Forums: Add option for OP to mark a reply as solution, or rating system

[Arris]

Just thinking about this. When I'm looking for information that I haven't found here at TechSpot I find that searching always means I have a lot of "Hi I have a problem" and "If you find a solution please email me at ***@***.com" type forum entries with no other pertinent information. Forums seem to be the host to huge amounts of data, It would be fantastic if there was a way to tell from a glance which ones actually hold solutions or are worth looking at. Now for general universal purposes the Google +1 system is of use, but for Techspot only use I think it would be useful to allow for the OP and Admins to be able to mark a reply as the solution and/or have a rating system for threads based on views, number of replies and perhaps a voting/rating system that those participating in the thread could contribute to.

I think this would make sorting through information an easier task.

 

[caravel]

Many forums have the facility for the OP to mark a thread as solved. I'm sure this is not built into vBulletin rather it's a hack you need to install, but yes it is possible and I have seen it elsewhere. e.g. here: http://www.linuxquestions.org/questions/slackware-14/

As far as I know posts/threads are then searchable based on the solved criteria. This has obvious advantages, but is also flawed as it relies on the user to mark the thread.

As to "reputation", I would advise against it as it has the tendency to turn forum participation into a competition and simply feeds egos. They also have something like that at the site I linked to whereby you click a user's post, (simple yes or no option), if you found it helpful or not.

 

[Arris]

Yes, I've seen a rating system before. I guess it's not perfect either way. Without one threads that are very useful and would be a recommended read will get missed, but with one junk threads might get rated highly and people would waste their time reading them.

Although the Solution/Fixed marking by OP/Admin would be great, as long as Admins didn't feel it was a burden.

 

[Julio Franco]

We mark threads "solved" just like you mention in the malware forum because that is strictly dedicated to tech support: https://www.techspot.com/vb/menu28.html

We haven't tried doing the same anywhere else because it's (in my opinion) too much of a burden to check every thread and because it'd be hard not to miss some in the process.

Besides I'm not sure how we could successfully mix support/question threads that are meant to be solved at some point vs. those that are on-going discussions.

 

[Arris]

We haven't tried doing the same anywhere else because it's (in my opinion) too much of a burden to check every thread and because it'd be hard not to miss some in the process.

Besides I'm not sure how we could successfully mix support/question threads that are meant to be solved at some point vs. those that are on-going discussions.

That's why I suggested that OPs could select what they think is the best answer to their thread, if one is required. Wouldn't need to automatically close the thread so discussion could be continued. Just would be nice to be able to identify threads that feature a "solution" for those who stumble upon the forum from a web search for help with a problem.