Closing Resolved Threads is Counter Productive!

[Winning]

IMO :). I'd like to suggest that in these forums when a thread is resolved, it simply be marked as resolved, why close it? As a new customer, again and again I have tried to do a search on a question I have. Often I will find a thread that addresses the exact issue I have but perhaps I am left still needing to clarify some some small piece of info. Being able to post in that thread would be invaluable, because I could quote the post that I need further clarification on and say "I understand what was said above, but I'm still having a small issue here" or whatever. Instead I have to start a thread all over again, write a much longer explanation than necessary if I could have just picked up in the previous thread, and then have to see a lot of info rehashed that was already in another thread. This makes no sense to me and seems counterproductive to the spirit of forums, where people are encouraged to use the existing body of community knowledge rather than just start a new thread every time they have a question.

I participate on Microsoft forums and they also mark threads resolved when they are answered for the OP, but they leave them open. And you'll find people searching and then adding to these threads just as I detailed above, all the time. IMO this is how it should be.

Thanks for listening.

[chilihead]

You are more likely to get support in your own topic than in one marked resolved ;)

[Michael]

You're free to link to old closed topics so that you don't need to rehash anything.

Honestly, so few topics actually get closed as resolved, relatively, that I don't see there's any point in changing this myself. If it were to change, I think what you're likely to see happen is that when the issue is resolved and someone else asks a new question, no one's likely to respond to that new question because the topic says it is resolved.

[Winning]

No problem with that happening at Microsoft forums at all, because people still look at new threads. So if a thread gets bumped, people look at it. The "resolved" could also include a date, so that if users see a bumped thread with a 6-month old date, they know it was just bumped.

[Winning]

You're free to link to old closed topics so that you don't need to rehash anything.

Good point, but IMO that does not work really well. People don't tend to want to open a thread, that have to open another thread and read that one, then go back to the thread and response there. It does not make for efficient communication. Again, I'm just giving my perspective coming from forums where it is done differently. I don't pretend that my opinion is the only valid one, even though I know it's the right one :P :D.

[AndyF]

Trouble is if they were not closed and someone replied with a similar issue, it might not have the same cause.

It could get quite messy in ensuring that it was the same underlying cause or not and not just the same symptoms. Its just easier to have a new topic for each one I feel as its 'specific' to your question(s)