New Posting Features - Discourage Trampling (For Help-Based Forums)

This product is aimed at discouraging your users from trampling the help posted by another member. I help administrate a math help forum, and our rules do not allow for people to post explanations of hints or a full solution within 24 hours of someone else posting help. This gives the OP time to respond to the initial help that was posted.

However, we get some that ignore this and go right ahead and ignore the judicious help posted by another aimed at getting the student to do the heavy lifting, and go ahead and post a full solution, thereby devaluing the help already posted. Our goal is to help a student learn, not do their homework for them.

This product will display an alert if the last post in a thread was not posted by the OP nor by the user attempting to post and if this last post was posted within the threshold in hours that you define in the settings.



To Install:

In AdminCP go to Plugins & Products -> Manage Products -> Add/Import Product.

Click on "Choose File" and browse to the product xml file that was packaged in the .zip file.

Click "Import"

You MUST set your settings to enable the mod. Each setting has an explanation of its use.



Support for this product can be found here:

• MHB - Discourage Trampling (For Help-Based Forums)
• TAZ - Discourage Trampling (For Help-Based Forums)

[concepts]

Wait, can this work when creating then attempting to post a NEW thread to a specified forum?

[kh99]

lol, if this were installed here I would hardly ever post. I really never thought about it but I guess I do this all the time. But I also expect it to be done to me if someone else can help or sees I'm not on the right track.

[MarkFL]

Originally Posted by kh99

lol, if this were installed here I would hardly ever post. I really never thought about it but I guess I do this all the time. But I also expect it to be done to me if someone else can help or sees I'm not on the right track.

I wouldn't use this product here if I were an admin.

I think the atmosphere is different here...we are not helping students, trying to engage them in the learning process. The kind of scenario I initially wrote this is where a student might ask for help with finding the roots of a quadratic equation, and helper 1 asks the student if they have tried to use the quadratic formula, and if so can they identify a, b and c.

Then helper 2 comes along an hour later and posts a complete solution, thereby destroying help 1's attempt to guide the student, and help them learn to work quadratic equations on their own rather than just spoon-feeding the solution to them, which does little in the way of teaching them.

[kh99]

I see. I didn't mean to comment on the usefulness of your product, only on the fact that I know I sometimes "intrude" on people here trying to help someone, and I never really thought that it might be impolite.

[MarkFL]

Originally Posted by kh99

I see. I didn't mean to comment on the usefulness of your product, only on the fact that I know I sometimes "intrude" on people here trying to help someone, and I never really thought that it might be impolite.

I found your comment useful because it will make folks think harder about whether they really need something like this, which I will readily admit will not be for everyone, in fact relatively few will likely find they need or want something like this.

Here I think all help is welcome, and it is not seen as trampling if you add to what someone else has posted...you are not undermining an attempt to engage a student to do the heavy lifting.