You must have misunderstood. I agree with you.

Oh, LOL. I guess I did misunderstand. Maybe being at work has already fried my brain by 11:48 AM.

Yeah, I was braindead too at 11:48 AM (that was over 4 hours ago). What I meant was to agree with you, I think that we should "link threads" even though I would not really call it that. :)

I understand the points being made about how threads can evolve, but if Post #1 starts off asking about, say, how to install Firefox, but by Post #15 it has moved to being about how to get the TV-out function to work on a new video card, then obviously the thread has become unfocused, and its overall usefulness will suffer. What I mean by this is that from a functional standpoint, the effect would be that other people who are searching for help with installing Firefox will consider the comments about the video card to be useless and irrelevant, while people who are searching for help on TV-out are going to be confused when the Search results contain threads with titles about Firefox. In other words, mixing multiple topics together in a single thread helps no one, and it is best for comments to stay on topic as the LQ Rules emphasize. If there are two distinct questions to ask, or two independent topics to discuss, it is always better to put them into two different threads. -- J.W.

J.W. - You are right, but what I mean is that if someone sees that post #15 is off topic but that there's a bunch of people interested in the "new" topic, that one should make a new thread called "how to get tv-out to work" and suggest something like "hey, this is OT, let's go here ...". I think that's what Matir was talking about. And I do not know if you think that "linking threads" that way is bad, but I think that is the right way to go when a thread gets OT but enough people discuss the new topic.

This way the original thread can go back to Firefox, and the new thread will keep it's own topic. This way Mr. Searching-for-an-answer can find both topics since they are in seperate threads.

Hi,

I am a new member who has found LQ incredibly useful, especially the way that, in England, I can get overnight help from both the USA and Australia, and a problem fix ready to go in the morning. I am now replying to other peoples' questions on the topics I have solved. I think the first week or so after solving a problem is the best time to explain the solution to other newbies because all the things that confused you at first are still clear in your mind.

Also, referring to Matir's original question, I have a relatively difficult job teaching high school maths and statistics. So if someone wants to e-mail or point me to the raw posting data I would be happy to crunch the statistics and see what comes out. There might be useful lessons that could help the site.

Cheers

Tim.

t11235powell@yahoo.co.uk

I think of it all like this:
to avoid newbies creating new posts with prosaic (for expirienced users and hard for newbies) questions, there should be more 'How-To' threads that explaind every single step, so that noone has any doubts about anything.
I read somewhere here in LQ which posts should be answered first? my guess is: the old ones first. Why ? Because people will then be able to find those resolved problems using 'search' option. Even if certain problem is slightly different from the resolution, they will find those answered posts really helpfull. Aditionally I think new problems number will grow slower then.

Regards

kuser- I agree to a certain extent. the older posts should be answered first, but how old? like a week ago? from 2000? the really old ones might deal with something that is really out of date (like RH 9) and thus answering them is a waste of time, and drags up sludge to the forum. I think that users should not have "oh it's only 15mins old, I'll look for something older" - as long as they can answer the question, they should.

Ephracis etal- I like the idea of the person gently "maintaining" a thread, by saying "hey guys, this is off topic, I've posted a new thread on video card drivers here..." (hopefully with quotes to all off topic material from other thread)
all responsible LQ users should try to thread maintain, it will help the moderators. This is also more effective than saying "hey sparky, start your own thread"

titanium_geek

Gulp. As a Certified Computer Idiot, I probably shouldn't venture into these waters. But you asked....

Any answer I gave to a question would be laughable. If a newbie asked, How do I turn on my computer? I'd be stumped.

I really hope the search function is improved. I'd especially like obvious questions that are asked again and again to be lumped in one place: these are the answers I need (see my Certification above).

For example, today I wanted to find out how to edit /etc/hosts through root. I thought I was very clever to know how to open a terminal emulator (Mandriva 10.1). But then what? The handbook, written by geeks for geeks says, Open and type. How useless is that for a CCI? Type what? My password? the name of the file? edit etc/hosts? None of these work.

By the way, that was the last sentence in the handbook that I understood. Yes, I read the whole thing.

So, tail between legs, I come here to search for answers. Now, I'm CERTAIN that someone has answered this before. But danged if I can find it, so I'll have to ask again, and some nice, kind person will answer. I hope.

Anyway, clumsy as this site is for the likes of me, I bless the day it was started, I bless the kind souls who patiently answer CCIs like me, I bless you one and all.

Nina

I agree, we need to be nice to CCI's.

the search should be improved in the next forum roll out.
also remember that google indexes the site.

titanium_geek

And google apparently indexes it quite frequently. About a month ago, I had an issue with the 2.6.12 kernel, googled a bit, then posted here. About two days later, in a continuation of my googling, I stumbled across my own thread in google.

titanium_geek wrote:
"the older posts should be answered first, but how old? like a week ago? from 2000?"

I think the oldest ones should be answered first unless they are...

titanium_geek wrote:
"...really out of date..."

...and there's no use answering those posts
(the experienced users know best, which are out of date and which ones might be usefull for future education).

you should answer what you can, regardless of whether the post is a day old or a week old.

period.

titanium_geek

There are many un-answered post on LQ, however, me personally only look at recent post's so if it has not been answered in 48 hrs it probably wont be...

KC

Well, I do my best to answer as many posts as possible, new or old. I generally try to answer newer ones: they are the most likely to be relevant to the original poster. 3 months later, very few people are still likely to be looking for the mount options to allow a user to write to a vfat drive. (That's my Most Frequent FAQ recently).