an OP can indicate that any of the replies attached to their post are an "accepted answer"
this way, scanning the headlines on a post you can see "oh, that OP found an answer" or not... this gives the OP the power to say "*That* is what I was looking for" so if you have the same problem, you can easily focus in on the relevent reply(s), reading the others only to fill the context or gather other info.
this idea is not my own, it is in use on AskMetaFilter and I must say it is quite helpful, it also provides a(n additional?) smooth, creamy ego boost to the poster that supplied the "answer", maybe even toss said answerer some bonus XP too (not that they wouldn't already get that XP from the increased attention to their post, the "answer")
so, for an illustration, go and read some comments associated with any question that has a small checkmark next to where it says "X comments" - those have "answers"
...it could be argued though that XP fills this niche, albeit even better by allowing "gradients" of "answers" and letting the hive mind decide rather than the OP.
but ah, shall we discuss?
It's not what you look like, when you're doin' what youre doin'.
It's what youre doin' when youre doin' what you look like youre doin'!
- Charles Wright & the Watts 103rd Street Rhythm Band
IMHO, this need can be adequately addressed by OPs adding an Update to their root post, saying "I found Phil's and Meghan's answers were what I was looking for" or some such.
That works -- unless the original question was asked anonymously.
I know, there are a whole list of other reasons against anonymous posting, but this just adds one more reason.
This also requires retraining the population as a whole, which anyone who's had to deal with IT security knows can be a losing battle.
(I'd also prefer to see updates handled in a more consistant manner -- it's up to the poster to mark what the changes to the post are, and they may make significant changes without marking that they were changed, or when they were changed, etc, making it look as if people responding to the messages are idiots by their comments)
I can maybe see this for the Q&A section, but I don't feel there's a need for it, because the "correctness" of the answers is already indicated by their ordering underneath the question (the answer with the highest XP rank is first etc.).
For all other sections, and particularly for SoPW I'd be opposed, it's called Seekers of Wisdom, not Seekers of Answers, because you can learn as much (if not more) from nodes which go off on tangents or present slightly less suitable solutions as from ones that just answer the question directly. Also, I'm not sure the OP is always the most qualified to judge which answer is best, and TIMTOWDI makes it hard to choose the "best" answer anyway.
All dogma is stupid.
While I think tirwhan overstates the difference between seeking wisdom and seeking answers, the essential point is correct.
For better or worse, SoPW has evolved as a place for asking nearly ephemeral questions. While we can take steps to improve the timelessness of some worthy threads, it remains that most SoPW threads become stale, and then smelly, after some period of time. The crowd's attention has passed on to the newer articles. Everyone should just assume that if no one has replied in a thread for a few weeks, the subject has been forgotten. There's no point in trying to keep it on life support.
So if, as an OP, you haven't gotten satisfaction after a couple weeks, just post a new SoPW. You'll probably have learned enough that it will more than a mere repetition of the first post. (And when you do this, it's recommended that you include a link back to the previous thread, for context.)
In contrast to how SoPW works, we have the node 1843 section. Here, questions are concisely framed, and all answers are supposed to meet some minimum standard of quality, in terms of how well they address the question. If you think your question is so important that it ought to be visible in eternity — including potentially receiving answers — then posting it as a Categorized Question is appropriate.
First, many SoPW nodes are created by AnonyMonk, so updates by the "owner" of the thread's root node are problematic.
Second, it's not uncommon for the "right answer" in a SoPW thread to end up being a combination of distinct contributions from different replies -- that is, no single reply contains the "complete" right answer, and to really understand a solution, a reader needs to track the thread linearly, which is what people normally do already.
(update: fixed grammar)
It is seldom that there is one best answer to a SoPW - either the question has a fairly obvious answer and many replies of similar merit are posted at essentially the same time, or the question is explored in many different directions, often at great length, by several monks. In both cases it would often be wrong to single out "the one best answer", especially as doing so may mean that other worthy answers don't get posted.
It is worth remembering at this point that SoPW nodes server two purposes - to provide the product of others wisdom to help the seaker find a solution, and to share that wisdom with others who may have a similar problem. To that end damping down the enthusiasm for posting a variant answer by saying "don't bother trying, the best answer has been posted" is somewhat counter productive.
A better solution, as suggested above, is to tag the OP's node as having had a suitable reply. In principal at least a standard notation in the OP's node could cause a suitable class attribute to be added to the heading line HTML so that it is obvious which posts need attention, and which have an answer the OP deems suitable (but are worth reading for interest and enlightenment of course).
DWIM is Perl's answer to Gödel
I had a similar idea before. It wasn't highly received, nor many other similar ideas that one can find via Super Search.
Perhaps we just need to start doing it Tanktalus (adding (Solved) to our node titles as appropriate). Have to admit, I have never rememberd to do that, but it wouldn't take too many examples of it being done for the idea to be adopted I think.
DWIM is Perl's answer to Gödel
To echo tirwhan and jdporter and expand slightly:
- If a "best" answer for a given question exists, many times it depends on how that answer applies to the OP and should not be considered a "best" answer for all situations. For example, choosing an appropriate sorting algorithm and deciding whether or not to slurp a file prior to processing are both highly dependent on the context of the OP. How many elements need to be sorted? How expensive are the sorting comparisons? How big are the files? One size does not fit all.
For this reason, I would prefer that the OP simply update the root post to indicate which replies were particularly helpful. I would hate to see some poor monk read a thread that concludes "slurping is the best choice", then go off and try to slurp a 20 GB file into memory (and inevitably posting to SOPW pleading "I used the best approach, why isn't this working?"). - Multiple replies, none of which answer the OP entirely on their own, can work together to fully answer the OP by each addressing different aspects of the overall solution. One post may comment on coding style or areas that could be buggy, another may address the choice of algorithm, another may suggest a module from CPAN, etc. Each reply could benefit the OP - how would you choose which is "best"?
- This type of question has been discussed before, but often in the context of flagging unanswered questions (which, of course, requires some method to identify appropriate answers). You can use Super Search to find them, but here are a few:
Just my 0.02.
Update: Well, you can add graff, GrandFather, and Tanktalus to the list in the first paragraph. I guess that's what I get for taking the time to Super Search before posting. :-)
(Ok, -- me at will for this one, but I couldn't resist.) ;)
acid06
perl -e "print pack('h*', 16369646), scalar reverse $="
I think this idea is probably not a good one, though your case is presented logically and well. My reasoning is that an OP getting an answer to a Perl question is only one part of the whole SoPW process and what it can offer us all.
First, a multitude of answers offers people many different ways of approaching a problem. Even though the OP may find one of these quite sufficient, it is good for people to see the wide variety of possibilities that are often available. Second, the OP may need something quick and dirty, just to get a particular job done, and will gladly take the first thing that works. And that's fine - that's what s/he needed at the time. But to stop the answers at that point may deny us from seeing some very creative, even eloquent possibilities. Some of the Perl idioms are truly works of art.
I think maybe the point I'm making is contained in the title of the section - 'Seekers of Perl wisdom'. Whether intentional or not, that title suggests that we're getting more than just answers to questions. We're getting the attitude behind the code, the Perlish ways of thinking that make this such a unique and fun language. The 'wisdom', as it says. Really, it's more than just 'Answers to Perl Questions'.