Getting popcon back in shape

[Chris Jones]

Hi

Michael R. Head wrote:
> If you had a 'FAQ bot' that could be updated and referenced by

#ubuntu on freenode has such a thing in the shape of ubotu. It's a bloot
bot.

> The faqbot could have a web interface that allows the nice interface for
> inputting new FAQs and looking them up.

Not sure if this exists.

I think there is a lot of scope for analysing the things new users are
looking for - earlier in the thread someone mentioned the kinds of
things that show up a lot in the forums; The same is true of the IRC
channel, it's codecs, java, accessing windows and graphics drivers that
probably make up a good chunk of the questions.

I've been lurking on #ubuntu for a while now and the sheer frequency of
these requests  screams that there should be a highly discoverable way
of answering the questions users want to know about. I get the feeling
that for many users these issues are of such basic necessity that they
are more like extended post-install tasks and they will most likely not
use Ubuntu if they can't figure them out.

With that in mind, would there be interest in centralising and
formalising this a little? It sort of hooks into the thread about how
things like gstreamer apps should respond when they need to install
non-free codecs.
If any part of Ubuntu can be patched to fail in such a way that it
displays to a FAQ or selection of possibilities then many user support
requests will simply solve themselves. The IRC/forum/wiki support
efforts could be more focussed on the more interesting problems with FAQ
entries and the creation of new ones.

It provides metrics on what is being asked most and (if I'm not talking
smack) help users solve more things themselves.

Cheers,
-- 
Chris "Ng" Jones
  cmsj at tenshu.net
   www.tenshu.net