Standing in the street trying to hear yourself think

[Scott Kitterman]

> On Thu, 9 Jul 2009 14:58:49 +0800
> John McCabe-Dansted <gmatht at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>> On Sat, Jul 4, 2009 at 2:23 AM, Evan<eapache at gmail.com> wrote:
>> > We also seem to have a duplication of effort on several fronts. At
>> > last glance we have:
>> >
>> > - mailing lists
>> > - IRC
>> > - wiki
>> > - launchpad
>> > - launchpad answers
>> > - forums
>>
>> I wrote a blueprint for maintaining a database of errors. I suggest
>> that for all questions of the form
>>    "What does this error mean? What should I do?"
>> The way to get help is via this database. E.g. say I run
>>   Xvfb :2 -screen 2 1600x1200x32
>> and get the error
>>   Couldn't add screen 2
>> Then instead of hunting round in all the of the above. I simply run
>>   autohelpsys  Xvfb :2 -screen 2 1600x1200x32
>> (autohelpsys has not yet been written)
>> autohelpsys searches the database for a solution. If a solution is not
>> found it offers to create a new ticket. Someone (possibly me) then
>> submits something like the the following to the database:
>>
>
> At this point, are we back to telling the user something like "I did
> not find you an answer, but if you wait a few days(, weeks, months),
> someone should get back to you."?
>
> It would be better to connect to the live help instead, and when the
> answer is written, email the user with. This will give them another
> avenue of help, and if the answer was done quickly, may give them the
> help in time.

This:

http://www.socialdesktop.org/socialdesktop-gcds.pdf

appears to be highly relevant to this discussion.

I can see this being extensible into the kind of user helping user plus
better access to documented solutions capability you all have been
discussing.

Scott K