Mark threads as solved

[Dani]

Put larger text indicating to mark threads as solved, so hopefully more people will take advantage. Also, did similar with threads more than 3 months old.

[Ezzaral]

Yeah, it does stand out more now. Hopefully it will be used more frequently.

[~s.o.s~]

Another good thing might be to periodically mail out to members who have created threads but not marked them as solved after X number of days. This would help with members who might have wanted to mark their threads as solved but won't bother going to the website and searching for the thread which they posted. Just a thought.

[Dani]

The problem with doing that is that there's no way of knowing whether they started a Q&A thread or an ongoing discussion, or whether any of the responses they got really were valuable.

It would actually be a super big turn off for a newbie to start a thread in the C++ forum. Then get a response saying "use code tags correctly!" ... and then a week later they get an email saying "If your thread is solved, mark it solved!" Plus nearly every thread in the Internet Marketing category is not Q&A.

[~s.o.s~]

I gave a pretty coarse grained suggestion; of course, you should send mails only for threads created in specific forums, mainly that being programming related forums. Also, I really don't think it should be a big bother to receive a mail every month. After all, you do send out newsletter every month. Why not couple it with a request to mark threads as solved?

[Dani]

We already send out email to new members a week after they joined with links to threads they posted in. (In an attempt to help new members who post on the site one day, and then forget the URL or how to find their post.) I guess we can include a sentence about how we encourage marking threads as solved.

[Ancient Dragon]

I would consider such emails as spam and a big turn off. I would not want DaniWeb to send me such emails. It is no big deal and most members probably could care less whether a thread is marked solved or not.

[AndreRet]

I think Dani is correct in saying that encouragement will work. I am not that much involved with other forums than VB6, and I can tell you that the necromancing there is huge...:S We get posters asking questions on threads that is still open from as far back as 2005!

I personally (and have noticed others started the same - vb5 etc) pulse the posters to mark the threads as solved once its done. If they start a new question with the same thread, we would pulse them to open a new one instead.

Sending mail in a CONTROLLED manner would not be annoying I'm sure. I get on average 6 mails a day from previous posts or the newsletter/geeks lounge etc, and it is still not getting on my nerves at all, as long as we are having fun.:cool:

Good luck in solving the problem, I for one will really enjoy it to see posts closed off if there is no more replies on them in say a month. (dormant for a month):-/

[Ancient Dragon]

>>We get posters asking questions on threads that is still open from as far back as 2005!

Marking threads as solved will not solve that problem. Mods need to actually close the threads to fix that.

If you like such emails then that's great -- for you.

[Dani]

> I get on average 6 mails a day from previous posts or the newsletter/geeks lounge etc, and it is still not getting on my nerves at all, as long as we are having fun.
But you also have 600+ posts. The average member with 15 posts might find one email a month a turn off.

[Ancient Dragon]

Of course the way to stop such emails is to set the appropriate flag in the PROFILE :)

[Ancient Dragon]

I just saw that new Solved Thread message on a thread -- looks great :) If anyone misses that then they must be blind.

[AndreRet]

I suppose you're right. Why not then look at my last part of closing off dormant posts, say when they have been for a month. Chances that a poster will reply on his post after a month is quite slim. If the post is closed and someone wants to reply on it or ask his own question, automatically take them to a new thread which will in return show as a new thread to us.

I have noticed that a lot of new posters search for certain code, find it here on Daniweb and then asks a question fairly related to that topic, hence raising the dead. If that post was closed, a new thread will be forced and we that help a lot, will get to a solution much faster because we do not have to page through a few pages to see where the actual question is coming from or whether it is related to the original question.

Just a few pointers, before my head gets bitten off - again...:D