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Posting links within your questions and answers: World

 

 

Okay, here’s a question I’ve seen some of you asking: Can we use links within our QnA postings?  There’s been a little confusion recently surrounding this issue, and I’m here to set the record straight.

 

The short answer is YES.  You can indeed use links within your answers, comments, and even your question details.

 

Before I proceed with more information, I must say up front that you are not allowed to post links to external sites that violate the QnA Code of Conduct. 

 

Including links in your answer

In fact, we encourage you to provide links to support your answer.  If you found the answer on one or several websites, it’s very helpful to the person who asked the question to visit those sites and see for themselves (and to get more info if they want).

 

I think it’s also really cool when users help others by explaining just how they searched to find their answer.  Let’s look at an actual example.  Here’s a question I just came across last night posted by Gwen:  Is there a computer dictionary out there? You can check out the question and see my answer (I’m david-qna).  But I’ll also include my answer right here:

 

There are quite a few online computer dictionaries out there. I found a bunch by doing a Live Search for computer dictionary. You can see my search results by clicking this link:

http://search.live.com/results.aspx?q=computer+dictionary&go=Searc​h&form=QBRE

I think http://www.webopedia.com/ looks particularly good and trustworthy.

 

As you can see, I included a link to my search results, and maybe this will help Gwen learn how to do searches on her own in the future.  I also put in a direct link to the online computer dictionary that looked best to me.

 

So these are examples of how you can put links to great use in an answer.

 

Including links in your question details

When you are asking a question on QnA, you might want to include links in the "question details" section (the part that shows up under the main part of your question).  You may want to do this to show what you found on your own.  Or maybe you want to reference a website that presents a certain point of view and that’s what your question is about.

 

Here’s an example of a question I just posted in which I included a bunch of links: Does Warren Buffet approve of the controversial sales techniques used by Kirby to sell vacuums? 

 

Even if you type a full web address in the first part of your question (the first question entry box that allows just 100 characters), it won’t be clickable.  That’s because that part of your question itself becomes a link to the actual question.  So I don’t recommend including full web addresses in the main question area.  If your question is about a web site, by all means, write the name of the site (like amazon.com for example).  But don’t write the entire URL (http://www.amazon.com). 

 

Examples:

 

Good: What do you think of the website amazon.com?

 

Not so good: What do you think of the website http://www.amazon.com? (Okay... not the best example because the Spaces blog tool here just made that a link!  But it wouldn't be a link if you tried this in QnA.)

 

 

Including links in your comments

You can also include links in your comments.  I won’t give an example of this.  But I can imagine times when you might want to explain yourself in a comment by providing a link to a site that backs up what you’re saying or further clarifies the issue.

 

How to include links

Here’s a great Q and A about how to create links in your question details or answer: Should the ability to add hyperlinks be added to QnA?

 

 

Why should I explain when Jason has already provided a great answer!  Thanks Jason!  Nice job.

 

 

The potential danger of clicking links

Now, just to be thorough, I should mention that not all links are safe.  And it becomes especially risky when those links are posted by the general public (be it on QnA, a personal blog, an individual’s website, etc.).  I know our wonderful QnA MVP (Microsoft Most Valuable Professional) Ron Chamberlin thinks along those lines… and he should know because he’s involved in computer security.  Ron says that he finds it not a good thing to just open any link, and he has written: “Just because a link says youtube, ya don’t really know, and I would hate to see your pc fry because of a malformed link.”  Wise words indeed.

 

Here are a couple of interesting articles about the safety of web links:

 

·         McAfee: Search results can be dangerous

·         BrowserShield: Helping Make the Web Safe for Surfers (so there's more hope on the horizon)

 

 

Just to make it clear, it is against the QnA Code of Conduct to post links that could harm or disrupt another user's computer.  And this includes dangerous links.  But, you, as a user of QnA, are responsible for protecting your own computer system, and I wanted to let you know about the potential danger of links.  I also want you to know that the QnA team is not responsible for the content or activities in any user-created content.

 

All in all, I just wanted to try to clear up the general question of whether or not you’re allowed to include links in your QnA postings.  Again, the answer is YES.  I hope I’ve helped!

 

-DavidB, QnA Program Manager