- This topic has 8 replies, 7 voices, and was last updated 21 years, 5 months ago by
.
-
Posts
-
Hey,
Being a Mentor, one of my duties is to, “make sure no questions go unanswered”.
I was actually wondering how we go about this, because if we don’t know the answer, then how can we help out? Is it possible to bump a topic, or something similar?
Thanks.
That’s a great question, Martin! Of course none of have all the answers, and we cannot answer every question. So what do you do when there’s a post that no one has replied to, and you don’t have a direct answer yourself?
First, don’t feel compelled to answer immediately. Give it a day so that someone who actually has an answer gets a chance to respond first. If no one answers after one day?
Let me give you a couple suggested responses…
Acknowledge that someone actually saw their post.
“Great question, [username], and welcome to BigBlueBall! (Assuming that they’re relatively new here.) I don’t have a solution for you, but I’m sure that someone here has has a similar [problem/question/situation] and can provide some help.” If they are new to BigBlueBall you might go an extra step.
“I did a quick search through the forums and found this topic that seems to address the same problem. Does this help? Search is a good way to find answers, as is our [Messenger Name] FAQ.” Link to all the appropriate places for them.If they’ve been around for a while, don’t assume that they didn’t search. Nothing stings more than being told condescendingly, “Did you try searching?” if they already have. That’s not to say that they searched well. You might try a quick Google search, and link to it.
“You probably already tried to search our forums, so I did a quick Google search on the terms “ichat on windows” and found several websites that might help. See how I used the search criteria and linked to the search results? This helps everyone get better at searching — the learn by example.
Email the topic to someone who seems to have expertise in that area. You can use the “Topic Tools” menu to send any discussion topic to another person. All you need is their email address. If you don’t know that, consider sending them a PM or IM with a link to the topic. Be sure to explain why you’re sending them the link.
If you still don’t get an answer after another day (or two), go ahead and bump the topic.
“Hmmm… looks like this is a tough one. I’m bumping it to see if maybe one of our experts overlooked it.”Many times, the question may need clarification or more details.
“It might help us answer your question if you could provide a few more details. What version of [Messenger Name] are you using? What is your operating system? Did the problem just occur? Did it ever work before? Has anything changed on your system recently?”If you ask them to try Google for an answer, be sure to remind them to come back and share their solution when they find it.
“If you do find a solution, please be sure to come back and let us know what worked.”
All of these responses do a couple of important things. They let the original poster know that someone actually read their post and took the time to at least try to solve it. Sometimes it’s discouraging for new posters when they see their topic has been read, but no one replies at all. All these responses also effectively “bump” the topic back to the new topics page.
The key is to…
- Let the original poster know that someone has seriously considered their question or problem.
- Help them feel welcome (and not stupid).
- Help get them find an answer.
Keep in mind, you don’t need to go back into the past months/years/etc. and find posts with zero replies. If their need for a solution was answered within a week or so, chances are good that the need is no longer relevant to the original poster.
Now I’ve got a question for all of you!
What should we do with problems that no one can answer?Do we…
- Let it die on the vine (like we currently do)?
- Delete the post and pretend it never existed?
- Move a special area for challenging problems?
- insert your brilliant idea here
On a personal level, there’s nothing more frustrating to me then when I am searching for a solution to a problem and I think I’ve found a promising link to a website where someone else had a similar problem, only to find that it’s a dead end, and no answer to the problem was ever produced. Sure, sometimes life is like that. There aren’t answers for everything, and sometimes the answer is something we don’t like (“No!”). I don’t have an answer for this one. I’d just like you to think creatively about how we can tackle it here at BBB.
i dont have any brilliant ideas, but here’s my take on the possibilities for unanswered questions:
.. Deleting the post like it never happened isnt good, because someone can always go back and answer it later… unless it was deleted.
.. Moving it to some special area for challenging problems would overload that area. with all the questions that simply go unanswered…. it’d be its own little BBB
.. Letting it die on the vine may be frustrating to people looking for answers, but it at least leaves it open for future posts in a relevant area. someone might eventually have something to say about them.Well Martin definitely beat me to the question, but I was going to ask What if all questions are going answered? Basically we can just sit back and relax no? (Of course after having tried contributing some answer or help or some sort of response ourselves).
As for any ideas for unanswered questions, well the member can keep their topic tagged (if they have it set up to subscribe to the posts they make) and they can just keep checking back there to see if anybody replies as long as we let them know that their post was taken into consideration and every possibility to find a solution for them has been done.
MiamiGuy wrote:What if all questions are going answered? Basically we can just sit back and relax no?I have some ideas on this, but I’ll give others a chance to chip in first… 🙂
well I think, if you see a post that you don’t know how to answer, it will obviously depend what area you are a mentor in. If it’s technical and you are unsure then ask your advisor if they can help maybe they know more than you or leave it, check it out till you are sure of your reply. In my role it’s not technical so sometimes I ask other people what they think. But as a mentor I think our role is to keep an our eyes open and not be worried if we don’t know the answer just keep our advisors in the know, ie about the posts being sent and if we are unsure maybe they can help. If we do know then give an informative reply not just reply because we feel we have to, as this won’t help the person concerned who posted in the first place.
Okay well granted i just became a member of BBB in January of this year…I have looked at some posts with no reply from a while back before i joined and i was wondering, even if its old, can i still reply to them even if the person didn’t seem to keep coming back to BBB? I wasn’t sure, i thought maybe yes, since someone else might search for the same thing and see the reply i add…But i’m not too sure people would agree with bringing up old posts. So i decided to ask here first.
And on the no posts going unanswered, well that’s kinda hard to do, since we don’t know all the answers, but letting each one know that their post has at least been acknowledged and that if someone comes up with a solution they will be sure to put it up when they can, is a great idea. It’s nice and makes them at least know that they haven’t been ignored.
hatedjealousy wrote:I have looked at some posts with no reply from a while back before i joined and i was wondering, even if its old, can i still reply to them even if the person didn’t seem to keep coming back to BBB?absolutely, if you know an answer to the question. of course, some topics dont necessarily need answers anymore, like perhaps old versions of messengers that have since been updated to fix problems. i wouldnt answer topics unless you have a very definitive answer to give them (like “someone will answer this shortly” wouldn’t be good), but if you have something relevant to post, by all means do.Great to see that we’re actually getting some kind of direction to head in. I think that a lot of us mentor folks were just kind of sitting around asking ourselves “Okay guys…so…since everyone is doing something…what about us?” Heh, just kind of seemed a tad pointless when we really couldn’t do anything that somebody else already wasn’t. Also especially frustrating when you’re in a section that is not technical-based and purely composed of …well…*cough* random such and such.
Hopefully now we’ll start feeling like something other than dead weight now that we have a slightly more outlined plan. *little shrug*
- You must be logged in to reply to this topic.