IRC log analysis for everyone!

[Dougie Richardson]

Hi Andrew,

2009/7/27 Andrew Sayers <andrew-bugs.launchpad.net at pileofstuff.org>:
> This idea really interested me, and got me thinking about whether we could
> make a program to just let ordinary users search for previously-answered
> questions.  It wouldn't provide the same quality of answers as the "20
> questions" approach we talked about before, but could at least do a bit of
> good.

There is a problem with this approach which is false positives.  For
example there are still people automatically telling people to run
sudo dpkg --reconfigure xorg whenever there is a X problem.  When it
comes to installation issues, a common problem is silly APIC
implementations in BIOS, easily rectified by using the noapic option
but the most common response is often to tell them to check the
MD5SUM.

We would need to have some way to control the quality of these answers
if at all - I'd venture it'd be better to take the 20 questions
approach.

Regards,

Dougie Richardson
http://www.lynxworks.eu/
dougierichardson at ubuntu.com