What about this process to promote drafts considered completed. These steps are performed by moderators or other users with the appropriate permissions:
After a draft is considered good to be moved to Features…
Leave 24 hours for anyone to object or to wrap up the draft discussion (you can use a bookmark with a timer, not to forget).
Remove the first “Description” header (to make excerpts look better, showing directly the feature description).
Reset the timer.
Select all comments and move then to a new topic in the Archive category with the title “[Draft discussion] (same title)”.
Close the new draft discussion topic.
The Archive category needs to be created. It would be muted by default, meaning that its topics don’t appear in the Top, Latest… timelines. These discussions can still be found through various methods, but they would not get in the way.
I like this. It gives a clear way of getting requests promoted and keeps the draft discussion accessible but out of the way. It looks like the site tools are ideal for this way of handling it.
Implemented. Users should only see the #drafts:archive category if they know where to find it. They should see the closed topics only if they were involved before they were moved to the Archive.
Also, the search priority for the Archive is set to very low. The rest of the steps seem to work. I have been practicing with the categories you have moved to features today.
I’ve just archived discussion and moved a request to #features and it worked very smoothly! I don’t think I’ve used this forum software before but I really like it and the process works very straightforwardly
Careful when going through these steps! If the topic with the votes is closed by accident, the votes will disappear and be redistributed to their owners.
I almost did this with no less than MIDI comping. In fact I hit “close” and I even saw an instant notification related to the votes, but I realized my mistake and within 1-2 seconds reopened the topic. The votes are still there. Phew! Maybe they don’t go away that easily, but I’d rather don’t test.