Beechwood Chip Posted September 3, 2014 Report Share Posted September 3, 2014 It seems that some of the threads I've started have "marked solved" buttons, but others don't. Is that feature only in "General Wood Working Talk"? Or does it disappear from a thread when that thread is old? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
thewoodwhisperer Posted September 3, 2014 Report Share Posted September 3, 2014 Honestly, I don't recall. It was a seldom-used feature so it may not be implemented across all sections. If people are going to start using the feature, I'll have to look into our options for making sure it doesn't get abused or become annoying. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Beechwood Chip Posted September 3, 2014 Author Report Share Posted September 3, 2014 I'm not a big fan of it, but it came up in discussion so I started poking around. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Eric. Posted September 3, 2014 Report Share Posted September 3, 2014 The problem with the feature is that people can pick a post as the best answer before I have a chance to respond, which makes it inherently flawed, obviously. You can go ahead and mark this as the best answer. In seriousness, I find it a bit pointless. The goal of a forum, IMO, is open and potentially endless dialogue. The best answer feature is kind of a punctuation mark that suggests the end of a conversation. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Tpt life Posted September 3, 2014 Report Share Posted September 3, 2014 As long as we are submitting opinions, I have lots... It is a thread by thread sort of tool. Some yes and some no to Eric's comment. That said, I don't think many threads would suffer if it went away. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Beechwood Chip Posted September 3, 2014 Author Report Share Posted September 3, 2014 I wouldn't be upset if it went away. But - I'm not the target audience - I read this forum pretty regularly. The target audience are people who never read this forum, Google for "flatten wood", and get back thousands of hits, most of which have nothing to do with their problem. That person doesn't want to read a discussion, they just want to quickly jump to the answer to see if it fits their question. My impression of the "solved" feature is that a person asks a question, a dozen people send in really great answers, and the OP marks one of them as "best answer", because it bests fits that person's specific situation, tools, skills, tastes, and mood. It's kind of like asking "What sport should my 8th grader play?" "soccer" "baseball", "wrestling" "golf" "basketball" "BASKETBALL IS THE BEST SPORT" "hockey" "golf" "cross country" "swimming" "football" "... It's a bit annoying to the people with great answers who weren't picked (Kiki and me), and it's not a service to a person who is googling for advice who might find that "cross country" was a better choice for them. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
thewoodwhisperer Posted September 3, 2014 Report Share Posted September 3, 2014 I think it's a feature intended more for help forums. So for instance, the help sections of this forum. "Hi, I can't get this to work." If there's one working solution, the solution gets highlighted. But our other rooms on this site are more opinion and experience-based and there won't be one right answer. And people rarely come in asking questions with absolute answers. So maybe I'll disable it from all but the Help sections. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest Posted September 3, 2014 Report Share Posted September 3, 2014 It could be useful if the common questions and best answers were indexed and easily searchable, but like Marc said this is not a help desk forum. While it is a nice way for an OP to recognize a forum member that has gone above and beyond to provide an especially strong answer, it is not widely utilized, so I am fine if it goes away. The clean, simple interface of WTO is one reason why I participate in this forum and not others. Less is almost always more. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Popular Post thewoodwhisperer Posted September 3, 2014 Popular Post Report Share Posted September 3, 2014 The good thing is we have the Like button to help highlight posts that are particularly useful, by committee. Still not a heavily-used feature but probably serves our purposes better than a Best Answer button. 3 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Freddie Posted September 3, 2014 Report Share Posted September 3, 2014 The mark solved thing kind of annoys me when I enter a chat room like yesterday and see a bunch of threads marked as answered. For the most part, none of these things were actually answered, there are just a bunch of different approaches from different folks. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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