Best practices for using this Answers site

Finding the right answer should be easy. Together we can build and maintain a well organized, growing knowledge base by practicing a bit of good Question and Answer hygiene.

Below are 11 tips for using Answers in a way that will help the whole FlexSim community get maximum value from the site, and keep our content organized, efficient, and intuitive. These tips are adapted from this DZone blog post. DZone makes AnswerHub, which powers this site.

1. Search for questions before asking. Use the advanced search functionality to look for a question you may have before asking it. You may find your question has already been asked and answered. This saves you and other community members time and effort.
2. Make your question titles descriptive. Making a question's title descriptive makes it much easier for other people searching the site to find what they need. Question titles like Problem with conveyor are not very helpful when searching, whereas titles like Item gets stuck at photo eye when using area restriction are much more helpful. The question title should not be too verbose, but it should describe the problem well.
3. Post content in the right space. When creating content, it's important to select the appropriate space for it to be posted. Choosing the right space for your content will not only keep the community organized, it's also more likely to be viewed and responded to by the right community members. Need help with some aspect of FlexSim or your simulation? It goes into the Software & Simulation Questions space. Starting a discussion that doesn't have a specific answer? General Discussion is the space it should go in. Don't post an article to ask a question - do that with a question. Don't use a question to request a feature - that should be posted as an idea.
4. Mark correct answers as accepted. It's important to accept a correct answer to a question, especially the questions that you asked. This will make finding the right answer much easier for other members and let the community know that your problem has been solved. Let others know what answers helped you solve questions by upvoting or liking correct answers to show community support.
   
5. Share your knowledge by answering questions. See a question you know the answer to? Submit an answer with text, images, links, videos, and more to support your answer and to help fellow community members.
6. Use comments and replies. Only post an answer when you're actually answering a question. You can use comments, or directly reply to others' comments to provide support, additional information or ask for further explanations when necessary.
7. Ask experts directly. Want a reliable answer quickly? You can ask an expert directly after creating a question and the expert will be notified. Use the 'at' symbol @ and start typing someone's name, and they will be notified that they were referenced in a post. Be sure to use the autocomplete as you type their name, or you may type it incorrectly and the user will not be notified. A properly formatted @ callout automatically becomes a link. If it's not a link (like this: @Ben Wilson!), try again.
8. Monitor reputation points and the leaderboard. See how you rank in your community with reputation points. Reputation reflects engagement levels like questions asked, answers submitted, upvotes, and more.
9. Become an expert yourself. Have an area of expertise? By providing knowledgeable answers you can be recognized as a topic expert. The system identifies these users based on the number of accepted answers you provide within a topic. Additionally, you can self-identify areas of expertise in your profile settings. Topic experts receive an elevated role in the community and get notified when content is posted within their area of expertise.
10. Follow topics of interest. Want to continue learning about a specific topic in your community? Follow a topic and receive activity updates in your inbox instantly, daily, or on a weekly basis. Change notification frequency and other settings within your profile.
11. Visit the community often. The more we contribute to the community, the more valuable it becomes for everyone. Have an article you want to share? Post it. Want to share an idea and generate a discussion among other FlexSim users? Answers is a great place to facilitate "ideation" and collaboration.

Additional pointers for using answers.flexsim.com:

12. Topics - when you create a post, whether it's a question, article, or idea, you must tag your post with at least 1 topic (and up to 5 topics) to help identify the main issues of your post. As you add topics, autocomplete will suggest preexisting topics. Please select a preexisting topic if it is a good match, rather than creating a new, slightly different spelling of an existing topic. Also, please try to keep new topics to only 1 or 2 words.
13. Ask one question at a time. When composing a new question, keep it to just a single question. Don't include multiple questions in one post. Each question deserves its own place. When you separate multiple questions into individual posts, it's more likely that more users will participate in your questions, getting you more answer options more quickly, often from multiple individuals. It also makes each post smaller and easier to digest, also encouraging more participation.
14. Follow-up questions - sometimes its tempting to ask a follow up question as a comment to an answer, or even more inappropriately, as a new answer to your first question. New questions that can stand alone should be posted as brand new questions. Only clarifying questions should be asked that expand on the original question/answer/comment that is being discussed. This keeps each question post laser-focused on the top question, and each answer directly pertaining to the main question.
15. An answer should really be an answer. Each answer should directly address the top question in a post. An answer is never a 'thank you', a comment, or another question. Those each have their place (usually as a comment), but none of them should be posted as an answer. A question can have multiple answers. The question asker (or 'OP' - original poster) should 'accept' the answer that worked best for them. Users can upvote answers that are helpful, or downvote those that are not. The top answers will bubble up to the top.
16. Conversations go in comments - If you need to clarify a part of someone's question ("what version of the software are you using?"), add a comment to that question. If you want to respond to someone's answer ("thank you!" or "that didn't work for me because..."), add a comment to that answer. Need to respond to someone else's comment? Reply specifically to that comment.
17. Simple and specific questions are best. Simplify your question by creating a sample model that shows the issue, rather than posting a large model (perhaps containing proprietary information) where only one small part of it pertains to the question. Use images to show what is going on and what should be happening. Animated GIFs are even better (example).
18. Public questions are best. They add to the public knowledge base. They will get community participation, and thus get more answers, faster responses, and broader participation. They can help others in the future. Whenever possible, simplify your question for a general audience.
19. Private questions are for private information. If you have a question pertaining to your specific license, make it a private question. Only FlexSim US can see the contents of private questions. Anyone you or a moderator invites to a private question with a @ callout will also be able to view the question. The @ callout doesn't actually work yet to invite 3rd parties to a private question. We're working with AnswerHub to figure out how to make this happen, since it would be a fantastic feature. Until then private questions are strictly between the OP (original poster) and FlexSim US.

Post attachments:

1. Attachments types - If you find that you can't upload a particular file type, simply compress it to .zip and upload that way. Make a note of that in your post so that we can consider allowing your file type.
2. Attachment sizes - We've tried to be quite generous with total allowable upload sizes. If you find that your attachment(s) are too big to upload, first try compressing to .zip. If that still doesn't get your attachments small enough to post, you may be able to use a 3rd party file hosting service such as Dropbox or SugarSync, and include a link to your uploaded file in your post. Make a note of that in your post so that we can consider increasing the file size limit if this becomes a common problem.
3. Attachment count - Again, we've tried to be quite generous with the total number of attachments that can be added to a post, primarily because images count against your attachment count. Let us know if you're trying to make a post but run into the max attachment limit.

Advanced search functions:

1. Simple search

   A search that uses one or more words, separated by spaces.

   For example: Enter transporter resource to perform a search for transporter, resource, or transporter resource.

2. Refined search

   You can refine your search by adding different symbols (+, -, [, or ]) to your search.

   For example:

   • • Entering transporter +resource in the search bar returns results that include transporter and resource, but resource is a required term.
   • • Entering transporter -resource in the search bar returns results that include the term transporter, but excludes any that contain the term resource.
   • • Entering [transporter] in the search bar returns only results that are tagged with the transporter topic.
   • • Entering [transporter] [resource] in the search bar returns only results that are tagged with the transporter and resource topics.
3. Google search

   This Answers community includes Google Custom Search to easily enable the use of Google's powerful search engine across all FlexSim web sites. Please see this question and answer for details.

If you have any questions, comments, or tips of your own that you'd like to share, please start a discussion in the comments below. We can update the article above with the best suggestions or illuminate anything that might be confusing.