Helpful Members!

[Michael]

Hello Support!

You may or may not have recently noticed that there is a new icon appearing on some members mini-profiles. It will display like this:


You can view the list of current helpful members here.

These members have been recognized by the admins as posters who contribute sizable value to the Support community. They represent the best of the advice providers that we have (who are not already staff) here on Support. They do not posses any special powers or abilities on the forum other than a keen eye and strong knowledge of ProBoards and our software. These Helpful Members will be hand-selected by the admins but as always we will take member suggestions under advisement.

Asking to be added to the Helpful Members group is not permitted, and could severely limit your chances or even eliminate the possibility of being added to the group.

We hope that the addition of this new group will help users continue to get the best support of any online community on the internet!

[David Clark]

How does one get added to the "Helpful Member" group?

Simply put, members are selected for the "Helpful Member" group by exhibiting a certain behavior over time to demonstrate their knowledgeability and willingness to help out other members with information specific to their issues. In general, we love the atmosphere of positivity when tackling web software/theme design/coding issues, and the cooperative atmosphere of admins helping other admins, but it has happened that a few members begin to throw out random thoughts or pseudo-helpful misinformation into the mix, which can obscure the original purpose of the thread and de-rail the conversation. We're trying to avoid this.


What to do to be recognized as a Helpful Member:

• Post in Support threads where there's a question you know the answer to! If your solution is a guess or might not be that helpful, you should wait for a ProBoards admin to post.
  
• Make sure your responses in Support threads are well-detailed, easy to understand, and courteous! If you're helping someone and they are reacting badly to your attempts to assist, it is best to leave the thread for a Support admin to address.
• Spend time getting to know the ProBoards software! The more you know the software and the general web principles that the software is built on, the better your ability to assist others will be!

What to avoid to be recognized as a Helpful Member:

• Make sure you're not posting in a Support thread when you don't have pertinent information to the issue at hand, period.
• You should avoid cluttering threads up with more posts than are necessary, giving the thread a false air of activity/urgency when the support team scans over them all in the morning.
  
• Don't post things like "Good luck with this problem!" unless you've been meaningfully helping someone and you're at a point where your assistance is no longer required. This counts double if you haven't been posting in the thread at all. People like well-wishing, but not when they were expecting the post to be a suggestion or answer to their problem.