[wp-forums] Building better.

[Mark R]

On 12/5/06, Handy <handy.solo at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> So how DO we encourage folks to answer questions?  When they reply back that
> something worked, invite 'em to "pay it forward"?
>

Make the barrier to entry easier to pass.
We all started by answering the 'easy and often asked' stuff - with me
it was 'headers already sent' 'what is ftp' and 'what is .htaccess'.
It's really really easy to tell people to search, it's easier still to
ignore it but to benefit the forums and new people the best thing to
do is give it a damn good answer.
- when someone searches they might find your answer
- that answer will benefit many more people than a "Search dammit" reply
- that answer makes it really easy for someone else to copy and paste
to someone else. When they do that, the other person gets an answer
and the person who did the copying hopefully gets a kick out of a
"Thanks!" - and that is more likely to get them to repeat it.

Pointing people at Codex has it's uses but it's much more useful to
take the time to give a good solid answer.

M.