A general forum question of interest

[foolofthehill]

What is in this forum considered an adequate time a poster should wait until he could expect a reply to his/her question??

I've tried to figure this out by myself by reading all relevant stickies and forum rules, but unfortunately couldn't find any information about it (though I accept being blamed for suffering from a possible infrequent blindness every now and then ).

And in addition to this question, it would be interesting to know what moderators would advice the poster to do in case this adequate time has passed without any responds??

I just noticed that most posters, especially the first time posters, seem to sit in front of the screen, after posting their call for help, bitting their nails nervously in expectation of an instant responds not realising that the moderators might be overwhelmed from the huge amount of requests.

So, if there would be something you, the moderators, call an adequate time for waiting, why not presenting this information in a sort of Java-script pop up in connection to the posters 'click' on to the submit button?!?
Something like "Thanks for your post, the members of this forum will try to reply in the next XXX hours/days/weeks. Please be patient !", after which the poster has to click onto an 'OK' button to let the communication window (I know that's the wrong word for it, the right one lies on my tongue but won't get out) disappear.

(Okay, and if you suspect me to have some selfish reasons behind my idea, you're d@#m right.........but I am patient and will wait until one of you nice guys steps into my unanswered post ) [Nevertheless, I believe such an info could prevent a lot of unnecessary posts, which I've found throughout this forum]

Cheers
Mario

[Only A Hobo]

Umm which question do you have in mind? Moderators do not tend to answer a lot of questions ..that is not their job. Many senior members and also many much less senior members answer the questions here and lotr does more than his fair share of the work. Double posted questions and those written incomprehensibly or containing little or no helpful information tend to get ignored. Questions with a follow up posted 5 minutes later do not figure well in my book. If I don't know how to answer a question I leave it. A post with zero responses or at least no replies from a senior member will recieve more attention from others.

Also questions asked more than 24 hours ago dissappear from the latest posts search. I had a quick look at your previous posts and don't know which one you mean. The forums have been upside down recently as you are aware, we've done our best, but a few questions may have slipped under the mat .. so gentle message saying "anybody please" in your thread will bring it to the top of the list I'm not sure any great changes are required to the system .. seems to work pretty well to me .... usually.

[foolofthehill]

Originally Posted by Only A Hobo

Umm which question do you have in mind? Moderators do not tend to answer a lot of questions ..that is not their job. Many senior members and also many much less senior members answer the questions here and lotr does more than his fair share of the work. Double posted questions and those written incomprehensibly or containing little or no helpful information tend to get ignored. Questions with a follow up posted 5 minutes later do not figure well in my book. If I don't know how to answer a question I leave it. A post with zero responses or at least no replies from a senior member will recieve more attention from others.

Also questions asked more than 24 hours ago dissappear from the latest posts search. I had a quick look at your previous posts and don't know which one you mean. The forums have been upside down recently as you are aware, we've done our best, but a few questions may have slipped under the mat .. so gentle message saying "anybody please" in your thread will bring it to the top of the list I'm not sure any great changes are required to the system .. seems to work pretty well to me .... usually.

Being a non-native English speaker (as I am) includes sometimes the risk to be misunderstood by a wrong choice of words. Please accept my apology for that!!
My post was not intended to be a complain. It was actually a serious suggestion, which I thought could possibly make the lives of those who answer all the questions from the posters a bit easier (my thoughts at that point were actually with people like LOTR and birdy, as well as you -since I saw a lot of useful advice of you too).
On the other hand I could easily put myself in the situation of those who have a problem and try desperately to find an answer, yet do not spend enough time with reading all the threads and stickies.
My final comment -kept in brackets- was then just born out of my German heritage, or German humor/ironic, which I know is not always comprehended well from other people; yet, sometimes I just can't resist.........I hope you understand and accept.

[Sgt]

Hi Guys
Maybe Try this, it says, when the forum starts

(If this is your first visit, be sure to check out the FAQ by clicking the link above. You may have to register before you can post: click the register link above to proceed. To start viewing messages, select the forum that you want to visit from the selection below.)

Try Telling the people looking for help To SEARCH, the forum In Big Black Capital Letters, you know what some are like can't think of it for themselves ,or you could put it in search, in BIG RED LETTERS so it really stands out

How Many people actually read the faqs or help files on, anything, before posting

I think This might help (??)

Sgt

[Grandpa]

You do know this post is 3 months old but since you brought it back to life I will answer foolofthehill orriginal question.

I would say about 5% do a reasonable search on the forum for their answers before posting their question. And probably 50% do a quick look and get discouraged because there are so many post to read through. I know I was guilty of reading through post for about 30 min. then giving up before I posted my first question on the forum.

The Lord of The Rings answered it within a few hours but I knew by looking at the unanswered post it would be a while before it got answered. It was back before a good portion of the senior members were members. At that time about 75% or greater messages were being answered by the Lord. And I new he was in a totally different time zone than I was.

Today most post get answered within an hour or less it is pretty rare that I look at the new post and see any well asked question that hasn't been answered. We currently have several active senior members from all around the world and different Time zones so there is a pretty good chance of getting questions answered in a timely matter.

[Sgt]

I know that most of the posts are answered within a few hours, I was not meaning to imply that this forum does not, try and anwser the requests within a certain time, what I was saying was that a lot of people don't search, the posts, when they should, we found that on a lot of the Forum websites, they didn't do it either, when I was a member of them

Sgt

[Lord of the Rings]

Funny you should suggest such a thing. For the past 10 months at least, I've had a custom script I've wanted to employ for members with 3 or less posts to their name. It would force them to read the rules, description of sections & Stickies, etc. before being able to post. But I haven't been able to get this into operation due to small technical problems. lol With any luck, it will be in operation before the end of the year. But no promises.

[Sgt]

I Like what your doing
But if I May make a suggestion, I would make it 2 trys, If they can't get it from, what your site is suggetsing, they never will, I found this on a lot of the sites I was Involved in.

Another Idea is members sign in, then you know who is members and who isn't, We did that so when the guest's try and place their posts, they had 2 posts unless they became members (this worked pretty well, unless, they were given the answer straight away), then it fell down

I must admit we are still working on this (though LOTR is pretty close), our group has taken that into consideration, If you solve it LOTR, I would be really interested on how you did it

Sgt

[Lord of the Rings]

For this forum, it's not wise to stop visitors even viewing the forum. We get visitors who are programmers of all sorts, etc. Also, there's lots of people who "do" read the stickies & research their topic, find their answer & then disappear. It's normally dare I say it the "d****" (who register because their problem is not so easily recognised or is a new problem or,) they are just in need of personal support due to their technical ignorancy. I should have limited that last comment. But making the point that some people register & post from time to time to give valuable info. Whereas there's those who need personal help, & there's those who are simply "LAZY" to find previous answers to their problem which still apply.

[mercy1]

I dont understand what was going on this thread.
But the Avatar pic in LORD OF THE RING is very nice.