Thanking Helpers

[Gruff18]

This forum has been absolutely brilliant for my being able to continue using Open Office - people are so patient & helpful.

It would be nice to see a 'thank you' button on moderators' or whomever else is providing assistance, under their avatar. I can't think of any other way to show my appreciation except for not asking a question until I've exhausted all other methods of working out my problem...

Anyway, kudos! Great software and a great website.

Best wishes X

[RusselB]

You can always use the @ symbol in front of the helper's name when posting a Thank-You message.

[edit] Part of suggestion removed based on information received from other helpers.

[floris v]

I appreciate your gratitude, but it's not a very good idea. Because, well, only a few people would use it.

[Gruff18]

It's an excellent idea, floris v. No one does it because they don't know how.

[floris v]

Take a look at the ask libreoffice board https://ask.libreoffice.org/en/questions/ and find out how many people vote up answers to their questions, or "accept" them.

You can post a replyvto say thank you, or send a private messenger to a user to thank him or her, and people do that regularly.

[keme]

The best ways to say thanks (IMHO):

Confirm in the thread that the problem is solved, and if applicable, specify which solution worked and explain how you made it work (this improves the answer further, so you kind of "pay back" that way).
Do the work yourself. Attach a file which illustrates what you are working with. Don't expect people here to provide a finished solution. Mostly we strive to educate users rather than doing their work.
Come back later. As you gain experience, you will be able to provide help to other users, too. Sometimes you even learn something from it, and you relieve other helpers of tasks they may find trivial/boring/annoying.

Of course, upvote/downvote/like/thanks buttons is a simple way to provide a token of gratitude. They could also improve the quality of search sorting, but that depends on there being a lot of similar questions, and of the users actually voting. To me, the extra buttons/arrows more often appear to me as screen clutter rather than useful assessment tools.

[eremmel]

@keme +1
And do not start sending PMs with 'Thank you'. I only react to PMs which are about meta-community (and sometimes request for exchange of sensitive information).
I think that I'll block PMs when this will become a custom on the fourm. There is already a kind of kudo-count: the number of posts.

[ThomasH]

This thread reminds me of something Mr. Rodgers said, quoting his mother: Whenever you hear about bad things happening in the news, always look for the helpers. They are there too. I'm paraphrasing but the basic gist is that there are always out there even in the internet, haha.

I've had quite a bit of help already with someone of the questions that i've had and I am happy to give back where I can even though I'm still new to OpenOffice, I'm getting up to speed pretty quickly.