[Foundation-l] A proposal for a Wikimedia project that helps people find solutions to their problems

[Yao Ziyuan]

On Sun, Nov 20, 2011 at 2:05 AM, Tomasz Ganicz <polimerek at gmail.com> wrote:
> 2011/11/19 Mateus Nobre <mateus.nobre at live.co.uk>:
>>
>> +1.
>>
>> always thought it.
>>
>
> There is actually such a wiki-project called "WikiHow":
>
> http://www.wikihow.com/Main-Page

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 at lists.wikimedia.org
> Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
>