[pmwiki-users] PmWiki forum...

Neil Herber (nospam) nospam at eton.ca
Fri Mar 16 17:40:58 CDT 2007


On 2007-03-16 Patrick R. Michaud is rumoured to have said:
> And personally, I've never found a forum that actually made it 
> significantly easier to find answers to my questions than mailing 
> list archives do.

Ditto.

I find that forums are great for "conversations" but lousy for 
conclusions. The best tool I have found for collaborative technical 
documentation is a wiki.

The existing FAQ and Questions pages may be less than they could be, but 
I think that just shows how effective this mailing list is. People ask a 
question, get an answer, go away happy. Very few think to add their 
problem and solution to the FAQ, probably because they have no way to 
guage how frequently the question has been asked. And maybe because once 
  your problem is solved, you have less motivation to talk about it.

Instead of or in addition to the FAQ, there should be an AQ (answered 
questions) page or group. You are only allowed to post questions with 
answers, such as:

Q: Why don't we use a forum instead of this stupid "AQ" page.
A: Because forums are great for holding conversations, but lousy for 
reaching conclusions. At least here someone can edit my inane comment, 
sparing future readers the agony of reading it.

In the spirit of practicing what I preach, I have started this page:

http://www.pmwiki.org/wiki/PmWiki/AQ


-- 
Neil Herber
Corporate info at http://www.eton.ca/



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