Over the past year, our community has grown tremendously and done some amazing things, and I think it’s awesome. As there are many great minds here, we should try to learn from one another, and we should definitely have fun while we’re at it.
I think we should aim to be an ever-growing community, where we help one another achieve any goal that comes to mind. I already see more and more people pitching in by answering questions, so I think it’s time to post some guidelines for how to write a good forum post that will get a quick and accurate answer, and how to respond and participate in the community.
Here’s what I have in mind:
Be nice . I love the atmosphere, and I love seeing how much everyone enjoys helping one another. I firmly believe that we should safeguard this culture—this is our space and we should protect it. We have different skills and different challenges, so don’t forget that each one of us was once a code baby
Use meaningful titles . ‘How can I create a collapsing and expanding repeater?’ is a much better title than ‘Help please!’. This makes it easier for people to spot the posts that they can help with.
Multiple short posts are better than a long one . This allows other people to benefit from our posts after we’re done with it. Keeping posts short makes it easy to find answers, and makes the post relevant for more people.
Keep questions focused and clear . This will make each question easier to solve, which makes it possible for more people to answer it.
Provide as many details as possible . Share what you think is right, what you’ve tried to do, and what blocks you. Include any relevant screenshots, code, and URLs to make it easier for others to understand the problem.
Acknowledge our peers’ help by marking a ‘Top Comment’ for the best answer . This will also make it easier to spot the correct answer.
These are my ideas for guidelines, and I’d love for everyone to respond to this question: What makes you answer a post?
I’ll update the guideline list with everything we will agree on.
This community belongs to all of us, so let’s make it the best.
if it has not been asked already ad nauseam (“I pasted HTML into the editor and it doesn´t work”, “I set a value on a form but it is not saved”, “something runs in Preview but not in Publish Mode”)
if I know the answer or have an inkling
if I see a question from somebody that has helped me out in the past
if it is well formulated and to the point. Sometimes I read questions that I simply do not understand to begin with and I always have great respect for Wix Support that they seem to be able to distill the meaning out of something fuzzy.
I think this is a good start. Stack overflow has a good model that has evolved over many years that this is consistent with:
One thing that it stresses is to search for pre-existing answers to a question before asking it and highlight why the question being posed is different to those that went before, referencing other posts as required.
Why do I answer questions?
I am naturally curious and have a lot of development experience that it is clear many forum members lack.
I like a challenge and if the problem is something I have already encountered or can learn from then I am happy to jump in and contribute.
Many forum contributors are designers and not developers and so while they may have a rudimentary understanding of how to write code, many need a helping hand to address misunderstandings in how to apply code or examples they may have seen. Also one day I may need some design help
Liran, if you allow me, I would like to add another reason what compels me to answer questions:
“If I am completely stuck and I get an answer from Wix, I feel l more inclined to help out others”
For me, helping out is a two-way street. I cannot help but noticing that when the"oldies" (Andreas, David, me, and maybe others that I forgot to mention) are stuck and ask a question, they might just as well have quoted the Swedish Nation anthem: it´s just as useless.
Take one example from a very good “newcomer”: @stcroppe . He contributes, his questions are to-the-point, concise, compact and sufficiently explained with (edited) screen shots and examples. But he, like us, simply gets no answers to many of his questions. Why? A year ago, we received helpful answers from Team 1.0, the creators. Then we saw echelon 2.0, 3.0 and 4.0 coming. Tai and Yisrael are still doing their best.
But so many questions are simply ignored by Wix. Why? We might be a little bit further up the road and thus we cannot be answered with a link to an article. So we need an answer from the ones in-the-know.
So, t, at least for me, it frustrates me not getting an answer to a serious question and I am therefor less inclined to help out others.
You have a point Giro, “so many questions are simply ignored by Wix”.
I feel the Forum is now the go to answer for them, it’s an excuse.
I’ve asked relatively easy questions to Wix Support, questions that if only they had an example for it or they would show the code used on their videos I could do on my own.
I use this code forum a little bit differently. I use it as a resource to reference commonly asked questions. I use to locate an answer and share the thread links in different FB groups.
What compels me to answer a post? Or when DO I answer a post? Well …
When a title has good keywords or a complete thought … I open the thread to see if I can help. If I can’t help then I try to bump the question. I amswer when I think I can help reword the answer that has already been given because the person is still confused about the solution. I answer when I have an existing tutorial video that may help find a solution. I answer when the person I feel the person genuinely wants to LEARN and isn’t simply looking for a custom code to be created for free. I answer for many reasons … but that should give you an idea.
Why do I answer? I feel it’s not a secret that I am very pro-community. The community is the very reason why I even started my video tutorials. I love this community and I will continue to contribute as much as I can when I have time.
