1337 Ubuntuforums - thread ranking

[it.henrik]

Hi fellow ubuntuforums users,

Ubuntuforums was GREAT until 6-12 months ago but now the level on the information in the threads seems to degrade quite fast.

I know im putting my chin out here but is there some way of getting a section in Ubuntuforums for questions and answers with a higher level on the answers and questions.

Im not sure on how this would work but right now its really hard to find a good answer to the problems I have with Ubuntu without having to dig through tens or hundreds of posts.

Yes I know it has to do with the popularity of Ubuntu which generates lots of new linux user and I LOVE the fact that Ubuntu is gaining popularity and pulling ppl out of the M$ way of thinking.

One simple solution would maybe be a ranking system on the threads, when I searched for something I would get a list of threads which got a "star" from others that searched for the same or similar words as I.

Maybe we could rank the entries in threads with different types of stars, like "funny", "informative", "social networking", "ideas" etc etc and the lists with the highest scored threads within its own groups would be presented next to each other when I searched for something.

The users who wrote the comments that got the point would have a summary of the score next to the avatar so we would have a carrot for writing good posts and less "I think ubuntu is bad", "my cat is yello" etc.

What do you all think?

[matthew]

Every place/forum where I have seen something like this implemented, the feature turns out to be a popularity contest and not a useful tool. We have discussed this several times in the history of these forums, and even implemented something similar early on. It didn't go well. We have determined that we do not see any value in making another attempt to do this.

The "thanks" feature is probably as close to this as you will see.

[it.henrik]

Well if it has been tried and failed then there must be some other way.

Maybe we could have a button in every post for "Did this post/thread help you solve your problem" and then bump the thread up in the search results according to the number of "Did this post/thread help you solve your problem"-clicks.

Or ... there could be a list next to the search-results with "People who also searched for [keywords used in search] found these post/threads useful".

There must be some way of improving the usability of Ubuntuforums to help bring it back to its former best-source-of-information glory, the thanks button just doesnt seem to do the trick.

[LaRoza]

Tags?

[popch]

Maybe we could have a button in every post for "Did this post/thread help you solve your problem" (...) the thanks button just doesnt seem to do the trick.

We do have that button in every post, and it is the thanks button. How else can I read "the following users want to give thanks for this useful post"?

[it.henrik]

Tags?

Anyone can start a thread and ad tags to it, it doesnt mean that it contain useful information.

I am trying to figure out a way of filtering out information by using the computing power of all users of this forum, think wikipedia :)

[LaRoza]

Anyone can start a thread and ad tags to it, it doesnt mean that it contain useful information.

I am trying to figure out a way of filtering out information by using the computing power of all users of this forum, think wikipedia :)

There is an ubuntu wiki.

This is a forum and is more dynamic.

Anyone can add tags to a thread you know, not just the OP.

[it.henrik]

We do have that button in every post, and it is the thanks button. How else can I read "the following users want to give thanks for this useful post"?

Well the "thanks button" does just do what it does, thanks the writer of the post.

The thanks button is more like a popularity contest then a way of filtering out solutions to tech problems, right?

Of course, if you write a good post that helps others then that post will get many thanks, but also a post that, which I absolutely agree with, tells ppl to stop trying to push their religious believes on to others.

I would like to have a function to sort out the very best problem solving information in this huge pile of threads and posts.

[LaRoza]

I would like to have a function to sort out the very best problem solving information in this huge pile of threads and posts.

Stickies.

You seem to be trying to turn a forum into a wiki. Picture UF as a phone support technician, and a wiki as a troubleshooting manual. Both are useful.

[it.henrik]

There is an ubuntu wiki.

This is a forum and is more dynamic.


I know thats why its so great, I want to keep it that way! I love forums. I just want some way of find the information I am looking for as quick as possible and I believe im not the only one (just read the subjects on the threads in this part of the forum).

One way of doing this could be to use 2 seconds of every user who found a post/thread useful to their problem. :)

Anyone can add tags to a thread you know, not just the OP.

Ok thats great, but I believe that most users are just like me, quite lazy, and want to get on with their problem as soon as they found the solution to it, thats why I want a "one click"-solution.

Just look at Amazon and ebay, why do they fight over the one-click-buy functionality if they do not think its what their customers wants.

[it.henrik]

Stickies.

You seem to be trying to turn a forum into a wiki. Picture UF as a phone support technician, and a wiki as a troubleshooting manual. Both are useful.

No, but I can see why it looks like that.

I want to divide all the support technician in this fourms in to different levels of support.

Everyone who have called a support line knows how frustrating it is to try to reach the technician who knows the system you are working with and can answer your question in 10 seconds.

I want the forum users to help me lift up the answers from those senior technicians/ubuntuforums users in the search rankings.

[it.henrik]

Stickies.


Stickies doesnt do the trick, we cant have every thread with the best a solution to a problem as a sticked thread, then there wont be room for new threads :)

What we need is some way of ranking the information in the threads so the best, most accurate is the first thread to pop up when you search for something.

Come on ppl, its called helping each other out, isnt that one of the big things with this forum is about?

All that needs to be doen is that I click the "this post solved my problem"-button so that the next person who is having the same problem as I does not have to dig through all the posts I had to dig through to find the thread that solved my problem.

Isnt this a great idea?

[forestpixie]

Perhaps it is a good idea, but on the other hand how many paeople would actually bother.

I think the tags is a good idea and probably of more use than the 'Ubuntu' variant in the title - I personally think the wrong one is mandatory, plenty of threads already with a tag of 'none'.

But that said if there was such an option I would use it, as I would also use tags.

The problem I can see with a simple 'this helped me' type of response is that it would work for very specific problems, but if the problem is more broad and it takes many responses from different people to actually fix the problem which could be caused by little or conflicting infromation from the OP, - which one does the 'this helped me' apply to ? - or are you suggesting a 'tick' against each post in a thread - that would become a bit confusing I think.

[it.henrik]

I dont know how many would use it, I know I would.

By judging from how many who takes their time to spend hours in these forums just looking for someone to help (like I used to do when I was a student supposed to work on my master thesis :)), I would guess that enough people will use it for the idea to work.

What I would like to see is that some smart ppl here at ubuntuforums could have a discussion around how a good solution could look like.

Im just brainstorming here, please join me :)

I strongly believe that to make something like this work it needs to be
a) Quick and easy to use
b) easy to understand why its there

Regarding if the tags could be used for this:
I dont want to kill someones darling here ... but the tags seems to complicated to me for this purpose. I personally does not even know what they are used for, I guess its for categorizing threads but it does not say anything about the quality of the posts in the thread.

I must admit that I have not read any FAQs about the tags, and I dont think the majority here at ubuntuforums ever will either. Im sorry but I guess that most ppl here are like me and I do not have so much time anymore to spend reading up on things I dont know if I need to know about. I would prefer to have lots of time to read all about the open source community but I guess thats how reality looks like for most of us with a job and some kind of family.

Once again, I love Ubuntuforums! I dont want to change it, I just want to improve it.

I have learned so much from hanging around here and I want to help others to be able to improve their Linux skills like I have and I also want to make sure Ubuntuforums can continue to be my no 1 source for information about Ubuntu and OSS :guitar:

[it.henrik]

The problem I can see with a simple 'this helped me' type of response is that it would work for very specific problems, but if the problem is more broad and it takes many responses from different people to actually fix the problem which could be caused by little or conflicting infromation from the OP, - which one does the 'this helped me' apply to ? - or are you suggesting a 'tick' against each post in a thread - that would become a bit confusing I think.

I was thinking along the lines like:

1 ) Person A search for "Keyword1 Keyword2"
2 ) A gets a huuuuuge list of threads, most of them does not have anything to do with the solution of A:s problem
3 ) A reads some threads to find a thread that includes a series of posts that finally ends with the all the solutions to the problem. Usually it takes a few threads with different posts with the right info to solve my problems at least.
4 ) A marks the last post A had to read as "this solved my problem"
5 ) The forum will store "Keyword1 Keyword2" with this thread that contained the post.
6 ) Next person B searches for "Keyword1 Keyword2" and gets the normal search results together with the list with all threads marked as solutions to "Keyword1 Keyword2".
7 ) B marks some post in some thread as the solution to B:s problem.
8 ) The forum will store "Keyword1 Keyword2" with this thread that contained the post and sort the threads marked as problem solvers after the number of posts marked as problem solvers.

etc etc

In the end we would get a list of threads with a high probability to contain the solution for our problems. If we were looking for something else we can just skip the list with threads marked as containing solutions.

[forestpixie]

As far as the tags go - you can search tags instead of keywords.

I can see what you're trying to say but I still think it'll get really confusing.

If for instance there is a thread with multiple posts that address slightly different aspects of the problem - each of which happens to be a solver for a bunch of people - we could end up with a thread with 10 different solutions each of which had been tagged as being "this solved my problem" (for instance :D )

I come wandering along looking for a solution to my problem - I see this thread and it's been tagged as "this solved my problem" by a bunch of other people - great thinks I - but the tagged solution on page 1 doesn't help me at all - unbeknown to me the solution I need is actually on page 3.

Now I then go wandering off looking for another thread - leaving the solution behind me.

Just playing devil's advocate you know here.

I do think that it would be a good idea if it could be made to work, but how complicated do we want to make the forum for people to use.

I still think that the tags should be mandatory - then if you search for things you really are looking for - obviously searching keywords finds it somewhere in the depths of the thread.

[it.henrik]

Ok what I was aiming at was not a "im feeling lucky" solution but rather more something along "this list of threads has a very high probability to contain the solution to you problem".

It might not bring the thread with the solution to the top of the page for every search but it will at least lift out threads where I absolutely wont find the solution.

The biggest drawback of ubuntuforum , for me at least, is that 1) it contains so many threads with the same information and 2) so many threads with so little information, so to speak.

But hey, Im not try to CPR my darling here ;) if there is something better I will use that instead!

The "this solved my problem"-button might not be the best way to address these problems but it is at least an attempt to come up with something that could help all ubuntuforum users who come here looking for an solution to their problem.

Help me here :) Im holding out my welcoming hand.

or... am I the only one here who see these problems? :confused:

[it.henrik]

I do think that it would be a good idea if it could be made to work, but how complicated do we want to make the forum for people to use.

I still think that the tags should be mandatory - then if you search for things you really are looking for - obviously searching keywords finds it somewhere in the depths of the thread.

My fav rule when it comes to computers is KISS so Im all in favour for keeping the interface simple.

If the user interface is getting complicated, maybe we could have an "advanced options"-checkbox in the settings or something, ala VLC. If your advanced enough to find your profile settings you probably understand how to use a "this solved my problem"-button ;)

On the other hand, I do not believe keywords are simple. Keywords requires the users to know the words to search for on something they might not understand.

Keywords might be the perfect thing, but since ubuntuforums does not have the ranking and sorting algorithms at par with google, searching does not really work so well .. yet at least.

This thing with tags I do not trust at all, remember that not all users are fluent in English. Finding and spelling tags can be a bit tough for users like us, especially if your a computer/linux novice. Im a MSc in computer science who have lived a fair amount time in countries where ppl speak english natively, and I still had problem to come up with good tags for this thread :) .. but then again, I might have misunderstood the tags entirely.

Same thing for Keywords, sometimes you (read I) dont know the best keywords to search for to find the solution to your (read my) problem.

[forestpixie]

I can see what you're trying to do - but to be honest the last thing I do if I'm looking for information is use the forum search I tend to use the uboontu search plugin, although that too can lead to a long list of lost causes.

I do see the problem that you see, I just don't think it's likely to happen with the forum.

The biggest problem I think is that people will post threads without looking first which causes long lists of similar information.

[forestpixie]

An interesting thing with the tags is that anyone can edit them - so join me in making sure they make sense :)

[lswest]

Actually, i don't think any filtering would be a good plan, because some days i look at posts i don't know if i can answer, but realize towards the end that there's a simple typo/mistake in the solution posted by someone before, which i can correct. So if you split the forum into different "technician" groups, then there is a good chance that the people who do post replies will a) be rushed b) make mistakes and c) not always be led onto the right track with prior posts. Also, chances are people will then start posting in only one area, just because it seems to be more active, and the clutter just becomes worse. Just my 2 cents.

[it.henrik]

The biggest problem I think is that people will post threads without looking first which causes long lists of similar information.

This would most likely be help by some way of lifting up threads related to the words I made in the search that others before me have realised solved their problem with similar or same keywords.

I know I have made myself guilty to this #-o, because I have tried to search for a solution to my problem and then by the replies I got I understood the problem better and could find the solution in previously posted threads.

[it.henrik]

Actually, i don't think any filtering would be a good plan, because some days i look at posts i don't know if i can answer, but realize towards the end that there's a simple typo/mistake in the solution posted by someone before, which i can correct. So if you split the forum into different "technician" groups, then there is a good chance that the people who do post replies will a) be rushed b) make mistakes and c) not always be led onto the right track with prior posts. Also, chances are people will then start posting in only one area, just because it seems to be more active, and the clutter just becomes worse. Just my 2 cents.

My idea is that the threads which have been marked as problem solvers would show up when you searched for similar or same keywords as the persons who marked the threads/posts, and of course we should still be getting the normal search hits as well.

In this way the filtering would only affect ppl who are looking for a solution, not someone who is scanning the forums for some thread with a lost noob who needs a helping hand.
I have myself experience from both roles in that scenario :) without the help from others here in ubuntuforums I would probably not have gotten as far I have.