Memorizing important forum topics

[juergen_harms]

This forum needs some means to avoid that topics with important information just age away into oblivion - the thread on the usb startup disk creator is an example.

This is of particular importance while the mageia wiki is not yet up to speed, but even in parallel to the wiki such a feature would fulfill a usefull role. In the Mandriva forum, this task was solved with the "tips & tricks" forum - which never became very lively and convincing. Are there alternative ways? (I don't think that making them sticky is: the topics to memorize do not need to be permanently "present", but they need to be easy to find and to scan).

[wobo]

How about a section "Useful tipps and information"?
Threads which turn out to be useful and memorized could be reported to a moderator to be moved to that section.

[isadora]

Absolutely second this idea, creating a kind of library, for all those questions about Flash, repositories, MBR, PLF and so on and so further......................

[juergen_harms]

How about a section "Useful tipps and information"?

Yes, a very informative title. How about facilitating the handling of such threads by the monitor, for instance

- use/adapt the "report this post" in the lead post of a thread,
- or add a checkbox in the list of options offered when you reply to a post? Could be something like: "Suggest to add this thread to "Useful tips and information"

Or is this an unnecessary complication?

[maat]

Well this a very good idea to work on this question imho

We have also to think about frequently asked questions (about forum but also about mageia or packaging...), mini-tutorials and things alike.

Creating a specific forum for that could be an option indeed.

But we'll have also fantastic posts in the middle of lower interest topics...

Well... ideas welcome here don't hesitate to suggest things even if you're not sure

[wobo]

But we'll have also fantastic posts in the middle of lower interest topics...

The idea was to report such postings of long time value to be moved to an extra section so they don't drown in the flood and by time.

[juergen_harms]

We have also to think about ...

I agree: and that looks like quite a catalogue of things to do / to discuss - and risks to become a complex discussion (moreover, possible implementations cover a range of technologies: wiki, forum, FAQs). I suggest to avoid things to get complicated and keep the discussions separate.

Let me defend "my baby":

• such a feature is needed now: usage of Mageia is extending into new layers of users: new questions, new solutions that need to be remembered as they come - now,
• the solutions proposed are ready now and can be implemented easily and without delay,
• these solutions can be easily adapted (even abandoned) in case solving the other issues you mention make that necessary.

Is there a reason not to go ahead?

Looking at the brothers and sisters of the baby: why not sort them into issues and work out approaches in specific threads as appropriate. I think a parallelised one-at-a-time approach allows to produce results more rapidly and more efficiently. That is what this forum exists for (I am always confused by the meaning of the term "forum": this forum-section).

[ashledombos]

I just wonder, in this case don't we need an open wiki, where we can copy informations (and, if needed, link to the forum topic) ?

[juergen_harms]

I think we all agree: the wiki will be the platform where all open documentation will be kept in an organized structure. But the solution discussed here is complementary to the wiki:

• a wiki article must be carefully written, must fit into the wiki structure: takes time and work to be done; the forum solution is light-weight, can be done more or less immediately - and can be stored as it has already been formulated, without the need for "quality" required in the forum (maybe some threads to be saved in the forum would never make it into the wiki)
• storing info posted in a forum within the structure of the forum has a certain logic: that is where you will start searching if you remember "having seen" something in the forum
• there is need for such a feature NOW - the open wiki is not yet ready.

I consider Mandriva experience with this kind of solution as positive - could probably even be improved with good moderating.

[Max]

I think that a new subforum is needed to collect all of the important and useful threads.
phpBB forums makes this very easy. When a moderator moves a topic s/he can choose to leave a "shadow topic" in the old forum. This does not duplicate the thread, but merely provides a link from where the thread used to be to where it is now. So that new people looking for tried and tested solutions to old problems can find them easily, and older users won't have to look for their post, it will be where they last left it.
In other forums that I've moderated we usually had a subforum like this called "Tutorials". But I think that in this case "Tips and Tricks" is better.
And like others have said before me, the wiki is not mature enough to supply the needs of the userbase, and therefore we must come up with an alternative solution, and this one works well.

[juergen_harms]

Summing up: there are

4 posts in (what I read "strong") support of creating a new forum-section,
1 post stating even more is needed,
1 post asking for clarification - got an (I think) positive answer,
0 posts against this suggestion.

What needs to be done to get such a "Useful tips and information" forum implemented? (I wonder whether the word "useful" in a moderated forum is not a pleonasm and could be suppressed in the title)

[wobo]

(I wonder whether the word "useful" in a moderated forum is not a pleonasm and could be suppressed in the title)

In principle you are right, it is a pleonasm, but in this context it is a useful (sic!) hint for the unexperienced user about the nature of such tips and information.

[maat]

I think that a sub forum is a good idea but i wonder about the relevance of just having it as a place to just drop topics.

Perhaps it would be better for users to have instead synthesis topics with links to good posts to read wherever they are...

So, if i'm all in favor of a forum (or several ?) working like a library(ies) dedicated to "things to keep", i think the precise way to use/organise/think all this is still to be thought/conceived/imagined...

Because if we just stack topics without glue or explanations to guide users among them, once the form has got a hundred or more topics they will be lost in somehting they will see as a maze i fear...

So if you please, let us just think a little bit further to imagine and plan how we can make newcomers or newbies experience with these "reference news" the easier we can even with many many subjects to deal with in there...

(and probably we will need some people active on the forums, skilled with writing skills, willing to contribute, and technical savvy enough to maintain these parts of the forum too...)

[wobo]

So, at least we all agree that such a means to "excavate" the gold mine (which this forum will be) is necessary.

It is unavoidable, in whatever way we will accomplish that, that it will be a plethora of single posts or threads with no order. To make this easy to search through we will need 2 things:

- a meaningful subject for each post/thread (containing the essential problem or question, nothing like "No sound in Mageia!" or "Help needed!" but rather "No sound with nvidia sound chipin Mageia 1" or "Setting up the package repositories in Mageia1")
- a search tool for this forum: we can have a google search on this forum implemented, which returns results only from this forum. So, if I use the keywords "package repositories" I will get as result the "Setting up the package repositories in Mageia 1" post.

[juergen_harms]

The simple problem defined and discussed here is: (a) how to avoid that forum posts with valuable information age into oblivion, and (b) how to use forum posts as a stop-gap measure to create an easy access to valuable information posted in the forum while a wiki is not yet available for that purpose.

For (a) one or serveral forum sections will do the job - good moderation, some sorting, maybe editing titles would certainly create added value. (b) tempts to re-invent a wiki using forum technology (exageration, but that makes my point clear) - that would be wasted time, be an effort more or less lost once the wiki is there - that is a trap to be avoided. But I agree, some effort to facilitate access to the content stored in these new forum sections should be made, that should be possible with the tools available in the context of the forum and without putting a heavy load on the moderator.

Apropos moderation: I see no problem in sorting posts into several threads, or in editing titles. But editing content is another dimension, and rapidly might hit the limit, where a wiki and its tools are more adequate. Creating digests, indicices: well, if somebody is ready to do it, why not - my personal opinion is that this effort would be better spent on writing and improving wiki articles.

I understand Wobos suggestion, not so sure about Maats. Maat could you cast the ideas you are considering into a concrete proposal of what you think should (and can) be done? - that would make the discussion much easier.

[Max]

I think we can solve all the newbie problems quite simply.
This new forum will be special in two ways:
1. It will be sorted alphabetically.
2. It will not contain copies of other threads, or even links to threads. Think about it, somebody looking for a solution to a problem is not going to wade through 7 pages of discussion. Therefore the threads in this forum will be single-post threads, that condense the necessary information into an easily read format. That includes a meaningful topic, in the body of the post stating the problem explicitly, and explaining exactly what steps should be taken to fix it.

Now, the first one is (I think) easy and doable automatically.
The second one requires a lot of effort, and a way to maintain the cleanliness.
Therefore I propose that a new type of moderator be created, who will only be able to moderate that forum. Just to keep the garbage down, and in a pinch to help collect and condense the information. Or even some "forum miners" who will search the forum for useful posts and create threads in this new forum. This is better, because you can make the forum read-only for most users, except for these forum miners and thus keeping it clean.

[juergen_harms]

The second one requires a lot of effort, and a way to maintain the cleanliness.
Therefore I propose that a new type of moderator be created, who will only be able to moderate that forum

I agree, that would be a good solution. Is it realistic?

• it requires a new type of moderator being created that will require a discussion on the "job definition" and - probably - a council decision
• it requires volonteers to be found who have the skills - digesting posts requires quite some technical knowledge - and who are ready to do the job

The experience with this forum makes me somewhat sceptical - the forum is great in expression opinions, but zooming down to a consensus and implementing even small changes has a tendency to get stuck in multi-page noise. Hence my suggestion to start with something simple and easy to implement.

Max, I wonder whether you do not overemphasise the effort that is needed to find information in a simple "tips" forum that just contains copies of threads:

• search tools are - in my experience - quite sufficient
• given the experience with the Mandriva "tips" forum, there are not that many threads that get copied/moved to the tips forum - the risk is mall that trees get hidden in a forest

We now have 2 alternative suggestions: (a) just create one or several new forum sections and define a procedure that triggers a moderator to move threads or posts to such forum sections - the original suggestion; and (b) create a new type of moderator who edits threads and creates digests that will then go into the new forum sections - the suggestion made by Max. I am not sure whether (b) corresponds to what Maat is suggesting, or whether there is a (c) to come.

(a) and (b) are not exclusive: we might rapidly start with (a) and move to (b) when the new moderators have been accepted and found.

Personally, I think (b) risks much overlap with the future wiki: I prefer (a) as a lightweight solution within in the forum framework, acting as a kind of feeder for digests / articles then to be created in the wiki, and doing the actual job of (b) in the wiki. A wiki has a well-organised structure, a search mechanism, editing facilites - all made for this kind of job and superior to what can be easily done in a forum. But that is my opinion - if there is a preference for (b) to be done in the forum and it can be made work within a reasonable delay, OK.

[juergen_harms]

Three days later: what is going on? this thread come to some conclusions!

[maat]

Max proposal seems very sensible and solves most of the problems though requiring someone to do the job.

We can create specific user profiles with extended rights to maintain those diggest topics. Creation of profiles and forums wouldn't require much time.

The remaining questions are : will there be volunteers ? and how many maintainers would this task require ? (with 1 onr 2 volunteers we could start it as a test)

[wobo]

Ok, max proposal is of course a good read but I doubt you can carry it through in practice, much more I doubt we could do it in a reasonable time.

1. Alphabetical order: how would you try to achieve that? That would mean that with a growing number of posts in that section it becomes more and more complex to find a meaningful title - furthermore since you can't know whether a user looking for a tipp with his Broadcom will search under "B" or under "WLAN" or under WiFi" or under "Network". In the end the poor user is again asking the same old question because he does not find the matching tipp because he does not use the same search string as the editor who sorted the tipp in.

2. Thinking about what valuable tipps we already have and how much I know from mailing list discussions before the forum started it will take 2 editors full time to catch up in a reasonable time.

It's often necessary to think less complex and get things done.

[maat]

a first pinned topik with big subjects and links to other topics sorted or not sorted... well simply an index

that would be very simple, easy to maintain and effective to go to the subjects you're searching for :p

[juergen_harms]

I had a look at the Mandriva Tips and Tricks Forums: there are 3 with (in 7 years) 200 posts - an average of 3-4 posts per month, I would guess that while Mageia is still gathering speed it would be less here. The size of the "team" you are proposing looks somewhat an overkill. 3-4 posts per month should be easily possible to handle by - say - 2 persons, the manpower problem is not so big.

I see a more important point: even if it is only 2 persons, there should be some written and agreed guidelines, probably to be agreed by the council:

• formal issues (the situation is different from a wiki where authors do cooperative editing - and where, normally, the wiki has rules that provide the answers)
  
  • if the monitors/volonteers edit text of forum participants, are there authorship-right questions?
  • what happens in case of disagreement between the author of a post and the editors?
• conceptual/operational issues:
  
  • how are posts selected for inclusion in one of the new forums?
  • how are articles edited? it would be good/essential to have the author(s) of posts participate when the posts are edited
  • it is essential that such a tips forum lives: there will be questions, suggestions relative to specific articles; if the forum is locked for ordinary users, how does a user comment/ask questions? - add a non-locked additional forum?
  • I guess you will find other questions to clarify

[juergen_harms]

Wobo, your reply and mine crossed each other in mid-air. To your points:

(1) Sorting
I agree - sortingis not essential if the number of topics is limited - a good search facility does it (as already discussed). This is not a wiki.

(2) Volume of work to do
I agree: if the gadget we are discussing would aim at a digest of the entire Mageia forum that would be impossible - but we should never even think even of a large number of posts - if the "Max approach" is realised, it should be focused on a small number of posts with permanently valuable information (example: Mandriva tips and tricks)

It's often necessary to think less complex and get things done.

Cannot be said often enough. But, if the only way to get such a solution started is to do it in what you and I consider a sub-optimal, so be it - I have learned my lesson from the forum-edit discussion. I think a safeguard against doing it in a foolish way is to draft guidelines and submit them to the council.

[wobo]

I will be out of this discussion for this week (due to Linuxtag in Berlin).

[HermesLaws]

Hey i just throw some of my wish/mind bubbles into the room.
This is a complex topic, we could even talk about how archive our knowledge of something,
on the other hand its a matter of communication platform.

(1) Sorting
I agree - sortingis not essential if the number of topics is limited - a good search facility does it (as already discussed). This is not a wiki.

i would not ague with the number of topics being limited, because i hope you plan for the whole future, so there are just more questions not less.

Must have for a database:
multi-lang, 1click from a drop bar
a good layout
Apps like Mindmaps! ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WikkaWiki )
Cant vote for Max that a Wiki cant help the user less effective then a forum post.

Why a database for Tutorials and How-Tos instead of a good Forum post,
because the capability of a wiki page is so dramatic more useful to explain such complex topics, and im just thinking about the biggest consumer hole a windows user, for them each new step is a complex topic.
So there has to be a Linux 1-1 Mageia, for real "noobs".

and we have to ask the question,

Should a forum post be more like a blogpost?
A user having a problem and has now found a platform where he thinks are people that know the answer, so they have the possibility to comment / smalltalk / help him and guide him to the real help, each user ask in a different way, when you search for something maybe the solution is explained with argues you dont understand but the creater of the topic did.
Dont be afraid of let people create dead topics, one use of a post is done, when the user stops answering and that doesn't have to be bad, ideas, questions needs to be placed somewhere.
I can understand the problem with the search engine, but could it not be fixed by separating the universal help forum with unregistered access from the tips tricks / rest forum, where already found good explanation can be transfered into the wiki (translation)?

The real help would be great wiki, where you are be able to explain much in a good sorted way with the possibility to change the lang in any kind you want.
Also does the recording of small video tutorial a good example how to improve the help technic
http://www.mahalo.com

When you have a wiki like that, you wouldnt need a post in each country forum explaining how to backing up your bootloader/ getting something done.

examples are:
http://www.flossmanuals.net/newscoop-3-cookbook-3-5-2/ <- thats why i thought about how archiving our knowledge, the flexibility of an own mysql database has a lot of potential (newsscoop)
http://www.mandrivauser.de/doku/doku.ph ... binationen <- thank you
http://wiki.ubuntuusers.de/Dateisystem <> https://help.ubuntu.com/community/Linux ... sExplained

I'm still not happy enough with the mechanic of all kinds of forum, missing something like a time feature, a topic / idea evolves to a clue, because everybody is earning and there is not always one answer there should be some kind of ranking an idea / argue / option / solution (http://www.google.com/moderator/ or https://enquetebeteiligung.de/ or to sort tasks http://liquidfeedback.org/projekt/ )
When im looking back in this thread, i could miss the 3days the topic was on ice (when not extra mentioned, thats what i mean with the time code of a thread), for some its maybe irrelevant but everything has a sense thats maybe complexity.

I'm still searching/waiting for the 3d Wiki.
3rd library where a plasma is able to relocate / resize / sort and changing the vision of the data in all kind of forms like http://code.google.com/apis/ajax/playgr ... tion_chart

In the end the poor user is again asking the same old question because he does not find the matching tipp because he does not use the same search string as the editor who sorted the tipp in.

So till the wiki is ready, a "simple" How-to / Tips and Tricks / Rookie Guide, Forum Post would be enough but it cant beat a wiki.

I would also like fix-point in the whole project, like your header on the mageia.org page, im missing it on blog.mageia.org, its simple its elegant and smooth under the browser-layer but you dont have to click your bookmark for getting back to you blog/download/etc.

Bla bla bla just some wired coin of a distri-noob, that wants his system in the pocket, ready to sync with my main station and able to boot on any station with MY setup and stop the f&%/( closed source groups.