Community project: Unanswered posts...
 

At the top of each page, in the nav bar, there is a new link called "Unanswered Posts". I think it would be cool if we, as a community, worked through those posts and answered any questions that may have been asked and missed. If the post isn't a question, then just post something (remotely relevant!) to get it off the list.

Once we have the list pared down, we can use this link to isolate questions in near real time.

Let me know if you all have any ideas or suggestions.

Mike,
I have an idea. Get rid of this!

Or, at least, make some provision to allow "announcement" posts to bypass the filter.

I think that you might consider "sticky" in the same category as "answered"

OTOH, just because some replies, it does not mean that they have addressed a question.

Initial Query: Why does ....?

Reply: What do you mean by ...?

Response: I mean ...

Here the thread has responses, but the "question" remains unanswered.

Good points. I'm not sure how I can limit the search any narrower. I'll look into it.

Does anybody else have any input?

This seems only worth doing in cases where the original post asked a question that was coherent, well-posed and on-topic. I find many of the unanswered threads don't satisfy those criteria. Some examples:

[url]http://www.mersenneforum.org/showthread.php?t=5177[/url]

[url]http://www.mersenneforum.org/showthread.php?t=4578[/url]


Just looking at all the unreplied-to threads on the Software forum, of the unreplied-to threads that did make sense, we have e.g. this one which simply noted a small quirk about machine naming in Prime95 v24.13 and thus asked for (and needed) no reply:

[url]http://www.mersenneforum.org/showthread.php?t=4464[/url]

...this one, which points out a very minor quirk in the server's handling of assignments when the primary savefile is missing, and appeared only because the user fiddled with the client settings so as to cause it to do something other than its default behavior:

[url]http://www.mersenneforum.org/showthread.php?t=4407[/url]

...this one by alex Kruppa pointing out a handy way of debugging certain key aspects of one's p-1 code, which would be useful only to folks actually writing such code, not a large part of our constituency here:

[url]http://www.mersenneforum.org/showthread.php?t=4270[/url]

...this one asking about firewalls, which I believe is covered in the Prime95 readme file:

[url]http://www.mersenneforum.org/showthread.php?t=4162[/url]

...this one simply saying the Primenet manual test forms were broken (again):

[url]http://www.mersenneforum.org/showthread.php?t=3919[/url]

...this one about roundoff error messages, which kind of thing is covered in several other places:

[url]http://www.mersenneforum.org/showthread.php?t=3856[/url]


The only ones in Software (I only looked at the first 2 pages, i.e. roughly the most-recent 200 threads) I found that appeared to warrant some kind of reply and were not already covered elsewhere:

[url]http://www.mersenneforum.org/showthread.php?t=4190[/url]

[url]http://www.mersenneforum.org/showthread.php?t=4144[/url]

...so at least based on this limited sample I don't see a huge issue here. The bigger issue I see is the longstanding one of the same question getting asked, in different guises, in multiple subforums.

I'm afraid of bumping old threads on top of the forum. They are getting messed with new threads, thus complicating finding new and up-to-date information.

For example, in server forum, do we need a really old announcement about server synchronization on top of the forum? It has came from 2002!
[url]http://mersenneforum.org/showthread.php?t=218[/url]

I've done my best to answer "0 replies" posts w.r.t. 321 -- but this is weird:

[url]http://www.mersenneforum.org/search.php?searchid=122633&pp=100&page=5[/url]

1970?? DB error?

It's moved to page4 now (and counting down). Anyway the last two posts say they were posted 01 Jan 1970!!

why dont we just :nuke: them? :alien:

[QUOTE=axn1]why dont we just :nuke: them? :alien:[/QUOTE]
I agree, most of them are useless posts that deserve useless answers, see my reply to the domain name sale post.

Plus, those bumps can get annoying at times.

I agree with axn1. Let's :nuke: 'em! :grin:

I've 'em'ed about a dozen obsolete and/or trivial threads which uncwilly bumped. 'Appy now?