I must say, having ones post somehow "end" the thread with no response or acknowledgement feels nasty. It happens to me often, and I never know whether the thread came to a natural end, or if others just got fed up with my verbosity, and chose not to engage any further. I sometimes do avoid posting for exactly that reason, especially in the Beginner forum; I do not want to be the only one giving advice.
You just need to try to work with your self-esteem.
No, that's not the issue. You see, if I wanted to be the only one dispensing advice, I'd do that at my own web page; I even have a domain ready for that, if the fancy strikes me. And while I definitely am no
expert, I have lots and lots of
experience in various things I'm very proud of and willing to discuss.
While I do have some self-esteem issues, mostly my issues are with
communication. As you know, I'm
never shy of providing my own opinion or viewpoint.
The issue is that a single viewpoint is just a single viewpoint. When both questions and answers have quite a lot of guesses and "noise" involved – well, questions mostly lack necessary information, rather than have too much information or useless information in them –, each answer includes a set of undisclosed assumptions, which may or may not be correct. (I sometimes answer questions based on an informed guess – based on past observations of similar questions – and they suprisingly often hit the asker's target, but equally often weird out other potential answerers as to "what made you think they asked about
that?)
Consider a collegial coffee break or beer after work, where someone describes a problem they're having with something, and one of the group makes a suggestion on how to proceed or solve the issue. Then, consider the three cases of how the situation continues:
- The group simply disbands, people looking at their empty cups or glasses, and either go get a refill or back to their work.
- Other members of the group make assent noises or nods, look at their empty cups or glasses, and either go get a refill or back to their work.
- Someone (or more than one) says "hey, that's a good idea; thanks for suggesting that, I'll have to rememer it myself too". Then, everyone looks at their empty cups or glasses, and either go get a refill or back to their work.
The first one is what happens now. You may not believe this, but I'm actually quite emphatic, and whenever I detect that situation in real life, end up chatting with the asker, just to avoid them having to experience that silence. On the net, it is harder to do.
The second is what I'd like to have: an
Agree button. Not only does it solve the problem Dave is asking whether the forum should have designated "Expert" forum users –– helping new members and basically everyone evaluate suggestions made, without trying to change the posting culture so that people would post much more "I agree, that's what I'd suggest too" posts. It is also very easy, a single click.
The third is the existing "Thanks" option, from my own perspective. Because of the perception of a pure "Thank you" in different cultures, different members treat it differently. Some use it as a pure acknowledgement –– say, like looking at whoever is talking now, showing that what they are saying is being considered and thought of -–; some like myself use it somewhat as a mix of the second and third cases above, depending on the subject; some use it as a bookmark; and some think it is such a strong endorsement that it should be used sparingly, or it will lose its value, lowering the signal-to-noise ratio unacceptably.
Unfortunately, it looks like the forum software does not currently support or have any easy way to implement a separate
Agree button that would work exactly like Thanks, but be separate. So my favourite suggestion is unfortunately out.
Therefore, the "best" option, in my opinion and experience with technical forums, would be to combine the Thanks button with Agree/Assent/Concur.
While the change would be just to the text shown on the page (on the button and in statistics), it might be a clever solution to the underlying problem Dave is considering adding "Expert" user classification for. For members, it just means that if they read a thread, and they see a solution they themselves would suggest if it had not already been suggested, or if they agree with the suggestion and have some experience with the problem or similar problems, they are encouraged to click on the
Thanks/Agreed button.
On the
Help page –– right next to the Home button on the link bar ––, this could be described explicitly; as well as on the pages intended for new members to read, and on the Forum rules etc.
In a real sense, this would be the social engineering option to solve an underlying problem for which a technical solution has been suggested.