Just about every day, more and more questions are asked, and even more answers to throw at it. I would love for there to be an extra feature in the Newcomer's Forum.
Make it an answering sort of forum, where people can ask questions and experienced users can answer for them. When the thread creator thinks a user has answered his/her question, there will be a giant button under the armatar/name, with a statement that says "Did this user answer your question? If so, click this button!" (or something smaller and simpler). Multiple replies cannot be answered, only one.
When this happens, the thread is automatically locked, and the thread is sent to a special split forum (that is still in the same page) that contains already-answered questions. This way, users can just look there before they ask a question. With this, the thread titles are in bold.
Alternatives:
A split forum where it shows the list of answered questions, un-answered questions, and introductions, that way things are organized?
Give the answerer to the question 1 AP for their efforts?
That's nice, it would decrease questions a bit, I think. I like the button thing, reminds me of Yahoo Answers or whatever that site is I get on the list when I Google something... I'm not entirely sure how the answered questions forum thingy would work, I was thinking of a special search bar(on that would work, of course) that shows only in that forum, and when you enter your questions it will come up with a bunch of topics that has those words in the title and possibly question post(topic post)...
I guess that wouldn't be much help since people don't normally care for little search bars, the search thingy could be put at the bottom of the Help Page and stuff.
You'd be surprised. On the crowded boards I've seen, there are questions that are completely unique and different from others. This at least shows that people will give a hoot about the questions.
Now, this can be a lot like the stickies, but unlike those, these are short, sweet, and to-the-point, while the stickies have a large cache of information. It, however, still cannot answer some questions, and it is better if they are recorded, so others can see.
My last sentence on the previous post is kinda weird o_O I just noticed.
I like the 1 AP
XD
It might be useful, but would people check the answered section anyhow?
Well my searchbar idea could be at the top to the right of the Newcomer forum. The 'Answered' Forum probably wouldn't be too hard to miss, if it is indeed a second forum(or subforum, it'd be displayed right under the Newcomer Forum name on the Community Page), if it's an entirely different section then no doubt it'd be easy to see, and if it is called something like 'Questions?' or whatever, someone looking for the answer to something will probably look there, or I'd think.
I'm thinking it'd be something like a separate forum these things are stored in, rather than a billion stickies in the NC Forum. As I said above, it'd be almost like a sub-forum, I think a search for that specific forum would be nice, since no newcomer wants to look through 20 pages of answered questions to find out what an AP is...
The answer to the question (the reply) will be in bold, and a slightly-higher font face to ease the skimming.
I love the Forum title, Raptor! I'm sure that will fit. I also like the logic of how newcomer's don't like to search for answered questions. So I thought of this:
Added#2:
The questions most viewed will be the ones bumped up, not the recently replied to. This suggests that the ones newcomers will think of first will be at the top, and the ones that are most unique will be at the bottom, since not as many users might have a question/trouble about.
I like the idea. And are you saying the person that answered the question gets 1 AP, or everyone who post on it gets 1 AP? Because I think it should only be the person who answered it.
The answerer gets the AP, but I don't know how this will work out. After all, AP means spamming. Oh well, that's not the important part anyways. Newcomer's forum = 0 AP, and it has to stay that way, I guess.
I think everyone should get 1 AP for posting there; otherwise, there'd be huge debates about who answered which question and who should get the AP. And, if users did get points from posting in that section, they'd be more likely to answer questions, knowing that they'd get a reward for it...
I suppose you're right. That's why I'm going to remove this 1 AP reward. I just added that in, because I thought the answerer could get rewarded somehow. But since you said that, I figured that 1 AP for all, or 1 AP for one is bad both ways. So we will have to take out that other idea.
Removed: 1 AP reward for the answerer to the question.
