Force the author of a thread to close the thread before authoring a new post

[ben_leah]

I have occasionally come across threads that contain a number of suggestions (fixes etc) but provide no feedback on the result of those suggestions. I think that its is often the case that somebody will post the actual fix to the problem , then the auther of the post will take this and use it but provide no feedback on the result.
I make the suggestion that the author of a post must close (provide a final feedback) before being allowed to author a new post? This will ensure that threads have a more complete lifecycle from Inital Problem to Final Resolution.

Any Comments?

[dickinsd]

That sounds like an idea with potential..

I have no experience of the admin side of a VB board but I would guess that there would be quite a bit of coding to get something like that to work.

I think the idea has 1 big good point - that is that we would know what actually fixed a problem, rather than for example working our way down the list of suggestions until we find the one that works.

I think it is fairly simple for a prefix of Solved: or something like that to be added to the thread title, but making a user close a thread before they can open a new one - this I think would require some coding AND I think this is a bad idea.

What if I asked about getting my laptops touch pad working.

Title: HP Pavilion touch pad problems
I ask my question about for example the side scroll bar not working.
Some one posts a suggestion.
I go away and try it - it works, I then return to close the thread.
BUT another user has picked up on the thread, he has the same laptop and a problem with his touchpad - a different problem.

Can I close a thread that another person needs help in?

What if that suggestion works for kernel 2.6.10-1.770 but doesn't work in kernel 2.6.11-1.xx - would it not be better to work on that thread rather than open a new thread.
At least if I ask the question in an existing thread people can see what has already been suggested..

I think it would be nice if people would take the time to come back and say yes thank doing X worked for me.

I don't think you should be forced to do this and I don't think you should be told to close a thread before opening a new thread.

Dave

PS: Another reason against closing threads before opening new threads would be that people with lots of problems would either have to wait for each problem to be solved before they could worry about the next thing - or we would have threads that have loads of different unrealted questions in them...

[jim]

this topic was covered before

http://www.fedoraforum.org/forum/showthread.php?t=50715