I don't know if this is the right forum for this, but it is a suggestion, not for LQ but the community perhaps.

What brings me to this thought is the thread linked here: http://www.linuxquestions.org/questi...ic-4175554545/ .

Now, I don't mean to single out the final post suggesting it be marked as solved, as it is customary to do so when a problem is "fixed." However, there's a problem with this in my view.

Are we doing a service by suggesting an OP mark a thread is solved when they do a reinstall? Is that really solving the problem?

In some cases it may be. However, in this thread, other than stating

they only address one suggestion given. The OP never follows up on any information asked, such as clarifying "does not work." No error output, and no mention of what other steps they tried. Had they tried other suggestions, they would have gotten an error had it "not worked." Even the one suggestion they did state they followed should have given an error.

The usual reasoning behind marking a thread as solved is to help others with the same problem. However, a reinstall in such a case as this is overkill by far, and would actually be a disservice to anyone with the same problem.

+1

(I posted the same in the thread before spotting this thread.)

I thought of doing so as well, but thought maybe would be better off here, as it wasn't the only such instance.

ETA: I've just been seeing a lot of the reinstall solution lately. It's lazy, and not a solution, so should not be marked as such. Dare I saw, with Live distributions, there is absolutely no need to reinstall. Before such comments start, one can't blame the users coming from a Windows world where a reinstall is the norm either, as a lot of Windows issues that are solved as such can be properly corrected.

Urging the OP to mark such threads as solved is definitely wrong. The problems are ignored, not solved. The kind of problems where re-installing might be considered "solved" would be for example:

Someone's Debian system has problems caused by mixing repositories (Stable, Testing, Ubuntu); the system is beyond repair; re-install.

Otherwise, a thread marked as solved should have a real solution.

I agree with the consensus so far -- the thread should not be marked as solved if all is done is a reinstall as people are more likely to look to threads marked as solved when coming via google and the like and they will find there is no solution in such a thread.

I think too much is being made of a suggestion to mark the thread as solved and especially in the thread where the OP is brand new.

Not for nothing, but one possible criticism might be the common mis-perception that old timers on any given site are pushy and overbearing and thus antagonize, by passive means, new members.

I'm on the fence here but my inclination is to not worry too much about the outcome status of a thread to that level. I do agree that the OP found "a" solution. And many posters do manage to find solutions on their own.

Someone's brand new:

1. They "jump" to whatever direction makes the best sense for them because commonly they're going to push, push, push to accomplish their intentions and if that means a total re-install then that was their choice. Truly they probably just wanted to ... (fill in something such as "play their game", "write and compile their program", "read email") and stuff got in their way, they tried a few things and posted a thread, did get some suggestions, the first one didn't work, and then they used the veritable sledge hammer approach, because honestly they knew that would work. And don't tell me that literally EVERY last one of you hasn't done EXACTLY the same thing once or twice. I have. Bear in mind that many of the newest posters have just started with Linux and likely they've toiled through an install two or more times and to them a complete fresh install may be more palatable to them similarly to what we felt ere long ago when we wiped out DOS, Win95, Win98, etc and used a completely fresh install. Or for that matter, our very earliest Linux installations too
2. New posters do not always re-visit, they either solve something their selves and move on without providing any updates, a suggested solution does solve their problem but they never update nor even acknowledge their status, or they continue to exist, never finding a specific solution, but also never deciding to update their forum thread
3. My contention is that arguing in THAT THREAD about the rightness of recommending that they mark or not mark the solution as solved is probably not the best idea. I therefore do give acknowledgements towards you for bringing that discussion somewhere else

What instead are you suggesting, though? I personally think I'm fine with the OP marking that thread as solved, because for them, it is solved.

And there's nothing saying that following up with further suggestions towards what might have worked isn't an option. One can even politely say, "Wow, that was overkill, in the future I'd suggest ... rather than a full re-install, which takes both time and wipes out existing potential work."

To my mind there's nothing wrong with reinstalling to get something to work -- yes, I have done it and, yes, I will do it again.
However, I think marking the thread as Solved means the people who find the post via the site search or google are more likely to click the link because it is classed as solved even though it is of no use to them. Granted, they may just look for a thread the is really solved but it seems incomplete, to me, to mark it solved when there is little helpful information in the thread.

rtmistler, thank you for your well thought out response. I can only hope mine is of an equal caliber (I doubt it, but I will try).

My issue was not so much with the solution - yes, I will admit I have, as many of us likely have, used the sledgehammer approach.

My view was that a "senior" member encouraging that a thread be labeled as "SOLVED," in which a problem was solved by re-installation when it appeared other options were not attempted, may present the wrong idea to a new user.

Often we use the premise that marking a solution as "SOLVED" will help other new users find this solution. If a large number of problems are solved in this manner, then marked as such, a new user may be lead to think that many problems are to be solved this way. This could possibly lead to many new users being turned off by Linux, and unnecessarily so.

My intent in my original post was simply to question whether encouraging such to be marked as an acceptable solution when other options were present.

I do like your suggestion of "In the future, I'd suggest," however I'm sure that's unlikely to happen. Many of us are going to see that the OP now has overcome the issue by reinstalling, and not continue the thread, deeming it "done."

I understand your thoughts.

I also feel that there are likely tons of solved threads which may be similar and likely tons of not solved threads which are just dead due to indifference.

Surprisingly I'll cite Stack Overflow and state that I think it is potentially a good idea for a solution to be voted up (not down) and also for secondary solutions to be filtered in sorted order when you view the thread. And finally the option for someone to just click that a given post solved their issue. Truthfully we do have that with the count of helpful votes. Although that can be sidetracked by giving reputation directory in lieu of voting on a particular post. What we don't have is a sort order for most helpful answer. But I also rarely see more than a count of 2 helpful votes, maybe as many as 3.

Either case, in the cited thread here, none of that makes any sense because of what the OP did to resolve their issue.

Now .... (and joking) Mark this thread as SOLVED

Hi all...

I often request those who get their issues resoved one way or another mark their threads as solved because it saves time as I go through the list of threads to respond to. I don't think I'm in error for requesting someone mark their thread solved for this reason.

I do think reinstalling is a completely valid solution, although I agree it never gets to the root of what the problem is.

Regards...

1 members found this post helpful.

And if you know the solution, but do not look at the thread, then you do not provide the solution for that person and others who may read the thread later looking for a solution. So everyone loses.
No it is not, becauseIt solves the situation, but not the problem that caused the situation. If I am looking for a solution to a problem, like many people, I first look at threads marked as solved. It is very annoying to read through a thread only to find that the person re-installed, because no solution was found.

3 members found this post helpful.

We do not mark threads as [SOLVED] to save our time while browsing the LQ, but to save the time of a desperate user looking for an answer to his issue, basically telling him "here be solution".

2 members found this post helpful.

If this thread were solved and received comments, I'd still see that and still review them.

Similarly, if I saw a thread showing as solved but hadn't commented yet and felt I had something to contribute, I would.

Many of us do comment on solved threads.

a lot of times it is the FASTEST solution
for example if you run
-- DO NOT DO --
on a redhat system this is ? fixable?
but se will not let the boot process finish until it is fixed

the use of rpm to reset it might NOT fix everything


so it would come down to

30 min. to reinstall , 30 min to move back up data over
or
all day ( if not 3 days) ti fix


and if this is a new to linux user
royally FUBARing a install is normal

and part of the learning process

Yes, a reinstall is sometimes the fastest solution and I think that learning to reinstall quickly can be a valuable thing to learn if only so you stop being worried about having to do it.
However, the quickest solution to accidentally uninstalling one Debian package (as may have been the case in the thread which brought this topic up)* may not be to reinstall (and install all packages rather than the missing one)*. To mark such a thread as Solved not only makes people more likely to simply reinstall in such a situation and not learn a better way of resolving the issue but it also means that people think reinstalling is a "normal" way of doing things.
The example you give is an excellent one because you know the quickest solution through experience. That the solution is know to be "reinstall"**, I think, somewhat reinforces the fact that a thread where the OP reinstalls without any problem solving at all is actually an argument for not marking such a thread as resolved. After all, the only reason you know that reinstallation is the quickest and probably most efficient way to solve the issue of "chmod 777" is that other things were tried before the reinstallation...


*I'm assuming for the purposes of this post, I have seen other threads where the simplest answer definitely was not reinstalling.
**I had thought I read of a script especially designed to correct this, so I am assuming that does not work.