More thoughts...and more questions!

Since the forum for this team has been a tad quiet, and irc, well the same. I decided to stick all this in one post. Just thoughts really, but opinions welcome.

It occurred to me today that there are a few things that need to be ironed out for this team to work to its best level. In no particular order...

1) As far as I can tell, the unanswered posts team has a specific task, that is separate from that of the other teams, and a way should be found to make sure that the teams are working together rather than at cross purposes. The point of that is really this. The relevant teams are already in place to try and catch all problems in relevant forums. We should still certainly be answering where possible, whenever possible, but I would like to know at which point a thread becomes 'unanswered' (!) and so a direct concern of this team.

It's not such a ridiculous dilemma really, I mean the notion of a couple hours has been thrown around, which is fine, but I mean give the other teams a chance (and keep our goal realistic!)! We are here 24 hours in some capacity, in all timezones. I would be more inclined, having thought about it, to say 12 or 24 hours, before a thread becomes the direct concern of this team, unless user nominated (more on that idea later). I figure if we actually manage to keep close to up to date at that level we could adjust it as needs dictate.

2) Not such an important one this, but worthy of a mention. Traditionally, if someone posts a thread that for whatever reason is important (to them), and receives no response, they will bump that thread back to the top, in the hope that a more recent visitor seeing the post may be able to answer. I don't have any problem with that when done with some realistic expectation on the part of the poster. But since a thread, as far as I know cannot be bumped from an edit, it requires a post. That means that some of the most potentially needy (hate that word) threads, will not get attention as they will appear answered. I am sure this wouldn't account for too many instances, but none the less...

Anyway, a couple ideas come to mind from this. You could allow bump to work from edit. That would be the simplest, though not the best solution I think, and I am not sure Ubuntu-Geek would like the idea anyway.You could make it so the word bump is flagged in posts where no other word is present so the count remained zero. But my favourite would be to do with the wiki and Launchpad. As someone else has the Launchpad teams in place, and we already have a wiki page. Could we have a notice on the forum somewhere to suggest that if a post doesn't get a response, in 'however long', they can come to the wiki page, and submit the url of their thread to a submitted list, and then we can try and allocate it.

3) I like the suggested and implemented Launchpad team. I have come around to it! It seems the most logical place to manage the actual team, and the lists of people 'with knowledge in...'. I think I would suggest keeping team management there, and team function on the wiki, or maybe the other way round. It seems logical (simpler) to separate the two. Any other ideas?

4) I, and others have talked a bit about these knowledge based teams and efforts. Whilst all that is great, and no doubt will be fully implemented at some point, I think we should perhaps emphasize that if someone wants to join the team and spend a few minutes a day, or whatever time they can spare, answering a post or 2, that is fine too, and should definitely be encouraged. Every bit helps after all.

5) Back on the knowledge based team effort, or whatever we want to call it. I am actually wondering why, since it's not the only effort going on, we couldn't make it poster driven. Say we keep a list of who knows what on Launchpad. We then 'make it known' that after 'so many hours' if you haven't had responses, you can submit the thread url, with tags to the wiki page. The team can then allocate it for consideration to however many volunteers we have (based on tags and/or content) who may be able to help. If there is no specific person, then it would be allocated to those people we have listed as something like 'good general all rounder' (read "have time, can Google!), or whatever. Thoughts in progress...ideas?

6) At some point, does an unresolved post become equal to an unanswered one?

7) I still think we should have tag moderators! People with the ability to 'tweak' tags, since often threads will go unanswered when people are not quite sure what they are actually asking.

Thanks for reading. I am sure I have more, but for now....

Work back from the oldest unanswered post first. I think really if the person looking at unanswered posts is happy to guide on that particular issue-it's up to them how long they think a post should remain unanswered. [B] example:- [/B]a couple of times I thought thats easy to answer so the poster has waited 10 mins.

Another time I have a suggestion or answer, but I think someone may have a better one-I've waited a few hours(this is more so with posters with a reasonable post count, new users I answer faster as I feel that they may feel nobody cares)

regards Daniel

I managed to construct this search link today after playing around with search options: http://www.ubuntuforums.org/search.php?do=process&replyless=1&replylimit=0&dontcache=1&searchdate=1&beforeafter=before It finds all unanswered posts in all forums that are older than one day since the last post. It seems to work pretty well for the most part. That should give the other teams a chance to answer the posts before we go at them.

As for bumping posts, yes, a traditional post bump does mess the search up. An option for that would be to just type "bump" into the search bar, since most posts are bumped using that method. I know phpBB3 has a "Bump" button that moves a topic to the top without the need to edit or post, which would be a handy feature, but we aren't on phpBB3 now are we? ;)

For tagging, while I do like the idea, I think it may become cluttered after a while if we start tagging all posts with "unanswered". That would also screw up the cloud view on the front page. The ABT forum has a checkbox to mark a topic as resolved/not, but there is no way to search for that at the moment.

Point #5 is one that I do like. I'm currently working on a tech support system for Ohio LoCo which works similar to the way you described. It uses a queue style method for topics, and they can be marked resolved, open, or reopened. I might be able to copy over that system and use it. We could also use a bugtracker method, and make a fake package/project on Launchpad to use the bug-tracking system there to mark topics as bugs and assign priorities and statuses to them.

Jacob

i was actually thinking a bit about this, and the idea i had was to add a "post status" tag, where the user can mark it as "resolved". so, in essence, rather than looking just for the "unanswered" posts, we should really be looking for unresolved posts, since frequently a post may get an answer, or even several, but still not resolve a user's problem. (this would take care of the "bump" problem already mentioned).

so ideally, the search we would perform is to find all "unresolved" (or "open" or whatever the thread status is when it is not resolved) threads that have not had a post in 24 hours, say. that would be a pretty decent filter for what posts need this team's attention.

don't know how easy it would be to get the admins to implement this, though...

using the bugtracker is an interesting idea... but still leaves the problem of /finding/ threads that have been answered but unresolved.

thoughts?

nanotube said: ...

so ideally, the search we would perform is to find all "unresolved" (or "open" or whatever the thread status is when it is not resolved) threads that have not had a post in 24 hours, say. that would be a pretty decent filter for what posts need this team's attention.

don't know how easy it would be to get the admins to implement this, though...

I really like that idea, with the slight issue being, that often, there can be problems where there are multiple solutions, suitable for different circumstances surrounding the same problem. I don't know, maybe I am just over thinking that one.

using the bugtracker is an interesting idea... but still leaves the problem of /finding/ threads that have been answered but unresolved.

thoughts?

Again, I like that, although I have no knowledge on setting up big tracker systems etc and wonder about the complexities of such a system. Also, I would prefer it if the onus, was on the thread poster to submit such a 'bug', since often I think posts can become irrelevant after a period of time, either as they have already been solved, or maybe another thread answered the question, and the poster found that thread or a host of other reasons, and the poster has just forgot/neglected to post a solution or whatever.