23meg
October 23rd, 2007, 12:45 AM
While we've been doing pretty good in this site at meeting the support requirements of users, especially after the Dapper release, when the number of users started increasing more rapidly than before, some users have started to voice their dissatisfaction with the support. The usual routine is to inform the user that support is provided by volunteers, that nobody is under an obligation to answer questions, that if their question went unanswered, it's quite possible that nobody has the answer, etc.
Like many other projects (https://answers.launchpad.net/), Ubuntu has an answer tracker at Launchpad (https://answers.launchpad.net/ubuntu), which is probably the busiest one there. Though perhaps not comparable to the forums, a huge amount of questions get asked and answered. People seem to be quite satisfied with the service.
My suggestion is: perhaps people in the forums should be actively informed of the existence of the LP answer tracker as an alternative way of getting support, especially if their posts have gone unanswered, or they haven't been able to get their problems solved here. Not everyone reaches the forums via
http://www.ubuntu.com/support/communitysupport or similar places where the answer tracker is listed beside the forums, and my general impression is that at least most new users asking for support here aren't aware of its existence.
I don't have very good ideas at the moment as to how exactly this should be done (maybe a sticky in Absolute Beginner Talk? post(er)s that go unanswered for a while get a notice?) , but I feel people could benefit from it being done.
Thoughts?
Like many other projects (https://answers.launchpad.net/), Ubuntu has an answer tracker at Launchpad (https://answers.launchpad.net/ubuntu), which is probably the busiest one there. Though perhaps not comparable to the forums, a huge amount of questions get asked and answered. People seem to be quite satisfied with the service.
My suggestion is: perhaps people in the forums should be actively informed of the existence of the LP answer tracker as an alternative way of getting support, especially if their posts have gone unanswered, or they haven't been able to get their problems solved here. Not everyone reaches the forums via
http://www.ubuntu.com/support/communitysupport or similar places where the answer tracker is listed beside the forums, and my general impression is that at least most new users asking for support here aren't aware of its existence.
I don't have very good ideas at the moment as to how exactly this should be done (maybe a sticky in Absolute Beginner Talk? post(er)s that go unanswered for a while get a notice?) , but I feel people could benefit from it being done.
Thoughts?