Questions and answers

Questions and answers is for a question that has an answer. A student runs a device simulation on the hub, the log ends in "convergence failed", and somebody on the hub has hit that before and knows what the fix is. She asks; two people answer; she marks the one that worked. From then on the next person who searches for the same message finds the answer already written down, with the working one at the top.

That last part is the point of the tool, and it is why the shape is different from a message board: a question is asked once, answered by whoever knows, and then closed on the answer that helped. It lives at /answers on the hub, and most hubs link it from their support or help menu.

Anyone can read questions and answers. Asking, answering, commenting, and voting all require you to be logged in; the links send you to the login page and bring you back where you were.

Which one do I want?

If you want to	Use
Get one answer to a specific question, and mark it as the answer	Questions and answers — this page
Discuss something open-ended, where several answers are defensible	Forum
Report something broken, or ask the hub's staff for help	Support
Ask for a feature, tool, or change to be built	Wish list

Ask here when you expect somebody to know. Ask in the forum when you expect people to disagree. File a support ticket when the hub itself is at fault — nobody has to answer a question, and no clock runs on one, so a question is a bad place to report an outage. Check the knowledge base first; it holds the answers the hub's staff have already written up.

Finding a question

The main page lists questions newest first, with a search box at the top. Type a keyword or phrase and press Search to match question titles and text.

Two rows of links sit above the list:

• Sort by — Recent (newest first), Popular (most liked first), and, on hubs that award points, Rewards (largest reward first). Clicking the sort you are already using reverses its direction.
• Filter by — All, Open, or Closed. An open question is still accepting answers; a closed one has had its best answer chosen.

When you are logged in, a third row narrows the list to Everything, Questions I asked, Related to my contributions (questions tagged with tools you author), or Tagged with my interests (questions matching the tags on your profile). The last two only have any effect on hubs that have the matching plugins enabled.

Each row shows the question, who asked it and when, whether it is open or closed, how many answers it has, and its vote buttons. A question that has been reported as abusive is listed as Question under review and cannot be opened until the hub's staff have looked at it.

The sidebar links to the knowledge base and to the help page, and, where points are in use, to the page explaining how they are earned. The newest questions are also published as an RSS feed at /answers/latest.rss.

Asking a question

Take the convergence failure above the whole way. The student is logged in, she is on /answers, and she presses New Question at the top of the list.

1. Press New Question. You can also reach the form directly at /answers/question/new.
2. Tick Post a question anonymously if you do not want your name shown with the question.
3. Enter Tags. This field is required — a question without at least one tag is not saved. Tags are how other members and the "related to my contributions" filters find your question, so tag it with the tool, resource, or topic it is about.
4. Write the Short question (one-liner). This is required and is what appears in the list.
5. Add Long question (details) if the one-liner needs explaining.
6. Where the hub awards points, Assign a point reward for answering your question takes a number up to the balance shown beside it. The field is disabled when you have no points to spend.
7. Press Save.

The question appears immediately and you are taken to it. If the hub notifies particular staff of new questions, or if your tags name a tool whose authors should hear about it, those people are messaged.

So the student's question reads "Transport solver stops with convergence failed at bias > 0.4 V", tagged with the tool's name, with the input file and the tail of the log pasted into the long description. Both halves of that matter: the tag is what reaches the tool's authors, and the log is what lets somebody answer without a round of questions first.

You can also ask a question from a resource or publication page, on hubs that show a Questions tab there. The question is tagged with that item automatically, and the item's page then lists it.

Answering a question

1. Open the question and press Answer this question, or use the answer this question link where a question has no answers yet.
2. Write your response in Your Response.
3. Tick Post response anonymously to keep your name off it.
4. Press Save.

The asker is messaged that an answer has arrived, unless they turned notifications off. Your answer joins the list under the question, where other members can vote on it and reply to it.

Write the answer for the person who finds it in six months, not only for the person who asked. Two mechanics push the same way. Anyone reading can vote on your answer, not just the person who asked, and those votes decide the Popular sort; and on a hub that runs points, an answer needs at least three votes with a majority positive before it shares in the payout, which a one-line "same here" never gets. If you only want to ask the asker something, use Reply under the answer rather than posting a second answer — a clarifying request posted as an answer sits in the list looking like a solution.

Voting

Every question and every answer has Like and Dislike buttons showing how many people have voted each way. Press one to cast your vote; press the other to change it. You cannot vote on your own question or your own answer — the buttons are shown but do nothing. Votes decide the Popular sort and, on hubs that award points, feed into how much a question is worth.

Commenting on an answer

Under each answer is a Reply link. It opens a small form: write your comment, tick Post comment anonymously if you want to, and press Save. You can reply to a reply, up to three levels deep. The asker and the person you are replying to are both messaged.

Every question, answer, and comment has a Permalink you can copy to link straight to it.

Choosing the best answer

Only the person who asked a question can close it, and only while it is open. Under each answer you will see Accept answer; press it on the one that helped most. The answer moves to a Chosen Answer block at the top, the question is marked closed, and no further answers are taken. Where points are in use, this is the moment they are paid out, so a question left open indefinitely pays nobody.

Come back and do it. The student who accepts the answer that fixed her convergence failure turns a thread into a result: the fix sits at the top of the page, the people who helped are paid, and the reward she put up leaves hold. Nobody else can do this for her, and there is no deadline that does it automatically.

Deleting your question

Open your question and press Delete, then confirm on the page that follows. The question disappears from the site. Any reward you were holding is released back to your account and no points are awarded for the question. You can only do this to your own questions, and hub managers can delete any question.

Reporting abuse

Report abuse appears on questions, answers, and comments. It files a report with the hub's support staff and hides the content behind a notice until they have reviewed it. See Support.

Earning points

Not every hub runs points. Where yours does not, there is no reward field on the ask form, no Rewards sort, and nothing in this section applies; the rest of the page still does.

Where a hub does run a points economy, each question has a market value that grows with the answers, votes, and recommendations it collects. When the asker accepts an answer, that value is split three ways: a third to the asker, a third to the writer of the accepted answer, and a third divided among the other answers — each qualifying answer takes that third divided by the total number of answers, and an answer qualifies only if it drew at least three votes and at least as many likes as dislikes. If no other answer qualifies, the accepted answer takes that share too. A reward the asker set is paid on top, out of their own balance.

A reward is held, not spent, from the moment you post the question. It comes off your available balance straight away, sits against the question, and is released only when you accept an answer or delete the question. Offering one is a way of saying the question is worth somebody's afternoon; leaving the question open forever is a way of tying up your own points and paying nobody.

Members also receive monthly royalty payments on the questions and answers they have posted, based on the votes those have since collected. The sidebar's Learn more link goes to your hub's own page on how points work.