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I had requested person who had asked a question to mark an answer as accepted if it had resolved his issue. And @crop1645 had indicated in his comments that it was not a right thing to do which i kinda agree with on hindsight. Can we build a list of things we can do or avoid doing in SFSE.

It would be good to have central repository which the users of SFSE could refer to. If there is already one is place can someone provide a link to it.

Here is a link to meta discussion specific to not requesting to mark answer as accepted. Prompting for the OP to mark answer as solved

Thanks

4 Answers 4

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15

I normally only ask for a question to be accepted if the OP comments in the question with something like "Thanks, it worked".

And, in those cases, my wording usually is: "If it worked, please mark the question as accepted so others can benefit".

When I am looking for help, I normally start with the accepted solution, so it makes sense to ask the OP to save future searches the effort.

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@Prady -- the community has been going for some years now and the folks who contribute with quality answers get consistently upvoted by others and their answers tend to get consistently marked as the solution while getting upvotes over time. You, yourself, have a fair number of reputation points.

Over time, it all just works. Take sfdcfox or Keith C by way of example. They clearly know their stuff and never solicit for having their answers marked as the solution. And because, as the top contributors, they don't solicit, the tone of the Community seems more relaxed and friendly. It's subtle, I know.

We're here to help others.

If I contrast SFSE to other SFDC forums, one often sees importuning that comes across as "hey, it's a dog-eat-dog world out there and I demand to be recognized as Mr. SFDC, so mark this as the answer...NOW!" I'm sure that wasn't your intent but this can get to be a slippery slope.

So, I tend to gently suggest not to request such recognition so the community maintains its distinctive voice as contrasted to other forums. Sebastian's answer is a good one -- if the OP engages in a dialog with you and indicates it all works now (or your answer leads to the solution), it is acceptable to say, "great, happy to help. Please mark the answer as the solution so others can benefit".

And, if the OP doesn't respond with an upvote or solution, there could be lots of reasons

  1. Time of day / timezones
  2. The OP realized they posed the wrong question and your answer isn't relevant
  3. The OP solved their own problem and moved on
  4. The OP found a better answer elsewhere and moved on
  5. The OP is simply churlish and ungrateful
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  • I completely agree with your suggestion that i shouldnt have requested for acceptance of the answer. What i am asking out here is that we frame a set of quidelines which users can refer to. Right now i dont know what i am doing is right or is not a right not thing to do. My intention for this meta was to get a set of etiquette that can be referred to
    – Prady
    Commented Mar 12, 2016 at 3:11
  • 6
    I definitely don't like soliciting. It is often worded to sounding needy ("gimme moar rep!!!1"), and there's hardly any good way to say it, even though accepted answers are for the good of the community. Personally, I wish there were a way to get answers accepted only so that future visitors could find more useful answers without having to read as much.
    – sfdcfox Mod
    Commented Mar 12, 2016 at 18:33
7

This is just my two cents and doesn't necessarily represent anyone else's opinion.

I think asking within an hour is pushing the bounds of acceptability, which is what I remember seeing. I do think it's important to get correct answers accepted, but I also think imploring the OP to do so is not the right approach.

The above is especially pertinent when they have barely had time to even implement your suggestion. What if they just went home for the day? You should always wait at until your answer is at least 24 hours old before any sort of prompt.

What I do sometimes is, if it has been a few days and it's unclear if any additional follow up is necessary, post something like:

  • Is this still an open question?
  • Did you get this resolved?
  • Are you still struggling with this issue?

That way, I can find out if adding more detail will help the OP solve their issue, and also indirectly nudge them to accept if the existing answer solved the problem.

3
  • i like this approach. But i do think we need to frame some basic etiquite's that users need to follow. I never thought it was not right to ask to accept the answer till someone pointed out to me.
    – Prady
    Commented Mar 11, 2016 at 0:27
  • 'implore' -- excellent;
    – cropredy
    Commented Mar 12, 2016 at 2:28
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    I have to agree, I recently asked a question, then got snowed in by other stuff. Meanwhile I got two quality answers. It was days before I was able to test them both out and find that one worked and one didn't, but the fact that it took me several days to mark one was just due to my time. I'm sure you don't want people to feel rushed to mark an answer that they haven't fully explored or tested?
    – ScottH7a9
    Commented Mar 23, 2016 at 18:38
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I'd hope we can avoid a book of rules or guidelines to express an etiquette of "acceptable behavoir". I see many risks in composing such a list:

  • It'll never be complete. Not all scenario's can be anticipated or described.
  • We as a community change and evolve, so may our expectations of each other.
  • I really want to prevent a witch hunt on anyone behaving differently. I think we all want this community to be open and welcoming, that implies we have to have some tolerance and help people adapt.

Maybe I'm naive, but I think that with fair common sense and kindness, we'll do all right without a list of what's acceptable and what's not.

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