[SOLVED] Old, unfinished posts

[greywanderer012345]

Searching old posts is a great source of information, but too often, a search results in many similar posts, many of which contain the question I am asking, but do not contain an appropriate answer. It seems to me to be bad etiquette to reply to a 5 year old post with more questions. I would really like to see a way for the original poster to be able to declare a post as resolved, and a way to filter or prefer such posts when showing search results. Even organizing posts by how many members marked replies as useful would help. If anyone else agrees or has any suggestions on this, please reply.

[newInRobotics]

Well, there is a way to tell others that problem was solved, see thread below:
http://www.societyofrobots.com/robotforum/index.php?topic=15166.msg109841#msg109841

Notice green tick next to the topic, also "[SOLVED]" and short explanation in green?

Other than that, would be useful to have filtering feature showing solved topics at the top.

[Admin]

Most people don't mark things as 'solved', and it's not really possible to enforce it. There isn't currently a way to mark replies as useful, either. I've seen other forums that do it and it's quite helpful, actually . . .

If you find a forum mod you like, let me know. The full list is here:
http://custom.simplemachines.org/mods/

On the admin side I have options to weight search results. This is how I set it up:

Relative search weight for number of matching messages within a topic:  45%
Relative search weight for age of last matching message:  3%
Relative search weight for topic length:  1%
Relative search weight for a matching subject:  40%
Relative search weight for a first message match:  10%
Relative search weight for a sticky topic:  1%
Total 100 100%

[greywanderer012345]

Before this thread, I wasn't even aware that it was possible to mark anything as solved. I still can't find where to do it. If it's not only me who is missing it, more people might be willing to mark it if it were more visible. The result weighting is actually very good. As I said, I often get 20 or more search results with the same question I am asking, or at least posts which are relevant. Is it possible to allow other members than the original poster to vote the thread as solved. I think the easiest, and most likely possible, way to do this would be to add weight to number of 'helpful' posts in the search results. The forum's great, this is just my 2 cents.

[newInRobotics]

Before this thread, I wasn't even aware that it was possible to mark anything as solved. I still can't find where to do it.

You simply edit Your original post and add [SOLVED] to the header.

[greywanderer012345]

If that's all it is, I might start searching with [SOLVED] included in my search. I still think it would be great to add weight to threads with many 'helpful's.

[Gertlex]

To me, it's a lost cause. I don't recall the last time I saw a [Solved] tag, and I never do them myself.  You might as well hone your skill at quickly skimming search results and revising them until you find what you want.

[greywanderer012345]

Yea, I figured that out pretty quick. I tried including [Solved] in a few searches, but got either random results or threads similar to this one.    However, I just remembered what I used to do, using google and including "site:societyofrobots.com". I haven't used that in quite a while, probably because so many sites use google's search bar anyway, but it works pretty good.

Either way, if admin comes across an option like one we've been discussing, and wonders if it is worth investing the time, it certainly has my vote.

[Admin]

You can also edit, and then change the thread icon to 'solved'. It'll show a green check mark as demonstrated in this post.

You can also be more specific by doing this: "site:societyofrobots.com/robotforum bluetooth"

or go to the main page http://www.societyofrobots.com/ and type into the search box at the top left.