Solved Threads

[Ancient Dragon]

What's this new category under our reputation ?

[Dani]

Check out your member profile for more information :)

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!

[Salem]

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.

[Dani]

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.

[DimaYasny]

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

edit: I mean mark them as solved

[Dani]

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.

[DimaYasny]

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

[Dani]

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.

[DimaYasny]

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

[Salem]

> 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.

[Dani]

Salem, I'm actually rather confused what you're asking.

> 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.

Wouldn't you want to do this even if Solved wasn't a metric?

> So we have now 4 "metrics" which tell the world how we're performing, yet none for those people asking the questions?

If someone has a lot of posts but little reputation and no solved threads, then it's more likely than not that they don't answer a lot of questions.

If someone asks a lot of questions, but they ask good quesitons and always use code tags, a lot of people do +rep for that. Therefore, if someone has a good reputation but no solved threads, then there's a good change they are a good question asker.

[Narue]

>also give a nice overview of how a member has replied and helped other people.
That kind of gives oldtimers the shaft though. For those of us who had thousands of posts long before marking threads as solved was a feature, it would seem like we're less helpful than we really are. Not that I intend to put any more weight on the number of solved threads than I would on rep, but this feature seems dicey at best and not nearly as entertaining as rep.

[Dani]

> For those of us who had thousands of posts long before marking threads as solved was a feature ...

At most there are about five such people, all who haven't logged into the site for well over a year. The ability to mark threads as solved has existed since 2004.

> this feature seems dicey at best ...

It's not supposed to be a new feature as much as it is just doing a simple calculation based on a system that was already in place to use as an added metric.

[Narue]

>The ability to mark threads as solved has existed since 2004.
Really. Then only a tiny fraction of people have taken advantage of it. It still sounds dicey to me.

>It's not supposed to be a new feature as much as it is just
>doing a simple calculation based on a system that was already
>in place to use as an added metric.
Solved threads is an existing feature. Using them as a metric for whatever you intended is a new feature. Simple.

[Dani]

> Really. Then only a tiny fraction of people have taken advantage of it. It still sounds dicey to me.

Do you remember when the Mark as Solved link was in the Thread Tools dropdown menu? Few people aside from the mods probably realized that it existed. Then the Mark as Solved link was moved to the top of the page. Still, few people used it. It was then moved to the bottom near the Quick Reply box where it's gotten a lot more attention.

In any case, while the rep system is based on what OTHER community members think of you, this new "feature" (ok, I said it ... feature) is just here to provide a more objective idea of how helpful a member is.

For example, going back to when you first started on DaniWeb and you were rather, how should I say, mean, you were extremely helpful to many members, but had one of the lowest reputations. Had this metric existed, it would have been a way to gauge that you were a knowledgeable person with an attitude as opposed to a spammer with lots of posts and no worthiness beyond that.

[Dani]

> It still sounds dicey to me.
IMO, any completely automated system that attempts to calculate the worthiness of a member of an online community completely on the fly is going to be dicey. But, when coupled with the reputation system, the member's post count, and how long ago they joined, I think it helps to give a better at-a-glance all around picture of the member.

[Narue]

>when you first started on DaniWeb and you were rather, how should I say, mean
"Were" nothing, I'm still rather mean. ;)

[Dani]

No you're not. You're the picture of politeness :)

[Narue]

>You're the picture of politeness
I scared away two or three people in the last month. Polite people don't do that. ;)

[jbennet]

naure is scary in a cool way :)

i always laugh when you scare the turbo c++ ing void-mainers in the c++ forum

i like the new feature btw, talked to dani abiut it earlier

[Ancient Dragon]

I guess I'm somewhat confused -- why is my Solved Threads nearly twice as Narue's even though she has been around longer than I have and has nearly as many posts as I have. ~S.~O~S is similar -- more posts than I have but half the Solved Threads. Am I over-rated or are they under-rated?

And Dima: I do occasionally mark some threads solved when I am pretty sure they OP has indicated the problem is solved. It doesn't happen very often, maybe a couple times a week at most.

[Dani]

Do you have a tendancy to mark threads as solved yourself? As a moderator, you have that ability, and that would skew the results in your favor.

The thing is that you can go into everyone's member profiles and click the link next to where it says Solved Threads to actually see where this number is coming from. Should you choose to investigate that, you can probably come to some conclusion regarding the types of threads Narue replies to that get solved and the types of threads that you reply to that get solved.

[darkagn]

I like the solved threads count. But maybe as a compromise the moderators/administrators of daniweb could have this info removed from their profiles? After all, they are moderators so we all know how good they are ;)

[Dani]

> I do occasionally mark some threads solved when I am pretty sure they OP has indicated the problem is solved.

A couple times a week for a year can certainly account for an extra 200 solved threads!

I don't believe this will allow for users to inflate their solved threads count since you were only able to do this since you're a mod.

[jasimp]

cscgal I noticed your post count dropped by ~1500. How come?

[Dani]

A behind the scenes change has been made where posts made in staff-only forums no longer count towards the post count of us moderators.

[jbennet]

ooooooooo soon i will overtake dani

[jbennet]

does rep count in there?

[Dani]

The staff forums are hidden within the Coffee House, just like Area 51. Rep doesn't count anywhere in the Coffee House and neither do Solved Threads.

[jbennet]

cool. is area 51 any good?