Does anyone have any best practices on how to ask a good question and what to put in the body?

thaas · 2022-09-22T20:33:16+00:00

There was an error rendering this rich post.

I want to provide our audience with a short tutorial to help them get quicker/better responses in our Q+A community. I'm looking for any best practices you've seen work on how to write/phrase questions appropriately and what type of information is valuable to consider in the body

Find more posts tagged with

Accepted answers

Rav Singh

Hi @thaas

While I've created lots of content focusing on how to use our Community and its features I certainly need to do a refresher on this for our users as well. Its a number of years old now (before we switched to Vanilla) however one of our superusers created a good intro article containing tips on how to ask a question and encouraging sharing as much info as possible since our Community is product support-centric.

I'll share it below if you're interested however you've given me the impetus to give it a revamp that is more focused (and relevant now that we're on Vanilla).

https://community.reckon.com/discussion/6081778

All comments

Rav Singh

Hi @thaas

I'll share it below if you're interested however you've given me the impetus to give it a revamp that is more focused (and relevant now that we're on Vanilla).

https://community.reckon.com/discussion/6081778

thaas

Hi @Rav Singh - thank you for sharing this. It is helpful and also validating. I was starting down a very similar path and this has given me more ideas.

Here are some points I captured while doing some other research. Not sure if any will be helpful to you but thought I would share:

Writing good questions isn't always easy. Here are some tips that may help you:

Keep your questions simple - long compound questions force respondents to keep a lot of information in their heads and are likely to produce unpredictable results. Use the body to expand upon what you need
If a question can be misinterpreted, it will be - Be clear, concise, and always beware of imprecise language
Include only one topic per question (avoid "double-barreled" questions) - If you want to be able to come up with specific recommended actions, you need specific questions
Make sure the respondent has enough information - use the body to provide additional
Pay attention to the category you are picking
Use tags

Poorly written questions may result in

answer(s) you aren't looking for
additional time is taken to rephrase, provide clarification, or add more details
frustrated respondents

BrendanP

Another potential idea is to use the discussion template addon to include some info you would be expecting folks to include when they ask their question.

I referenced it here in another thread:

https://success.vanillaforums.com/discussion/comment/4578#Comment_4578

support/csm/implementation pm could enable and advise you on that feature if you want to test it out.

thaas

@BrendanP - thank you. @hannahhowle got us set up with the template yesterday and I'm currently testing it out