Create or improve common forum responses

This article explains how to create or improve common forum responses that are available to contributors for use in support forum replies. Other considerations such as adding images, using wiki markup, or renaming existing forum responses are also covered.

Adding a new forum response

To add a new forum response, simply create a new article. You can use this link.

  1. Make sure the article title starts with "Forum response -" and that the article is in the "Canned Responses" category. Also, don't use a colon in the article title, since that will prevent wiki links (bug 749835).
  2. Add a link to the new canned response article under the appropriate heading in the common forum responses article. If no heading is available, add a new one, like this:

== Heading under which you want the response to be ==

[[Forum response - Test response|Label you want the response to have]]

Review and approval

Have your submission reviewed by another KB article reviewer to minimize errors. Please contact a reviewer or an admin if your submission requires immediate attention or hasn't been reviewed in a reasonable amount of time (see Meet the Team for contact information).

Warning to reviewers: Forum responses that appear in the common forum responses list will be available to contributors in the support forum, even though the response itself hasn't been approved (bug 986912). When reviewing the common forum responses list, make sure that newly added forum responses are approved or else make a new edit to delete (or comment out) the unapproved response from the list.

Other considerations

Renaming a response

If you just want to change how the response appears in the support forum "Common responses" tool, simply edit the common forum responses article and change the label you want the response to have. If you also want to change the title of the response article itself, a KB article reviewer will need to edit the Description to change the title.

Warning to reviewers: If you edit the Description of a "Forum response" article and change the title, its link in the common forum responses article MUST be updated with the new title. Otherwise, the support forum "Common responses" tool will show a redirect to the renamed article instead of the content, as shown in this screenshot.

Wiki markup

Please be careful using wiki markup. Keep in mind that certain formatting will show up in the "Forum response" article but won't work when the response is posted to the support forum. For example:

  • DO NOT use "show-for" code, as described in How to use "For" tags.
  • DO NOT use "styling" markup for keyboard shortcuts, buttons, menus, notes and warnings, such as {key }, {button }, {menu }, {note}text{/note} and {warning}text{/warning}.
  • DO NOT use templates, such as [[T:aboutconfig]] and [[T:optionspreferences]].

A list of markup that works in both articles and in forum posts is included in the Markup chart article. Please only use markup that works in forum posts.

Images

The support forum doesn't reduce a large image to fit the page, like a KB article does. Reduce larger images to a width of 520 pixels or less (500 pixels or less for indented images) using this code: [[Image:YourImageName|width=500]]. Note: The problem with large images seems to be fixed since at least January 2021 (see this support forum test post).

Also be aware of bug 1019998 which adds extra line breaks around images posted to the forums. As a workaround, use an asterisk, colon or semi-colon to set off the image. Note also that bug 1019998 has been fixed so the use of an asterisk, colon or semi-colon as a workaround is no longer needed.

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