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| Suggestion: Active vs closed questions |
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| kolban |
 Posted: Fri Aug 10, 2001 7:07 am Post subject: |
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Grand Master
Joined: 22 May 2001
Posts: 1072
Location: Fort Worth, TX, USA
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| I don't know if its possible, maybe something to be raised with the developers of this forum package, but it would be great to be able to flag topics as active or closed. As the list grows, it becomes impossible to know if a poster is still looking for information or is happy with the answers. |
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| bduncan |
| Posted: Fri Aug 10, 2001 11:12 am Post subject: |
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Padawan
Joined: 11 Apr 2001
Posts: 1554
Location: Silicon Valley
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That's actually a pretty good idea. Unfortunately the only flags that are coded right now are "new" (meaning postings since your last visit) or "old" (no new postings). But I don't think it would be too hard to add this functionality... hmm, looks like I have something to do this weekend afterall.. 
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Brandon Duncan
IBM Certified MQSeries Specialist
MQSeries.net forum moderator |
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| bduncan |
| Posted: Mon Aug 13, 2001 10:04 pm Post subject: |
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Padawan
Joined: 11 Apr 2001
Posts: 1554
Location: Silicon Valley
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Neil,
Take a look at what I did to a topic in "General MQSeries Support" called "runmqsc weirdness" For all intents and purposes, the discussion around this posting is done. You will notice now that there is a little padlock on the folder associated with that posting. If you click on the post, you can still read it and the subsequent responses, but you'll notice that the "reply" button in the top right-hand corner has a big "LOCKED" across it. So my question to you, and everyone else is, do you see a need for us locking topics that are effectively answered? In my mind, if we simply have a padlock or some other indicator that a discussion is closed, and yet we allow users to continue posting replies to it, it kinda defeats the purpose of indicating it as being "done" right??
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Brandon Duncan
IBM Certified MQSeries Specialist
MQSeries.net forum moderator |
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| kolban |
| Posted: Tue Aug 14, 2001 3:49 am Post subject: |
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Grand Master
Joined: 22 May 2001
Posts: 1072
Location: Fort Worth, TX, USA
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Brandon,
Hmmmm ... not quite what I was looking for. Again, going back to the original requirement:
As the mqseries.net groups become more popular and the number of postings increase, it is becoming increasingly more difficult to know who is hoping for a response vs which topics are now satisfied. Closing a topic would (opinion) make matters worse. I can easily see a circumstance where a poster gets the answer good for him/her at that time but ... some new poster may have a similiar problem or question and would like to progress the topic further. Locking the original topic would mean a whole new topic would be created resulting in two separate threads. I would, personally, rather maintain status-quo than add topic locking.
My original comment was only wish-thinking, I am still more than satisfied with the system ... you have done an EXCELLENT job in creating and maintaining this. |
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| rtgordon |
| Posted: Tue Aug 14, 2001 7:20 am Post subject: |
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Apprentice
Joined: 27 Jun 2001
Posts: 34
Location: Lewisville, TX
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My experience FWIW with other message forums is that messages without activity get ignored and redundant topics are usually created anyways (using search is a difficult concept for some people. you usually find them posting "unsubscribe" to list servers  )... and on the other hand, let's say someone less experienced offers advice that actually fixes a problem but may have potential significant shortcomings, I would think you would want to add your insight no matter how old or finished the discussion is. |
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| bduncan |
| Posted: Tue Aug 14, 2001 1:31 pm Post subject: |
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Padawan
Joined: 11 Apr 2001
Posts: 1554
Location: Silicon Valley
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I agree with Gordon that no matter how many controls we put in to indicate which topics are active, users will still invariably post the same questions again and again. Many times the questions that are asked most often are asked by newbies who may not even know the keywords to attempt a search on. So I can understand that. However, I agree with Neil that we can try to do more to make it even more apparent which topics are closed, or as Neil more accurately put it, which topics have users who are or aren't expecting a response. One of the things Neil points out is that "as mqseries.net grows..." this may actually be part of the solution. If we are getting lots and lots of posts per day on the say, those posts that haven't had any activity lately will quickly drop to the bottom of the list. Furthermore, right now I have the software set up to display 100 posts per page. I could decrease this such that only those posts that have been touched within the last, say, week will appear on the first page. The moment someone replies to an old post on page 4 for instance, it will immediately be bumped back to the top of page 1.... I dunno... I'm not sure what a good solution to this problem would look like...
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Brandon Duncan
IBM Certified MQSeries Specialist
MQSeries.net forum moderator |
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| rtgordon |
| Posted: Wed Aug 15, 2001 5:38 am Post subject: |
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Apprentice
Joined: 27 Jun 2001
Posts: 34
Location: Lewisville, TX
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I don't know if it can be done with this software, but I have seen other forums where the "show topics for the last X number of days" feature is a user preference beginning with the site default.
Anyway... yes, I agree. "As the site grows" that would be something to look into, and it would work. However, until the site gets more ativity it might not look as "big" and "attractive" to those browsing for the first time. They may not know how to look back, and may not come back if all they see are a few active threads. When you start getting thousands of threads in a forum, then it might be worth consider cutting back.
Here are a few examples
http://www.hardforums.com
http://www.ls1.com/ls1forum/ls1_forum_main.htm
The only other thing that I can think of is that it may be hard to determine what should be closed and not closed. A thread like "What do you like/dislike about MQSeries?" is one that should probably stay open indefinitely, and would probably generate a good bit of discussion, but I agree... "How do I tell which version of MQ am I running?" could probably be closed after one response, but logically, when a question has been answered or exhausted it will fall to the bottom and be available through search functions. Maybe one suggestion would be to point the newbies to the search option if you know that the question/topic has been covered thoroughly.
gordon |
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| bduncan |
| Posted: Wed Aug 15, 2001 9:33 am Post subject: |
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Padawan
Joined: 11 Apr 2001
Posts: 1554
Location: Silicon Valley
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Or as Neil has done in the paste, simply paste the link to the thread that covered the question previously. As far as showing those threads from the last X days, that would be a simple thing to add. The database contains the timestamp associated with every message posted, as well as keeping track of the last time that user Y has logged in. It wouldn't be too difficult to add this functionality...
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Brandon Duncan
IBM Certified MQSeries Specialist
MQSeries.net forum moderator |
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