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FAQ

Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ)

What kinds of questions can I ask here?

Most importantly - questions should be relevant to this community. Before you ask - please make sure to search for a similar question. You can search questions by their title or tags.

What kinds of questions should be avoided?

Please avoid asking questions that are not relevant to this community, too subjective and argumentative.

What should I include in a question?

Questions need to be self contained and provide enough context for the reader to understand how to reproduce the situation. Please see the Support Guidelines for the ROS community..

What should I avoid in my answers?

ROS Answers: Open Source Q&A Forum is a question and answer site - it is not a discussion group. Please avoid holding debates in your answers as they tend to dilute the essense of questions and answers. For the brief discussions please use commenting facility.

Who moderates this community?

The short answer is: you. This website is moderated by the users. Karma system allows users to earn rights to perform a variety of moderation tasks

What if I don't have the "best" answer?

Do not worry about providing a "best" or "complete" answer on the first reply. The world is large and there is almost always others who might be able to provide a "better" answer, but if you can provide a helpful enough answer to get the person who is unblocked going forward that's already a help. If you're answer is exactly what people need it may be voted up and become the accepted one. If not it can still help others and provide an alternative suggested answer.

What if I don't have a "complete" answer?

The completeness of the answer it's often limited by the completeness of the question. Often questions are posed vaguely enough that answers are often just guesses. I recommend in that case being clear that the answer is speculation based on assumptions being made and I try to state those assumptions. On the hopes that if my assumptions are incorrect the original asker can update their question to add more details. And at that point my answer is to a different question and either someone else can provide an answer or I can update mine. The approach that I've seen work best is to make a best guess answer and comment to ask the original poster to update their question to add more information. After which you can update your answer to be more complete given the more complete question. This has the significant benefit that someone who comes upon the question later does not need to pay attention to the comments. They can read the fully detailed question and then read the fully detailed answer, without needing to follow the whole thread back and forth gathering more information from the original poster.

How does karma system work?

When a question or answer is upvoted, the user who posted them will gain some points, which are called \"karma points\". These points serve as a rough measure of the community trust to him/her. Various moderation tasks are gradually assigned to the users based on those points.

For example, if you ask an interesting question or give a helpful answer, your input will be upvoted. On the other hand if the answer is misleading - it will be downvoted. Each vote in favor will generate 10 points, each vote against will subtract 10 points. There is a limit of 200 points that can be accumulated for a question or answer per day. The table below explains reputation point requirements for each type of moderation task.

1 upvote
3 post a link
1 add comments
50 downvote
25 accept own answer to own questions
25 open and close own questions
100 retag other's questions
75 edit community wiki questions
1000 edit any answer
200 delete any comment

How can I post a link if I don't have any karma yet?

You can post a link to things without karma as long as it does not get rendered as a link. If you put it inside of a block quote it will not get rendered. The karma lmits for various actions are there to prevent spammers from creating a lot of content.

How to change my picture (gravatar) and what is gravatar?

The picture that appears on the users profiles is called gravatar (which means globally recognized avatar).

Here is how it works: a cryptographic key (unbreakable code) is calculated from your email address. You upload your picture (or your favorite alter ego image) the website gravatar.com from where we later retreive your image using the key.

This way all the websites you trust can show your image next to your posts and your email address remains private.

Please personalize your account with an image - just register at gravatar.com (just please be sure to use the same email address that you used to register with us). Default image that looks like a kitchen tile is generated automatically.

To register, do I need to create new password?

No, you don't have to. You can login through any service that supports OpenID, e.g. Google, Yahoo, AOL, etc. "Login now!" ยป

Why other people can edit my questions/answers?

Goal of this site is... So questions and answers can be edited like wiki pages by experienced users of this site and this improves the overall quality of the knowledge base content. If this approach is not for you, we respect your choice.

Still have questions?

Please ask your question, help make our community better!

If I want to suggest a way to improve this website what should I do?

If your suggestion is related to the configuration please open an issue on our github issue tracker. If it is a feature or underlying issue with the askbot engine please open a question on the Askbot Forums