It is not unusual for TS's to disappear into the Internet wilderness after getting responses and give no follow-up. For myself, I find that frustrating. I put a lot of time (average about 30 minutes) into my responses -- not that I don't have a quick opinion, but from a lifetime in "academic" life, I feel that a citation is very helpful to separate the wheat from the chaff.

Virtually every online merchant sends a feedback questionnaire after a purchase. Maybe AAC can consider something similar and non-intrusive to allow those who tried to help to obtain closure.

DRAFT
After a thread is dead for 1 week, AAC sends the TS a very short questionnaire:
1) Was your question solved
2) No longer interested
3) Still working on it
4) Ignore -- you will not be bothered again (or no response)
5) I am responding for the estate...

Then, a final post can be made automatically or a flag inserted into the TS's profile of posts.

EDIT: Of course that would not occur for locked threads, OT threads, and maybe others.

 

Well the way I see it is.. The same question will have been asked on MANY MANY web sites.. They will get varying answers and will then just use the thread on the site that proves the "easiest" for them.

Sending a PM or email maybe a good idea.. I'm sure there is a way to get a button so the helpee ( You ) can press in that sort of condition..

 

hi jp,
On rare occasions we do get some positive feedback from a 'satisfied' TS, when that happens I make a point of thanking the TS for the feedback.
Also I try to encourage them to post their results/circuits so that others with a similar project may find their work helpful.

Most TS's, I suspect use the 'shot gun' approach, they blast every technical website with the identical question, cherry picking answers that get them a quick fix.

As an extra note, I see an increase in TS's using the 'Like' button just to draw the 'helper' back onto their thread, rather than the '@name' tag.
This makes the Likes count meaningless IMO.

E

 

hi jp,
On rare occasions we do get some positive feedback from a 'satisfied' TS, when that happens I make a point of thanking the TS for the feedback.
Also I try to encourage them to post their results/circuits so that others with a similar project may find their work helpful.

Most TS's, I suspect use the 'shot gun' approach, they blast every technical website with the identical question, cherry picking answers that get them a quick fix.

As an extra note, I see an increase in TS's using the 'Like' button just to draw the 'helper' back onto their thread, rather than the '@name' tag.
This makes the Likes count meaningless IMO.

E

Hi Eric,

I agree and have seen your posts to that effect. As for your added note, I disagree to an extent. Nothing can make "likes" more meaningless.

 

It would be interesting to see how many would reply John. I guess very few.

Occasional OPs would not even recognize the name of the forum where they got a maybe very useful reply but mentally qualify the message as spam. Myself, I rarely reply requests about my satisfaction for any fake or real product I got.

BTW, digressing now, a like means too many things, one of them is "I agree", the other is "thanks" and God knows what else. Too broad I think.

 

I know that I am pretty sensitive to sites sending me unsolicited e-mails and probably would not appreciate receiving something like that from a site I had just joined -- it would make me not want to participate again and make me wonder what other e-mails they are going to figure I'm just dying to receive.

As for the likes -- they are somewhat meaningful in the individual case. You see a post that has a few likes, you can usually determine fairly easy what the general intent of those specific likes is. But the likes count is pretty useless. Beyond being able to say that there is something generally positive being said about a person that has lots and lots of likes, you can't say much.