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Situation: I have some problem and find a similar question about the problem that has an answer. But my circumstances are different to those of the person who asked. Is there an appropriate way I can comment there? I want to say something like:

I had a similar issue, and the given answer worked for me as well

I think I should not answer the question in this case, and I do not have sufficient reputation for making a comment.

Is it better just to not write anything?

This is the specific question (but I'm asking generally):

Ubuntu 14.04 Ethernet and Wifi not working (unclaimed network)

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    Are you saying the answer on that question worked for you but your problem was different? In that case, no need to comment, just upvote the answer that worked.
    – Mark Kirby
    Mar 6, 2018 at 9:41
  • OK I get it, that this make it more simple. Yes, I have different laptop and 64 bit system that person who asked
    – weatherman
    Mar 6, 2018 at 9:48
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    It is sobering to see ones C- work discussed in Meta. FYI, I added an explanation.
    – chili555
    Mar 8, 2018 at 17:14
  • It's clearly not C-work as it helped at least 2 users... What's c-work to you is A-+ for the person running into the same problem and your answer helping them out of a tight spot! @chili555 :-) :-) :-)
    – Fabby
    Mar 11, 2018 at 11:18
  • @chili555 What is C-work? I probably did not get what you mean. -Fabby I do not even know what you mean by A-+. But I guess, that for chili it mean the problem is easy... And for me it is very difficult and useful. But I like to know where to share that in my circumstances it worked also.
    – weatherman
    Mar 11, 2018 at 16:25
  • @weatherman In grade school in the USA, report cards are issued and the student's work is graded A, B, C, D or F. A is outstanding work, C is average and F is failing; that is, the student must repeat the grade a second year. Above, I characterized my work as a bit below the average expected. I shall strive to improve. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Academic_grading_in_the_United_States
    – chili555
    Mar 11, 2018 at 16:35

1 Answer 1

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In this case, since you have enough reputation, you should simply upvote the answer that worked for you. If you didn't have enough reputation to upvote, you should still click the upvote button, as anonymous feedback is counted and can be accessed through Stack Exchange Data Explorer (and I use it for some moderation activities), though it does not affect the visible post score.

Post score is intended to indicate how useful the answer is. Arguably the strongest form of usefulness is that it worked for someone else :) so to indicate that the answer worked for you, upvoting is the intended method of communication!

When you do have sufficient reputation to comment, I would still advise you in general not to write a comment saying something worked for you. It's unlikely that a comment saying "this worked for my slightly different case" would have any value, unless, possibly, you specified what was different about your case, like "I was trying the same thing on 16.04 and this answer worked for me", or "I was using [some specific hardware] and this worked for me" (on a hardware-specific question). Such a comment might arguably be slightly useful. If it were a case where such a comment had value, then the author of the post might see the comment and update their post to say something like "according to [you] this also works for [different scenario]" and then the comment could be deleted. Keeping the site up to date over time is a challenge we haven't quite worked out. That's definitely not the intended purpose of comments, but I guess it's one of their possible uses.

Still, I certainly wouldn't consider it necessary to make such a comment, and if I saw a comment like that that seemed to have little value, I would flag it as obsolete. Comments are easily deleted, and once deleted, nobody except mods can see them. So, we do not expect much value from comments. Voting, on the other hand, is vital to the site, and I encourage you to do it prolifically. If useful posts are not upvoted, nobody will know that they are useful, and if bad posts aren't downvoted, people will not realise that following them may be a bad idea.

Oh and yes, you're right, you definitely should not add an answer saying "this answer worked for me". Such an answer would be considered Not an answer and would be deleted (unless nobody noticed it and flagged it). If someone repeatedly makes posts that are deleted by reviewers and/or mods, eventually the site will automatically block them from answering questions until they manage to do enough things the system values (like writing posts that are upvoted) to get the ban lifted.

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    here I can make comment. I think I see it. It is better do not have many comments. And I see that you have to be specific.
    – weatherman
    Mar 6, 2018 at 11:12
  • Yes @weatherman :) Comments are mainly intended to be ephemeral and used for improving or otherwise moderating posts, the site's main content. OTOH, they are sometimes very useful (for example, they provide highly relevant links to pages that are likely to stay up, such as other SE posts), and sometimes have long lives. But, on the site, we usually consider numerous comments to be clutter distracting from the good stuff. SE sites are not forums; we don't chat about stuff; we just fix it. Here on meta, OTOH, discussion is encouraged, and long comment conversations are generally fine.
    – Zanna Mod
    Mar 6, 2018 at 11:18

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