Just a reminder to new users in the Forum: please use the option to mark the post that helpfully answers your questions as the “Solution”. It will help other users to finde the solutions faster. Thank you.
Mark a Post as the Solution
I run and admin several Discourse servers for communities on my own servers, hence I support this idea, and it’s fundamental to Discourse use.
However, it presupposes there is only one unique solution to a problem or issue, and that there is only on;e probem per topic. In fact it is often the case in issues or topics that there is more than one solution, more than one satisfactory workaround, and also a spectrum of opinions that can all be valuable towards helping, with not necessarily one supreme post.
My admin policy on this is, where it’s simple and clear cut, mark as a solution, where it’s not, don’t.
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It is not uncommon for someone to post, receive a reply, and then say “that’s exactly what I needed; thanks!” But they don’t mark the thread as solved. If it had been so marked, I wouldn’t have even bothered to open it. I wish people would mark threads as solved too. Heck: I wish I had admin privileges to mark threads as solved for those exact situations where people state that it is so outright and nothing more. It would still clean up threads nearly daily.
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When. the resolution comes by a sort of additive combination of many of the responses, perhaps it would be nice to be able to select more than one response as a ‘partial solution’? I had a thread like that recently, where I finally (after getting tired of being nagged continuously by the forum software itself) picked one response out of several as the ‘solution.’
And then of course there’s the occasion where the issue is still hanging, with none of the responses offering a total solution.
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I find that this issue persists. In the past couple of years every new person does not understand that the idea is to mark the post with the useful info, not your own post where you acknowledge it. Even when someone explains what to do, they don’t do it because they assume the Solution can’t be changed once it’s set (which it can).
What can be done to elucidate this feature?? If we have no hope of getting people to use it correctly, we shouldn’t have it at all. (But I don’t suppose there is a choice.)
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I’ve noticed this quite a lot recently, too. There are threads I wouldn’t even open if I had known they were solved already.
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That’s one aspect, and when there are multiple posts that contribute (as mentioned above), that’s another. But I’m talking about people constantly marking the wrong post, presumably because the right way to use the Solution feature is not explained clearly enough.
It is pretty clear IMO, but sometimes people just forget it even exists.
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I am one of those new users of the last years (months even), had many questions, and I always try to mark the solution. Unless I forgot offcourse 
. But not always there is ONE solution, in a number of cases the solution was almost in one post, and then a following post made it clear, so a cumulation of suggestions.
So in defence of people who forget this mark: it is not always clear which one to mark…
I am breaking protocol to “bump” this thread and request that it (or a notice like it) be pinned, at least temporarily. The misunderstanding and misuse of this feature by new forum denizens this week is getting so frustrating that it is impinging on my ability to focus on people’s issues.
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Forgive me if this has been discussed but I have sometimes wondered, if a person solves their own question, and then posts how they arrived at their answer – is it appropriate (or frowned upon) to mark their own post as the solution? Asking for a friend lol.
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I don’t think so. If you’ve solved the problem without someone else’s advice then you have solved it.
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Sure, go for it. That’s why the Solution box is available on your own posts (in your own thread).
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Indeed, in my opening post of this thread, I linked to the Forum Guide by @Steve .
In that .gif explanation video it shows that you need(ed) to click on the three little dots to show the solution icon below a post.
I think this behaviour was changed, because I see in this very thread (that has not have solution marked by me because the thread is just an invitation for the users) that every post shows very clearly the Solution checkmark below every post (so it behaves differently than in the Forum guides explanation).
Here a screenshot:
Unfortunately I cannot anymore edit the first post to update this information. Maybe can @Steve update it for me (and also in the Forum guide, with a little workflow on how to make it, since the.gif video goes very fast and can be confusing)? (maybe I am totally wrong about this change)
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Well, at least your first paragraph is still accurate. That may be all people read anyway.
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I’ve created this friendly graphic as an easy-to-understand guide for people using the forum. Hope it helps. 
Sorry.
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Don’t be. It’s very funny… 