Well said. Adoption is… low.
For others viewing:
here is an example of a post where the Solution is used. Out of the last 100 posts where a user could mark a post as the solution, we’ve seen 1 use (and they marked their own post as the solution).
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So create an incentive. Your moderators can accept answers on their behalf too, as happens here on meta.
People won’t press extra buttons if they aren’t offered a carrot to do so.
Adding more buttons they won’t press isn’t a solution.
For long topics (50+ replies) maybe also consider pushing the summarise feature which will automatically focus on posts which have lots of likes and other interactions.
All this is known and has been discussed within our forums.
- Sellers aren’t all “hip” on Amazon deciding if an answer is the “Solution”
- Sellers see no real need to use the button. Kind of a let everyone read and decide for themselves
- Often there are multiple solutions
I believe @danny_amazon’s desire it just about how to get posters to use the button. On that I tend to agree some with @Stephen … as in there is really no incentive.
That’s what I see as a bottom line to the issue. Basically just an overall lack of “desire.” To that I have no answer at the moment …
Rob
You are missing the point and constantly talking about the sellers while the focus here should be on the staff. I assume you are all employees of Amazon and there should be a reasonable amount off staff on a board with 1.1k topics a week. If you can’t tell your staff to mark solutions, or better said; properly moderate such a big forum something is wrong on the management aspect or your staff training. It should not be such an hard job for even a small team to maintain this. Don’t expect your users to do this, properly train your staff.
The point of a solution is to redirect your users to the best solution and not make them choose between multiple solution. If they want multiple solutions, they will read the topic anyway. Big topics can be summarized and assuming the amounts of likes casted on your board suitable solutions are probably in these summaries.
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Give them a badge? It’s called Helpdesk here for the solutions.
(better than a T-shirt imo)
However, Amazon badges are few and far between, it seems they do not like to reward members or encourage competition. 
Please feel free to correct me if I am wrong and I do realise that this may vary from marketplace to marketplace.
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We’ve refrained from having our staff mark any answer as a solution. Our concern is that if sellers disagree, we’ll lose more trust than we’d be building. Open to thoughts if you view this from a different perspective.
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Our badging is left at the default that comes with Discourse. An area that I haven’t invested in as the impact is unclear to me. Do others have data on the benefits / value of investing in a badging system custom to the use case of the forum?
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You only make them mark solutions if it’s clear. I assume your staff has knowledge of the seller process and issues themself so they should be able to select the best solution. I picked one topic, you can clearly mark an answer here. If the seller is not happy with a marked solution, as TS they can change to solution to what makes them happy, if they don’t bother to mark anything they certainly would not care if the solution is not what they like?
I can understand Danny’s reticence.
If there were certain posters that dominated their forum by posting and replying to all subjects and categories the simple fact of clicking a solution button (even if they were correct) it would destroy all hope of discussion, interaction and a general forum respect,
more or less making it a one man show and therefore not very interesting or inviting for others to join , who would want to be part of that?
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@Tracey The goal here is for endusers to quickly find solutions to problems, not to encourage discussion in support topics? If you want discussion, then no, you don’t use a solution button. But I will quote @danny_amazon below:
It’s either you have discussion or you mark solutions to help find end users quickly find their answer to the quistion. Topics will automatically close after X days, leaving room for further discussion to a problem and maybe remark the solution if needed.
From above …
@danny_amazon is the only Amazon employee posting here. The rest of us just avid posters trying to help some.
The Amazon forums have only a few moderators. Far to few to mark messages solved, even if they thought it OK. There are "specialists within some categories who could do it, but again I think it would not bode well with users to see Amazon marking those threads. JMO.
This is I guess the crux of the issue. Amazon needs both as it is not just a “Help” section and does not have direct answers from Amazon themselves. It depends on users like myself providing direction for others, and that comes with discussion on what is correct (Side note: that is almost always unclear from Amazon on many topics. Sorry Danny.)
I’ve been a poster on Amazon for many years, in different Marketplaces and on forums about Sellers, MWS and even the Product Advertising API.
No iteration of any of those forums has completely served the posters, this last being overall better … but still not quite close enough.
I don’t know how to make this work at the moment, or if it is truly needed for anything more than Amazon themselves. But I do see a need for users to find answers faster than reading all the posts.
Maybe this thread will help solve that.
I know, I meant I assume they have staff on the forum. With “You” I refer to any individual dealing with this issue.
I understand the challenges here, not saying it was going to be easy, but I still think that consistent use of Solved will improve the board in any way. You don’t have to auto close so you can leave them open for discussions. But I am biased on closing topic when there is an answer. Users can always create followup topics.
If they don’t have enough staff, they can just follow the weekly top topics and mark these. Also, not all topics need to have a solution. I advice to just use this when you feel to.
My point here is: Every OP with a solution, will give the enduser a choice to quickly get a solution.
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This sounds like a cultural and organisational issue rather than a software issue. I’ve read this topic a couple of times now and I’m not sure how we can improve Discourse in any concrete way that will help.
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So in fact there is no solution to to the solution button!
Although it could be put in Discobots user tutorial so members learn how to use it correctly.
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There are heaps of ways to effect behaviour change, starting with education and modelling.
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