My position is that while a Moderator can try to mark the most appropriate post as an answer, he/she can't always do so.
There can be various reasons for this
- lack of time (finding the best answer means reading the entire thread)
- lack of competence in that particular issue (leading to a faulty decision)
- the fact that one person will think answer A is the best answer while others will think that answer B is the correct
- better answers can be added later.
I'm sure there are more.
It's refreshing that you are objecting to your own post being marked as an answer as most people object to not getting points "they deserve" by someone else's post being marked as an answer. You had proposed two posts in that thread as answers - one
your own and the other post presumably the one you think should have been marked as the answer. Had you proposed just one post I would probably have not looked further. By proposing two I had to decide which one.
One the second point.
There are an amazing amount of threads from 2007; 2008 and 2009 (some Jan 2009) that have in those days been marked as answered and yet have not been locked. Despite the age and the closed nature of most of these threads (i.e. a post has been marked as an
answer in them) people are still posting in Jan 2011 to them. Some of these posts are the quite pointless (at this stage) "Thanks, this helped me" posts but many are either new questions or questions that are only vaguely related to the question asked and
already answered in the thread. As people today tend to be using different versions (SP2 for instance) of the software than was available when the thread was live even related questions are no longer valid in such cases.
I am spending far too much time trying to Split off these new questions from these very old threads and as Split tends to work once in a blue moon not often having much success in doing so so those new posts get deleted and then I lock the old thread to
stop anyone else from jumping in to it.
Newer threads are being locked by me when the OP has marked a post as an answer or stated that X solves his question. By doing either he is stating that the original question posed by him has been answered. by locking it as soon as I see such a marking or
such an answer from the OP I am stopping people 1, 2 or 3 years down the line adding new questions to an already answered thread.
There may be rare situations when a locked post should be unlocked. If so a message in the forum to the Moderator with the URL of the locked thread (and with a suitable title) will get it unlocked if the request is justified. I'm shortly on holiday for five
weeks with much less forum access than normally but otherwise I will always see such posts within a 24-hour span and probably earlier. But I am trying to lock new threads only when such a request is not likely to occur or if it is isn't justified (perhaps
because the OP wants to add a new question in the old thread).
Finally: there was an example just today of why locking is needed. Within an hour the same person posted an almost identical post to seven different (old 2008, 2009) threads. He could do so because they were unlocked even though 6 of the 7 were marked as
answered. If left that would have meant seven parallel threads with the same question which would have been a massive waste of forum readers' time. (After trying many times to split a couple of these off, I deleted the lot).
Mike
SP 2010 "FAQ" (mainly useful links):
http://wssv4faq.mindsharp.com/default.aspx
WSS3/MOSS FAQ (FAQ and Links)
http://wssv3faq.mindsharp.com/default.aspx
Both also have links to extensive book lists and to (free) on-line chapters
