Two Ideas to Cut off Duplicate Questions in Online Forums

re: Two Ideas to Cut off Duplicate Questions in Online Forums

Vurg — Thu, 28 Jul 2005 21:42:24 GMT

It still doesn't solve the real problem. The user will still go through pages and pages of search results.

My (wild) idea is to have some sort of in-depth categorization of postings. If there is a magical way of harvesting information from posts and organizing them into a knowledge base tree, then that would solve a big chunk of the problem. Of course, there is no magical way to do that, so the user would have to cooperate.

Usually, a specific forum focuses on one topic (a technology, applicatication, TV show, and etc). The smaller the scope of the forum, the closer the relationship of the postings will be. Maybe users can create these sub-forums through some sort of voting process. The same meta-voting features allow posts to be moved to their respective categories.

re: Two Ideas to Cut off Duplicate Questions in Online Forums

jledgard — Thu, 28 Jul 2005 21:52:26 GMT

I think that the search result value depends on how good the search is. Your second suggestion falls in line with some of my thinking on moderation that I haven't posted yet.

The FAQ view, however, based on posts I've seen so far works well as long as users find the right forum for the question.

re: Two Ideas to Cut off Duplicate Questions in Online Forums

Tobin Titus — Thu, 28 Jul 2005 22:13:24 GMT

Looks eerily like google ads *shudder*. I would imagine this suggestion would obtain the same fait -- being ignored. I do think this is a great feature, but honestly it won't solve the problem.
The problem that you stated is that expertise is spread too thin to answer all the questions. You don't want to make it overly difficult to ask questions, but at the same time you can shift more of the responsibility on the inquisitor before they ask the question. You have to give incentive for the person asking the question to do some due dilligence themselves before asking the question. Maybe consider making two paths for asking questions -- an "question wizard" and the standard question form. The wizard would allow you to type up your question, search for suggested answers and then mark some of those suggested answers as "close" or "way off" to help guage the type of response you are looking for. Going through the wizard would classify the question as a "qualified request" or something to that effect, and the question would be posted to the top of the forum. Questions posted through the standard form (without the wizard) would be posted under all the "qualified requests".

re: Two Ideas to Cut off Duplicate Questions in Online Forums

Björn Graf — Thu, 28 Jul 2005 22:14:33 GMT

Sounds good. But will these kind of users really take attention to such unobtrusive search results? Maybe some search results relevance based checkbox ("Yes, I have checked the search results and even if the relevance seems high non of these answered my question") could help :)

Side note: the XHR should be executed in async mode and not in sync mode - AKA as blocking - like the Whidbey online library.

"The smaller the scope of the forum, the closer the relationship of the postings will be"
Well, newbies already get confused by the scope of the current MSDN Forums and (cross) post into the wrong ones.

In the end the real problem with double posters is that they want an immediate answer to their questions and the idea proposed here could be a
first step to fulfill this demand - ya, I know this is kind of contrary to my first paragraph :]

-- b.gr

re: Two Ideas to Cut off Duplicate Questions in Online Forums

jledgard — Thu, 28 Jul 2005 23:19:00 GMT

Are google ads really ignored? Google and partners seem to be making a ton of money off of them???

That bring up another idea... why not.. in the notification mails people get with replies to thier post we insert "other potential answers"?

re: Two Ideas to Cut off Duplicate Questions in Online Forums

Chris — Fri, 29 Jul 2005 01:23:26 GMT

This is a great idea, but I think you might have to combine both your ideas - e.g. what happens to those who enter a subject such as "PLEASE HELP ME...!" etc...
So after you enter your subject you want an updated list on the right as you say. Then (I doubt it's possible) you'd ideally want the list on the right to alter as you entered in your question (maybe there could be a separate 'update answers' button instead?)

Failing that the 'post' button should actually be called 'review and post' and it would present you with a list of possible answers, then your post, then (finally at the bottom) a 'Post' button - i.e. before you can post you need to scroll past a list of summaries of possible answers.

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re: Two Ideas to Cut off Duplicate Questions in Online Forums

Saurabh Nandu — Fri, 29 Jul 2005 08:49:12 GMT

The FAQ suggestion makes sense in some kind of forums - like the example you gave of activation issues for Express. But if you inside a general language forum like C#. You'll hardly find any relevance to the top posts and the new posts being made. Hence its a good feature for some forums.
In fact looking at other communities. Today they try to do the same thing by having a sticky *newbie read me* post. Where the moderators will keep adding the top problems and their solutions in the same post (Wikki like).

<Snip my personal view>
If you look on a global scale unlike many countries like USA where users have been used to using forums/BBS etc. since a long time and abiding by its cultures. Most Asian country users are just waking up to discover online communities. It's an experience for them to ASK help outside their known group of peers. They are not aware of how to best utilize these communities.
</Snip>

Hence searching for them needs to be more attractive to make them use it. And I think ts a bit of education and marketing that needs to be undertaken. I like your suggestion to make background searches - this way the user does not need to perform two steps i.e. First Search and the Post. It gets in a single step process of search, if no relevant answers found post (considering the search engine can turn up right answers).
I think there should also be some marketing involved to name the system as *Instant Answer* or *Ask Josh* - something like that to make the user feel its faster to get an answer through search rather than post.

re: Two Ideas to Cut off Duplicate Questions in Online Forums

Dave — Fri, 29 Jul 2005 14:27:06 GMT

What about a keyword tagging scheme(a bit like browsing del.icio.us). Both questions and answers could be associated with keywords by users. New keywords could be associated at any point later on.

Users would search by keyword. Those Q or A's most moderated up or newest could appear higher up, along with further keywords to refine the search further.

In many ways it's solving the same problems as a pure search solution, but giving real people more control over the catagorization.

re: Two Ideas to Cut off Duplicate Questions in Online Forums

jledgard — Fri, 29 Jul 2005 23:58:16 GMT

Chris: We have considered doing a secondary search at the post & review stage. One of the issues, however, is that most search technologies aren't yet very efficient at finding matches with paragraphs or more worth of text in the search string. And the ones that do don't do a very good job at it. :-) Why do you think the google search box only accepts a limited amount of characters? I bet that people will make progress on this in the next couple years though.

re: Two Ideas to Cut off Duplicate Questions in Online Forums

jledgard — Sat, 30 Jul 2005 00:01:44 GMT

Saurabh: I agree with your statements, but I think that idaelly we start organizing buckets where these work more frequently. It will NEVER replace, nor do i believe it could, the manual FAQ generation process.

I also think we could do some things to make it more discoverable like calling it "Instant Answer", moving it to the left hand side of the page so eyes are drawn to it, and potentially even forcing a double check when the user hits post.

Dave: I like the whole tagging concept. A little birdie tells me that there will be a MSFT owned forum site that implements some tagging soon. I'll be watching carefully to see how well tagging goes over in the forum space.

re: Two Ideas to Cut off Duplicate Questions in Online Forums

AdamKinney — Sat, 30 Jul 2005 19:52:37 GMT

This is an interesting idea, thanks for sharing. I think comparing the proposed subject line to exsiting posts, as a start, would be useful.

re: Two Ideas to Cut off Duplicate Questions in Online Forums

Lee Holmes — Sun, 31 Jul 2005 10:31:31 GMT

This is an awesome idea, Josh. I blogged it (http://www.leeholmes.com/blog/IdeasToCutOffDuplicateQuestionsInForums.aspx) along with a functional prototype (http://www.leeholmes.com/projects/answer_suggest/answer_suggest_hifi.html)

re: Two Ideas to Cut off Duplicate Questions in Online Forums

Chris — Mon, 01 Aug 2005 01:18:26 GMT

>> most search technologies aren't yet very efficient at finding matches with paragraphs or more worth of text in the search string

Interesting - the same technology could also be used:
(a) For RSS readers that want to identify/group duplicate posts
(b) For finding emails that cover the same topic of discussion.

Sounds like a job for Microsoft Research!

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