We want to use EasyDiscuss like a classroom. As with any classroom, students need to ask questions, but only qualified instructors should answer; however, other students can listen (read) and learn.

By restricting replies to the topic author and admins, this feature:

• allows the topic author to ask clarifying questions
• allows other students to learn by reading the questions and answers
• gives site users assurance that the answers are trustworthy
• cultivates an atmosphere of respect and seriousness
• keeps the thread on topic and focused
• prevents topic hijacking, joking around, and other distractions
• prevents the interference of people who think they know the answer but do not
• prevents debate and confusion

We believe this function would be useful for product support, classrooms, and other cases where it is best to prevent replies from well-intentioned but misinformed people.

We would like EasyDiscuss to capable of behaving in this way. Stackideas made our install of 3.0 work this way, so we know it can be done, but that was a custom modification that we hope can become a standard feature in 4.0.

Please vote to support this feature!

http://stackideas.com/voices/easydiscuss/item/1030