ASCOM Answers is a community maintained FAQ and technical support site for astronomy hardware and software. We specifically deal with ASCOM (the Astronomy Component Object Model) but we welcome wider questions relating to astronomy equipment, software and techniques.

We want ASCOM Answers to become the canonical place on the Internet where people come to solve their astronomy problems. To do this, we need your input. If you've solved a problem, or if you have a problem you need help with, then WE WANT YOU.

We encourage astronomy equipment vendors and software developers to participate. For you, this will help to soften your technical support burden and help your customers solve their issues quickly with peer-to-peer support. Vendors that engage with the community often enjoy greater respect and customer loyalty. As a vendor, we encourage you to participate by answering questions about your products and by seeding the database with Frequently Asked Questions (ask the question, then answer it yourself). If you provide us with your logo graphic as a PNG image (28x20 pixels) we'll 'light up' tags relating to your products with your graphic. This will send a clear message to your customers and potential customers that you're engaging with the community.

Users of this site gain reputation as they contribute. Reputation is awarded by the community, by peer votes. As a user's reputation increases, they are able to have more and more control over the content, for example they may re-tag questions, edit questions and answers. More information on this can be found in the FAQ.

Strategies for Increasing Your Reputation

Reputation is earned by posting questions, answers and comments and by voting on other people’s content. Your peers, members of the ASCOM community, get to vote on your content, so quality and relevance really counts. Here are some ideas for how to maximize your reputation.

1. Think of a problem you’ve recently resolved with your astronomy gear. Create a new question that describes the problem, and then answer your own question by providing the solution that you found.
2. Look back in the ASCOM-Talk message archives. Pick a question and enter it into ASCOM Answers. If you can find the answer, then add that, too.
3. Same as (2) but find questions from other astronomy related forums and mailing lists.
4. Pick an existing question on ASCOM Answers that has multiple answers. Create a new answer that incorporates all of the existing answers, corrects any mistakes, and expands upon the content. Format everything so that it looks really great. Then stand back as your new super-answer gets voted up and becomes the de-facto correct answer.
5. Vote on other people’s questions and answers. Best practice when casting a vote is to leave a comment explaining why you voted the way you did. If you see a good question or answer, vote it up.

Dos and Don’ts

Remember, everything on ASCOM Answers is in question-and-answer format. Here are some general dos and don’ts:

• DON’T put answers into the question section. Always split your content into a question (or problem description) and then submit your question. Then answer it (provide the solution) in the separate answer section beneath the original question.
• DO answer your own question – this is OK and specifically allowed.
• DO stay on-topic (Astronomy). If you don’t, your posts may be moderated, voted down or deleted.
• DO answer other people’s questions, even if there is already an answer. Your answer may be better.
• DON’T ask further questions in the answers section. If you need to ask for clarification or further information, add a comment to the original question.
• DO tag your questions with up to 5 tags, so that others can find them more easily.
• DO try to re-use existing tags in preference to creating new ones.
• DO accept a ‘best answer’ to your questions, by clicking the check-mark next to the answer. If you answered your own question, then you can still accept your answer as the ‘best answer’ but only after 48 hours have elapsed (this is to prevent people from ‘gaming’ the system).
• DO format your content carefully. Content that is both accurate a visually appealing is more likely to get voted up. The site uses something called MarkDown, which is a common-sense easy-to-use method of formatting plain text content. You don’t need to know and HTML – but if you do, some basic HTML tags are supported too. There’s a full help page provided on the site.
• DO read the FAQ.
• DON'T attempt to game the reputation system, please play fair. The rule is one-person-one-vote. The site has built-in countermeasures and attempts to game the reputation system are likely to result in your account being locked or deleted.