I have seen a lot of questions lately that will have different answers, depending on whether the user is running Drupal 6 or Drupal 7. Very often the first comment is "What version of Drupal?"
-
I think this needs to be revisited. I agree that there should be mandatory version numbers. Drupal 7 differs greatly from 6 and therefore the answers do as well. I find myself skipping over questions that do not clarify.– user842Commented Jan 25, 2012 at 20:56
-
1To clarify the Drupal version for which the OP is interested, it is not necessary to use a tag.– avpaderno ModCommented Apr 3, 2012 at 21:57
-
See: meta.drupal.stackexchange.com/questions/229/… and meta.drupal.stackexchange.com/questions/2541/…– Free RadicalCommented Sep 19, 2013 at 4:24
-
I don't know why this question getting negative vote. I noticed this post too.– BalaCommented Sep 19, 2013 at 16:57
-
@Bala Voting on meta is different. Instead of good/bad, it mans agree/disagree (see meta.stackoverflow.com/help/whats-meta). Downvotes here think mandatory version tags are a bad idea.– mpdonadio ModCommented Sep 19, 2013 at 17:04
-
I agree with kiamlaluno, every Drupal Answers user should clarify the Drupal version within the question text if necessary. Forcing to choose a version would be a bad idea (think about all the questions regarding drush which is independent from Drupal's core versioning system).– PaulCommented Sep 24, 2014 at 12:06
Add a comment
|
2 Answers
As far as I can see, on meta sites there are tags that are marked as mandatory, such as discussion; if the software they run is the same, then it should be possible to do the same on the main site.
The problem is that the version tags should not be mandatory, but used when strictly necessary. I should not use 6 because I am using Drupal 6, but because the question (and the answers) is only valid for Drupal 6. When somebody see the question, and see it's tagged 6, he could decide not to read the answers because he is interested in Drupal 7, but the answers could still be valid for Drupal 7. I could ask a question that doesn't depend from the Drupal version; if you force me to select a version tag, then I should use at least two. This would mean that, when Drupal 8 is out, somebody would read my question and, seeing it is tagged 6 7 could think it's a question for those Drupal versions, when it is not so.
It is not different from tagging a question c#-4.0 when I am asking the syntax to use for the "switch" statement, which was not introduced in C# 4.0. You could object that in Stack Overflow you could tag the question with "c#," but the equivalent tag in Drupal Answers would be "drupal" that you can consider an invisible tag always added to every question.
-
1My counterargument would be that questions should be tagged with the version of Drupal that the user happens to be using, and be retagged with other versions if the question is generic. Very often users don't know that some situations are version specific, but most of the users (at least the ones with retag permissions) do know.– mpdonadio ModCommented Jul 29, 2011 at 0:39
-
Some questions can be version independent. Well, most questions that does not depend on actual api should be version independent. And if question have different answers for different versions, nothing prevents posting them all.
Mechanism detecting phrases like "Drupal 7" in body or title and suggesting appropriate tags would be nice, but I think we may do it by hand easily enough.
-
1Note: above answer was migrated here from much more recent question (closed as duplicate). It had a bit different feel in previous context, or so I think. I wouldn't post it here as kiamlaluno's one was sufficient and more comprehensive already.– MołotCommented Sep 19, 2013 at 12:27
-
I thought this was a good answer, and this is an important topic, so I decided that merging was better than simple close-as-duplicate.– mpdonadio ModCommented Sep 19, 2013 at 18:39