Sep 3, 2008

Oracle Forums: New Feature(s)

The new forums.oracle.com site is now online and running. Since the first preview (see this entry) they changed some functionality:





Now there is not only the discrimination between member and active member. Now you can achieve 5 levels from Newbie to Guru. As you can see, you have to answer 20 questions correct to get to the second level called Journeyman.
At the thread overview a new column was added which shows, if you can get points for answering the thread and if this thread was already answered correct. The green star indicates a right answered thread:



Inside the thread there is the green star at the beginning:


and the correct answer is marked, too:


Last but not least the person, who gave the answer, gets the points:



Here the official statement from Oracle about this points:

What are "rewards points"?
It is possible for you to reward an answerer 5 points for a "helpful" answer or 10 points for a "correct" one (or none at all). Users who accumulate certain amounts of points reach different levels of recognition (see legend). In this manner, users who offer consistently helpful or correct answers raise their standing in the community. (Note: in order to award points, you must identify your post as a "question" first - which is set as default.)

One feature was removed from the forum:
The first column of the thread overview indicated "New content since your last visit" or "updated content since your last visit". I think this feature broke the forum the last time, because you have to save for each visitor all states of the threads he visited...

This "correctly answered" feature is very helpful for all forum users. And the race for the top users in the forums is now open again and we all have to start from zero again ;-(

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