Board suggestion

[Stan Mathews]

It would be nice if there was a way for the original poster to "mark" the post as "solved" when they receive an answer that fulfills their need or they adapt a suggestion to satisfy their requirements. Multiple branch posts with several possible solutions offered are hard to follow and one is never quite sure that the problem is solved unless the poster replies to all the branches.

Possible?

[Selwyn Rabins]

RE: Board suggestion

i think it is a great idea. i don't know if it is possible. will have to find out if it is possible.

[Elliott Lester]

RE: Board suggestion

Stan--you are the man!

When I give the suggestion--no one responds. When you
you give the suggestion, jump jump jump. I lift my hat,
and bow to your feet, oh great one.

Now, would you mind talking to my wife...

[forskare]

RE: Board suggestion

Oh Boy, Oh Boy

Lester, I suppose since you asked first, you can be first in line for this one??

kenn

[whanigsberg]

RE: Board suggestion

Hi all,

I have a slight reservation.

Just because the original poster thinks his or her problem is solved doesn't necessarily mean that it has been. In addition, sometimes--often, actually--multiple solutions are offered and the first one might not be the best.

So there could be a cost to prematurely closing off some of these discussions.

My two cents worth.

Bill

[Stan Mathews]

RE: Board suggestion

Bill,

Didn't say or mean the thread wouldn't be available for further discussion. Maybe a color change of or bullet beside the topic header indicating that the original poster's interest in the topic had been satisfied.

Could save some time in surfing the board for topics which stil "needed" further comment.

Elliot,

I don't remember your post on the same topic, but will search to see what you said. Maybe it just took more than on reuest. Or maybe it's the way I said it.

Ken,

Did you read my final comment on the "walking Alpha Five manuals" comment?


Stan

[Elliott Lester]

RE: Board suggestion

Bill, I agree with you that just because the questioner
thinks the problem is solved might not mean that it is for a variety of reasons--work around won't work in my system,
it is not really solved.

However even if you could search on solved threads, you
could save alot of time on duplicating steps that either have not worked, or worked. Moreover, I do not think that
a solved mark or highlight or key word would stop continued
messages. Programmers are artists--each with a different
means to the same end. This is the greatness of the board, but often times difficult issues go unanswered or solved...

Regards

[forskare]

RE: Board suggestion

Stan,

Did a search and couldn't find it. Hmmm, are your sure? Or have you been eating lutefisk again??

kenn

[Stan Mathews]

RE: Board suggestion

Read it again. I didn't say I didn't find it find it. I said I didn't remember it and "would" search. Since found it, replied, and brought it to the top.--- June 21, 1:14 PM

[Wanda Friesen]

RE: Board suggestion

I often (ofen) :) times don't have a lot of time to look on the board to see if the problem I am experiencing has already been addressed and solved. So, to have a mark beside posts that have at least one solution to the problem would be a great help.

Personally, I've printed out several posts and have organized them by subject. I am sometimes able to find the solution without spending time looking on the board or posting the problem.

Wanda

[tlyon]

RE: Board suggestion

Stan,

As always, a great suggestion. Do you suppose that the board rules might be changed to encourage posters to include a new topic follow-up post that indicates the problem is solved? I realize that sorting procedures might make this impractical but I'd think something of this nature could work. We'd all need to participate fully for it to be meaningful.

Another subject that seems to be increasingly prevelant is long threads. Over 10-20 posts in a thread seems to be approaching the point of unmanageability . Perhaps a limit of 20 posts per thread might be appealing. Another thread could be started if necessary. Modem users would appreciate this very much, I believe.

Whether Alpha's forum software can manage these changes is beyond me. To work effectively, threads would need to be sorted by date+subject.

Tom

[Stan Mathews]

RE: Board suggestion

Tom,

Let�s first give credit to Elliott, he posted the general idea first. Thank you Elliott.

You've made good points and I've taken some time to consider them. Maybe the first time in a while I didn't fire back the first thing that came to mind. (For those of you familiar with Myers-Briggs personality evaluation, I'm an ESTJ with none of the traits anywhere near the midpoint.)

I didn't realize that we had any board rules other than prohibiting personal attacks, profanity, etc. Common sense and decency alone should be enough to take care of "board behavior". (Limeys read that as behaviour) My suggestion was meant to relieve some personal frustration.

Generally �posts� fall into one of several categories for me. None of them is likely to have only one possible solution, that�s how and why the board is such a good learning tool for poster and responder. I have probably posted messages which fall in to all the categories I will mention. None of us is immune, well maybe Dr. Wayne and Ira Perlow are.

There are �snow-blind� messages where someone has been working too late and can�t see what they need to do, or they tried to approach a problem from one direction and can�t see how different it looks from the other side. (Read the recent posting on CCVALID. I once spent two days and a hundred lines of code one time writing a validation routine in Foxpro and Ira showed how it could be done in about 10 lines. Talk about your paradigm shifts.)

There are �this should be easy to do but isn�t� messages. Some are valid and some are semi-unique to various application requirements. These may be solved by coding but often require rethinking the original table structure, either adding calculated fields or different information, or intermediary tables, or operations, like summarization, on existing tables.

There are �I didn�t change anything and now Alpha won�t.......� messages. These require some detective work to determine what did change and why it affected the results of that which now doesn�t work. These are especially interesting to me.

There are �I�m doing the right things, I didn�t do anything wrong, and Alpha is misbehaving� messages. These are especially nasty problems which may be Alpha bugs or peculiarities and are hard to diagnose. (Read the posts on heap lock failure, unable to add tag to index, license count exceeded, failed to save document, etc.)

So how do we manage the board to do away with some of the repetition of subject matter, get to the new problems which need attention, and easily bypass topics which are �solved�. Many of the �snow-blind� posters are too deep into their situation to even think of using the �search� feature. Do we need another page between the �Alpha Five V4� and the actual message area that reminds us that �You may not be the first person with whatever problem is at hand. Please use the search feature first.�? What a pain. I�m leery of a new topic follow up post �Thanks, it�s fixed�. Would this help or add clutter?. Is the topic description area large enough to hold �Bug in tbl.fetch_next_loc(), sorry my mistake�? I�m open to more suggestions here. We need something.

Long threads are a problem. I was wondering today if I could capture Jamin�s �Where are we....� post, cut and paste the names and home locations into one document, and re-post it so that it could be read as one �level� rather than the eighty some odd it is now. This is an extreme example but it really shows the problem. My network net connection through our own website coughs a little on that one. Maybe I�ll experiment with doing the �cut and paste� on that topic tomorrow and see what the response is.


Any one besides Tom.
If you read this far, please take all this as my opinion of things. This has nothing to do with the policies or operations of Alpha Software. Those who �patrol� the board trying to offer help, at whatever level of capability, can spend a considerable amount of time checking back to see if the solution offered was of any benefit or even addressed the real problem. I personally seem to have difficulty at times understanding the problem that a topic addresses and wind up offering a solution that is inappropriate. (Read post about removing recent databases accessed from the file menu.)

Past my bed time now. It�s late and if I�ve said anything offensive to anyone, let me know and I�ll apologize directly.

Thought for tomorrow:

There are only two kinds of people in this world, those who think there are only two kinds of people, and those who don't.

[Stephen Williams]

RE: Board suggestion

Some message boards allow icons (this one does paper clips to show attachments) How about a smily face by the solution(s) that worked?