OP question follow up encouragement idea suggestion

[CanadaEh]

I occurred to me that with an exception of few most trivial/newbie questions (e.g. is 20 week old bird in the picture a pullet or a roo?) it will be very valuable for the community the OP own answer to their question a few months later. For example:

"My conditions are such and such. Should I do this or that?" - There will be some answers/suggestions - but I would still like to know a few months later what OP have decided to do and how did it workout for him/her.

"Have anyone tried this? E.g. certain model incubator." - if no one tried it and OP decided to take a risk to experiment, it would be nice to know how it worked out.

"My bird is sick. The symptoms and pictures are..." - again a OP's followup would be beneficent for anybody stumbled on the thread with similar problems.

This is regardless how helpful community responses are, the most precise answer can be provided back by OP themselves, e.g. "this grown up to be a roo" or "whatever it was I managed to cure it with that" or "I bought it and at least for me it did not work properly".

Not sure how it could be implemented - "e.g. nagging alert to follow up on question asked 3 months ago with trophy points for following up?" - I leave to site admins to look into.

Please comment if you would find it useful or not...

 

[Kiki]

Awesome idea. Unfortunately most people just don't take the time to update their thread.

 

[Shadrach]

I occurred to me that with an exception of few most trivial/newbie questions (e.g. is 20 week old bird in the picture a pullet or a roo?) it will be very valuable for the community the OP own answer to their question a few months later. For example:

"My conditions are such and such. Should I do this or that?" - There will be some answers/suggestions - but I would still like to know a few months later what OP have decided to do and how did it workout for him/her.

"Have anyone tried this? E.g. certain model incubator." - if no one tried it and OP decided to take a risk to experiment, it would be nice to know how it worked out.

"My bird is sick. The symptoms and pictures are..." - again a OP's followup would be beneficent for anybody stumbled on the thread with similar problems.

This is regardless how helpful community responses are, the most precise answer can be provided back by OP themselves, e.g. "this grown up to be a roo" or "whatever it was I managed to cure it with that" or "I bought it and at least for me it did not work properly".

Not sure how it could be implemented - "e.g. nagging alert to follow up on question asked 3 months ago with trophy points for following up?" - I leave to site admins to look into.

Please comment if you would find it useful or not...

I think a follow up badge is a great idea.
If its a thread I've taken an interest in I've had to resort to sending a PM to find out what happened.

 

[Kiki]

I think a follow up badge is a great idea.
If its a thread I've taken an interest in I've had to resort to sending a PM to find out what happened.

Do they respond to the PM?
I find that most times if you ask in the thread for an update the OP usually comes back to give one.
Sometimes they simply forget because it isn't an "emergency" any more.

 

[CanadaEh]

it has to be something really important for me to resort to PM on other forums plus there is risk of significant delay if the member has not been active for a while (or not getting reply at all). It would be so great if any question thread would be concluded by OP's follow up.

Another technique to encourage OP followup could be to allow the OP to mark "the best answer" in the thread, including writing follow up a month or more later and marking it as "the best answer" (and with some sort of awards for most best answers)

 

[LoveMyChickenBabies]

I believe that it is a great idea! The only reason why I don't do that, is because after so long of not being on it, I don't get any alerts or anything, then I lose that thread and I can't find it anymore.

 

[CanadaEh]

E.g. stumbling on this thread https://www.backyardchickens.com/threads/odd-behavior-when-it-gets-dark.1281400/ in a couple of month, while I'd be curious which of the educated guesses/suggestions made was most helpful and how the issue was actually resolved, I would not bother to bug the OP for my educational purposes only (unless experiencing the very same issue and not finding the answer).

 

[alexa009]

it has to be something really important for me to resort to PM on other forums plus there is risk of significant delay if the member has not been active for a while (or not getting reply at all). It would be so great if any question thread would be concluded by OP's follow up.

Another technique to encourage OP followup could be to allow the OP to mark "the best answer" in the thread, including writing follow up a month or more later and marking it as "the best answer" (and with some sort of awards for most best answers)

Sounds like an intelligent idea but I'm not sure it would encourage every original poster's follow up just imho. It would increase the number of active op's. What kind of awards did you have in mind?

 

[NoFlyBackFarm]

I like this idea!

 

[CanadaEh]

What kind of awards did you have in mind?

either trophy points

Another technique to encourage OP followup could be to allow the OP to mark "the best answer" in the thread, including writing follow up a month or more later and marking it as "the best answer" (and with some sort of awards for most best answers)

or even better "best answers" number to be displayed similar to posts/likes/trophies under avatar