Notify a question's author with request to choose and mark a solution

AI-generated summary

Users are discussing the need for a feature to notify question authors to mark a solution after a set period, inspired by Lithium Forums’ system dmitry_fedyuk. alefattorini notes low resolution rates in support topics and suggests such a reminder could be effective, though sam cautions against over-relying on email notifications, which may devalue Discourse communications. alefattorini and downey highlight that many users unfamiliar with Q&A norms (like Stack Overflow) simply forget or don’t realize the value of marking an accepted answer. downey also points out that replying publicly bumps topics unnecessarily, while private messages lack visibility for community education. alefattorini notes the current workaround requires admins to manually review and mark solutions. A PR for this feature has been submitted by @bekicot erlend_sh. Alternatives like forum-only reminders (without email) are proposed loginerror and supported as less intrusive osioke, with the feature tagged as pr-welcome.

I see the feature in the Lithium Forums software: it send a letter to a question’s author in a week after the question to engage him to choose a solution:

Your topic recently received a reply.
Topic: …
Date: …
Did it solve your problem?
Click here to view the reply and mark one as an Accepted Solution.
This helps others find helpful answers in the community too!

11 Likes

As I just said here, it might be very effective:
https://meta.discourse.org/t/discourse-solved-accepted-answer-plugin/30155/117?u=alefattorini

Any thoughts about it? Just looking through the support category, I can notice that just 20 topics of 100 are checked as resolved. Is it a real stat? Or it’s only that OP doesn’t remind to check topic as solved?

I don’t know, I view the “accepted answer” as a “nice to have” as opposed to a “every loop in the system must be closed”

Bugging people with email is a two edged sword, it may be effective, it may cause them to devalue emails from Discourse.

1 Like

Yes, but simply people don’t remind to check or answer and confirm the solution. Often I have to mention them requesting their attention :slightly_smiling:

This is also a huge problem for us. If people aren’t accustomed to participating in Q&A communities like SO, for example, it doesn’t occur naturally to them that there’s any value in marking a reply as the Accepted Answer.

We could reply to the topic but that would only unnecessarily bump it. We could send a private message but that’s harder to track and people other than the poster won’t get any education that they too should accept answers.

2 Likes

Currenlty I MUST re-read the entire support topic checking the right answer and using admin’s powers!

1 Like

@bekicot submitted a PR for this:

https://github.com/discourse/discourse-solved/pull/67

6 Likes

How about a Forum reminder instead (without an email)?

3 Likes

That sounds better to me and less intrusive, it is pr-welcome so :wink:

4 Likes

Closed in favour of Automate reminders to mark solutions