I must raise this question again!

[Aaron]

This does sound to be a terrific idea, however will you not have the trouble of dumping messages that shouldn't be dumped?

 

[Corticus]

Or,

instead of redesigning the forum, you could type [notsolved] at the end of the subect of your question if your not happy. Then, you could search fro "[notsolved]".

Hmm?

 

[Mark O'Brien]

The "Hall of Fame" was intended to be a sort of FAQ type forum that incorporated the "best" solutions (by consensus) on common questions. This has sadly been neglected.

The consensus at the time this thread was initiated was that determining if a problem has been "solved" is a rather arbitrary condition. e.g. if someone wanted to sum all of the values in cells A1:A10, putting in a formula like:

=A1+A2+A3+A4+A5+A6+A7+A8+A9+A10

is a solution, but isn't really as good as

=SUM(A1:A10)

However, if I know nothing about Excel and get the first answer, I would say "Thanks" then state that the problem had been resolved. This could lead to complacency when viewing threads and the "better" solution may never be received. e.g. certain members of this board actually do read just about every post every day. Why should they bother to read or respond to posts that have been marked as solved? Typically, these might be the people that you really do want to read your post and provide an optimal solution. e.g. you don't want a dummy like me posting a solution to a formula question, because I'll give you something that works, but is probably really crap.

The whole issue of marking a thread with "notsolved" or "solved" to overcome this "deficiency" in the board is actually seen as being rude or bad netiquette by many a user. Mainly because the premise of this board is that it is a volunteer service. 99.9% Problems will almost certainly be resolved, but by having a dirty big "NOTSOLVED" in the topic, seems rather presumtious that you are going to get a solution, no matter how impossible the task or how vague the question. Eventually, you would end up wallowing in a sea of "NOTSOLVED"'s which would pretty much defeat the purpose, especially as some users give no feedback as to whether or not a proposed solution has worked. If they can't go back and post a "That worked, thanks" then are they really going to take the time to edit their thread topic?

Anyway, that's just my thoughts on the matter, plus a little bit of previous discussions. The "zero posts" option on the last board was also intended to alleviate the problem of solving all problems and I believe it was quite effective. However, like many fixes from the previous board, it is going to take time and effort to apply those fixes. e.g. Juan Pablo G. managed to fix the font size problem we were having. That is just on of many problems and he is volunteering his services on these issues even though he probably doesn't have extensive phpBB code experience.

 

[eliW]

.....The whole issue of marking a thread with "notsolved" or "solved" to overcome this "deficiency" in the board is actually seen as being rude or bad netiquette by many a user. Mainly because the premise of this board is that it is a volunteer service. 99.9% Problems will almost certainly be resolved, but by having a dirty big "NOTSOLVED" in the topic, seems rather presumtious that you are going to get a solution, no matter how impossible the task or how vague the question. Eventually, you would end up wallowing in a sea of "NOTSOLVED"'s which would pretty much defeat the purpose, especially as some users give no feedback as to whether or not a proposed solution has worked. If they can't go back and post a "That worked, thanks" then are they really going to take the time to edit their thread topic?.....

Mark,
Thank you for raising this whole issue again, I personally almost gaveup!

To overcome the difficulties you mentioned, I'll bring again some of the suggestions that I've made earlier here:

instead of the phrase "I am not satisfied etc.. or NOTSOLVED" I would suggest a little red light near the subject as an indicator that the member still needs help.

And

I) Only the member who posted, can turn ON or OFF the indicator
II) The indicator will be turned OFF automatically whenever a new reply to the post is accepted.
III) Turning ON the indicator will NOT push the post upward to the front page!!

I think that these suggestions could make the conversation in this forum very interesting and effective.
Also I am not concerned about missusing this indicator, as any new reply would turn it off, and the members of this forum are in general very reasonable and cooperative.

What about giving these suggestions a real try??

Eli

 

[Mark O'Brien]

Mark,
Thank you for raising this whole issue again, I personally almost gaveup!


What about giving these suggestions a real try??

Eli

I didn't dredge this thread up again that was someone else in February I was trying to bring closure to this one more time.

I have no sway on the adminstration of this board, but I would assume that if you really wanted something as elaborate as that red-light idea, then your best shot of getting it tried out is to code it yourself. We don't have any volunteers here that are phpbb proficient, so you'd be just as qualified as any else here to knock up code for your suggestion. The idea is certainly less obtrusive than putting "NOTSOLVED" in the topic title, but again raises issues like modifying the search engine and probably the existing database. Although I'm guessing on this.

I don't know how more efficient it would make the board, but I can guarantee that it would make it no more interesting. :D