Solving this problem has been a pet project of mine for some time.
There's some solution space between a forum and a wiki. You need a question-based navigation, with common questions pulled out, multiple answers and viewpoints, and all of it rated and commented on.
To put that structure in a forum involves too much overhead. to put that information in the structure of a wiki involves too much editorializing.
I've seen many attempts at coming at this from a strict UI standpoint, as mentioned in the article, but I have never felt that they worked that well. There's also the issue of whether a question is an actual duplicate or is different, or if the difference really matters. All of this is pointed out in the article.
I know I got tired of folks asking about book recommendations on HN and finally wrote an app that keeps track of what hackers recommend to each other. I tried to base the entire site of navigating from common questions to books that help answer those questions. I'm not entirely happy with the solution, but I find that trying to write a solution in code many times helps with the problem more than just talking/writing about it.
Looking forward to hearing more about this as the community continues to engage the problem.
> I've seen many attempts at coming at this from a strict UI standpoint, as mentioned in the article, but I have never felt that they worked that well.
What is the problem with UI approaches, do you think?
I think there is a tension between the user's desire for simplicity and the underlying complexity of the data involved.
So the user thinks: "I want to know how to fix X". But it's never really what they want to know. It's always something different.
This is the same problem software development teams face when asked to fix something. Simply because you can state it in a sentence does not mean you are communicating to me all I need to know to help you.
Very much so. This problem only gets bigger as people get more technically sophisticated. Most people are satisficers (when the first idea pops up that could even remotely fix the problem they stop thinking about more solutions) and they tend to force that on others as well. It's rare for people to be able step back and state their problem in a pure form, instead people like to state their problem in the form of an unimplemented solution (thinking that makes it easier).
Developers who aren't skilled in recognizing or dealing with this sort of thing are at a significant disadvantage. If you naively implement all of the random satisficed solutions people submit to you as "problems" you end up with an incoherent and conflicting mess.
From painful experience I'm happier with the idea of providing a reading list to somebody than simply trying to come up with some kind of immediate quick answer to a loosely-worded question.
A book author sets the table: he provides background, vocabulary help, and a context. Inside of all of that, he can discuss the issue from multiple angles and provide advice. There's depth: you take time to understand where the author is coming from. In return he provides you in-depth advice in the area you are interested in. More than that: good authors teach you how to think about solving problems in a particular area.
Instead of that format, on the net we have hit-and-run McDonalds sagacity. Questioners don't have time for a book. They have some random problem and Google is their friend. As a responder, I'm just some schmuck on the internet, busy doing other things and mostly distracted. I'm taking all of 30 seconds to guess what the person's problem might be, then fitting it all into some random mood and context I brought along with me. No matter how smart I am, it's just not the same. It's useful at times, no doubt, but it's not the same. I don't think the social networking paradigm translates over well to advice-giving. Heck, even with book authors I find that the quality varies quite a bit, and that's folks that take months to address an issue.
Again, I'm not saying these sites aren't valuable: I use them all the time. I just think we may put too much stock into the first returns from a Google or SO search. Trying to add structure to the process isn't going to necessarily make it better. If voting and friends work for sharing jokes and links, and they work for forming a community, it doesn't necessarily follow that they are the bedrock for creating a valuable structure to answer repeat questions. When we discuss this we might be like the guy who has a hammer and can do anything -- as long as all the problems are nails. (In other words we know the answer is going to be a tweet or a quick reply reused from a previous question, we just are trying to figure out how big of a hammer/format/magic we need to make it all work)
All the book recommendations are based off of common questions I see on HN. In addition, a user can go and pick their own books and order them to create their own list to answer a question (using this link http://hn-books.com/AnswerQuestion.htm )
The problem is that as the programmer I had to come up with an initial ranking for answers to the questions. I didn't like that, as I felt my own preferences weren't as good as some other readers. This is why I provided users the ability to select and rank book themselves. This is also why each book's detail page has automated searches where you can review what others have said about the book on various hacker sites. I even thought about a voting system, but I'm waiting to see if anybody much uses the site before I go running off with a bunch of features.
I thought about tags, but tags are simply not descriptive enough. Questions, as the article author mentions, can be interpreted various different ways. Voting turns into a popularity contest. (One of my pet peeves about SO and other sites is that you see answers upvoted which are wrong, misguided, or harmful, probably because the submitter is popular on the site) So there's no solution that I'm particularly fond of when it comes to dealing with common questions. I _do_ think, however, that questions are the place to start. Topics, tags, categories, or widgets don't seem like they work, at least to me.
EDIT: Another big factor is the experience level of the person asking the question. So if you wanted to know "How do I provide a search capability using JSONP?" I'd give you a completely different answer if you were a noob as opposed to somebody who has been around the block a time or two. Even through the concepts involved would be the same. It's a very slippery problem.
There's some solution space between a forum and a wiki. You need a question-based navigation, with common questions pulled out, multiple answers and viewpoints, and all of it rated and commented on.
To put that structure in a forum involves too much overhead. to put that information in the structure of a wiki involves too much editorializing.
I've seen many attempts at coming at this from a strict UI standpoint, as mentioned in the article, but I have never felt that they worked that well. There's also the issue of whether a question is an actual duplicate or is different, or if the difference really matters. All of this is pointed out in the article.
I know I got tired of folks asking about book recommendations on HN and finally wrote an app that keeps track of what hackers recommend to each other. I tried to base the entire site of navigating from common questions to books that help answer those questions. I'm not entirely happy with the solution, but I find that trying to write a solution in code many times helps with the problem more than just talking/writing about it.
Looking forward to hearing more about this as the community continues to engage the problem.