Confidence answering forum questions

Oliver Beirne said:

In the survey, I received a couple of comments that indicated some hesitation on participating in a public setting:

• 'Not willing / confident / feel enabled to speak on behalf of Arm.'​
• 'Some people may be unaware of them, or think it is not their responsibility, or they are worried about answering (publicly) correctly, or they don't want their name publicly visible'

Has anyone else encountered this with colleagues supporting their forums and has anyone taken steps to mitigate this?

Yes, and there are a few ways you can approach this. Ultimately the person that you're trying to encourage to post on the Community needs reassurance and that can be given in several different ways depending on the person, a few approaches can help:

- Editorial guidelines can cover tone, formality, and how to approach posting on the site.

- Have them run it past you first, get them to write a draft and run it past you for approval, and then let them post it themselves.

- Remind them that if they want, you can post as them for the first post or any follow-up posts.

I've noticed some companies choose to have "one account" with different people posting as they log in to it. Still, typically this is poor practice of sharing login details and it reduces the authenticity of the post when it could have been from an individual. Reassurance of support and "it's not that deep" or "not that critical" and they're not going to be reprimanded for their posts can help.

I've been thinking education and guide style content may help to mitigate, so thanks for sharing that line of thought.

Due to time zone reasons I want to avoid having anything run by me so I think the route of reassuring content and guidance is the way to go.

I've been thinking education and guide style content may help to mitigate, so thanks for sharing that line of thought.

Due to time zone reasons I want to avoid having anything run by me so I think the route of reassuring content and guidance is the way to go.