Working out what users are good at what...? Does that make sense?

[Wokawidget]

I have found recently that some of the questions I am asking are very specific and quite advanced.
As you can imagine this starts getting frustrating when I don't get any replies, as I am sure that most of use have experienced at some point or another.

So, after searching the interweb for more information and not finding anything, what do you do? Repost the problem again a week later? Bump the thread back to the top? Randomly PM regular users to take a look at my thread, only to get a negative reply. Non of these options are perfect.

Now I am not to hot on PHP, web dev or how this forum works and fits together, but would it be possible to have a section that has a list of technologies/coding areas that users could "sign up to". For example:

• MSXML4
• Visual Studio Installer
• Inno Setup
• Winsock
• COM+
• ...etc

A user could add one or more of these options to their user account and specify a "star rating", 1 to 5, on how experienced they are in that area.
This would mean that I could easily see the users I need to PM on a certain subject and what rating they are. So then I PM a certain few 5* users on my problem.

How hard is this to implement?

Woka

[brad jones]

I think what you would find is that most people would not want to be PM'd with specific questiosn. Rather most people prefer to answer the questions within the forums.

The issues I see you bringing up are --

How can we help to see that advanced level questions can get answered?
Is there a group of 'experts' in areas that we could set up to be able to answer those questions that no one else can answer?

I think there may be other options to the second question, but let me think about this for a while. If we address the second one, then the first one will fix itself.

Brad!

[Wokawidget]

Yes, I see your point about PMing users.
I am frustrated and typed the 1st thing that popped into my furry head

The problem I am having is that the thread sections span multiple topics. 99% of the posts arn't on any subject relating to what I require and suddenly my post is off the bottom of the list.

I understand that VBF might not have the user base experience required to answer my questions...or does it? I don't know, and it's frustrating sitting and watching millions of people view the thread, but no answers daya after day. Am I too impatient?

The problem with the interweb, as I am sure you are wll aware of, is that most of it is useless info, even on coding sites.
I don't care what technology MSXML4 is based on, I don't care on the theory regarding what it enables your app to do, nor do I want shed loads of pages of text detailing every 1 and 0 that it deals with. All I need for example is:

To save XML to a file use:

mobjXMLDOM.SaveXML "C:\Woof.xml"

Anyways, I am rambling now
You described what I was trying to explain exactly.

Cheers.

Woka

[NoteMe]

Woka, I see your point very well...since you have asked me a couple of times (+taxes) about very specific questions about things I know $hit about...

But PMing isn't always the best solution. As Brad said, people tend to like to answer in the forums. But if you PMed and sendt the link to a member, then he at least would know about a though question, and could look into it, and could post in that thread, so everyone could see it. (Don't think CornedBee would like those PM..)

And other solution could maybe be to move the though/unresolved questions to it's own section. If the "experts" knew about it, they could maybe take a look into them. But that would make the mod job even bigger.

I am not sure what the best solution would be. But I am glad someone took it up. Becuase those who has the hardest questions, is often the "experts" them self. And if they find out that they can't get their questions answered, they might find a better place. And "experts" leaving is the last thing we need here.

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[Wokawidget]

I agree...I now know never to ask you anything again...you know nothing, about anything. Why are you even on a VB forum anyways? Haha

It is getting to the stage now where I am looking at more and more sites, other than VBF. I have noticed my post count has dropped over the last few months, not going to leave though

Admittedly, the questions I have been asking aren't easy in the slightest and are quite advanced. I can see how they will go unanswered.

NoteMe, you mentioned the "rosolved" issue. Instead of adding "*resolved*" to the thread title, would it be possible to add a boolean Resolved flag on the thread. The thread creator can, without editing the thread, set a flag to say it's resolved and then these get put to the back of the threads when people view them? Adlibbing here, haven't really thought about it, but it sounds like a good idea...?

What do you think?

Woofa

[NoteMe]

Originally posted by Wokawidget

NoteMe, you mentioned the "rosolved" issue.

Did I....am I that tired that I can't remember that?

Originally posted by Wokawidget

... then these get put to the back of the threads when people view them?

To the back of the threads???


If you are asking about a "button" that a thread maker can click to add that flag to it, then the answers is still no I guess. It has been asked 3-4 times the last two months. And the answer has always been that it will be have to be done by a hack. And that is to much work and so on. Read the other thread about the answer if that is what you ment...

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[visualAd]

I'm not familiar with the forum software so don't know whther this is possible. But maybe you could have a sub forum in each forum where a user has the permission to move his resolved thread.

That solves the viewing problem and doesn't require mods to spend all day moving resolved threads.

Having all those extra forums may confuse people though and could make the VBF front page look a bit messy