On Tuesday 31 March 2009 06:14:54 am Manveru wrote: > 2009/3/31 Nikos Alexandris <nikos.alexand...@felis.uni-freiburg.de>: > > On Mon, 2009-03-30 at 23:05 -0400, Steve Litt wrote: > >> On Monday 30 March 2009 08:38:21 pm Nikos Alexandris wrote: > >> > when it's not required. In addition, it's not possible to mark > >> > ML-threads as SOLVED. The latter is, in my humble opinion, a big > >> > drawback. > >> > >> When I ask a question and then either am giving an answer or figure one > >> out, I reply one more time to the thread and append <SOLVED> to the > >> subject. That's a pretty commonly known technique recommended by ESR: > >> > >> http://www.catb.org/~esr/faqs/smart-questions.html#followup > >> > >> But all too few people choose to use it. > > > > Thanks Steve. I didn't know it works like that. > > > > Don't you really start a new thread by changing the subject? I this is > > the case, the information is still not organised/concentrated in one > > place as it should be. > > It should work in a way that Steve describe but often works like Nikos > said. I my case when you change the subject GMAIL treats that message > as new thread, that is way I do not like changing subjects.
Either way, it shows up in search engine searches right next to the original. It's certainly better than not putting <SOLVED> at all. I've been teaching troubleshooting since 1990, and in those two decades things have changed a lot. Software has become more numerous, more complex, and not as well documented. Support has shifted from vendor based to community. More and more, I put part of an error message in a search engine to find out what others have done. Unfortunately, well over 95% of the responses are people asking questions, with almost no answers, and the answers that exist typically don't look any different, from the search engine point of view, than the questions. It would sure make everyone's life easier of people put up a <SOLVED> post when they figured it out, to blaze a trail for those who follow via search engines. SteveT Steve Litt Recession Relief Package http://www.recession-relief.US
