Marking a topic as SOLVED or not ?

[Mind Calamity]

So, I've seen this practiced on many forums that I've been/am a member of, but since I've been here on OGRE I've seen many people say that it's bad practice and/or that it prevents further discussion on the topic, so here's a poll, let's see the opinion of the whole community in one place.

[nikki]

I guess it prevents people looking to answer questions in the help forums from having to click on a topic and read it all the way to the end to find out that the problem's been solved. This way they can quickly recognize the topics in the help forums that haven't been solved yet and address them.

[spacegaier]

As already mentioned there are two sides to this medal. One is ease for people wanting to help others out versus the risk of dismissing potentially still active and important discussions.

So in order for this solved/unsolved topic to work, I think we would need some sort of little forum mod that would allow everyone to flag a thread as solved and also revert that state in case the discussion gets reopen or a tightly linked follow-up issues arises. The reason is that, if only the thread opener is able to mark the thread as solved via changing the title (which AFAIk is the only way - apart from having mod rights ) you would always have to ask the thread opener to flag the thread which they will or will not do. So to eventually reach a consistent state, this process needs to be made as easy as possible and get separated from the thread opener. That is at least how I see it...

[mkultra333]

Most people seem to mark their own threads when done. I do mine. That doesn't stop someone coming in and adding something if there's a better answer, or even the original poster changing the status if they realize their solution didn't work after all. So the current system seems ok to me.

[Transporter]

It's possible to make this more comfortable. There exists a prefix add on for phpBB.

[lonewolff]

To me, it helps me identify helpfull threads when looking for information.

If they are [Solved] I know I am looking at a usefull thread.

[jacmoe]

If people are posting new questions in a topic marked [Solved] I am usually ignoring it.

[duststorm]

I also prefer marking, I recommend it to most people when their question gets solved.
Threads marked with solved are good candidates to look into when you have a similar question, on the other hand it organizes the forum better as other helpers have a better view of what has been answered and what not.
About the other side of the medal, I think that if you see a new thread you might know something about, even if it's marked as solved, nothing holds you back of taking a look. Who knows, you might learn something yourself or have something to add.