What's this new category under our reputation ?

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Reputation is a great way to know what the rest of the community thinks of you, but it is very much a number based on a popularity game.

This number is meant to be a bit more objective in representing how helpful you are at solving other members' questions. It represents the number of threads that you've replied to that have subsequently been marked solved. It discounts threads in the Coffee House and it discounts any solved threads that you started yourself (ie to represent questions you helped with, not questions you had).

There is a corresponding link in your member profile which links you to the list of these threads.

Hopefully this will be a good way of not just seeing what other members think of someone's posts (via the rep system) but also give a nice overview of how a member has replied and helped other people.

Of course, this is also meant to be an incentive to help more people!

How about the other "incentive" of working out which people are worth helping?

If two posters have started 100 threads (say), where one of them has marked nearly all of them as "solved", and the other hasn't even bothered, then I'd like to know.

But then you're only willing to help people because you get points out of it, which sorta goes against the whole community-helping-community spirit.

On the other hand, if you help everyone regardless of whether they have a tendancy of marking things solved, over a time, your solved thread counter does provide a fairly accurate representation when compared against other members.

how about if moderators see solved threads and solve them adequately?

edit: I mean mark them as solved

Threads have always been able to be marked solved by both the thread starter as well as a moderator. However, we prefer to let the thread starter mark threads solved when they feel their questions have been solved to their satisfaction. We don't want to stifle conversation by bringing it to an abrupt close when we think the question asker has gotten enough advice.

well, then how about a feature for mods only: mark thread as pending closure or something like that. that would alert them, say in a month's time to have a look at that topic, and if there were no further postings there for that month - mark it as closed+solved if applicable

That seems like a lot of extra work for the mod team. Especially considering it is not applicable for every thread to have a single, specific solution that resolves the entire problem the OP was having. Many threads are more along the lines of discussions or more subjective than that, for which marking them as solved wouldn't make sense.

I just want to add that the addition of calculating the number of Solved Threads is not meant to be a change to the way the Solved feature, which we've always had, works. Simply, I just calculated a number based on data that was already being collected because I thought it could be a useful statistic.

oh, ok another option would be sending a reminder to topicstarters to close threads

> But then you're only willing to help people because you get points out of it
So we have now 4 "metrics" which tell the world how we're performing, yet none for those people asking the questions?

As you well know, I also help out on cprogramming.com, and there is no rep there at all, so I'm definitely not in it for the "points" as you put it.

If they have a high post count, they might have a clue.
If they have a high rep, they might have a clue.
If they have a high number of "solved" threads, they might have a clue.
If they've been here a long time, they might have a clue.

If none of this matters, why show it?

Sure, if "solved" is a metric, I'm going to be more interested in helping people who post with code tags in proper English, and give due recognition rather than some brain-dead semi-literate boob who doesn't give a damn so long as they get their free lunch.
We all have a limited time here, so I want to make sure that my effort is duly recognised.

One way is to "reward" those responsible posters by answering their questions
a) first
b) in more detail.
If I run out of time, then the also-rans will either have to wait, or improve. Without any incentive, why would they ever bother to try and climb out of the mud?

I spend way too much time just reporting posts with "no code tags" to begin with anyway.