[Ted S]

Originally Posted by Spinball

Some questions/suggestions.
1) I think it would be useful to allow people to switch the 'helpful answer' functionality on for a particular thread when they create a it. I think this is preferable to allowing people to vote into threads which are not appropriate for voting. E.g. 'You'll never guess who I bumped into on holiday'. It would be a tickbox in the new thread page. Is this doable?

Possible, sure. It's just not designed to to that.

2) Would it be possible to allow people to vote for one post in a thread only? I.e. if they vote for a new post, their previous vote for a different post is removed? That way, if a better answer is posted and people vote for it, the older, less useful post will lose votes and hopefully fall more rapidly below the new post in popularity.

Yes it would be. This requires one additional SQL check on voting.

3) Displaying the most helpful answer. How difficult would it be to, if there is a helpful answer voted, display a line under the first post (a bit like the 'Thank you' line in the Post Thank You mod) which shows there is a 'most helpful answer'. The line has the usual category open/collapse button. The button is collapsed by default. When someone clicks the open button, the post is displayed like when you expand/contract a category. So you show the thread like we're used to seeing threads, but if people want to see the most helpful answer, they just click the open button in the line under the first post.

The first part is simple enough and already offered. Getting the post to show up directly is tricky since you have to query and build it which seems redundant. Why not just link to it directly and avoid the server load?

Interesting stuff that I'll definitely consider after building the 4.0 version.