how good is ubuntuforums advice?

[josephus]

I was just wondering how good do you find ubuntuforums advice to be in solving your problems. Don't just rate it good because the final advice that you received was good, but also consider the number of missteps taken before getting a resolution to your problem.

[gnomeuser]

Well many misses but eventually a hit is likely. I find it's often a good thing to check the backlog of a users posts if it's an important issue to see if the user knows what he/she is doing.

[Rhapsody]

For minor to moderate problems, help is generally quick and informative.

However, my on-going lack of sound has not gotten a solution in more than five months. At the moment, the only place to go from here appears to be getting a copy of Windows, installing that, then seeing if I can even get sound there. If I can, then it becomes even more mysterious. If I can't, then I've got a hardware problem.

[brim4brim]

I found it mostly good. Generally I've just been pointed toward howto's I didn't find myself though.

Sometimes I solve the problem faster myself than someone finds a solution for me. I don't consider myself to be good with Linux but I'm at the stage where I'm not afraid to go try to find solutions myself but I'd be handy if someone who already knew could show me instead of my searching man pages to find the answer.

[kerry_s]

I consider any help is good, considering that the forums are users helping users, there will always be some wrong answers, even if we were experts, there would still be wrong answers. They varity of problems is sometimes mind boggling, plus the fact that most people with problems give next to no information to go on, sometimes it just amazes me what little they put, they might as well just put "HELP!" and hope for the best.

[Rhapsody]

They varity of problems is sometimes mind boggling, plus the fact that most people with problems give next to no information to go on, sometimes it just amazes me what little they put, they might as well just put "HELP!" and hope for the best.

I was actually talking to my mother about a similar thing a few days ago. She was saying she could post my problem on a troubleshooting board at work, but I commented on how little there would actually be to post. I mean, I can give most of the specifications of my PC, and the exact version of Kubuntu I'm using, but nothing really about the problem. The problem is that the sound doesn't work. There no errors, no indication that anything's broken, no feedback from the OS at all really.

That really seems to be the one thing I don't like about Linux. While Windows won't shut up, Linux is the other way around, it won't say anything! One day, KTorrent (on desktop 4) crashed. I only found out when I switched to desktop 4 and saw an error message. God only knows when it actually crashed, it could've been like that for hours.

[naknak987]

I voted poor because the problems I do post here, almost never get answered, or answered correctly.

[aysiu]

I either get an answer that's great... or get no answer at all.

[MilosDusan]

Answers are going to vary no matter what.. Remember, this is a support community.. While some answers are universal, others either take time to decipher, or have a multitude of variation to resolving whatever issue(s) that may occur..

Because of this, I admit, I give it a 4.. If people don't know the answer, then they just don't know.. You can't fault people for that.. The whole idea of the community is for us all to work together and resolve what issues we can so we can move forward with what can be one of the best OS setups ever...

And that is my two shiny little pennies ;)

[JerseyShoreComputer]

One of the best things about Ubuntu is the community. Sometimes you get an answer that works, other times not. But what may work for one person may not work for another as we all have different configurations. By playing around and figuring things out, we now have the ability to assist someone else, even when we don't get answers or help for ourselves. Just by participating, it is possible to help even one person.

[STREETURCHINE]

i think these forums are good,how can one complain about advice that is given freely ,whether it be good or bad,
if it was given freely without malice,then it is not bad advice it is just not the answer you were looking for.

[andlinux21]

Been pretty good for me and it also encourages when someone learns something or if they know how they got something working to help out which is always good.

[aleska]

If one interprets "good" to mean accurate, or moving you in the right direction, I say it's great! I evaluate ubuntuforums.org's advice not just in terms of people responding to my particular posts, but also in the answers I find by searching the forums. If I've got a tough Linux question, I'll inevitably find a least something useful by doing a google search limited to "site:ubuntutforums.org".