It is often very easy to find answers to questions, but sometimes what works isn't what's best. It would be great if moderators could look at solutions and mark them as best practices as appropriate. This would definitely help solve real world problems, but also give young programmers insight into what constitues preferential methods, and just as importantly, why.
Marking for best practices would help. But if that is done half-heartedly, then the quality of markings would be poor. For example some practice is not best though it is marked as such or some problem doesn't have a marking at all even though there are solutions. And what if there is a better practice somewhere else? How the practice is updated by a random user, if it requires a moderator to update the marking?
Also I would expect deeper categorization of the subjects. For example "basic language features" is not deep enough, but like "string-manipulation" under it would be fine.
Edited bySilvercodeThursday, August 14, 2008 1:06 PMFixed typos
Mattfras - the tags may be useful, but my suggestion would be tied into the "mark post as answer" paradigm, and in my opinion should be restricted to moderators, and MVP's. On the other hand, if it were tied into the points system, the option just wouldn't show for anyone with, say, less than 4 medals.
Silvercode has valid points though. The people so marking posts need to do it when the post really does have merit. This is specifically why the tags aren't suited to the job - anyone can make them, and certainly "anyone" isn't always qualified.
I don't think posts so marked should be updated - the author has the option of adding a new comment on the thread. As for Better Practices - well... what one person thinks is a best practice might not be shared by another MVP. Maybe the first MVP is right, and maybe he isn't, but either way, having the answer has got to be better than not having it, and should in most all cases be perferred.
This might be nice to have, but I feel that the forum interface is literally littered (how's that for alliteration?) with features that someone once thought might be nice to have, but which in fact are hardly ever used. Vote as helpful or unhelpful, for example.
My personal opinion is that the forums need fewer features, not more. More features, more bugs, more clutter.
IMHO, NNTP with Google Groups provides a posting/searching functionality far superior to that provided by these forums, and I think a major reason for that is the simplicity of NNTP.
