tracker: MDL-21538

I suspect this is dead in the water now. This is the latest conversation: https://tracker.moodle.org/browse/MDL-39707 looking at porting Advanced Forums features into Moodle. Martin has recently posted here: https://tracker.moodle.org/browse/MDLSITE-1910

Forums are a complex issue.

-Derek

Really like the idea, but why limit access to admins and instructors? Could this be available to students and why not link pinning to rating? This way, students could bring to the top the topics or posts that most interest them.