About answering questions. Don't do it if you can't offer help.
It's not exactly a success post but i believe it can have some impact on people's success if we use it properly.
Before getting to the point , i'm not here to offend anybody but just to let people know.
I think this has been talked about before by some members. It happened to me several times already and i felt i have to write about it.
Whenever somebody asks a question, this one becomes easy to find by other members , hoping that someone can offer a helpful answer, but there is a problem with it.
The moment the question gets the first comment of any kind , it gets marked as answered and removed from the unanswered list , thus leaving people without the help they might be needing to move forward.
I've been seeing in other questions and getting myself many first comments such as:
-" Sorry I don't know the answer "
-" Great question , hope you get the answer soon "
I've seen this happen quite often and sometimes even in a row, i get the feeling that some of them do it to get a lower ranking , maybe i'm wrong and if i am i apologize.
Some may say, "No problem just post the question again" yes it is a solution but it is possible to get the same useless answers again , with a few possible outcomes :
1) The person needing help being discouraged from asking again.
2) The same person spamming his question over and over until he gets the help he/she might be looking for.
For people who comment in order to follow the post , they can do the same by clicking the star at the top of the blog.
Please think about it , a helpful answer can save fellow members hours of work or searching around WA and goolge and can also save them from making huge mistakes with their website for example.
Before finishing this post i want to emphasize that this blog is not made to hurt anybody's feelings but to make people aware.
Has this happened to you before? Let me know what you guys think.
Edit : Deleting unwanted answers seems to make it visible again in the Unanswered tab.
Recent Comments
17
This happens too often. I don't know what people are thinking when they "answer" a question without an answer! It is not only unhelpful, but then your question has that chance of never really being answered correctly. One of my biggest pet peeves here!
I tried deleting the first comment, and i can see the question pop up again in the unanswered tab , if it becomes visible to everybody again then it is solved.
Quite right! and then, you are missing a third point, you are waiting for an answer and you get a notification,you all glad :):):), because you THINK you get the answer, and it says: I like to know this too, I am going to follow this question...aaaarccchh...
Yeah haha. I was expecting the notification to get around the issue , when i opened it i saw that "I don't know" and said to myself "oh not again :P"
When you are the question asker is it possible to remove "useless" comments from your thread? If yes, that may be a quick and simple solution.
If removed and thus leaving no responses I would think it would then show as zero responses again.
If that is indeeed possible then it would solve the proble , so far i haven't seen a way to keep the question as unanswered yet but i will check what you are saying.
Please let us know if it works. Because the reality is that we will always have newbies joining in here and this is not something they will automatically know and it is not likely it is something they will search for an answer to right off the bat.
:)
I just did it, and inside my profile within "My Questions" tab is marked as unanswered now but i don't know if others can see it again.
Can you check it out in a moment please?
See more comments
Yes I can feel it too. I got many answers like that :) I am thankful that you found out about deleting unwanted answers. Can the questioner delete any reply to the question topic?
Cheers,
Ferdinand
Yes, that way your question goes back to the unanswered tab.