Mike Walsh's WSS and more - "Propose as Answer" and how I deal with it as a forum Moderator

Friday, February 06, 2009

"Propose as Answer" and how I deal with it as a forum Moderator

It's possible to mark any forum post as "Propose as Answer". The idea is that this helps the Moderator by letting him/her quickly know which threads possibly contain a solution. He/She can then access the threads that include such a post and then decide whether the post is worthy of being changed from merely "Propose as Answer" to being marked as an Answer.

It's a good idea, but unfortunately there are many people who don't seem to get the idea behind it and who post a reply in a thread and then immediately mark their own reply as "Propose as Answer".

Well this post is to tell you that in all but one of the SharePoint forums, you are wasting your time if you do that because this is what I do when I do a sweep of the threads that include "Propose as Answer".

Firstly I of course find the "Propose as Answer" post.

a) If the person who has marked it is the person who posted it I remove the mark.

b) If the person who marked it is someone whose name I recognize (and can thus trust their judgement) I very very quickly scan the post and then 99% of the time Up it to Answer status.

c) If I don't recognize the name of the person who marked it, I spend more time looking at the post before deciding whether to "Up" it or not (in which case I remove the "Propose as Answer").

d) Posts which aren't answers at all (and it's always a surprise to see post marked "Propose as Answer" that include questions rather than answers - but it does happen) get the Propose as Answer removed of course.

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So you see, don't mark your own posts with "Propose as Answer" and you have a chance that they will - at some later date - be marked as an answer. Mark your own posts and they won't be.

Note too that I also on occasion move posts directly to Answer status. But only when I read them the first time. So this (usually) won't apply to a post that has in the meantime been marked "Propose as Answer" by the poster.

2/6/2009 10:07:04 AM (FLE Standard Time, UTC+02:00)

Comments [4] Other Computer | SharePoint |

2/6/2009 10:54:20 PM (FLE Standard Time, UTC+02:00)

Here here - the thing that gets me is when someone comes in to a post, repeats what I have said as an answer (but I didn't propose it as the answer) and then they mark their own post as propose as answer, even though all they did was repeast what I said! Good to know that you moderators are doing the right thing though :-)

Brian Farnhill

2/8/2009 9:57:54 PM (FLE Standard Time, UTC+02:00)

This is a completely wrong way to look at it Mike. I've asked many questions on the SharePoint and InfoPath forums on the Microsoft site and after a lot of time received no answers. Then I investigate what I have asked further (sometimes many weeks later) and I go back and post an answer (still nobody may have replied).

I don't post unless I have investigated and confirmed that my solution works for my own questions.

In this scenario you would just blindly mark a correct answer as incorrect just because you can. That's bad moderation of a forum.

Joe Breen |breenjoeAT NOSPAMgmail dot com

2/9/2009 3:51:02 PM (FLE Standard Time, UTC+02:00)

All I can say is that you should try being a Moderator. It takes a lot of time and you get very little gratitude.

Automatically deleting self-posts is what I do because *typically* posters do not set as high a requirement on marking their own posts as they do on others. The other reason is that if someone else marks a post that is in effect two people who thinks it is an answer (the person who wrote it and the person marking it).

I have just been through the back "proposed as answer" posts in a couple of forums. If someone else (especially someone known to me though his own postings) has marked a post as an answer then I can very quickly scan the post to see if it looks as if it could be the answer to the question and then change the marking to Answer, but if the person who posted it has marked it I would need to spend several minutes on a single post checking if that post does in fact answer the question. I'd much prefer to spend that same amount of time on converting several posts that other people have marked as answers to answers.

(or indeed to spend the time first investigating and then marking as Answers posts that people haven't proposed)

P.S. I was not talking about people starting a thread and then answering the thread themselves (and then marking the thread as Answered. Those I leave unless it is obvious (answer within an hour say) that the person was only trying to increase his point score. I was talking about someone who did not start the thread proposing his own answer as an answer (Note: marking "Propose as Answer"). This doesn't seem to be the case you are talking about in your comment.

Mike Walsh |englantilainenAT NOSPAMhotmail dot com

3/28/2009 5:10:29 PM (FLE Standard Time, UTC+02:00)

That's fair enough Mike.

Yeh, moderating is a thankless task so for taking the time to do it I say THANK YOU. :)
The forums don't work without people like yourself.

P.S. I like the update to the layouts of the forums ... seems to have only happened today (28th March 2009)

Joe Breen |breenjoeAT NOSPAMgmail dot com

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