> As I'm reviewing some of the previous wiki pages now, I
actually am kind of
> inclined to think that it's better to have stronger problem/solution
> separation. But I could be convinced either way.
I feel a bit like wasting the reader's time to let them first read through
a question, and then follow a link to a marked solution. I know this is how
it would look if it was a regular question-answer topic in the forum. But
the wiki style provides a more efficient and readable way to learn about
high-profile issues (straight to the point, exact), and going to a forum
style would be a downgrade.
I created a test topic to play aruond with what this would look like. Take a
look:
https://ask.fedoraproject.org/t/no-sound-after-upgrade-to-fedora-linux-35...
In most cases, I think the solution part will be concise enough that it
should be entirely displayed within the solution box in the first post. The
main problem I see is that "code" formatting is lost in the solution quote.
So in order to provide good readable descriptions to our users
(solution-style), they would either need to be written in this style also
in Proposed Common Issues, or rewritten into a new topic. So the actual
"why is X broken? - have you tried Y? - and what about Z?" discussion would
occur probably elsewhere, in some generic Ask category, and once properly
discovered, somebody would rewrite it into a solution-style topic into
Proposed Common Issues, where we would verify it and promote it (move it)
into Common Issues if it's good enough. Does it make sense, am I imagining
it correctly?
Yeah. As I'm imagining it, we'd allow replies in the Proposed Common Issues
topics, but they'd be limited to discussion about the text of the problem,
whether it should be promoted, etc. If someone replies about the bug itself,
we can move the reply (easily done) to a new or existing topic.
Then, when we promote the topic, we'd hide any remaining replies. (Still
there for history but regular users wouldn't see them.)
What about changes to topic titles, do they change the URL? (That
would be
very inconvenient, perhaps even a deal-breaker).
The "real" identifier is a number. The above link works as
*
https://ask.fedoraproject.org/t/no-sound-after-upgrade-to-fedora-linux-35...
but also
*
https://ask.fedoraproject.org/t/18243
or
*
https://ask.fedoraproject.org/t/something-else-altogether/18243
It _also_ works as
*
https://ask.fedoraproject.org/t/no-sound-after-upgrade-to-fedora-linux-35
without the number, but... our tools obviously should avoid that.
> There is a setting "Make new topics wikis by default"
which we would
> enable for these categories. It doesn't make the post ownerless, though.
> I think we could set these expectations reasonably in the description of
> the category.
>
That might work. I think it also implies that you'll not simply take some
topic from a general Ask category and tag it into Proposed Common Issues,
because that wouldn't convert it into wiki style, wouldn't be in a
solution-style text, and also the topic authors might be negatively
surprised.
True.
So, we'll need a way to tag interesting topics in general
categories as
"look, this might be a frequent and important bug", and then a set of
volunteers who sift them and convert selected ones into Proposed Common
Issues, and then QA goes through those and promotes some of them into
Common Issues. Ugh, is it too complex?
I think the "tag" process and "convert into proposed" can be
combined.
Basically all you'd do is reply-as-linked-topic from the proposed
topic and put your reply in the Proposed Common Issues category. Then that's
what QA (including, in my mind, new volunteers from Ask) would consider to
promote.
Just to be clear, I'm still not convinced this is a good idea :-)
But why
not try it. Perhaps we'll then come up with some mixture of both
approaches, or at least realize some shortcomings.
Yes, thanks. I'm also not sure it's the _best_ way, but I think it _might_
be better. We can see!
--
Matthew Miller
<mattdm(a)fedoraproject.org>
Fedora Project Leader