Last week, In the Know wrote about composing and posting a question. Today, we’ll get into browsing and answering other users’ questions.
Browsing: When you visit the Questions homepage on the Knowledge Network, you’ll see the questions that were posted most recently first.
The right-hand column includes the options to ask a question and edit your interests on your profile. Below those options, you’ll see the various statistics on questions asked, answers posted, active participants, latest activity, and total results.
To refine what you’re looking for, you can type a keyword or phrase into the search bar to view all questions that include that word or phrase, or you can select one or more topics to view all the questions that are tagged with that (those) topic(s).
At the bottom of the page, you’ll see a series of numbers, as well as “prev” (unless you’re on page 1) and “next” (unless you’re on the last page) options. This list of numbers allows you to browse through the pages, each of which displays ten questions.
Each question shows the asker, the title, the first few lines of the question, the date posted (if it’s within the month, it will say the number of days ago the question was posted), the topics under which the asker tagged the question, the number of answers, and the voting total (see below for details).
Comments: Each question has the option to “Write a comment” and to post “YOUR ANSWER.” The comment section is to be used for clarification purposes only. If you have an answer, you should always post it in the second box on the page, the one next to your profile picture, where it says “[Your Name] says.”
If it’s a clarification of your own question, you can simply click the “Edit This Question” button in the right-hand column and edit your question.
You can also comment on an answer or ask the responder about what he or she said.
Answers: Anything that you feel will be a valuable contribution to the discussion is helpful. Some questions lend themselves more to an open discussion; others call for yes/no answers or are requests for examples.
Items to post in the comments box include “Are you asking for documents for just a city, or for any jurisdiction type?” and “RFP stands for Request for Proposal.”
If it’s a clarification of your own question, you can simply click the “Edit This Question” button in the right-hand column and edit your question.
You can also comment on an answer or ask the responder about what he or she said.
Answers: Anything that you feel will be a valuable contribution to the discussion is helpful. Some questions lend themselves more to an open discussion; others call for yes/no answers or are requests for examples.
You are invited and encouraged to post any answer that’s relevant and appropriate. We’d make a length recommendation, but length of response depends greatly on the question.
You can attach a document in an answer as well; however, as with questions, we ask that you upload the document to the Knowledge Network’s Documents section so that all Knowledge Network users can have easy access to it in the future.
Thumbs up/Thumbs down: Once you click on any question, you’ll see next to it and to each answer a number with a “thumbs up” icon above it (indicating approval) and a “thumbs down” icon below it (indicating disapproval).
To show your approval or disapproval of a question or answer, click on the appropriate icon. The total votes (a thumbs up” counts as +1; a “thumbs down” counts as ?1) are shown between those two thumbs, as well as on the Questions homepage.
Accepting answers: When you post a question and someone answers it, you have the option of “Accepting” the answer (it will appear to the right of the thumbs up/down icons next to the answer).
If a question has an answer that has been accepted, an orange check mark will appear next to the answer that’s been accepted, as well as next to the question on the Questions homepage.
If you have any comments or questions about making the most of the Questions section on the Knowledge Network, let us know! We want to help you get the most out of the Knowledge Network.
Max Moline
ICMA Knowledge Network Intern
mmoline@icma.org
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