It's a common science that people should look up the previous threads before starting a new topic or question, actually not only newbies got loads of questions (like myself), even those senior players in this forum still will encounter problems they are not sure and they would like to ask here as well. Except discussions on those new fashion equipments, a lot of questions are old questions, which might have been discussed numbers of times, but still, it is extemely difficult to find out the right answer from previous threads. Why? For example, if you wanna know how to clean your shoes, you will eventually find this thread: http://www.badmintoncentral.com/forums/showthread.php?t=4725&highlight=cloth This topic is about 6 pages, and there are over 100 replies with various answers, it took me over 20 minutes to read through and still i can't get the answer about which is the best solution. This thread is only a "mini","tiny" topic compare to thousands of others which contain thousands of replies. Also this shoe cleaning topic is not a very hot topic either. If you tries to find out some infomation about certain racket...I bet you will end up with endless seeking and reading. Thanks people who established this forum and thanks those seniors and those experienced users, they have been helping others, giving people advices. They shared their experiences, which make those threads useful, which forms the fortune of the forum. But now, these fortune becomes more and more difficult to utilize. since sometimes you may find there isn't a clear answer even you finished hundreds pages of reading; sometimes, there is a answer, but hide into thousands of replies, you might be able to find it out, but it may take you ages to do so. more and more, sadly, the fortune becomes junks.... So can I suggest... is it possible that, anyone who starts a thread to ask a question, after the question is discussed and concluded, can he/she (or ones who have been following the thread throughout) write a small conclusion, even there isn't a clear conclusion, it can be concluded as "no clear conclution, but people suggests...." it maybe feel a little bit inconvenient at the beginning, but I believe it will change the forum to be better value in use, for every badminton enthusiastic fan.
the only problem with that is, there might still be pages of posts after the starter of the thread has posted the small conclusion, it might not be easy to find this conclusion if the thread is pages and pages long. unless the mods can make it such that the conclusion is copied to the front of the thread, maybe pasted in as the second post after the initial question. hard work though!
There's always no right or wrong answer in discussion, therefore, I can pretty much say 99.999% threads will conclude like that, which means useless. Like Dreamzz stated, ppl can and still willing to share stories after the original poster thinks "enough". Why shut the door on them? The "search 1st" suggestion only applies to extremely common type of questions. No one wants to repeat the same answer 5 times a day. However, for your case, if you believe your question is rarely discussed and/or you want to further discuss it with another point of view, then, "repeat" is more than welcome.
it's not for some certain case, but those discuss are very valuable, sometimes people needs some quick & right response, a new thread can't provide that in time. I am saying to do something to those valuable discussions, make them useful for the future, for those who is new... start from now on
Will it be enough to give the thread starter an option to close the thread? For example, after a couple day, Foreverlove want to close the thread because he/she feel the goal has been reached. However, I as a late comer (because I was on vacation) feel I have some secret I want to share with everyone. Should I start another thread or should the original thread be kept open to start with? Sorry for the bad input...
For threads with some conclusions/good advice, Create a sticky that links to all conclusions, possibly indexed by topic After a topic is thoroughly discussed, start a new thread, post the conclusions along with a link to the original thread(s), and have the sticky link to the conclusion. Close the original thread. If more discussion needs to be added by latecomer, latecomer can post to the conclusion thread. When that thread gets too long, create new conclusion thread, and replace the link on the sticky. There's probably better ways to organize, but I'm too tired to think right now..
IMHO, why not create Wiki side by side with the forum? Forum naturally for discussion, I think will be hard to keep a good information eventhough it stickied due to the nature of forum.. Wiki on other hand is better for keeping those information but then not designed for discussion like a forum.
Yes totally agree with that. Maybe put the information after a good discussion over in forum and after almost all agree that its worth to be put into Wiki, also make the Wiki only editable by some users (mods, or some known users).