phidia
June 25th, 2008, 11:44 AM
From what I've seen questions in the help forums get repeated. The solutions to these questions get repeated too. It's fine as a digital social outlet however it seem very inefficient.
Sure changes over time (upgrades/new releases & whatever) might require revising a previous solution but many solutions will work despite those changes.
I am aware there is indexing of the forums but I'm suggesting a specific type of indexing for solved posts. Let's say, for example, twin view>nvidia>date solved. I don't know how that could be displayed but a table of contents or even an interactive decision tree format would be very helpful.
Having an organized way to search for problems could help people who are trying to help others too since no one remembers every issue. I've found that I can recall parts of threads that might be pertinent to a question but I can't get it back by searching. Browser history can help but I might not be on the same computer I was when I read the post required, or the thread I need to find is "lost" in browser history and difficult to find now.
The ubuntu wiki or community docs, which I link in my sig, are useful and they have some gaps too. There is a lot of "how someone solved their problem" value in the forum threads but they get buried.
Well that's it then for what it's worth.
Added next day: Another reason for suggesting a different way of indexing is that I can easily get a no matches found message searching the forums and yet using the same search string in google will give me hits that find the topic at the Ubuntu forums!
Sure changes over time (upgrades/new releases & whatever) might require revising a previous solution but many solutions will work despite those changes.
I am aware there is indexing of the forums but I'm suggesting a specific type of indexing for solved posts. Let's say, for example, twin view>nvidia>date solved. I don't know how that could be displayed but a table of contents or even an interactive decision tree format would be very helpful.
Having an organized way to search for problems could help people who are trying to help others too since no one remembers every issue. I've found that I can recall parts of threads that might be pertinent to a question but I can't get it back by searching. Browser history can help but I might not be on the same computer I was when I read the post required, or the thread I need to find is "lost" in browser history and difficult to find now.
The ubuntu wiki or community docs, which I link in my sig, are useful and they have some gaps too. There is a lot of "how someone solved their problem" value in the forum threads but they get buried.
Well that's it then for what it's worth.
Added next day: Another reason for suggesting a different way of indexing is that I can easily get a no matches found message searching the forums and yet using the same search string in google will give me hits that find the topic at the Ubuntu forums!