Forums Threads – Just One More Question…

This morning I had the opportunity to present to a group of community leads for the Windows Server some of the things we’re doing over in Developer Division around community. Of course, I spent a bit of time talking about forums and how they’ve been working for us. It’s incredible—we’re now hovering right around 4,000 questions per week, and although the overall two-day answer rate is still around 40%, we’ve seen some major strides being taken by groups inside of DevDiv (congrats to the Visual Basic team, who has the largest forums and is hitting a 75% 2 day answer rate!) The Windows Server folks, via their new TechNet forums (https://forums.microsoft.com/technet), are just starting to get their feet in the water with forums, so it was great to share a bit of DevDiv’s success.

Of course, whenever I talk forums, I end up having a conversation with somebody that suggests something cool that would make the forums even better. This time, it’s thinking about what to do with follow-up questions in a thread. Currently, somebody asks a question to start a thread. Usually, there’s a bit of back and forth that goes on before a reply is made that is marked as an answer. Up until this point on the forums, that answer marking closed the thread. Moderators move on. I notch one win for the good guys. You get the picture.

The problem is that that answer can sometimes spur a follow-up question which needs more discussion. The answer marking tag essentially keeps some of our best experts from looking at a thread again, so that follow-up question will just sit there, unnoticed.

Now, I love the answer marking, and one of the reasons I like it so much is the closure that it provides. I like the fact that we know when a thread is “done”. But what do to for the follow-up questions?

A simple proposal I have is to allow a user to attribute a reply to a thread either as a “response” (default), or an “additional question”. The thread will still be considered “answered”, but a moderator or another forum user would be able to look at threads that had “unanswered follow-up questions”. Once a reply posted after the follow-up question is marked as an answer, the thread would be removed from that list.

My fear is that this is too complicated—it’s adding the complexity of threaded conversations without the elegance. The other option is to continue to build a culture where the best place to ask a new question is always a new thread. What do you think?

Comments

• Anonymous
  June 23, 2006
  Another way to address this issue would be to extend the View By attributes in the Forum. Most basic news readers allow you to view only threads that have new posts; this feature is not available in the forums. Certainly there is a graphic representation to indicate whether you've read a thread or not, but you always see the "noise" of the posts that have no activity since you last read the forum.
  
  This would be particularly useful for very active forums, or for people who do not visit the forums daily (or hourly for very active forums). I wouldn't mind seeing a "Watch" flag available too, which is different that My Threads.
  
  It's tough to manage follow-up posts, and at the end of the day, any solution that requires the post to make a series of decisions about how to mark a post is probaly not the best. It's better to give everyone the flexibility to read the forum the way that best suits thier needs.
  
  For now, I recomend that follow-up questions go into a new thread. Some times it can break the flow, but I'm more concerned about ensuring that each question gets the best chance of being answered by ensuring more people see it.
  
  Mike - SQL Express forum

• Anonymous
  June 23, 2006
  I like the idea of the degree-if-answer rating, where the author of the question can rate an answer.
  
  Threads with a lower rating for answers would then be "less closed" then threads with those with higher-rated answers.  This would allow the "answers" to still find interest in a thread.

• Anonymous
  June 29, 2006
  If you fear things might get to complex, maybe a simple option can be provided to start a new thread from an answered one. The new thread would link back to the old one for reference (or if possible, the post of the old thread will be shown in the new thread), and the new one will not be marked as an answer.

• Anonymous
  June 30, 2006
  The comment has been removed

• Anonymous
  May 29, 2009
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  June 08, 2009
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