[Foundation-l] New project proposal: wiki-based troubleshooting

[Yao Ziyuan]

Thomas Dalton wrote:
>>
>> We definitely do not want to be giving medical advice to people. If
>> you get that wrong, people die. Medical advice should be got by going
>> to the doctors. Can you give another example of what your idea could

Yes, medical troubleshooting is both extremely useful and extremely
sensitive, and that's why I said "Like Wikipedia, WikiTroubleshooting
should cite credible references." We could put a warning and a
disclaimer on every medical troubleshooting page telling the visitor
to check cited references and other sources before adopting any
advice.

>> be used for? Can you also explain how it would work - how would we put

Troubleshooting is enormously useful beyond the medical domain. For
example, troubleshooting problems when using a computer (hardware or
software), programming (intending to implement something but the
program doesn't behave as desired; in this case, a troubleshooter
helps the programmer incrementally specify his *intent* rather than
*problem*), using home appliances ("my air conditioner has ice"), or
any other problem at home or at work.

>> together this wizard?

To understand how a wiki can implement a "troubleshooting wizard", you
must first understand what is a "troubleshooting wizard". Googling [
troubleshooting wizard ], we can see some examples:

http://www1.linksys.com/support/troubleshoot/routers/index.html
http://support.plato.com/ple/troubleshooting.asp
http://www.fixyourdlp.com/wizard/launch-window.html
http://support.hubris.net/dialup/wizard/

All of the above examples help a visitor isolate his problem step by
step, asking one question at each step and finally giving possible
solutions.

Also learn about the concept "troubleshooting" at
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Troubleshooting .

How can a wiki implement a troubleshooting wizard? A wizard is a set
of pages. Each page assumes you have specified certain symptoms (e.g.
symptom1, symptom3, symptom5) of your problem and asks you a question
to specify a new symptom (e.g. symptom10); then it redirects you to a
next page that assumes you have specified symptoms 1, 3, 5 and 10 and
asks you yet another question or shows you possible causes and
solutions for the symptoms you have specified so far (1, 3, 5, 10).

Therefore they're just static HTML pages where each page can link to
one or more "next pages". This is exactly what a wiki can do.

Best Regards,
Yao Ziyuan
http://sites.google.com/site/yaoziyuan/