Just thinking...seems every question that's not nonsense should ideally have _some_ value in answering it (over and above to the person asking):
* if it crops up a lot, it could be a FAQ entry somewhere, as well as something that needs to be more easily found in the documentation * if it's nontrivial user error, perhaps that's suggestive of an opportunity to improve some documentation or offer some training (whether by the user paying for it, or a user group sponsoring it, or free online training, or whatever) * if it's a real problem, there should be a bug report * if it's something that's not currently possible, perhaps there should be an RFE etc (which is to say that the above list itself should be subject to growth and revision as needed). I think stats are kept on code (and documentation?) contributions. Perhaps if stats were kept on the disposition of questions, it would be possible to quantify more benefits, identify more strengths, weaknesses, and opportunities, substantively refute cynicism (or at least respond to it), and visibly do a more systematic job of both getting the maximum value out of user input, and minimizing repetitive questions. To do that without being too burdensome would take a decent database app, designed to help avoiding duplicate entries. And it would take a procedure, something like: asker identifies which answer(s) were conclusive for them, and either the asker or one of the major contributors to the answer enters the question, answer, and (optionally) suggested long-term measure to keep the question from needing to be asked again. In a free support environment, I think the asker should summarize, otherwise they're more like a parasite than a symbiote. In a paid support environment, or if both the value of the question/answer and the expertise to summarize it effectively are more apparent to the responder, then perhaps they should summarize. IMO at a dead minimum though, the asker should consider themselves responsible to either indicate what answer(s) they considered responsive, or that they've given up. Otherwise, the Q&A wanders or just fades away pointlessly. Maybe that could be done on a wiki rather than a database app - it would need to be widely editable rather than burdening just a few privileged people; and a wiki can still be "protected" by simply reverting unreasonable changes. How it could be organized though (depending only on question and short-term answer, since the suggested long-term response might be absent or revised), that's where I run out of ideas. Maybe that's all it takes, thinking about how to capture the value of feedback and interaction, putting out some guidelines (and revising them as needed), and (time permitting) encouraging people to add or update wiki entries. It's not about one more hoop to jump, it's about giving just a bit of structure to the _opportunity_ to capture that value. This message posted from opensolaris.org _______________________________________________ opensolaris-discuss mailing list [email protected]
