Accepted Solutions
If Helpful is turned off then Not Helpful would be as well. This community platform is used by many many other companies and there is some utility in Not Helpful for other support communities. I've seen it in a few cases here as well. Rare, but yes there have been some cases where people have been overly sarcastic and their response was therefore not helpful to the person they were responding to. Yes, I guess it could be taken as being cruel but not everyone has to agree with an approach. In fact, they might find that a suggestion has been tried but isn't very successful. The Not Helpful designation could help people steer clear of approaches that consistently cause people to fail at quitting. With a new quitter, how is the person supposed to know that a particular approach has been tried and few people are successful with it? We live in a society where there are reviews for nearly everything we purchase online and those reviews shape what we purchase. Those reviews also hopefully push the creator of the product to do better. Similarly, it could motivate the person to improve their response. Afterall, we should all be pushing to improve right? Change is necessary and quitting is a form of growth and change. Change happens here every day. 
Not a endorsement of being cruel to others but we should be open to both positive reinforcement and constructive criticism.
We do also have spammers on occasion trying to push their products on the site. While I'm able to do a pretty good job at removing them without anyone seeing their posts, sometimes they fly under the radar. Using the Report Abuse button is the best way to get my attention however clicking Not Helpful will deporioritize responses that are out in left field.
@Everyone
Just as I recommend not using Helpful liberally I would also not recommend using Not Helpful liberally. The Helpful and Not Helpful designations help to determine the relevance of things on the site. If something is deemed Helpful then it is prioritized over things that aren't marked as such an also over things that are marked Not Helpful. Imagine you have four different people asking the same question. One of the questions has responses but no Helpful or Correct answers. The next one has responses with a couple Helpful Answers and also a correct answer. The third one has no responses. The last one has responses but there is one marked with not helpful. You want the question with the correct or helpful answers to bubble to the top in search results so you find the answer. If there is a question with 45 responses and Helpful Answer marked on most of the replies this isn't helpful either. It dilutes the information and no priority can be assigned. Every response is on the same playing field.
Any additional questions?
Mark
EX Community Manager
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I also never paid attention to the fact that there was a "no".
When you pointed it out to us.....I had to chuckle at your question----who would be so cruel as to check no?????
In the old days of the old site......we had some pretty good "ruckuses" (is that a word??) "dust ups"??? out and arguments? I had people ask me to not comment on their blogs ever again simply because I took another viewpoint. Soooooooo remembering the old days.....just checking no for helpful would have been kind........
Anyway------we are much more civilized now so you are totally correct.......helpful should be the same as like.......click it or not....no or yes...not necessary.
