Announcement Please Help & Reply To Unanswered Threads

[Shadrach]

Forcing them to go to articles instead of starting a thread would only make article questions/discussion increase exponentially.

There's no way to moderate and/or administer logic, common sense, integrity on a forum...
....or anywhere else.

See above.

 

[Shadrach]

The technical aspects to any of the above are pretty trivial. I've done similar to a couple of web sites, including addressing one of aarts bugbears in making people fill out their profile with their location before being able to post.
Yes, it costs traffic but in some cases the quality is more important than the quantity.

The thing is on the original subject of this thread is that a small percentage of the membership respond to the help answer unanswered posts and mostly these people already put a lot of time and effort into the site.

I realise people are resistant to change. Most come around and sometimes it is better to lose a few members if the functioning of site improves. Every site upgrade for example has people complaining that they don't like the change. Most adapt to it.

 

[007Sean]

The problem of unanswered posts is, the majority of the posters want an immediate response/answer to their proposed question(s)....most don't want to do any research before asking a question that has already been asked at least a thousand times and has gotten a thousand responses! The internet has created an 'instant gratification' for a lot of people seeking answers to their questions.

A leopard doesn't change it's spots and the human condition isn't any different. I don't have a solution to this delima, so as long as they keep asking questions that have already been asked and answered, we'll just have to keep answering those questions for the too lazy to research, or don't know how to research folks.
PS... @Shadrach , has a very compelling argument!

 

[NatJ]

Suppose the article section was reorganised so that the article groups were the same as the main forum layout.
Take the forum section "Raising Baby Chicks" for example. The articles to do with raising baby chicks could be grouped together in the articles section.
When someone posts in "Raising Baby Chicks" a bot would post a link to the article section on that topic automatically for the OP's post.

Currently that would give 11 seperate article sections with an auto bot response directing the OP to that section.

At it's most basic when a person hits the post button to start a new thread in any of the 11 sections a pop up would appear with a link to the relevant article section. The only way to close the pop up would be to click on the link to the article sections.

So would only apply to the "raising chickens" section? Because it certainly should not happen in member introductions, or buy/sell/trade, or a few other sections. No article is going to take the place of an actual introduction or a sales post.

Having to navigate a popup to post their question might just cause people to put the question somewhere else (like in their introduction post, instead of in the emergencies/injuries section.) That would potentially be a problem, because the people who are good at answering specific kinds of questions may not notice a question in the introductions area.

 

[triciayoung]

BYC has been blessed with a HUGE influx of new peeps over the past 3 months, but with all these new members come a LOT of new questions.

Unfortunately a lot of questions have gone unanswered, and this can be a poor experience for our fellow peeps, especially when it happens to brand-new members!

We'd like to encourage everyone to take a moment and look through the Unanswered Posts here: (list without BST section) : https://www.backyardchickens.com/pages/unanswered/

(with BST, etc. https://www.backyardchickens.com/find-threads/unanswered)

... and focusing on the oldest items, see if you can give a helpful and friendly reply to a handful of posts. If every active member chips in a little-bit wherever they can be of assistance, we could have every new thread have a response

In some cases you might have a great answer, in other cases, it might be really helpful to point the person to another thread with answers, and in other situations, it might be beneficial to ask for more details and information that the OP (original poster) left out.

So, take a look, remember what it was like to be a brand-new chicken-owner who needed help, and do your best to "pay-it-forward" by replying to a few unanswered threads!

I answered 10 of the older ones this morning.

 

[triciayoung]

I have now answered about 15 unanswered posts. I noticed that all of them are posting for the first time. Why not have first time posters redirect to the new member introductions forum. There are about 10 of us there that routinely welcome people and if they have questions, either answer them or point them in the right direction.

 

[Nifty-Chicken]

Why not have first time posters redirect to the new member introductions forum

Every new member receives a PM that directs them to that section and invites them to create an intro post. Is that kinda what you mean?

 

[casportpony]

The list is getting long again! I usually start at the bottom and work my way up the list:
https://www.backyardchickens.com/pages/unanswered/

 

[triciayoung]

Every new member receives a PM that directs them to that section and invites them to create an intro post. Is that kinda what you mean?

What I mean is that since we are constantly monitoring the new member postings, we could take the unanswered to make sure they are answered if there was a way to redirect them to us. Especially since a high percentage of the unanswered are people who are posting for the 1st or 2nd time.

 

[triciayoung]

The list is getting long again! I usually start at the bottom and work my way up the list:
https://www.backyardchickens.com/pages/unanswered/

I just answered 7. I will try to do more tonight.