Unsolved Questions Forum

Originally posted by Rotwang Hey one more idea- Jeremy, to your point about people neglecting to unmark them from their unsolved status- you could make the "unsolved" flag auto expire after x days. The user would have to actively go mark it unsolved again after the mark expires. That sort of makes sense- if someone really really really wants the question answered, he can keep renewing its mark.

So initially a post is flagged as "unsolved" but then after "x" days the flag would switch to "solved", unless the poster took action? All I see this leading to would be huge numers of posts being inaccurately marked as "solved" when in fact the only thing that's happened is that "x" days have elapsed. I don't see that having literally thousands of false positives would be an improvement. Along those lines, what if someone other than the original poster was still trying to solve the same issue? Would/should he have any rights to keep the post opem as unsolved if he continued to struggle with the problem?

Sorry, although I agree with your original suggestion in principle, and if there were a way to *reliably* flag a post as solved or unsolved, then I'd endorse it, but the fact of the matter is exactly as XavierP has stated -- most posts are simply abandoned regardless of whether the original issue was resolved or not, and experience has shown that the overwhelming percentage of people simply will not follow-up on their own posts.

The only way you could compel people to maintain their own threads would be to prevent them from creating any new threads until their existing ones had been refreshed again with the correct current status, but that sort of policy would fatally poison any website that tried to implement it. Just my 2 cents. -- J.W.

You missed the concept as well-

In the system that I recommend, there is no "solved" flag.

There is only an "unsolved" flag.

Get it now?

(And no, no one else can mark it unsolved except the original poster. )

Yeah, I got it from the beginning. What you are overlooking is one of the key aspects of Boolean logic, namely the NOT condition. If you propose creating an indicator to reflect a given condition, then logically a different value must be set if that given condition were not satisfied, ie, the "!condition". To use your terms, if you propose having an "unsolved" indicator, then how would you describe a question that is "not unsolved"?? I'd say the word "solved" would pretty neatly cover it, but regardless of the particular word you choose, the intractable issue is that that only a very tiny minority of users ever bother to take the time to followup on their posts, regardless of whether the responses they received were helpful or not. Most threads are simply abandoned.

From my point of view the key rationale for your proposed "unsolved" indicator would be to give the original post more visibility, and it seems that the same result can be achieved by simply bumping the post once every 3 or 4 days if you do not receive any useful responses in the interim. Let's face it, if the LQ community can help out, it will help out, and generally it will do so within 24 hours. If a given issue goes for a couple of days/weeks with no satisfactory answer, then sure, you can keep the thread alive by bumping it repeatedly, but once a certain amount of time goes by without a satisfactory resolution, it seems to me that you just need to accept the idea that, well, maybe nobody has any useful advice to offer. Adding more indicators or classifications isn't going to change that. As always, just my 2 cents -- J.W.

Originally posted by J.W. Yeah, I got it from the beginning. What you are overlooking is one of the key aspects of Boolean logic, namely the NOT condition.

You need to stop thinking code and start thinking functionality. The lack of the unsolved bit does NOT imply solved. I could imply pending. It could imply withdrawn. The forum doesn't need to indicate a false unsolved bit, it only indicates the presence of a true unsolved bit. Ergo, there is no solved state in my proposal.

Let's face it, if the LQ community can help out, it will help out, and generally it will do so within 24 hours.

No, let's really face it, in only 24 hrs, "the LQ community" hasn't seen the post. A small fraction have. Go to page three of any forum and look at posts- you'll find a great many problems that you know are solvable that haven't been solved.

Bouncing a posts causes it to get seen by more people. That's nice. What's better is for a guru to be able to come to a site and say "show my the hard problems". That's nice too.

To leap in again - the fact is, also, that threads have meaningless names. How many times do we see "Please Help" or "Newbie Needs Help" or "Why Does It Do This" as the title of the thread? No matter how many times we ask that meaningful titles be put on threads, these headings come up time and time again.

These are also the threads that your hypothetical guru is likely to ignore - simply put, if the thread starter can't put a meaningful title on a thread, why should the guru read it? There is another, fairly well known, forum which would close a large percentage of our threads simply because of the titles. At LQ, we are balancing user friendliness and usefulness.

Hmm, that got a little off topic. What I am saying is that some threads will go unsolved because no one wants to read a thread which may be ill thought out or presented. And so, to conclude, these threads may forever be unsolved.

Just another £0.01 (2 cents) for the discussion.

(to XavierP: )

Yes, I agree, sure. But in those cases, it's the poster's own darn fault, right! No ammount of LQ coding genius can solve that old problem- garbage in, garbage out.

I'm saying, If I post a well crafted question, that I know must have a resolution, and I know there must be some people in the mass of experts at LQ that could solve it, and I'm willing to expend the energy of coming back and marking it unsolved, then why not help me put it in front of some expert experts.

Or conversly, if I'm a guru (not) then I should be able to say "show me the hard stuff."

Look at the LinuxQuestons.org logo. It's that bird on the right I'm after!

Fair do's

Well, Jeremy has said it's on the TO DO list and he'll add it and when it's run for a while one of us can post back with the following legend:

I'm Right, I'm Right, I'm Right, I'm Right, I'm Right, I'm Right, I'm Right, I'm Right

What I would love to see is some way of dissuading people from posting useless thread titles - but I suspect that that would severely restrict the usability of the site and end up annoying our regulars.

Wel, jeremy said he would add it to the TODO list "for future consideration", so maybe it won't get added. A shrewd response, but I can't fault him, I've been in jobs like his and I do the same thing. Like I said, I'm satisfied with the response.

But anyway about users with bad titles- (now we're getting away from topic, we're naughty naughty), but I've got an idea for that:

Do moderators get a special "view" of the forums? Like with extra buttons or whatever? If they do, you could add a button on the forum index in the moderator view, so that at a glance a moderator could go down the list and click click click click. And the bad starters of those threads get an automated PM (maybe not even from the moderator but from a generic "forum" address) that says "Your post had a title which wasn't descriptive.. please read the posting guidelines.. etc etc". Level of friendliness up to you. But it leaves the post there, just warns.

See, when it comes to bad titles, you're not looking at an abuse problem, it's an education problem. Those posters are just dumb, not malicious right. They want to increase the likelihood that their question gets answered and so do you. Win-win, the incentives match. One PM once could do it.

Also it should be stateful so that once a user gets a message for a given thread, he can't get it again (and the button dissapears in the mod view so other moderators don't keep clicking it)

When Jeremy adds something to the TO DO list it does get done. Unfortunately, for the site at least, he has a heck of a lot on his plate, so an ETA for the TO DO items is difficult.

I like the idea of the PM button to mention thread titles. My preference is for mods to change the title and to post to say what ha happenend and why. But maybe I just like power

Originally posted by XavierP I like the idea of the PM button to mention thread titles. My preference is for mods to change the title and to post to say what ha happenend and why. But maybe I just like power

Yea that's definately overkill. Editing other people's words is just about the worst thing a moderator can do.

But on the plus side, if you did start doing that, you'd be rid of me!

True, your posts would end up reading: "I agree with everything the moderators say"

But seriously, we have had some members use profanities in their threads and thread titles. Bearing in mind the size of our audience and the fact that we often end up as number one on Google searches for problems, I would like those words to be removed as soon as they are spotted. Also, I would like to be able to make titles more meaningful - at the moment we can only change titles when we merge threads. To be honest (and without giving away any secret info) mods have less powers over threads than you would think. Which is good, LQ is a lightly modded forum which gives the boards the special character they have. Other forums are far far stricter - I have seen threads closed simply because they are titled "Please Help".

[pedant]Removed apostrophe[/pedant]

To add another 2 cents, returning to the original idea: Yes, I'll say again that I understand the intent of the proposed unsolved flag and I agree with it in theory. And Yes, if we put aside discussions on the set of possible values the flag could have, the issue of bad thread titles, and how to define what a reasonable length of time is before the majority of the LQ community has viewed the post, and we focus solely on functional issues, then I would again ask about how you would propose handling the situation where the advice in a given post may solve the problem for the original poster, but does not work for another LQ'er who is experiencing the same difficulty. In such a situation, that person (meaning the current visitor, not the original poster) may try to solicit additional advice via posting followups to the original thread, but may soon conclude that since he can't modify the unsolved flag, that he would be better off creating his own duplicate thread on the exact same topic, and thus, instead of keeping discussions on a given topic within a single thread, each poster decides to create a brand new thread. This kind of behavior could easily multiply the level of effort the moderators already have to expend, and clearly would make moderating the boards even harder.

How would you propose to address duplicative or overlapping posts that all cover essentially the exact same topic, but which are created because each original poster wanted to retain control over the value of the flag? Please understand I'm not trying to be combative, but as I stated previously, the best way for a question to be answered in my opinion is to give it visibility. Bumping it every couple of days is one way to do it, as is a clear and specific title. But by the same token, if your post has been bumped every few days for the last 2 or 3 weeks and you still haven't gotten an answer, then having another flag to set might not make any difference -- by that time, I'd be willing to bet that the real gurus have already seen it more than once, but they just don't have anything meaningful to add. Maybe I'm looking at things too narrowly but from my point of view, giving the entire LQ community the ability to keep a thread in a highly visible position (via bumping) is superior to giving a single person the abiltity to set a flag to that may keep that thread in a highly visible position (via the proposed flag). -- J.W.

Well, how often do you find a post where, after the question is solved, someone else responds and says "wait I still don't get it"?

Note: I didn't say "that never happens", I mean exactly what I said- How often does that happen? Seriously, are we talking like one in 400 posts?

As it is now, if I have a question, do a search, and find that it has been answered, but I don't understand the answer, I just start a new thread. I may even refer to the other thread in my new thread and say "I read this and I almost have it but what about ____". (In effect, it's a different question, though I admit that's debatable.)

I think you're in the zone of being perfectionistic here. If I said: I have an idea, lets all drive around in cars to get where we're going you could say "what about flat tires, and what about drunk drivers, and speeding". And yea, you'd be right. But it still beats making everybody ride horses!