The Illusive "resolve" button...

I'm confused. I'm not seeing a pattern to which threads the "resolve" button appears on. Why does the "resolve button appear on some and not others? What does the "resolve" button do? What is being "resolved"? Why would someone want to click the "resolve" button?

EDIT: here's my guess.... do the "resolve" button appear only on the threads that I start?

It's a feature that isn't used very much on permies, but it's here because we're a sister site to Paul's Java programming site, javaranch.

On permies, we mostly discuss stuff.

On javaranch, it's much more a forum for questions that need an answer, and that answer is often quite specific. On permies, even when a topic is a direct question, there are usually a dozen or more possible answers.

The upshot is that on javaranch, once a question has been answered satisfactorily, there's not a lot of point wasting people's time reading it and answering it again, so the original poster or a staff member can mark the topic as resolved.

I haven't played with it much, but I *think* that marking a topic as resolved also sends all those blue exclamation marks thingies we use to flag important or urgent topics back home to whoever sent them so they can be used again.

I think what makes CodeRanch different from other software engineering sites is that we discuss software engineering. Rather than go get an answer and be done. So in many ways, it's the same as permies.

But sometimes there are topics where the OP has the information that was sought. All done.

And, at the same time, there are people that want to participate in a few threads from the last day - so when they look at the list they see that a few are marked "done" - so they might skip those. This is especially helpful if there are 20 staff members who love answering questions. They can focus on the stuff where folks are still looking for help.

We use it sometimes here - just not very often.

Thank you for explaining it!