J V
April 12th, 2010, 06:14 PM
Absolute beginners talk has over 5000 pages of un-solved posts. And thats not counting the other support forums.
A few ideas to help clean things up.
A note to new users posting in the forums showing how they can mark a thread solved, and asking them if they have used search yet.
Ability to flag user for not searching for common answers (As in: If it is in the first 5 topics of the search it is common)
This would alert the user, not the moderators, but after a certain amount of flags (Say 5 within a month) an automated report is generated with the offending topics and the user can receive a warning.
(To counteract lazy newbies, no problem with posting something they can't find, but posting for every little curiosity when 10 seconds on google saves everyones time is worth a warning)
Possibility to mark a thread that has had no traffic for... Lets say 3 months as solved by anyone, not just the admins/thread creator.
Possibility to mark a thread abandoned
3 months is a large amount of time, shouldn't bother any thread that hasn't been abandoned or solved, would get general help down to 1000 pages, and absolute beginners down to 500 pages
Perhaps older members with more beans will be allowed a shorter time-span: 1 month?
Initial incentive to help clean up the old posts by providing a token (One per 100?) bean for marking threads solved or abandoned until Unsolved count becomes reasonable
Incentive for new users (Under 1 month membership) to mark their threads solved (One bean per solved)
Possibility for OP to check off who answered the question and apply one bean each (Replace post count? Lower title requirements?)
Edit: Would like to draw attention to the "Big solved button (http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=1323341)" idea which would also help signifigantly
A few ideas to help clean things up.
A note to new users posting in the forums showing how they can mark a thread solved, and asking them if they have used search yet.
Ability to flag user for not searching for common answers (As in: If it is in the first 5 topics of the search it is common)
This would alert the user, not the moderators, but after a certain amount of flags (Say 5 within a month) an automated report is generated with the offending topics and the user can receive a warning.
(To counteract lazy newbies, no problem with posting something they can't find, but posting for every little curiosity when 10 seconds on google saves everyones time is worth a warning)
Possibility to mark a thread that has had no traffic for... Lets say 3 months as solved by anyone, not just the admins/thread creator.
Possibility to mark a thread abandoned
3 months is a large amount of time, shouldn't bother any thread that hasn't been abandoned or solved, would get general help down to 1000 pages, and absolute beginners down to 500 pages
Perhaps older members with more beans will be allowed a shorter time-span: 1 month?
Initial incentive to help clean up the old posts by providing a token (One per 100?) bean for marking threads solved or abandoned until Unsolved count becomes reasonable
Incentive for new users (Under 1 month membership) to mark their threads solved (One bean per solved)
Possibility for OP to check off who answered the question and apply one bean each (Replace post count? Lower title requirements?)
Edit: Would like to draw attention to the "Big solved button (http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=1323341)" idea which would also help signifigantly