[~19% Resolve Rate] Why is this forum so unhelpful?

Development Programming & Scripting
1

Hi,

I’m have posted only 2 questions on this forum and none have any answers. I don’t know if i’m just posting stupid questions or there is no interest or the level of expertise required isn’t around.
I’ve done a simple scroll in the Programming & Scripting section and counted the Resolved vs Unresolved topics. It came out to about a ~19% resolve rate.

~19% resolve rate, why is it so low?

PS. I apologize if I offended anyone :sweat:

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Doubt it. It’s been discussed before. Folks are bitter, and rightly so, but that’s it.

The reasons why questions go unanswered are probably too numerous to list. Look at this person, they’ve been around for 6 years, apparently, yet they’ve answered no questions: :stuck_out_tongue:

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~19% resolve rate

It’s probably a bit higher → people do not click the solution / resolved / close button. And the metric covers the venerable (migrated) Answer Hub content whose button was pretty hard to find :expressionless: There are also questions so in-depth that cannot be answered by a mere forum dweller and the sinfully repetitive ones no one bothers to click on.

There is no incentive bar your own interest and will to chip in. One day I’m going to cash in all the coffees / beers I’ve been offered in the last decade, though.

there is no interest or the level of expertise required isn’t around.

On a more serious note, I’d say it’s the latter. Chances of attracting an individual with the pertinent know-how may be slim. BP traffic is an order of magnitude higher than C++. You may need to wait more than 13h is some cases. If you haven’t received an answer in 3 days, I say bump it.

Imagine if there was a system where you could earn tokens that would allow you to fire a tough question at Epic’s engineering team who must dedicate 30m per week to forum duties. #crazytalk

Also, UDN:

Also, try the same question on Reddit / Discord, it’s quite lively out there.

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I see.
I had the false idea that there are at least a couple of blueprint and C++ people from UE lurking around in the forums, but that’s most probably wrong.
Great answer, thank you!

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Agreed, it’s wrong. But Staff answers are few and far between, indeed.

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Be more patient and persistent. Or pay up. But seriously, bump it up every couple of days.

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A lot of people ask questions, not many to answer them.

I was just like you. Sometimes I didn’t get the answer, or I found the solution myself.

One day I decided, if I don’t get answers, at least I can help someone to find them.

Hope you do the same.

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The trick is to make the questions as uncomplicated as possible. They answer most of my questions.

-Few lines
-Not complex
-Add images
-Add Videos
-Be specific

In summary. Make it easy for them!!

This works!!

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7

Are you happy now? I just answered the Upgrade [5.2 -> 5.3]: warning C4305: 'initializing': truncation from 'size_t' to 'uint16'

Ivan3z is on the right track. Although there’s quite a lot more to it that make it more or less likely to be a successful question. Some of these may apply only for myself but some may apply for others too

  • you cannot expect an answer earlier than a minimum of 24 hours, not everyone is awake at the same time and not everyone takes the time to read the forum frequently or regularly (once or twice a day for me for example)
  • sometimes questions get lost, in that case bump them as suggested if enough time has passed already
  • sometimes you need to learn how to help yourself, so if you don’t get a response don’t just bump but instead write a follow up with things you have tried and why they have failed or why they didn’t satisfy you
  • learning yourself includes learning more about the engine if possible so dig into its documentation and ideally the source code as well, they are there for a reason
  • if you can find the answer with a search on the forum (or your favorite search engine/ai) that’s a bad sign since you obviously didn’t invest time to search for an answer yourself
  • if I have to go through a lengthy process of downloading some log file or zip or project that makes it unlikely I’m going to invest the time unless I’m really interested in the question myself
  • the same applies when I feel like I’m wasting my time while reading the question

There’s a number of guides on how to best write forum threads. If you’re looking for more suggestions I’d recommend reading some of those.

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