Amending topic title

The majority of our topics are general discussions and really don't lend themselves to reaching some sort of concluded state. Frequently, that type of structure is used for personal support queries, where a person asks support personnel for help and upon getting it, the topic is basically over. Here, only a few of our threads work like that, and in most of those cases, those topics don't end there. Generally, someone else comes along with additional or related questions, which then moves the thread back to an in-progress state until they get their answer. And round it goes.

We debated using that type of structure here in the past, but, found that the continuation posts by others as described above, limited its usefulness. The only place it seemed to work was in the spyware cleaning forum where each thread handled only a single infection incident and other members could not bump reply into someone else's thread. When an infection was fixed, the thread was over and closed.

 

Well, the problem with an "okay to close" function is that a thread really does not belong to just the person who started it. If all we did was one on one support questions, then yes, but, usually many other people reply to the same threads. Done for one may not mean done for all. As an example, let's look at the current SpywareBlaster update issue and the Avira update problem in the Javacool section. Once the person who started the initial thread got their work-around, they may have clicked an "okay to close" button, but, since then a lot of other people have been posting about the issue. For some, the work-around works. For some it doesn't. Everyday, more people arrive and ask about the problem.

Basically, it is extremely rare that any thread here is posted and done after a few replies. Maybe a small handful could be closed like that, but, usually that's not the case.