On Sun, Nov 20, 2011 at 2:05 AM, Tomasz Ganicz polimerek@gmail.com wrote:
2011/11/19 Mateus Nobre mateus.nobre@live.co.uk:
+1.
always thought it.
There is actually such a wiki-project called "WikiHow":
The difference between my proposal and other existing wiki-based problem bases (WikiHow, WikiAnswers, fedorasolved.org, etc.) is how to locate your specific problem in a wiki:
1. First, you may want to use a few keywords to do a quick search within the wiki and see if you're lucky enough to see your problem in the first page of search results.
2. If a quick search doesn't work, all problem bases (Yahoo Answers, WikiAnswers, etc.) provide "broad categories" that can usually narrow your search by three levels, e.g. Computers > Software > Photo Editors, but after going down such three levels, the topic can still be very broad. Wiki-based problem bases such as WikiAnswers allow you to create subcategories infinitely deep, and this is a very good advantage, as with a wiki we can implement infinitely sophisticated categorization that organizes all known problems in the world. But I think categorization alone can still be insufficient, which leads to the third approach below.
3. Symptom-based problem isolation: After the wiki's category system walks you down to a "problem type" that is still to broad for your specific problem, the wiki can further isolate your problem by branching out by "symptoms", which is the "troubleshooting wizard" concept I mentioned in my original message. Let's see a concrete example:
Step 1: Initially, the wiki's category system takes you to a broad problem type "My air conditioner doesn't work". Step 2: On that page, the wiki will say: "Check if the air conditioner is plugged in. Does this solve your problem? [Yes] [No]" Step 3: If the user clicks [No], the user will be taken to a further page that says: "Check if there is too much dust in the air conditioner. Does this solve your problem? [Yes] [No]" Step 4: If the user clicks [No], the user will be taken to yet another page that says: "Check if the air conditioner is out of refrigerant. Does this solve your problem? [Yes] [No]" Step 5: If the user still clicks [No], the user will be taken to another page that says: "Contact maintenance personnel."
As you can see, such a wiki-based troubleshooting process gradually isolates the user's problem by letting him choose symptoms, leading to increasingly specific problem pages.
So my conclusion is: keyword-based search + categorization + symptom-based troubleshooting can make the world's most comprehensive problem base (PB), just like Wikipedia has been the world's most comprehensive knowledge base (KB).
A "problem" is actually a set of "symptoms". A "symptom" is actually a "characteristic" of a problem.
"20Q" (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/20Q) is an interesting example that uses the same characteristic-based approach to retrieve an object.
-- Tomek "Polimerek" Ganicz http://pl.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:Polimerek http://www.ganicz.pl/poli/ http://www.cbmm.lodz.pl/work.php?id=29&title=tomasz-ganicz
foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l