Alerts to prompt people to select a best answer for their question thread

[Stuart Wright]

In my experience from using a Q&A addon for Xenforo 1, folks who have asked a question very often do not bother to pick the best answer.
Can we please have an option to nag them periodically to pick an answer once they have replies to their thread with upvotes?
Please like this suggestion if you agree that this would help correctly manage threads which need marking as solved.

 

[Alpha1]

Yes, this is my experience as well. An alert would be useful.

 

[Stuart Wright]

The other option is to have them automatically marked as solved when a single reply gets a set number of upvotes.

 

[beerForo]

The other option is to have them automatically marked as solved when a single reply gets a set number of upvotes.

I don't like this because most votes does not = best answer it simply means most votes. Many "solved" answers may actually be the minority.

I don't like the idea of a "reminder" alert either. It's an alert that is telling someone something they already know and is not based on an action. Most forums are people asking things, so I imagine this will be used heavily, especially with the way XF has integrated it. If I have 20 questions I don't want 20 new alerts.

I do like the idea of some kind of reminder. And I do feel it should be action-based. Perhaps something like if your question receives an answer after "X" days or "X" answers, the normal alert that you would get is amended. So for example:

When the question is still new the alert may say:
member answered your question How do I do this?

After "30" days or "15" answers, the alert changes to:
member answered your question How do I do this?, would you like to mark it Solved?

Well, something like that. You are reminded to mark it with one of the normal alerts so you don't have a new alert type.

 

[Stuart Wright]

Having members mark their questions as solved when they have a certain number of upvoted replies is just good housekeeping.
The XF team may already be planning alerts for when a reply is upvoted. In that situation, a reminder to mark it as solved is trivial.
However, if a thread has gone a while without being marked as solved, the OP could get a reminder alert prompting them to mark it as solved or reply with further information to get more replies.

 

[Dnyan]

Yes its a best suggestion

 

[Joe Link]

This should definitely be part of the core.

 

[Mouth]

Can we please have an option to nag them periodically to pick an answer once they have replies to their thread with upvotes?

This would make Question type nodes much more useful. Whilst having Question threads is great, they're benefit is greatly diminished when the author doesn't engage in marking answers/solutions.

 

[beerForo]

Upvoted, I find I am the only one every marking them.

 

[Mr Lucky]

It's an alert that is telling someone something they already know

Well they may know they got an answer, but many don’t know they can/should mark as solution. To me, that may be the bigger issue.

 

[beerForo]

I find "Did you know" alerts to be highly annoying. Google is constantly trying to tell me about Android features. I had to turn them off. "Would you like" to mark it solved because it has "10 answers" and has been "10 days" or similar is much better imo. It lets them know it exists without explaining it exists.

 

[Mr Lucky]

"Would you like" to mark it solved because it has "10 answers" and has been "10 days" or similar is much better imo.

I agree, that could be useful.

I also think it needs to be more obvious.

This can easily be ignored because to a lot of people it means nothing.



So I have this:



Which actually tells people what they can do. And the tombs are something they are familiar with from YouTube.

 

[Old Nick]

Great add, can you please share the code ?
How does it look on mobile?

 

[Mr Lucky]

Great add, can you please share the code ?
How does it look on mobile?

Currently it isn't quite right as the Mark as Solution text doesn't work as a link, only the icon does. So I'll try to see if I can do that then post the code.

 

[Old Nick]

Doesn't look too bad to me that way either. That only the icons are clickable seems sufficient to me.

 

[Mr Lucky]

Here is the code: https://xenforo.com/community/resou...d-solution-marking-for-question-threads.8682/

 

[beerForo]

It happens here on XF too, even with power users and the savvy. I have found myself telling people they can mark it solved when they post they found the solution. Not doing that anymore. In fact I have changed my whole position on it. The upvotes/downvotes matter more, and it doesn't really matter if it is ever marked solved. Until it can become more intuitive, I am going to just not worry about it.