Hi FTClark! We encourage all of our users to use either the ‘Answer Wiki’ or the discussion board but if there’s an approved answer, then the Wiki is the way to go.

What constitutes “approved”?

That would be up to the person who asked the question. If you put your answer in the ‘Answer Wiki’, then the user can approve it as correct.

@Carlosdl That was what I assumed but I have observed answers given in Discussion which confused me. I have observed you can approve Answers or Discussions.

When I was younger, I knew answers.
Phil 

An ‘Answer’ is generally only known by an OP. Any comment might be valid as part of an answer or might be correct in most circumstances but not the specific case. If an OP doesn’t test comments and report results, the validity of an ‘Answer’ is hard to know. An ‘Answer’ that promotes a specific product when multiple products fit different sites should not be an ‘Answer’. Also, an ‘Answer’ is generally always open to editing by other members, while ‘Discussion’ comments tend to be part of a permanent record. — Tom

@Tom, I appreciate your comment but was a little confused. I am sorry but I do not recognize a meaning for ‘OP’.

@FTClark : “…but I do not recognize a meaning for ‘OP’.” My apologies. ‘OP’ is a term from early BBS forum days, and it means ‘Original Poster’, the person who made the first or originating post in a thread. — Tom

@Tom, Thanks for clearing that up. I have been around at least that long but didn’t recognize the acronym.
I see now why you tend to “answer” in the discussion section.

“It ain’t what you don’t know that gets you into trouble. It’s what you know for sure that just ain’t so.”  Mark Twain

Interesting discussion.

I will have to partially disagree with Tom this time.

Most questions can have more than one answer, and even if all of them are in fact valid answers to what was asked, the OP is probably going to prefer one, and that decision could actually be made based on facts that were not even shared in the thread. However, that doesn’t mean that’s the only answer.  That would be the answer prefered by the OP or the “approved answer”.

Apart from helping the person that asked the question, the site’s goal is to help other people who could come here looking for a solution to a similar problem, and that is where other answers could be relevant. 

However, at the moment there is no way to mark more than one comment as an answer, and the answer wiki does not really work (and has never been used) as a wiki, and I think that’s part of the reason why it is not easy to agree on how we should post our answers. 

@carlosdl: And I partially agree with what you’re saying. But perhaps some of the overall question is how should we use the forum? It’s been clear that members are generally free to use it in individual ways(, so long as our IDs aren’t revoked). Common usage among the most active members, though, would tend to be emulated by others. That’s a simple result of human behavior. — Tom

Such a great discussion going on here! In addition, you can also add other answers to the ‘Answer Wiki’ as well as edit existing answers too.

Since everyone can edit the answers we’ve seen answers overwittten and good material lost.

Nocarragereturns?

Good material isn’t lost in ‘Answers’. The [Answer History] allows reverting edited or replaced answers to previous values. Unfortunately, at the moment, [Answer History] function might be in worse condition than the basic editor functions. It takes some practice to figure out how to get it to work as desired. — Tom