"Solved" markers

I am a regular reader of the PHP Development forums. What I think would be great to see is the ability for the thread started or a moderator to mark a thread as "Solved". That would mean I wouldn't have to trawl through dozens of posts only to find the problem was solved.

A little lazy on my part - but I think would be a beneficial feature for all developers who purely visit these forums to assist others.

Interesting idea but I'm not sure how it would work. The Perl adage comes to mind: If something is marked as solved I believe people will be less inclined to give alternative answers, which may be more understandable, follow better practice or just plain right.

Just my 2 (Euro) cents.
Displeaser

Good point. But those who are only visiting quickly would appreciate the "solved" markers, whereas people with a bit more time may want to go over solved threads and add alternative solutions if possible.

Besides, once someone has had their problem solved, how likely are they to come back and read their thread in case theres a new answer, especially if they've just spent the past 2 hours building their script around the original solution?

Having the ability to post additional solutions, however, would still be useful to people searching the forums if they have the same problem.

Another point...

I have noticed that some users will edit their first post with a footer saying that the issue is solved. But most don't do this, and what would be better is if [SOLVED] as appended to the thread title in the forum view.

Good idea in thought - but can it realistically be added ? I'd say that the majority of new posters who start threads don't come back to their original ones to say something like "post x fixed my problem".

I'd be a little hesitant to mark any of the threads in the forums I moderate as 'solved' without the OP saying that it is solved. There are multiple ways to solve problems and in many cases solution 1 might not work for another person having the same problem but solution 2 does and if the thread is marked 'solved' - would we get the solution 2 ?

Just my thoughts.

on an expert gender reassignment board they go through the whole points awarded, partial answer, solution accepted shamozzle, don't know if that'd work here.

There's a different breed of poster over there.

If I were to continue in this vein, you'd probably be looking at a few variants on the 'solved' theme.
Solved outright
Solved, awaiting a more straightforward/more comprehensive response
and others.

Though it's an additional load on the moderators, who aren't getting paid for the work they put in.

It is a good idea, but the cost of implementation, and the additional administrative overhead probably wouldn't yield enough ROI to make it viable

Just my €0.02

i have a similar problem, but seen from the other side : when i reply to someone's query, it happens quite often that i don't get any feedback at all, so i don't really know whether my contribution was useful or not

Give 'em a rep point or five (not a full rep power point, but 1/100 you need) for marking their thread solved. Rep is a toy but people like having a bit more than they have. This would motivate a lot of people to put the SOLVED tag, whatever it may be in the future (it can be an icon on the side of the title as seen from the title list).

Only problem I can see with this is abuse - people might start threads that have obvious questions ten times a day to get more rep. That's why we should only give out a little bit of rep. Moreover, it might be possible to not allow more than two or five SOLVEDs per day.

It's a lot of work for not too much gain, but on the other hand it truly would be useful to see that a thread has been solved.



Either that, or mods can mark a thread solved when the user posts something like "Thanks, it works now!"