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Tech Q&A Etiquette

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by pc_kahuna

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I have noticed there seems to be a lot of posts for help that members respond to but the poster never accepts or rejects the answer. There are posts out there from the last century that have many good answers but no feedback from the poster. Would it be too much to ask if one posts a request to help that one follows up with the response. I am afraid at some point the Q&A?s will languish due to lack of follow-up by the poster. As well, we all would like to get our points if we found the right answer for the original post.

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by stress junkie

You are absolutely correct. I pretty much stopped participating in the TQ&A after I got my little blue box for having 5,000 points. Many of the people who post questions are not very considerate of those who help them.

by amcol

We've discussed this topic here ad nauseum.

No argument that people should have manners, say "thanks" when receiving an answer to a question. But if you expect that you're setting yourself up for disappointment.

Does it really matter that your response to a question goes unacknowledged? Did you respond because you wanted that acknowledgement, or did you respond because as an IT professional you found yourself in a position to help a fellow colleague and did so?

I post herein to add to the collective body of knowledge. I couldn't care less if my responses are responded to. Most of the time I don't bother checking back, and if I do it's to see if further clarification is needed.

I had a professor as an undergraduate who was fond of reminding us that his job was to stand in front of the room and espouse knowledge, our job was to sit in the room and soak up that knowledge. He planned to do his job whether or not we were doing ours. He spent the rest of the semester facing the chalkboard (OK, I'm old) with his back to the class, never turned around once. One of the best classes I ever took and I guarantee you the professor didn't have a clue if we were even in the room the entire time.

Imparting knowledge and contributing to the professional community is reward in and of itself. You shouldn't need any other feedback than that.

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