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[AllenM Norton Fighter]

Hi SendOfJive,

I will of course respect your wishes.

I do agree with what you are saying conceptually but I respectfully don't agree that this is true in all cases. I have seen many examples of doing searches on forums where the lack of a solution could (IMHO) be detrimental to users coming here to seek help. The complete lack of a solution concerns me more than the wrong post being marked as the solution.

But even the wrong post being marked does concern me some - just to a lesser degree than the complete lack of a solution. I'm sure you've seen just as many marathon threads as I have where many users are recommending different things at different points in time. In many cases only one of those posts was the one which actually solved the OP's problem. I cannot even imagine a new user coming to the forum searching for help and trying to decipher for him/herself which of those many posts was the REAL solution. I've also seen cases where the marked post/solution could contain procedures that could be harmful to another user performing the same procedure.

My absolute only concern is the end user and you've known me long enough to know that and it is that concern for the end user that I still respectfully feel this is a good idea provided that it is not ever abused.

I will again respect your wishes however.

Best wishes.

Allen

[SendOfJive Norton Fighter]

Hi Allen,

Thank you.  And what you say is certainly true - I am just not convinced the problem is so ubiquitous, or debilitating, that it needs to be addressed in the manner that has apparently been decided.  I would also argue that pulling an answer from a single post in a lengthy thread risks getting it wrong, as the context of the issue and the various other things that might have been tried may also be important and relevant to a current issue.  Certainly picking the first rootkit solution you find, for example, is probably not the best idea.  The ability to find information is less dependent on finding threads with marked solutions and more dependent on being able to frame the search terms in ways that are meaningful to whatever problem is at hand.  If we want to make information easier to find, why don't we start by making it possible to refine searches a little better.  And I would certainly vote to give the Gurus power over spelling errors.

[dbrisendine Norton Fighter]

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SendOfJive wrote:

I am requesting that none of my fellow gurus mark any of my posts as the solution in any thread.

Sorry to have to disagree with everybody, but I cannot see where any third-party housekeeper, guru or not, could possibly know or care more about whether a problem has truly been solved than the person who actually came to the forums for help in the first place.  The most satisfying and rewarding thing for me on the forums is when someone I helped takes the time to come back and mark one of my posts as the solution.  It seems we want to kill that.  It seems we now prefer that rather than a personal acknowledgement from the person in need, a solution should be nothing more than a meaningless exercise of authority by someone who thinks they are more qualified than the person with the problem to know if there has been a resolution or not.  And that someone can remain anonymous, no less.

No, thank you.  I think most of the arguments so far have been specious.  So what if the wrong post is marked "Solved?"  The thread is still listed as solved in a search result.  Read the thread and somewhere in there you will find the answer or combination of answers that led the OP to a resolution.  Do we really need every post that correctly points a user to Customer Support to be marked "Solved?'  Do you really think that coming up with 20 search results pages with every entry marked "solved" is going to make life easier??  And if getting threads marked solved is so critical, why is it that there is so much misinformation being posted that contradicts existing vetted solutions?

Anyway, I will not be marking any threads, other than those I have started myself, as solved, and I ask that the gurus respect my wishes to let each OP decide if I have been helpful to them or not.

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Could not have said it better; 1000% on the mark all the way around.  Thanks for the 'voice of reason' as always SendOfJive.

I would also like to make the same request as SendOfJive has -

I am requesting that none of my fellow gurus mark any of my posts as the solution in any thread.

If the OP / user doesn't mark my posts as the Solution, then so be it.  I'd rather have the OP's mark of approval then the "seal of good housekeeping".

[Yaso_Kuuhl Norton Fighter]

Please let us not forget the forum staff (the moderators and admins). If a Guru misbehaves, action can and will be taken. So I'm certain that if a Guru were to abuse the new Solution system, then certain steps will be taken. In the meantime, like others have said, one should be in possession of a certain integrity and professionalism as a Guru, that way the abuse of specific features and functions is minimised.

[SendOfJive Norton Fighter]

Its not a matter of integrity or ability.  It's just that when I respond to an OP that I am glad that I was able to help them solve their problem, it would be nice to know if it was actually the OP who thought I solved their problem.  In my view this change depersonalizes the forum in favor of something that may not really be all that necessary or beneficial,  And I don't look forward to having to wade through a sea of "solved" threads to find the one truly revelatory answer I was looking for.

[Andmike]

Wow - what a lively and well mannered debate.  Obviously no politicians here...

I think the thread is now so long I have probably missed or forgotten most of the good points but I think someone wanted a suitably bit of wording to display when someone was about to start a thread.  My offering for today is:-

This will be "your" thread.  If someone "solves" your issue.  Please mark that post by clicking  "Accept as solution" to help others.

[AllenM Norton Fighter]

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SendOfJive wrote:

Hi Allen,

Thank you.  And what you say is certainly true - I am just not convinced the problem is so ubiquitous, or debilitating, that it needs to be addressed in the manner that has apparently been decided.  I would also argue that pulling an answer from a single post in a lengthy thread risks getting it wrong, as the context of the issue and the various other things that might have been tried may also be important and relevant to a current issue.  Certainly picking the first rootkit solution you find, for example, is probably not the best idea.  The ability to find information is less dependent on finding threads with marked solutions and more dependent on being able to frame the search terms in ways that are meaningful to whatever problem is at hand.  If we want to make information easier to find, why don't we start by making it possible to refine searches a little better.  And I would certainly vote to give the Gurus power over spelling errors.

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Hi SendOfJive,

Agreed which is why this option should be excercised with utmost care and dare I say again "integrity". If there is any question at all as to whether a specific post is the solution, then I agree that it is better to leave it unmarked.

I think this point actually illustrates something else which I have thought about in the past. I think the OP should be able to mark more than one post as the solution or really as part of the solution. Because you are correct that sometimes (particularly on the longer threads) the solution is really a series of posts which build on the previous one.

Another user who follows the steps in any "one" of those posts may not solve his or her problem but following the steps in the "series" might very well solve it.

Perhaps some way for the OP to rank a series of posts as the solution with a priority tied to each one? For example if the OP knows he had to follow them in a particular order this could come in useful.

For this option though only the OP should be able to mark a series of posts as part of the solution.

Allen

[yank Trojan Terminator]

FWIW, I have had the ability to mark posts as solved or use the not the solution button for well over a year now on the Comcast Forum and I have used the Mark as Solution a few times and the not the solution surprisingly more times. 

There are times that OP's mark a thread as solved and then come back and say, forget it, it did not fix it but I can't remove the solved.  I'd hit not the solution, and make a simple post quoting that response, saying something like - no problem, I've unmarked it for you, please let us know when you get the real resolution.  That way anyone tracking the fix can see what happened.

[DistEd2 Super Bot Obliterator Mobile Master (Norton Mobile Users Discussion Forum)]

I just this morning talked an OP, who (as an aside in a PM) had mentioned she'd accidentally marked the wrong post as the solution, through the process of using "Not the Solution" and then marking the post she really wanted to (neither of them mine, just to be clear!) so that just requires a little bit of mentoring, not Guru intervention.

[dickevans Super RootKit Eradicator]

Mentoring is most always better than intervention