Masking the Truth

Hiya lovely WA folks,
If you've read my ode to WA that turned into an article, you will be aware of how much I love it here at WA, the things I've learned, some of the people that have helped me and the huge reliance I have had on both Site Support and this fantastic community to help me out with my seemingly never ending questions!
I recently asked a question about site comments - I'm just going to copy it here so you understand how it went down without having to go back over it -
Why weren't people able to see my post to comment on it? Is it because I changed it to a draft while I did the SEO stuff? Will they still get the credits as they tried to reply? What do I do with their comments as I don't think I should approve them? Can the same people comment again if I repost. Will they be penalised if I don't approve their comments even though it's not their fault?
I received an answer but it was incorrect, several others saw that I received what they took to be the correct answer so just commented that I had the answer and wished me well. I commented on my own question to say that the answer was incorrect but as I STILL don't know how to tag (one day, probs not today but one day!) I couldn't let the person know directly. Also because they thought they had answered correctly they probably didn't check back and are themselves working with the wrong information.
Thinking about it so are the others who commented that the first answer was correct. One person, who I have found extremely knowledgeable in the past, replied to the incorrect commenter to say that actually they were wrong and they themselves did what I had done but they unfortunately didn't proceed to answer my questions! I was a little surprised at this but then I thought maybe they didn't know the answer either - not everyone knows everything about everything!
Anyhoo, I was left to figure it out for myself which normally doesn't go well ngl😊I didn't want to just delete the comments as I had one comment disapproved on Site Comments, just one, but it brought my all time score down from 100% to 99% and it can never go back up. To most I'm sure that's a wee thing but to me who has never been 100% at anything, I was fair gutted and it still upsets me every time I see that flippin 99!
Also I paid for the comments to help with my site rank so I didn't want to waste my credits, I have plenty as I didn't know how to use them at first so I was just storing them up till I figured it out (good strategy that if I say so myself) but I firmly believe in waste not want not and try to apply it to everything.
So I remembered somewhere in the training that there was an edit button on the comments so I went back over the comments and decided to just edit them as if the person had read the article, I would have checked with them first to make sure they were ok with it. When I read back over them I realise that each had answered partially and that if I replied inviting them back as if they were 'outside' visitors it might help others coming to the site. So that's what I did,
I had already republished and bought more comments before I'd figured all that out and one of the original commenters did come back and said some lovely things about my site🥰so I added all of that and ended up with about 10 decent comments which can only help my rank. No one was getting penalised and I got more bang for my WA buck, win win!
After I'd done all that, I woke up this morning to find someone had answered correctly about the edit button but had said I might have to chalk it up to experience and move on. I wanted them to know that you don't have to do that, you can do what I did but thank you for your reply.
Oh dear, I appear to have rambled on somewhat! If you're still with me my main points were:-
1. Check the answers you give to people, they might not be correct.
2. Check back when you answer a question in case someone has a better/different answer - you might learn something!
3. There don't have to be dodgy comments on your site, you can edit them.
4. I feel that if there's a 4 I'm still rambling so I'm going to exit quietly now and y'all have a good day now y'hear😘
Love,
shahlla
I have had to get rid of a lot of comments that come from outside of WA. There is a lot of spam about.
I haven't used site comments for quite some time so in all honesty I probably couldn't have given you the answer you were looking for.
I agree with your point number 1, people shouldn't assume they know the answer and post it thinking they are helping somebody. As you've seen, it's easy to mislead others as well as being misinformed yourself and carrying on thinking you were right.
I try to make sure I only help others with the limited knowledge I have when I'm confident of being correct and that it will actually help the asker and others.
Despite having a limited knowledge of all things online, it's still a heck of a lot more than people who are brand new to the industry so that's who I try to help out.
In this particular instance I would probably have suggested a pm to Kyle for your answer as, as you've found out, it's very easy to be given incorrect infirmation about something that is a platform issue.
Glad you got it sorted though......I sort of rambled through my answer didn't I???😂😂
Mark