October 23, 2002 at 5:21 pm
As most of you know we try very hard to make sure everyone who posts a question gets at least one reply. We (Steve, Brian, and myself) try to monitor the active discussions and catch any that fall through - after all, nothing more depressing than to need help with a problem and get no help!
To try to raise our service level we're beta testing a new feature that will post a follow up reply 5 days after the topic is posted...if there have been zero replies. When this happens you'll see text hopefully close to this:
No one has responded to this topic yet. Even if you don't have a complete answer, the original poster will appreciate any thoughts you have!
When you see that...and you have time...try to post something, even if only to ask a question to clarify or offer a suggestion about a resource that might help.
We'll run it for a while and see what you think. Any early comments?
Andy
October 23, 2002 at 7:33 pm
Have you considered maybe a zero reply option similar in function to active threads. And also may want to note last poster name is Site Owners somewhere so new folks understand.
"Don't roll your eyes at me. I will tape them in place." (Teacher on Boston Public)
October 24, 2002 at 4:30 am
That's not a bad idea. We'll wait to see what other feedback we get, but that sounds worth doing as well.
Good point - all the follow up replies will originate from 'Site Owners' both so you can easily identify it and to keep it from being added to our individual totals, Steve and I having a back and forth contest to see who can answer more posts!
Andy
October 24, 2002 at 8:10 am
I would shrink the time interval. If someone has a serious issue, 5 days may be a long time to wait. What about either 24 or 48 hours?
K. Brian Kelley
http://www.truthsolutions.com/
Author: Start to Finish Guide to SQL Server Performance Monitoring
http://www.netimpress.com/shop/product.asp?ProductID=NI-SQL1
K. Brian Kelley
@kbriankelley
October 24, 2002 at 8:49 am
Need to not do this on sections such as Content Discussions and other items that have no reason for someone to neccessarily reply.
Ex.
"Don't roll your eyes at me. I will tape them in place." (Teacher on Boston Public)
October 24, 2002 at 6:25 pm
Both sound good. Brian, I agree about the timeliness issue, just wasnt sure how the community would want it. What about weekends by the way? We dont do much traffic then, so if the 24-48 hour period ends on Sat/Sun, defer until Monday? Antares, I'll have to see how we code those to filter, but will get to it soon, probably this weekend.
Andy
October 24, 2002 at 7:00 pm
Well done boys. I'm from Argentina and it been a short time since I reply to the topics.
I spent most of the time submitting scripts, but I understand the need from a lot of people to get at least one answer. I would like to thank all of you to concern about the topics so much.
October 25, 2002 at 2:48 am
Good idea here. Sometimes things get overlooked and scroll off into never never land.
I think that 24 or 48 hours is too short. 5 days (or a week) is more appropriate. If someone has serious issues, I'm not sure they should be relying on a website for resolving their problems. (Nice that you guys think that way though).
Perhaps you need a new topic called "Critical Problems" or something along those lines? Or maybe some sort of urgency ranking for each post and gauge the autoreply off that. Critical posts get a 24 hours autoreply, non critical get 5 days, something like that. Of course, this lends itself to abuse.
Just my 2 centimes....
October 25, 2002 at 5:07 am
Now we're cooking - good discussion to have. Critical problems isnt bad either. What counts as critical is pretty tough - if you dont know how detach works and you need it now, thats critical! On the other hand, if its truly important, spend the cash to call MS I guess.
So is one better than the other - the zero replies option done like active threads could be customized per user for those that want to use it, maybe leave the actual posting to the topic for 5 days? Or is posting to the topic more effective, one less place to look?
If we can nail this down the next step is to try to determine when topics are resolved. Some are just open ended and that is fine - in other cases would be nice to poll the user to see if they got an answer that helped, if not, see if someone in the community can try again.
Andy
October 25, 2002 at 6:40 am
I think the combination of a link as suggested by Antares and leaving the time at 5 days would work. Crticial threads should be seen by the first mechanism and the second mechanism serves to bring the topic back up to the general community.
K. Brian Kelley
http://www.truthsolutions.com/
Author: Start to Finish Guide to SQL Server Performance Monitoring
http://www.netimpress.com/shop/product.asp?ProductID=NI-SQL1
K. Brian Kelley
@kbriankelley
October 31, 2002 at 6:06 pm
November 1, 2002 at 3:17 am
Nice work, chaps, both this idea and the site generally.
It may be useful to have a flag so that people who are just making an announcement and are not expecting a reply can indicate this. See, for example, the thread "Upcoming Changes to MS Knowledge Base Articles" in AllForums / Anything that is NOT about SQL. Similarly, the various SQLSpy / SQLInsider etc forums (fora?)
Just a thought...
Edited by - ThomasRushton on 11/01/2002 03:18:48 AM
Thomas Rushton
blog: https://thelonedba.wordpress.com
November 1, 2002 at 4:46 am
Agreed. We filtered out the new article posts, but that does leave some. I think maybe we could check to see if the topic is locked. Give me a day or two.
Let me float this idea while we're more or less on the topic. What would you think about us doing an email follow up to the original poster, say 3 days after the post, asking if they received an answer, did it help them solve the problem, etc? 3-5 questions we could use to gauge the impact/effectiveness. In addition, anyone who still did not receive an answer/helpful answer we could try to do a follow up with.
Andy
November 10, 2002 at 6:29 pm
I've updated it to exclude locked topics, so please lock anything that you think doesnt require a follow up - security announcements, etc. Not a big deal if you dont lock it.
I'd like to thank everyone who is helping reply to the ones that initially slip through - we're doing great!
Andy
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