Ability to merge multiple Community Forum threads

[kelimuttu]

Briefly describe the Initiative.
When there's an incident, we tend to receive multiple questions about the same issue from multiple users. The ability to merge questions will help us create one source of truth so our contributors won't have to provide multiple updates in different threads.

Describe the milestones if any

Add any related issues

What is the requested timeline for completion?
Up for discussion

Who is the audience
We should limit this functionality for Forum Moderators

Additional context

Applicable resources

[denyshon]

Some questions we will need to answer:

• What exactly should happen when a moderator "merges" a question into another? The obvious things are that the OP gets subscribed to the target question, and the merged question is locked.
• How would we inform the OP about the merge? By posting a reply by SumoBot?
• Would we want to also subscribe to the target question everyone who was subscribed to the merged question?
• Would we want to also repost the merged thread content in the target thread, like on Connect (probably not, but still needs to be considered)?
• Would we want to sum the stats?

[AliceWyman]

I'm taking it from another angle. The "one source of truth" for an emerging common issue should either be a support article or a common forum response as an answer to individual questions.

The https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/mozilla-support-rules-guidelines article Posting support requests section says this: (quote)
Create one thread and only one thread for each subject or Mozilla product you need help with.
Do not re-use existing threads started by others, even if they are seemingly on the same subject. Ask a new question instead.

Later in the article, the Marking support threads as "Solved" section says this:
(quote)
The Original Poster (OP), also called the "Question owner", can select Solves the problem next to an answer, to mark the thread they started as "Solved". Moderators can also mark threads as solved when the Original Poster (OP) clearly indicates the problem is solved

Based on the above, the whole point of the current support forum is to have one question "owner", also called the Original Poster (OP), who asks a question about a Mozilla product and receives answers from others to help solve a particular support issue. Are you going to allow for multiple "me, too" or "I have a similar problem" posts in a single support thread? Are those other users also entitled to an answer, if their issue is not identical (different product version, different OS, etc.)?