Help us to help you find the answer

In the past, I have written variations of this post with titles like ‘You don't have to say thanks in [community name]’. The reason is that communities often have functions that let you validate the quality of responses:

• Marking a response as correct, verified, accepted etc.
• Upvoting responses if you think they add value
• Clicking a variation of ‘I have this question as well’ to increase the weighting in search
• Clicking like on a question or a response

Choosing one or more of these options is more valuable to search than a reply saying ‘thanks for your help’. Of course, you are free to thank people for their help (and it can brighten someone’s day to know they helped someone). For this community, I want to highlight the main options available to you, and how you can use them.

Accepted responses

Available to people who create questions and community administrators.

Why use it? Marking a response as accepted increases the value of the thread to search. This means it is more likely to be found by other users when they are looking for help.

Once an answer has been marked as accepted, it is highlighted and presented as a top reply underneath the question. More questions with accepted responses = stronger community = more knowledge for everyone to benefit from. It is now quality content available for other people to find.

Suggested responses

Available to people who create questions and community administrators.

Why use it? It is a prompt for the author when they come back to review their question. This is another way to encourage the creation of accepted responses. 

Suggested responses act as a prompt for the author to decide if the response answers their question or not.

Ultimately, we want every user in this community to find an answer to their question. By using the features outlined above, we can move a bit closer to that wonderful day. I really do hope you choose to help us in this endeavor with your questions, and that you benefit from someone else doing the same.

Thanks,

Oli from the Community team