Disturbing trend in this community

[JusCuz]

I have to speak up about a trend in this community I've noticed over the past year or so. The issue is people posting links to documentation or links to other community posts as answers. Now, this would not be an issue if those links actually provided an answer to the question posted, and yes there are times, very rare anymore, that they actually do. Too often these links when referencing other posts are to posts that have no answers, or to documentation that also does not provide an answer. It's like people are watching for new posts, quick searching for other posts they can link, or finding the general documentation page. This. is. not. helpful.  I've lost count of the times now I've searched the community for an answer to a question I've had, found a post with the same question only to find a reply linking to other posts or documentation I've already seen, that did not provide any useful information for the question asked, and prompted me to come to the community in the first place.

In my opinion, this practice is reducing the value and usefulness of this community. This is a community of experts, and everyone can be an expert here. I don't care how little or how long you've worked with ServiceNow, everyone can provide value to this community. But crap posting replies to good questions is not the way. Please please please do NOT post a link as a reply unless you actually know this link is useful, that you see it actually has an answer to the question being posted.

I would love to have this spark a discussion in the community, how does the rest of the community feel about this issue? Is it really an issue?

[bburdick]

My sentiments are pretty close to yours.  I don't mind someone providing a link to a document, but provide additional information as to why you thought that worked - especially since I probably already searched docs and found that article, but it didn't seem to be a fit for my solution.

On a similar side note, I really do appreciate the respondents out there that do provide good information and feedback.  I do my best to click "found helpful" and mark your answers as solutions.

[Robert_Cartwrig]

Hi Jason,

I've experienced the same thing...so much so that I now usually add a request not to send me links to documentation or other unanswered threads right in my post. Sometimes I even list the top pages I have visited just to avoid this.

It's not to say that none of the links have been useful...sometimes I reread and see things I missed, or I learned something in the thread that upon rereading are now more clear.  That being said, I don't think I have never seen a link posted to a thread I started that I hadn't read prior to posting it in the Community.

How would you approach dealing with this?

Regards,

Robert

[JusCuz]

LOL, Robert, that's actually a good idea, posting all the places you've already tried, and specifically stating to please not post links is also valid. I'll be adding that I think to any questions I've posted in the future.

A recent question I've posted and had this situation, I actually called the person out for posting a not useful link that actually was not even related to my question. He actually deleted his reply.

We have the upvote ability now, maybe we need to go full reddit and have the downvote capability added. 🙂

[Robert_Cartwrig]

I thought about down-voting, but was also thinking about how many threads I've read that helped some folks but not others - and how folks might down-vote just because it didn't help their specific issue...and how discouraging that might be for folks that might actually have helpful answers.

It's too bad that we have to add that to our posts, but it seems to help in my experience.

And like bburdick, I click helpful for just about any comment that even leads somewhere helpful...sometimes after I have a resolution, I go back through and click helpful on all that person's posts. LOL