I just created some trouble reporting forms to use with the call center agents at work when they report problems to my team because we always need to go back to them and ask questions to clarify what the issue is. I see the same thing happen here all the time where someone will write a post tjat "x doesn't work" or "y crashes" and we always need more details. I thinking we should list some of the most common questions here and at tje end I'll either write a short trouble reporting tutorial with a section that cam be copied and pasted, or maybe DJ could create a form that generates a new post with the questions and answers.
I'll get us started with a couple from just the last few days:
Is there an error message displayed in the debug window?
Did the EZ-B make the disconnect sound or reboot?
Please post a copy of your project.
What are the steps to repeat it?
Is your battery charged?
Did you check the fuse?
Are you in AP or Client mode?
Can you access the EZ-B's web page?
Have you tried the servo on a different port?
If we get enough questions, we could even build a self help flowchart to get users through some of the most common issues or determine that a bug report or warranty claim is really needed.
Alan
Sorry for all the typos. Writing on my phone on the subway. I'll clean thwm up later. I type with a lisp on my phone.
Hey Alan. I don't know if you're aware of it, but there's something like this that has already been started in the FAQ section which I believe was James Hu's idea. It already has some of the more popular questions covered, but could do with a few more using some of what you've posted.
I did know about the faq, but there are a lot of new issues that come up that still need the same basic questions asked. My idea is that at least we could have a list of questions to cut and paste when someone posts a vague trouble report if not something more sophisticated.
Alan
Some of the people who have been asking questions lately.... don't think there are solutions
But, on that note - it has been an interesting challenge!
Where do we put these questions that people will see?
@Alan.
No worries, I thought you might know about it. Truth be told, I actually forget to refer to the FAQ's myself when answering questions. Your thread just reminded me of it again, lol.
I don't see statistics on how many people go to the tutorials without posting in the community and from what I have seen, I don't know that you have a method of determining. I think something that leads the user to the answer and has the user answer if this answer helped them would be the way to go.
To try to explain... I have a question...
Prompt: What is the topic of your question Answer: Scripting Prompt: What is your question about Answer: vision or camera Prompt: What it feature are you looking for Answer: Object tracking Bring them to the tutorial showing script commands for object tracking.
Have a "Did this answer your question?" question and indicator.
This is a pain to program I would think.
From what I have seen, people post questions here instead of finding answers on the learn section. That could be just because that is what I see, but it seems that people think that this is the learn section of the site. It could be because they search google for a topic and it takes them here. It could be that people can't find the learn section for some reason. It could be that for every one that posts there are 1000 that find answers in the learn section. I don't know, but it appears that this is where most come for help. Without having some way to know if the question was answered by the learn section, I don't know how you would do a comparison to find out.
I think that when someone posts here when the answer is in the learn section we assume that this is the common thing, I think that unless you have the data to analyse if this is infact the situation, you wont know.
Before the learn section was created, this was the place to get the answers. Because of this, you have a lot of users who are more than willing to give answers instead of direct people to the learn section. This causes the issue to continue. I face this in business daily. If a helpdesk is setup in a company, and everyone has been told to go to the helpdesk with all issues, and the helpdesk will help or get you in touch with the person who can, but... when people come to you, you don't refuse to help them and force them to go to the helpdesk then you are defeating the system that has been put in place to ultimately help you and them out. Any english majors hate me right now...
@DJ, I have three ideas of how we could use this.
The first requires no work from you. As soon as we have collected enough useable questions, I keep the first post of this thread up to date with useable questions, and ordered by the ones we are needing to ask the most at any given time. Those of us who answer a lot of questions just keep it bookmarked so we can easily copy and paste it when someone asks for help without providing enough information to answer their issue.
The second is a variation on the first, except that you implement a "sticky" thread function on the web page so that it is at the top of either the current topics or maybe just bug reports, and we word it to ask users with questions to include the relevant answers in their posts. When we get a vague or incomplete issue, we can still cut and paste the relevant questions into the thread asking for help, but it is easier to find.
The third requires the most work, and I would rather have you doing ARC releases, but you could have the web site insert whatever we decide are the absolutely essential questions into any new post when someone selects the Bug Report tag or the Needs Assistance topic type.
Alan
I really don't think there is hope to those 0.01% of users which post on the forum where the question is answered in the learn section. We make the learn section really really visible
Good news is we can see how many people have follow learn section because it's all logged, as you can see from viewing a users details. We can also see quite a bit more, such as every link any individual session takes. Which is why the site changes sometimes. Because we run reports that tell us to move things around.
The good news is there's a very small number of posts with their "issues" that would be solved if they visited learn. I think it's because these people want the community engagement. I believe they aren't knowledgable enough to contribute, but they want to be welcomed. So rather than coming in with, what they feel might be boring, a "hi I'm so and so and want to make a robot". Instead they come in with an "issue".
Also, some of the issue posts are people who are so excited to get the robot working, that they overlook the learn section and see engagement as a quicker and more personal touch.
Lastly, it's hard to not want to engage the forum when everyone on here appears so knowledgable and friendly.
In short, the percentage of those posts is incredibly small. If you consider brookstone's recent sale of thousands of jd's and six's plus the Christmas rush... As Dave put it - there's very few posts compared to a year ago. And it's not a little bit of difference / it's significant! Last year less than a thousand robots were sold for holiday season. This year thousands of robots were sold and the number of posts for assistance was still less, even though the number of units is ten fold.
Good news is that means we really did something right. We will continue to support all issues - but some will leak by with the reasons I stated above.
Something good to consider is questions still are necessary for our individual growth. I get questions from the forum experts as well - and that's never something to be ashamed of. Even if the answer is already there. This helps me as well. And the questions from these new users help you, whether you realize it.
They help you recognize how far you've all come. They show you that there's knowledge to share and you've positioned yourself that role. It's quite impressive to consider what we have here.
It's not like any other place on the Internet. There are no robot forums this helpful with this number of serious enthusiasts. Sure you can find "brainiacs" blabbing about c++ complicated blah blah with ros somewhere. But they're not doing much to share knowledge outside of their bubble. Ezrobot's bubble is expanding because you have all gone from "I can build a robot?" to "hey you, here's how you build a robot"
And when we say robot, we don't mean robot like everyone else. How disappointed do you get when visiting let's make robots? Or watching kickstarter and seeing "educational bots" that you shake your head at. Or reading a blog post about some maker who "diy" robot with an arduino and it avoids a wall with a distance sensor and drives on wheels... Meanwhile, your ez-robots are walking and talking and dancing and interacting and blowing peoples minds!
Ezrobot and this community is pretty much years ahead of everyone else - AND we make it atainable to pretty much anyone.
So, is it bad that we get the occasional post that sneaks by the learn section? Nah... There's plenty of positive perspectives which we can apply to this scenario. That doesn't mean to not take efforts and help them. I encourage these efforts, because it's part of what makes all of you so friggin awesome.