To better understand why your question suddenly fell off the edge of our forums, I’ll lay out our process:

ITJoe encounters baffling IT situation.

ITJoe posts his situation on IT Answers.

Your community moderators wade through the questions, including ITJoe’s.

We look through each question that comes into the community; we correct spelling, ask for clarification when needed (for ease of answering), or assign appropriate tags (for ease of search). We also delete questions. But, why? You might ask. The answer’s pretty simple; we delete any question that falls into one of the following categories:

• Homework or exam questions
• Sales pitches
• Basic questions that can easily be answered in a search engine: “What is cloud computing?”, “What does VPN stand for?”
• Consumer questions: “How do I change the ringtones on my BlackBerry?”
• Job postings
• Questions that are not enterprise IT-specific: “How do I format my spreadsheets?”

We do this in your interest, to minimize questions that don’t apply to you, whether it’s in your email topic updates, RSS or your Watchlist, we want to make sure that you’re only receiving what you signed up for. We wade through the junk questions to deliver you the most relevant content.

This is our main objective, anyway, and like it takes a village to raise a child, to run a community you need the help of the community members. See something you don’t think belongs here? Let us know! Flag a question, post a discussion or email me directly. We’ve had some great discussions posted by some of our most active members, so check them out for some great tips on asking and tagging questions, answering questions and general uses of IT Knowledge Exchange.

Want another venue to share your feedback? Here’s your chance: Fill out the 2010 IT Knowledge Exchange member survey and let us know what we’re doing right and where we can improve. (Aside from being an integral part in your community, you’ll get 250 Knowledge Points that can get you ahead in our latest contest.)

Thanks again for being a part of this community and working with us to make it as helpful as possible!

Melanie Yarbrough is the assistant community editor at ITKnowledgeExchange.com. Follow her on Twitter or send her an email at Melanie@ITKnowledgeExchange.com.

This is one of the most frequent questions we receive in our mailbox — member logs in, member asks question, member comes back later to check on question, question has mysteriously disappeared. So why the mystery? Are these questions not going through? Does IT Knowledge Exchange harbor magicians?

Sadly, no, it isn’t magicians. If it was, I’d put them straight to work on my taxes this year. The real story has to do with the questions themselves…

When a member posts a question to IT Knowledge Exchange, we see the new activity and read it. Yes, your friendly neighborhood moderators take a look at every question that comes into the site. If the question needs additional tags or title clarification, we make the appropriate changes. However, if we come across a question from one of the following categories, it is swiftly deleted:

• Homework and exam questions
• Advertising-based messages
• Basic “what is” questions that can easily be answered in a search engine: “What is networking?”, “What does VoIP stand for?”
• Consumer questions: “How do I change the ringtones on my BlackBerry?” “What antivirus should I install on my personal laptop?”
• Job postings
• Questions that are not enterprise IT-specific: “How do I format my spreadsheets?”

“So why the heavy-handedness? Can’t we all just get along?”

Think of it this way: you’re an enterprise IT professional. Maybe you’re a network administrator or a systems engineer. When you visit the site, you only want to see content that is relevant to you. Perhaps you sign up for specific topic updates by e-mail or RSS, or add questions to your Watchlist to make sure you’re seeing what you need to. What would happen if you started to receive “junk questions” in addition to the valuable content?

Our goal as moderators is to keep the conversation as specific to enterprise IT as we can, because that’s what the community is all about. Of course, we can’t always catch 100% of it — we need your feedback to do that! If you see a question or answer you think doesn’t belong in the community (homework questions, sales pitches), please speak up! Flag the question, post something in the discussion or send us an e-mail. We also have a couple of site feedback discussions open where you can contribute your thoughts. This community is meant for your benefit — help us keep it clean!

Thanks,

Community Manager

Recent IT Questions, IT Answers and Discussions are still in the navigation, but some members gave us feedback that they missed the “Unanswered Questions” tab. So, naturally, we listened and brought it back!

The unanswered questions tab is a great way to start participating on the site — it lets you filter through and see the areas where our members still need help. Remember, you can also access unanswered questions by parent tag if you are only interested in networking or virtualization queries.

Remember that every answer earns you 15 Knowledge Points toward community fame, a free t-shirt, or even cool prizes (like, say, a Google Nexus One).

Happy answering, and remember, your feedback on the site is what we count on to make the community better! Don’t be afraid to tell us what you’d like to see.

Thanks,

Community Manager

- Once you are logged in, click on “Edit My Public Profile” in the Dashboard:

- Scroll down to the “Upload an Optional Picture” option:

- Browse your computer for a suitable image. Once you have selected one, click “Save My Profile” and the changes will take effect.

Community Manager

In order to find the answer you’re looking for, you have to ask the right question. No, I didn’t just pull that out of a fortune cookie. Asking good questions is an essential skill that takes mindfulness, strategy and practice. The bottom line is: few people will help a person who doesn’t help herself.

Geek to Live: The art of asking [via]

Jenny Mackintosh
Community Manager

In addition to the homepage, you’ll now find these 3 tabs on every major topic: Recent IT Questions, Recent IT Answers and Unanswered IT Questions.

So now, if you’re looking for questions to answer within your specific expertise, simply click the Unanswered IT Questions tab on any of the topics of your choice below.

Recent IT Questions
→ This tab displays the most recent 200 questions, both unanswered and answered. This is the default view.

Recent IT Answers
→ This tab displays the most recent 200 questions that have an answer or a partial answer. The answer may be rated, improved or reverted by fellow members.

Unanswered IT Questions
→ This tab displays the most recent 200 unanswered questions. This is a handy tab, especially during contests, to quickly view only unanswered questions.

We currently have a Most Active Member contest during the month of May, so jump to your area of expertise and start answering questions to build up your Knowledge Points and you could be our next winner. Thanks.

Community Manager

VIEW UNANSWERED QUESTIONS ON THESE TOPICS

VIEW ANSWERED QUESTIONS ON THESE TOPICS

You’ll be amazed at the tips, tweaks and time-savers you’ll find in the blogs of your peers and colleagues on IT Knowledge Exchange. Our sister site, SearchSQLServer.com, has gathered together related posts from our SQL Server with Mr. Denny blog to create a reference guide for those just getting started with SQL or anyone wishing to brush up their skills.

So be sure to visit the SQL and SQL Server tutorial and reference guide and take a moment to browse through our growing number of IT blogs for other topics of interest.

Community Manager

I’ve previously detailed how to increase your chances of getting an answer but I’m seeing quite a few tags that look more like run-on sentences or a series of keywords than a actual tag.

For example, this is not a tag – it’s a question:
what cisco certification is best or should i go for mcse?

Nor is a series of keywords a proper tag:
Certifications Cisco certifications CCNA MCSE

Instead, you should break these terms into individual tags, like this:
Certifications, Cisco certifications, CCNA, MCSE

This will ensure that your question appears in the proper categories so that members browsing those categories will see it. Just be sure that the tags you use are applicable to your question. You should never use a tag that is not related to your question.

Community Manager

To subscribe, visit the Subscribe to Alerts page and check off all the tags of importance to you. You’ll receive a Daily Question and Answer Update in your inbox each day. It’s a great way to keep abreast of potential problems within your area of expertise before you have to face a similar predicament.

If you ever wish to unsubscribe from any or all topics, simply login and visit your Public Profile page to uncheck any unwanted topics. It’s fast and simple – and we hope – helpful.

Let us know what you think about this new feature and keep your suggestions coming. Thanks.

Community Manager

Step 1: Think!
Stop, take a deep breath and think before posting your question. This isn’t a speed contest. You want an answer quickly but posting a poorly worded question will result in decreasing your chances of getting an answer. Think and word your question carefully.

Step 2: The Question Title
The title you use is important. You want your title to be clear and concise so that other members will click to read your full question. Using HELP!!! or I need an answer is not helpful for the members searching or browsing for questions to answer. Please do not use all caps or excessive exclamation points.

Step 3: The Question
Some questions can be written in a sentence or two while others may require more details. For example, someone attempting to answer your question may need to know the operating system you’re using, the software version, etc. Provide enough details so other members can help you. And remember, a well-written question using proper grammar is much easier to read. ITKE isn’t a cell phone; so feel free to spell out the entire word.

Step 4: The Tags
Tags are the backbone of IT Knowledge Exchange. The tags place your question in specific categories. So using a tag of “Exchange 2003″ will put your question in that category. Other members wishing to answer questions about Exchange 2003 would visit that tag. But using a tag of “Help me” or other meaningless phrase, would not put your question where other members can find it. Think – and use common sense when tagging your questions.