Unanswered Questions

I know I’m not a moderator or anyone with “status” here, but I’m going to give an answer anyway [:P]

Without making topics sticky, which will keep the topics on top of the forum.asp page, there’s little that can be done except for the user to bump the topic if it hasn’t been answered after some time.

If unanswered topics were to be made sticky, it’d give the moderators and admin(s) of these forums a lot more work because they’d have to keep track of each and every topic and their replies and then make new topics sticky, and “unsticky” the ones that’ve been answered. Not to mention the complications that’ll arise once someone revives an old (answered) topic with a new question, or if the original question has been answered and the member who started the topic uses the same topic to ask another question in.
The only way to solve that would be by locking all topics once the questions have been answered, but then answers with different approaches couldn’t be added anymore, making things even more complex.

In short: the forums don’t allow for what you suggest without making things very complicated 🙂

P.S. I just re-read my reply three times and I can understand if what I wrote makes no sense at all. If it wasn’t for me knowing what I mean, I wouldn’t be able to figure out what I was going on about either 😉

well, I know how customizable these forums are, so it’s definitely possible with some modifications (I have an idea in case Jeff wants to hear it), but with the forums as they are I think it’s too much work.

If you look at the bottom of a forum, you’ll see sorting options. Use the sorting options at the bottom of the forum to check for unanswered posts. I use:

…sorted by number of replies in ascending order, from all topics.

But your suggestion is a good one. I’ve seen some sites actually put an link to “posts with no replies” that automatically gives you a view of all posts with zero replies. Usually it’s up near the top of the forum page; maybe that would be a good thing to add, eh?

Yeah, using the active topics page can be a bad habit. On the one hand, it’s convenient to see what’s new in a forum that you visit frequently. On the other hand, when you occasionally miss a topic, it can easily end up going unnoticed.

Personally, I use the active topics on a routine basis, but I still try to check the forum pages a few times a week.