compcomm chat room?

[searayman]

Maybe we cna try usign a meebo room to have a chat help room:

[url:6c01b]http://www.meebo.com/room/compcomm/[/url:6c01b]

I just think this is a little more convenient then an irc also its great for peopel new to linux cause newer poepel seem to be intimidated by linux.

[crdlb]

I really don't see how that is more convenient than irc for anyone. It might be a good idea to provide a link to http://java.freenode.net/ for web-based irc usage though.

[RYX]

I personally see absolutely no advantage in either approach. Can one of you explain where you see the advantages of a chat-room for offering help? Is it that good answers get immediately lost after they have been written? Or is it that there is this "chat-elite", this small circle of buddies who feel like they have their own "crown's club"? Why don't we use this forum for discussing problems and offering help - it would avoid answering the same questions over and over again?

(But I fear that the "average user's" stupidity and laziness is once again of more importance for this "project" than professionality or avoiding doing things over and over and over again ... [*big sigh*])

:|

[adamk]

I personally see absolutely no advantage in either approach. Can one of you explain where you see the advantages of a chat-room for offering help? Is it that good answers get immediately lost after they have been written? Or is it that there is this "chat-elite", this small circle of buddies who feel like they have their own "crown's club"?


You get that on any support forum, including this one.

[quote:f7f3a]

Why don't we use this forum for discussing problems and offering help - it would avoid answering the same questions over and over again?

(But I fear that the "average user's" stupidity and laziness is once again of more importance for this "project" than professionality or avoiding doing things over and over and over again ... [*big sigh*])

:|[/quote:f7f3a]

Except that it doesn't avoid answering the same questions over and over again... Just take a look at the various posts here and you'll see the same problems mentioned repeatedly.

For what it's worth, I've seen the #beryl and #opencompositing IRC channels be quite successful in helping users.

Adam

[RYX]

I didn't mean to say that they are not successful in helping users - they are not successful in organizing their help well. Instead of answering things in a chat-room they should answer things in the forums. There was an incredible amount of valuable information lost on beryl's irc channels. Especially the developer-information discussed there is lost forever. Why can't we learn from errors in the past? Weren't we going to do things better this time?

And you're likely right that the same stuff is being answered over and over again, but that is likely related to the entirely chaotic and messy structure of the forums and subforums. I think the forum-structure has to be heavily re-designed to lighten up this chaos.

[adamk]

Well, I do agree that having developer discussions on IRC seems like a mistake. In terms of user support, though, I think there are some distinct advantages to web-based forums, mailing lists, and irc, so I don't see any reason to try and limit users to one or the other :-)

Adam

[RYX]

That's true, there should be no limitation to only one of those possibilties. But the reusable help should have the absolute priority. Users should be encouraged to use the reusable help wherever possible so it can be improved and extended. A responsible "helper" in the chatroom should point users to the wiki or the forums, especially for more difficult problems. That way everyone can benefit from a solution.

:)

[rcxdude]

why not have the chat room(s) logged by a bot and the logs available and searchable from this website? the #mythtv-users channel does something like this (you can view the logs [url=http://mythtv.beirdo.ca/ircLog/channel/1/2006-01-04:d893a]here[/url:d893a])

[Jupiter]

I have to agree with RYX. We should try and keep as much support as possible
in the forum where it can be searched. The forum doesn't have the best organization
at the moment but that can easily be changed once we have a name and WIKI page.
We who help others must also do our best to use links, to point users where the
solution is. Rather than answering the same question over and over. A WIKI will
help in this area. I also think that to add another venue of support will make
things more difficult for those of us who do support. I sure don't want to keep
track of a chat room AND irc AND the forum. Even in irc i try to keep the support
to minor issue's. I do my best to have people open a thread in the forum, so that
we have a searchable record of the solution.

[SmSpillaz]

As soon as we have a website...

^ As soon as we have a name.

/me hides

[Deciare]

IRC can be quite effective for helping users with complicated problems that require lots of correspondence between the user and the helper. A problem that may take days to resolve on a forum may be solved in minutes on IRC.

Even if the information isn't immediately searchable, both the user, helper, and possibly spectators still gain experience that could be used to help someone who may post about the same problem on the forum at some point in the future.

Problems of such complexity tend to be pretty unique, though, so I don't think we're losing much reusability in those cases, though I admit it's suboptimal.

[RYX]

IRC can be quite effective for helping users with complicated problems that require lots of correspondence between the user and the helper. A problem that may take days to resolve on a forum may be solved in minutes on IRC.
I agree that irc can be useful for simple talk between developers - but technical discussions and helping with problems should definetly be done in the forums. If I spend a day and it likely helps many people in the future, I should prefer that over helping a few persons over and over again (even if I save some time that way). If things like that were answered on irc, they should be logged and immediately published on the forums. Well sorted, well entitled and in the right place/subforum.

Even if the information isn't immediately searchable, both the user, helper, and possibly spectators still gain experience that could be used to help someone who may post about the same problem on the forum at some point in the future.
Sorry, but I have to slightly disagree here. From supporting people at the compiz-forums I know that especially the complicated problems are the ones that will come up again after a few months. Even I, as the person who maybe actually figured out the problem back then, can't always exactly remember the cause and fixes of a problem when it has been asked a while ago. Then I can lookup the right forum post and have a look or post a link to it. Believe me - once you have made more than a thousand posts, at least 500 of them answering support-questions, then you'll not be easily able to remember any single problem you helped with.

I know that there will be people answering simple questions like the good old "failed to load slide: ..."-problem. And that's not bad at all, but users in the chatroom should be informed that the chatroom is meant for chatting, not for getting help - as Jupiter said. But of course we can't (and don't want to) stop people from helping each other - we just need to open people's minds that help is always to be found in the forums and chatting with friends can be done on irc/chatroom.

:)

[RYX]

For situations where a very special problem needs a lot of discussion and contact between helper and user, the helper could offer the user to go to a chatroom/irc with him and give "special care" (sounds somehow perverted, doesn't it? :D). I think it would be the most elegant and suitable solution to bring the user from the forums to the chatroom whenever very special problems occur, instead of generally bringing the chatroom to the forums (using a log) whenever somthing useful is said.

:)

[Deciare]

Putting the quotes around "special care" made all the difference in the world. ^^;

You're right, of course, that IRC is better suited to chatting than providing tech support. That's fine. We chat there too. :D Offering help is something we do when someone interrupts us with a question.

[shame]

I have spent quite a bit of time on various irc channels and yes, it is nice to have a place to chat for people with a common interest.
I think, as Deciare said, it is pretty useful for someone trying to get something work that they can get "interactive" help, where it may takes days to get to the bottom of a problem, in irc it can often be solved within a few minutes.
I'm all for irc.