What are the thoughts about reposting questions that go unanswered? Occasionally a post or problem goes unanswered and I was wondering about the appropriateness of reposting such a question.

I'm not talking about questions like "I need a script that has form to edit my database and get me an A+.", but rather posts that are somewhat well thought out and have some merit. From my own experience, questions go unanswered for a variety of reasons, some having nothing to do with the quality of the message. For instance, many monks aren't around on the weekend (sometimes myself included) and a lot of worthy posts can slip under the radar by Monday. Occasionally I hit a real show stopper and I find the Monastary a huge help. But on occasion, a post goes seemingly unnoticed. Now it could very well be the quality of my post, or disinterest from the majority of Perl programmers towards the specific problem domain, but on occasion, it has seemed to be timing as well.

What's the consensus?

-Lee

"To be civilized is to deny one's nature."

Replies are listed 'Best First'.
Re: Reposting Questions?
by suaveant (Parson) on Aug 02, 2001 at 23:10 UTC
    I wuld say go into the chatterbox and ask people why it might not have been answered, and if they have any ideas on what make make it more answerable, and then repost a more cohesive question... it might just be that no one actually knows the answer... but putting it out on the CB for review may get you an answer and save the clutter of a repost...

    Certainly if you are going to repost, try to repost the question in an even better way... whatever that may be :)

                    - Ant

[reply]
      When it's happened to me in the past, I don't repost. But I've been tempted when I've been really stuck.

      -Lee

      "To be civilized is to deny one's nature."
[reply]
        I don't see problems with reposting if it has been a while with no responses... but I would certainly try to make it more palatable, give more info, try to reword it, something... to maybe get it answered... asking in the Chatterbox could help you get ideas on what you can rework...

                        - Ant

[reply]
Re: Reposting Questions?
by tachyon (Chancellor) on Aug 02, 2001 at 23:38 UTC

    The radar issue is very valid. If a question is not on the newest nodes page (ie posted within the last 24 hours) and has not been answered it is effectively dead. If the question is important then reposting is logical. Asking for suggestions in CB often helps put it back on the radar (for a limited audience) and get suggestions for any changes to help get an answer in a repost.

    Observations. Weekends and US holidays are a bad time to post. The best posting time is ~ 1200-2400 GMT as this is when the active user base is biggest

    cheers

    tachyon

    s&&rsenoyhcatreve&&&s&n.+t&"$'$`$\"$\&"&ee&&y&srve&&d&&print

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Re: Reposting Questions?
by da (Friar) on Aug 04, 2001 at 00:02 UTC
    By any chance were you referring to Trouble starting Daemon with Expect.pm? I just took a (wild) stab at it. If you don't get satisfaction though the chatbox you might try re-posting with a title like "Trouble starting apache-ssl with Expect.pm" since more people might know apache-ssl than Expect.pm... 

    ___
-DA
> perl -MPOSIX -e'$ENV{TZ}="US/Eastern";print ctime(10**9)'
Sat Sep  8 21:46:40 2001

    [download]
[reply]
[d/l]
      That was one of the posts but a couple experiences (and seeing reposts by others) come to mind.
      But my main reason for posting the discussion was that I had not seen it addressed before. When I see certain posts repeated (especially after one or two days) I sometimes get irked depending on the nature of it.

      You make a good point about the title of the post. I assumed the problem lay in expect, hence the title.



      -Lee

      "To be civilized is to deny one's nature."
[reply]

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