New question plugin

[Tobias Zeuch]

A new artefact for questions, based on the proposal by the Totara group, see https://mahara.org/view/artefact.php?artefact=363268&view=1088 for details

[Mahara Bot (dev-mahara)]

Patch for "master" branch: https://reviews.mahara.org/3406

[Robert Lyon (robertl-9)]

Hi Tobias

One of the things I've noticed with the patch you provided is that the Question search form is a little bit confusing.

There is a show/hide advanced search but the advanced options are only a few check boxes that take up as much room as the 'show advanced search' link itself - so are the show/hiding links necessary?

Also, the 'ask a question' button looks like it's part of the search form - there is no visual demarcation between the two.

I've done a mockup of how this form could be displayed for easier use to the user.

Cheers

Robert

[Tobias Zeuch (tobias-zeuch-8)]

When planing the block type(s), we discovered some (potential) inconsistencies, referring to the sharing rights of questions and answers:

- Right now, the access rights for answers depend on the access right of the question they refer to. That makes sense in this context, but it also means that an answering user cannot control, who can access the answer, he himself created. Actually, a user who answered to a question can loose the right to view his own answer, when the owner of the question revokes the share-right to him. Maybe the existent access-rights should be fixed when the first answer is provided?

- Also, the system doesn't serve for private questions, because the question owner can provide access to additional audience after an answer has been provided (and actually he can't see who the question has been shared with in the first place). I think that's ok, as long as that's clearly communicated to the user, or would you like to make the plugin work for those cases as well?

- Should the question owner also be able to share other peoples answers via views? And the other way round, would there be need for an answer-blocktype and should that contain the question, because they don't make much sense without the context? If so, should a answer-provider have the right to share the question with other users?

- One thing we thought of was that the way, questions and answers work, resemble somehow the work in Groups. If all artefacts were group artefacts, the usual group rights would determine, if only the administrator or all group members could share the question and artefacts. But that would mean losing the authorship with it's special rights or adding additional rights on top of the ownership of the group artefacts. Also, that way you can't ask questions beyond the groups.

- Another idea would be to allow answer-owners to display the question but to not display the authorship of the other artefacts, or to only show it, if the question itself has been shared with the viewer of the page.

- Or the block could only show the question/answer, that the page-owner owns with a link to the question-page, where the access rights for the question determines, if he can see the question with all answers, or not (and there would be no link, if the viewer couldn't see the question)

Any thoughts on this or in general on how the access here should work?

Cheers
Tobias

[Aaron Wells (u-aaronw)]

Unfortunately have to push this one out to 1.11, because we're running well behind on 1.10 and because it relies on patches for bug 1037531, which has also been pushed out to 1.11.

[Mahara Bot (dev-mahara)]

Reviewed: https://reviews.mahara.org/3634
Committed: http://gitorious.org/mahara/mahara/commit/535c66d4754bb3d7f9d4b5593f25fea735b661fb
Submitter: Robert Lyon (<email address hidden>)
Branch: master

commit 535c66d4754bb3d7f9d4b5593f25fea735b661fb
Author: Robert Lyon <email address hidden>
Date: Thu Aug 14 11:00:13 2014 +1200

Altering how get_comments() works (Bug #1037531)

As I'm adding in some new options and I notice that Bug #1326425 will
also be adding options to get_comments so I thought it would be useful
to make a default opbject of variables that one can call and alter
with specific variables where needed rather than having to work out
where in the function call list things need to go as that list would
grow up to 10 options.

Change-Id: I7111559c4d12a8de128b9526930729728a36555e
Signed-off-by: Robert Lyon <email address hidden>

[Kristina Hoeppner (kris-hoeppner)]

We are not planning on adding that functionality to Mahara at this stage. If we do at a later point, we can resurrect it.