An idea:

For example, I have a post that I made yesterday that has now been pushed back a few pages. I have a friend who posted an ATA question a few days back, he has "bumped" himself a few times, and still no answer.

These are cases in which the questions are worded well, and there is without a doubt many people in this forum who know the answer, but simply the timing of the post is no good (not many people online when question was asked).

In our case, it's mainly because we are in Japan, and most people are sleeping when we are online, but it happens to those in the US as well.

How about a sticky thread that we can post in, asking for people to take a look at our unanswered posts? This will stop people from creating multiple threads (hopefully) in order to get attention. Instead, we can go to the sticky, post a link to our post and say "hello, I haven't had any answers and need some help, can someone look at this post please?" or something to that effect.

This way the experienced techs in this forum can go to that thread, and see who is in need of urgent help.

Just a thought. :angel:

I Think Julio or any Moderator doesnt appreciate this... sorry _-_

Lucan

I make a comment: There's just too many problems with SATA installs for me to consider the technology. It promises better thruput, but with all the issues, I'd say no thanks. ATA, USB 2.0, SCSI, & Firewire are all stable and well known :-)
:knock:

DonNagual - Are you sure people know the answers that visit? Some of the people here that can answer the complex issues don't visit frequently anymore. I know a lot of people through my years here that were "gods" to me with their knowledge and they have either left, or visit sporatically. So it may just be that people simply don't know.

Having said that, are you sure you guys have decent thread titles? To be honest I get frusterated reading "help me" or "urgent help needed" basically anything with help. I do try to help out when I can, but I'm sure there are people, that aren't under some unwritten obligation to help, won't mess with posts that are obviously in the wrong forum, or have horrible titles.

I don't know if we need a Sticky to post to, as a general guideline for bumping your posts I would say its allowed to be bumped once if not answered within 36 hours or it leaves the first page in that forum. It is allowed to be bumped twice after 72 hours or again leaves the first page of that forum. It is only allowed to be bumped a 3rd time after a full week. And no more personal bumps allowed after that unless 2 months have elapsed.

Our IRC channel has a fair amount of knowledge just kind of sitting there idling, and a lot of them don't frequent the boards anymore, so you can try there as a last TS resort (or first in my case).

Posts like this one for example

http://www.techspot.com/vb/showthrea...622#post201622

I guess I could just bump my own thread, but more often that not, that does more harm than good. It seems that posts with a response of "0" get looked at first, as everyone wants to be the helper. If there is already 1 response because of my bump, people assume I am getting help.

Bah. I'm thinking too much. Time for a hit of coffee.

Anyways, I think I see your preference. Mild use of bumping own thread is an acceptable thing to do on this forum. Copy that. Roger. Nagual out.

I don't think that the time of the post is really all that important.
If it has a good title, is easy to read and specifies the problem with enough information (more is better than less in this case), it has higher chances of being answered.

Personally I don't visit the boards nearly as much as I did, but I try to visit once a day. When I hit "new posts" I tend to get between 8 and 14 pages with new threads, and having a limited amount of time I can't read every thread. So I look a the topics that interests me and a few of those with 0 replies, as I think/hope those with a few replies are being solved.

But you're right in that we shouldn't care too much about being "the first one who solves the problem", but rather take care that each problem is solved.

Though there is also another matter that has a lot to say, and that is if there has been a lot of other questions about the same topic lately. Often the question could then have been solved by doing a search, or even just browsing a bit further down the page and read other similar threads. If you can't find any, see if they show up after you've created the new thread.
Because it's boring having to answer the same problem over and over and over...

Lastly, I agree with sng, that it seems a lot of earlier regulars aren't all that regular anymore, or are working actively on other aspects of the site and just don't have time to answer questions anymore.

EDIT:
Though after a more thorough read of the new posts, it seems there are a lot of nice helpful members here who does their best to help out those in need.

I see the point to everyones argument.

There are alot of qestions regarding SATA, and alot of them are just bad luck with the installation. Not much more you can say then try again. Another thing i am starting to notice is people planning PCs with the help of the members. THere are so many of them, people should really try to use the search function, as most of the time there is a thread right below about the same thing (ex. Which video card is best?)

I to agree that there are still alot of good people here helping

my 2 cents

sean

Couldn't have said it better myself. It help clear up some potential problems with multiple variations of the same question. And it allows people to spend more time on someone with a unique question, instead of trying to help someone who has already been helped in a different thread.

The thread in my sig covers this

But getting people to read that is probably even harder than getting people to use the seach function