Problem Resolved?

[BobLennon]

This is a great forum for PHP learners, users, and developers.

It's especially nice that each time a forum submission is made to a topic, it is put in order of the last response time, and when contributors to a topic do not respond that topic, it gradually falls from the screen.

What is annoying however, is that there are some factions within the forum seem to have some incentive to police which submissions have been resolved, and which have not.

Submitters are then queried about this state even though the responses may be incomplete, and their answers result in an annotation to the original posting indicating that it is "Resolved" whenever a positive reply is made.

I assume the question will be repeated to the negative responders until a "Resolved" condition is indicated.

Is there some kind of statistics that underlie this request? Are points granted to someone having the last submission to a question when it is marked as "Resolved"? Do people get some sort of credit for submissions that do not address the context of the question because they ask this? Or is this simply a mechanism to increase the efficiency of the core "Problem Solvers" of this forum?

Why not just let a question that goes inactive simply fade from the current screen, and let it go, resolved or not? At least that would insure that every question is at least read by the potential problem solvers.

Perhaps it's time to get rid of the "Resolved" investigators, and let the postings take their normal course.

Seems to me that taking this course would, at the very least, reduce the traffic of non-contributory questions in the forum.

[NogDog]

Can this be marked as "Resolved" now?

:p

[Weedpacket]

Moving this to a more appropriate forum.

And wondering what the problem is.

[BobLennon]

Moving this to a more appropriate forum.

And wondering what the problem is.

I think the problem is well stated in the post. If you do not understand the questions please let me know.

The fact that it has been removed from the high traffic forum seems to indicate that the administrators may be afraid to expose themselves to an open forum that may debate this issue.

That makes a second problem. Moving this post to the feedback and pushing for a resolution is simply censorship in disguise.

But let's get some answers to the first problem first.

Can you respond to any of the issues?

[BobLennon]

Can this be marked as "Resolved" now?

:p

No the issue is not resolved. And this post is wasted traffic.

[NogDog]

Firstly, this is the proper forum for this discussion. The fact that it does not have as much traffic as another forum does not make that other forum the correct one.

Secondly, I happen to like the Resolved feature. I frequent a number of forums, spend a lot of time at webdeveloper.com as I am a moderator there, and I appreciate a quick indicator that a thread has been resolved and thus do not need to spend my time viewing it to find out that it's already been answered.

If some moderator is prematurely marking threads you originated as resolved without your consent, that is another issue. I would agree that over-zealous use of this feature by moderators would not be a good thing, and they should err on the side of not doing so without confirmation from the thread originator that the question has been resolved to their satisfaction. But I would not like to see this feature removed, rather ensure that it is used properly, as it does save me significant time here an on other forums where it is used.

Lastly: lighten up, dude, it's just a web forum. It's not an organized conspiracy to censor your threads.

[JPnyc]

The reason for the resolved feature is so that users don't waste their time checking threads where the issue has already been resolved. They can spend their time here answering questions that still need answering. If you find that someone is marking your threads resolved when they really aren't, use the contact us link at every page bottom, and tell me. Thanks

[Weedpacket]

An additional reason is for the benefit of users who have problems and are searching the forums to see if they have already been answered; threads in the search results that are listed as [Resolved] are more likely to contain resolutions.

I for one have never marked another user's thread "resolved" without their explicit sayso (because they couldn't find the "mark this thread resolved" button).

[bradgrafelman]

What is annoying however, is that there are some factions within the forum seem to have some incentive to police which submissions have been resolved, and which have not. Factions? I think you're exaggerating the issue. If individuals take it upon themselves to verify with the thread creator whether or not they found a working solution to their problem... I don't see how that is harmful.

Is there some kind of statistics that underlie this request? Most definitely - the satisfaction of knowing someone came here with a problem or question and left with an answer. That's the biggest reason I come here. Likewise, that's probably why I enjoy my current job as an IT HelpDesk-type person - I like being able to help people.

Why not just let a question that goes inactive simply fade from the current screen, and let it go, resolved or not? Many do. I don't see people hunting through the 5th, 6th, et al. pages of a topic just to find something that wasn't clearly marked as resolved or not.

I'm glad JPnyc brought up this point, too, because I have first-hand experience in dealing with the situation of a thread having a decent amount of content with the last post containing a "Thanks! That worked!" type of response. Unfortuantely, I don't always check the last post in a thread, and I'll have read most if not all of the posts only to see that there's nothing further to discuss or troubleshoot.

[BobLennon]

Looks to me like the score is administrators 1 clients 0, and the suggestion will not be considered any further.

And because the forum administration has been outstanding up to this point, I guess that's OK too.

But groups that are really interested in the client’s opinions on various issues take every effort to insure that they keep in touch with the community.

And if that's the case, I think the community opinion on this issue could be quite easily determined with a sticky poll in each topic area.

But frankly, I’d bet that the forum administration will think that is a bad idea too.

I guess now’s the time to really mark this issue as Resolved

[JPnyc]

The feature exists because of community request. It's not a native feature of the software. So the outcome of the poll is already known. Many requested it, you are the 1st to speak against it.

[Weedpacket]

I'm still wondering what the problem is: how does having [Resolved] in the title make it any more or less likely to bump to the top of the thread listing? There's nothing in the software that biases where in the listing threads with [Resolved] in the title appear. If no-one posts in them, they just drift further down as other threads experience activity. Exactly like any other post.

Some resolve threads are posted in. Sometimes the original poster realises afterwards that it's not quite resolved after all; sometimes a bad solution is offered and a better one is provided later. Sometimes someone posts a follow up. Again, it makes for a permanent record, and increases the information content in the thread for the purposes of future reference. In other words, exactly like any ordinary thread.

I guess now’s the time to really mark this issue as ResolvedNo-one's stopping you from doing this.

The feature exists because of community request. It's not a native feature of the software. So the outcome of the poll is already known. Many requested it, you are the 1st to speak against it.An example: http://www.phpbuilder.com/board/showthread.php?t=10223557