Excel Tread could use Sub-Forums: New Posts get Burried too Quickly

[MrCreosote]

The Excel Forum is mega awesome and mega huge too.

While obviously one of the most popular on the internet, it poses a problem because posts come in so frequently, they get buried before the community can see them and respond.

The only way to slow things down is to provide sub-forums such as

• Charts
• Macros
• Formulas
• Databases
• Pivot Tables
• Finding Functions: VLookup, Match, Index, Indicrect
• etc.

 

[Peter_SSs]

Thanks for your interest in the performance of the forum. Your suggestion has been made many times before - if you search this 'About This Board' forum you will find quite a few such threads. In various of those threads you will find quite a few reasons why such a split has not been made, in fact the number of forums has been consolidated.

In a nutshell, some of the main reasons are that many beginners (even non-beginners) don't really know what the best solution to their problem is (eg they ask for a macro because they didn't think a worksheet function existed for their problem when it did. They ask for INDEX/MATCH, not knowing about SUMIF etc). If you have a question about a macro to make a chart, do you put it in Charts, or Macros?

In any case, although a question may move down the pages quite quickly, many of the prolific helpers frequently list the 'Zero Reply Posts' - link at top left of page - so those unanswered questions that get buried quickly still get looked at by quite a few people.

 

[MrCreosote]

Oops, should have know. I stated the obvious.

But didn't see the Zero Responses Button (!) What a GREAT idea!

Just a thought on that one: Once you get a single reply, then your post does get buried? Maybe some kind of metric like allow Searcher to select Fewer Than N Replies or develop an "intelligent" test for finding burried threads? Something like a 20 thread moving average of responses and tag the 1 or 2 with the fewest responses as Buried. Just thinking.... Lots of ways to do this. Also allow a Closed marker to get those threads out of the big list maybe or have a Hide Closed Threads Button.
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My particular frustration was that I had to wage through pages to find my posts to see if anyone responded. Of course then I discovered the best way is to go through my profile.

WOULD THIS BE POSSIBLE:?

Your example: Charts AND Macros:

You could have the two sub-forums AND a single thread that would be listed and accessed in BOTH sub-forums!

So you would have the best of both worlds: specific sub-division and NO thread duplication.

I don't think any forum has done this and it is probably the case that the forum platforms do not allow it anyway.

Oh well....
Thanks for the reply )

 

[shg]

My particular frustration was that I had to wage through pages to find my posts to see if anyone responded

Shouldn't need to.

Unless you've changed your default settings, you automatically subscribe to any thread in which you post, which includes the threads you start. Just click on Subscribed Threads in the menu bar.

 

[Peter_SSs]

Maybe some kind of metric like allow Searcher to select Fewer Than N Replies ...

Advanced Search (near top right of page) -> click 'Search Single Content Type' tab -> chosse any options you want towards the top pf the page but -> Find Threads with -> At Most -> N Replies -> Search Now

Also allow a Closed marker to get those threads out of the big list maybe or have a Hide Closed Threads Button.

Closing threads has also been suggested many times. It has been considered and discounted dues to the many threads where the OP says his problem is solved but later another member suggests ..

- a new macro that only takes 1/10 the time to run as the suggested macro, or

- a new formula that only requires 2 functions instead of the originally suggested formula that contained 8 function calls, or

- a Pivot Table where the original 'Solved' suggestion involved several hundred complicated SUMPRODUCT formulas

.. etc

If threads were closed, we would miss out on most if not all those great new suggestions.

It's the old saying "people don't know what they don't know".