What kind of questions should I ask in the Conversation?
While you can ask anything, your best shot at getting high-quality answers is if your question is relevant to the interests of the Scholastica audience – which are academics and scholarly publishers.
Can I edit my question?
Yes you can! Make sure you are logged in. Go to the page where you can view your question, and click the “edit” link next to your question. Enter your updated text, and hit “Save” – and now your answer is updated. One note: it is a best practice to note “[updated 10/3/12]” at the beginning of an updated question so that answer to the old version of the question don’t seem so crazy. :)
What if I think someone’s comment is a great answer? Shouldn’t I make sure that the best answer rises to the top?
This is truly a moral dilemma. Personally, I would copy the comment and post it as my own answer – but with an opening caveat “The answer below is originally comment posted by [ORIGINAL USER’S NAME HERE]. If [ORIGINAL USER’S NAME HERE] decides to post the comment as an answer under their own account, I will take this answer down so not as to compete.”
How do I edit my answer?
Make sure you are logged in. Go to the page where you can view your answer, and click the “edit” link next to your answer. Enter your updated text, and hit “Save.” Boom: you’ve got an updated answer.
Why should I vote an answer up or down?
The goal of the Conversation is to provide helpful answers – and to deprioritize unhelpful answers. Voting is a system that allows a community of knowledgeable users to filter knowledge so that, over time and through numerous votes, high-quality knowledge becomes easier to find than low-quality assertions. So, along with helping everyone easily find answers to their questions, you can help make the internet more useful for people by voting in the Conversation. Call it your good deed for the day.
How many times can I vote an answer up or down?
Once. (That was the short answer. The long answer would involve the rationale, which in short [yes, this is a short version of the long answer] is the principle of one vote per person so that quality is determined through an egalitarian democracy.)
Do I have to be logged into Scholastica to ask a question in the Conversation?
Yes. We want to reward people who ask good questions and offer good answers, and to do this you have to be logged in. We also want to create incentives for people to be respectful, and tons of research [link] shows that anonymity tends to be associated with more unethical behavior. Not cool.