Hear hear.... DJ Sures for Prime Minister of Canada. I even wrote a speech for you...

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We choose to build robots! ... We choose to put a robot in every home in this decade and do the other things, not because they are easy, but because they are fun; because that goal will serve to organize and measure the best of our energies and robotic skills, because that challenge is one that we are willing to accept, one we are unwilling to postpone, and one we intend to win ..

Could we not compile a list of the main questions asked for each of the more popular categories, and have them added to the FAQ section, as I feel that would be the right place for this valuable info. The copy and paste could be done straight from there if needed unless I'm missing a point or two such as having it dynamic so regular members could edit or add to it.

I just wanted to respond to some of DJ's comments, as I really enjoyed reading his last post.

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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.

This is so true. When I answer or just read questions from newer members I know the answer to, I do find myself thinking "man, that's easy" but then remember "wait, did I actually know that or find that easy when I first started?". As Richard so politely and correctly put it in one of my earlier threads, "6 moths ago, you didn't even know what a servo was... Now you're writing your own scripts and helping others". which has a lot to do with the documentation on this website, be it the learn section, or member input. I still do find myself missing the obvious when working on something, but that's only because there so much content in the EZ-Robot platform. As DJ put it once, he starts to write a new builder control, only to realise it already exists as he already done it some time ago, lol. Funny, but I get that.

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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.

Ain't that the truth. Here's one example for a fairly popular robot. Recently I helped @nomad out with his Aldebaran NAO robot. I've never owned one, nor ever used one, so to clarify a few things, I posted a couple of questions on their forum after looking through the their poorly laid out user guide. Two days... not a single response to any of my questions. Thanks a lot, lol. Even their customer support replies were crappy and short. Ask a question here, you sometimes get an answer before you even finish typing.

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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 kick starter 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...

I couldn't agree more. I give up at looking through the "Lets make Robots" project pages sometimes, as a lot of it is the same old Arduino line followers and the like, or the humanoid bots which are "all that" (I think the kids say) but it's basically a remote controlled toy. No speech rec, no camera rec, and no way to expand on the design or programming.

I'll make a point of something here. Not to blow my own trumpet, but I think I have built a couple of fairly okay robots (K-9 and E4-B4, and when people see these in person, they are blown away with how much they can do. Now, these two bot have been entered in numerous Instructables contests, the most recent was E4-B4 which was entered in a "Sci-Fi" "Tech" and "robot" contest. Waiting for results for "Sci-fi" and didn't make a finalist in the "tech" comp as there was a wide variety of different projects. Fair enough. Now, the robot comp... Was an absolute joke. Not wanting to sound like a bad loser (I really couldn't care less as I want going to enter anyway, and the prizes weren't that great in the robot comp), but the fact that I had the ONLY multi functional robot in the true sense of the word with clearly laid out instructing along with many high def photos and videos, was passed over for I think it was three 3D printers (SERIOUSLY! I mean, are 3D printers even classed as robots), an Arduino fish with a poorly laid out instuctable, and some line followers really surprised me no end. And I did a bit of searching in previous comes over the past 12 months or so, and every EZ-Robot entry I saw didn't get a look in. Maybe some people don't believe that the robots I and others made can do what we say they can do... don't have to be built or programmed by experts... or word about this great platform hasn't reached them yet or feel they don't have what it takes to make their own "smart" robot. Maybe the instuctable judges feel that the EZ-Robot platform is a "make it or program it yourself" platform. Same thing with K-9 last year. Loads of comments and emails about him, even got EZ-Robot some new customers because of him with people saying "this platform looks great. I've gotta check it out", but didn't even get a look in, in their comps that he was entered in. It seems to me that if it's a stand alone Arduino project, your sure to get picked. I show friends videos of Ardiono only "robots", and they say "that's cool. What else does it do?", and when I say "thats all it does (follow a line of avoid a wall)" that reply with "Is that it? oh, okay then". Maybe their judges should come over and have a look at the amount of work and effort that has gone in to member tutorials, forum assistance, and project showcases, and this thread of Alan's is a prime example of that.

Okay slightly off topic (sorry Alan, didn't mean to hijack), but I wanted to get that off my chest.

Anyway, I think Alan has a good idea, and maybe it could be implanted somewhere, but holy cow, DJ has a point about all of the pointers to the learn section (I didn't realise there whee so many).

Richard, I love the speech for DJ, although it does sound kinda........ familiar, lol, but works really well.

Steve.

Lots of really great discussion, although not a lot of answers to my question of "what are the common questions we ask when troubleshooting"?

My goal in asking this was not so much providing g a way for those having an issue to have another way to solve it themselves , but giving us a tool to gather the information we need to help. There will always be users who have issues not covered in learn or who skip right to asking in the forum. The latter of those groups also tend to not know how to aks technical questions well and provide incomplete data, leading to a lot of back and forth and some frustration on the part of is trying to help. If a few people solve their own issuw when we swnd them a list of relevant clarifying questions, that is a bonus.

That being said, I think two of our questions should be "have you looked at the relevant learn section or tutorial, and what was missing from that answer"? And" have you read the faq"?

This idea came about because I was getting poor quality trouble reports from call center agents at work without even the most basic information I needed to troubleshoot (user's phone id, time of the call, whether it was a one time or continued occurance) so I put together forms to handle the five most common types of issues with required and optional fields to fill out in order to engage my team for support. While writing the forms, I noticed a similar need here.

Alan

@Alan.

Yeah sorry, I did ramble on a bit and went off subject slightly in my last post. If an idea comes to light for this subject, and if I can possibly help in any way... please let me know. It'll be great to get some input from some of the other regular members about this.

Steve.

@Steve No worries. Great conversation regardless of the outcome.

Alan

There was response hidden in my large reply The response was listing the number of places that users are already directed to the learn section. So the questions i have are...

1. where else would links to the learn section be displayed?

2. if these less than 0.1% of users are avoiding those learn section links, what ideas do we have to ensure this new section of questions isn't avoided?

In summary, if less than 0.1% of users are avoiding all directions to the learn section, where do we place these new questions?

Or - wait i have an idea!

okay okay, i had the idea soon as i was typing this so i'll keep the above text anyway - because i'll treat this like a real verbal conversation as if we were chewing the fat over a beer.

When someone selects "require assistance" when creating a forum thread, the page will change to include drop downs for the questions that you come up with in this thread. So users will be forced to answer the questions we come up with before they can post for assistance!

So, keep going - come up with a good number of questions. I'll pick the most appropriates ones (if necessary) based on a conversation with james and analyzing his customer support zendesk report data.

This will be a good idea.

DJ, this is great news (that it is a very low number of people that don't find the Learn section). This is the information that wasn't or isn't available to us.

I think the approach you are alluding to is a good approach.

Yeah, I like the approach. Add a friendly introduction saying something "like 90% of troubles reported needed some or all of these questions answered to assist in troubleshooting" and allow N/A as a possible answer except for the most critical, because there will be some totally new things that we have never seen, particularly as the learn section continues to improve.

Here is another question for the list: have you installed the latest ARC"? (or, maybe even more appropriate, what is your ARC version nimber?)

Alan