Important Issue: How to know I'm being helped?

[AnxiousGuy]

Hi guys, I just wanted to know when a user in this community has replied to a question I've asked how can I be sure that the particular user actually knows the correct information? How can I be certain that I've received help from someone knowledgeable about the particular subject?

It seems really easy for any user to reply to a question I've asked and then give wrong information and if nobody else knows about my question then no other user can correct him...

Thanks!

 

[cdabc123]

scroll over their profile pic and you can see how many issues they have solved how long they have been here and how many posts they have made. in addition on the right their is a plus and minus button so users can call each other out on bad info. unfortunately, if you are so far down the rabbit hole you only get one person who thinks they know what they are talking about the information could have a higher chance of being false

 

[AnxiousGuy]

I just noticed a user has this under their name on the left side of the screen: "Eternal Champion"

What does this mean?

 

[Someone Somewhere]

Here's a list of the badges: http://www.tomshardware.com/community/badges.html

If you click on the user's name, it should take them to the page where you can see all their badges. Lots of red or blue is good, blank not so much.

The yellow badges are bit harder to understand - it depends a lot on the badge as to what it means.

Eternal Champion means someone has had the highest monthly solution count for a forum category, five times. This is usually a pretty good sign.

 

[AnxiousGuy]

So the easiest way is to do this: view a user who has posted in my thread by clicking on their user profile?

Thanks!

 

[ssddx]

@anxiousguy

honestly there is no way to know for 100% sure, even with the badge system as this only highlights how many threads they have answered and how many people marked them as a best solution in any given topic. what i highly suggest and even for my own answers is that you double check them with a little research on your own. while the answer may of course be correct it is always a smart idea to double check ANY source of information be it from a person you know, a trusted website, a forum, a book or any other information source.

high post count - this means that they are an active contributor here. a good sign, but does not always mean their answers are top notch
high best answer count - a good sign as this means they are often selected as the answer in a thread. doesnt mean top notch answers but an indicator.
badges - given when a ba is received for a topic area. a good indicator they are active in your question genre.
top listed - eternal champion or similar titles are a good indicator of being active and respected

edit - for ease of showing you.. relevant badges show up next to a users name here in threads. see the icon next to our names. i added a samsung tag to this thread just to show you how it works. hover over a users avatar will show you their post count, ba count and time here. clicking on their name (in our case next to our moderator star.. normal members dont have a star) it will show you their complete badge list. in order of how hard they are to get: green to blue to red. gold are special and a few are easy while many others require special conditions to be met.

of course this is not to say that a new member with very little of the above is incapable of answering a question correctly. all the above really say is that a member has been here for awhile and has been active. a new member can easily have a wealth of good information but it might be hard to see that up front because they have not been here long. i always suggest reading the content they post and then double checking it to make sure of it yourself.

--

by chance would you be referring to your recent "cloning a drive" thread?

if so, both ghost and hirens are well known and respected programs. there are alternatives of course. i would also like to note that if you "clone" your drive completely at regular intervals it is a nice backup as all you need to do is just swap the disks in your system to get it working again - no usb disk booting or lengthy restores at that time. the downside is that cloning a full disk takes longer than incremental backups. both can be good solutions depending on what your needs are (any backup is better than none) but i personally prefer cloning myself (again, my own preference)