Print

[AA4HA]

I suggest that we make the use of stickies for topics that are always asked and the answers are usually the same every time.

Topics like;

• Grounding (RF and electrical safety)
  Dipole antennas (how to figure the element length based upon resonant frequencies)
  RFI (the use of friendly ferrites for fun and profit)

You could create a few private, moderated forums where the details of a specific topic can be hashed out by a few (invited)  folks and then the consensus option would become the body of the sticky. (Like a week or two to comment, then someone would pull together a draft and run that by for comments again.)

When the same old saw comes up time and time again the questioner can be directed to the sticky. It would help those folks who need a quick answer to a simple question. Overall the quality of questions in Elmers, RFI and Antennas will improve as less time would be spent on "opinions" (that are usually wrong).

As it evolves, more topics could be sticky-fied. You could add stickies in how to do administrative things to a profile to reduce the workload upon the administrator.

Tisha Hayes, AA4HA

[K5TR]

You could create a few private, moderated forums where the details of a specific topic can be hashed out by a few (invited)  folks and then the consensus option would become the body of the sticky. (Like a week or two to comment, then someone would pull together a draft and run that by for comments again.)

When the same old saw comes up time and time again the questioner can be directed to the sticky. It would help those folks who need a quick answer to a simple question. Overall the quality of questions in Elmers, RFI and Antennas will improve as less time would be spent on "opinions" (that are usually wrong).

This sounds more like an FAQ sort of thing or maybe more like a knowledge base.  In any sort of venue where anyone can speak up you will always get various levels of advice on a topic.  Some will be really good and others will be misinformed.  The problem for anyone of us is knowing the good from the poor.  I am not sure the forums software is the best venue to create what is in essence is an FAQ.  I am sure most of us have seen the various ways this has been dealt with on the web - perhaps there is one of them that would be a good fit for hosting here on eham.  About a year ago several of us started a wiki mainly focused on amateur radio contesting but clearly much of that information covers topics for amateurs in general.  A wiki can be a great place to create 'how to' articles. Anyway - I will think on these ideas.

The contest wiki can be found here:

http://wiki.contesting.com/

[AA4HA]

You are right, a Wiki would make more sense.

We set one up at work. It was almost more trouble than it was worth.

Tisha AA4HA

[VE3PLO]

Every site that has something to do with technical stuff has a newbie section or stickies . Just for the purpose of explaining once and for all how to build a 20m dipole. And what is SWR etc...

Eham should have some of the treads with answers to these on the "top" and locked so nobody can post any more comments there.

[AE5NE]

Some sites like stackoverflow.com combine wiki and forum, and lead questioners to relevant highly-rated questions and answers from the past, by presenting the some search results while the new posting is edited.

They also allow up- and down-voting of answers so the community can rate the "good" from the "bad"

Open source versions are available such as
   http://www.osqa.net/
   http://askbot.org/en/questions/
   http://shapado.com/
   (more listed at http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/2267/so-clones)

[K5END]

Some sites like stackoverflow.com combine wiki and forum, and lead questioners to relevant highly-rated questions and answers from the past, by using the just-posted question as a search term and presenting the first few results from the search before allowing the new posting.

They also allow up- and down-voting of answers so the community can rate the "good" from the "bad"

Open source versions are available such as
   http://www.osqa.net/
   http://askbot.org/en/questions/
   http://shapado.com/
   (more listed at http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/2267/so-clones)

Sounds familiar.


If you ever have to ask PayPal or ebay to answer a question or resolve a problem the system encourages you to go through their littany of standard, typical, frequent questions with a robot before you can post the question for a breathing human being.


Not saying it is a good idea.

In fact, I hate it.

[AE5NE]

Don't see the connection.

These sites don't require you to jump through hoops, they only offer automatic suggestions. In fact it's not even a stopping block.  The list of relevant questions appears as you type your new question.

My post has been edited to clarify.

[N2MG]

I think an online knowledgebase would be pretty cool. However that goes FAR beyond these forums and the use of stickies.

Mike N2MG