From owner-freebsd-doc Mon Mar 19 8:27:12 2001 Delivered-To: freebsd-doc@freebsd.org Received: from mail2.virtualscape.com (mail2.virtualscape.com [209.213.96.75]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 13AFF37B71A for ; Mon, 19 Mar 2001 08:27:08 -0800 (PST) (envelope-from TomM@pentstar.com) Received: from Tommy [209.134.132.134] by mail2.virtualscape.com (SMTPD32-6.04) id A0CB2789013A; Mon, 19 Mar 2001 11:16:11 -0500 From: "Tom Musgrove" To: Cc: , , , Subject: The Ultimate Help System Date: Mon, 19 Mar 2001 10:26:32 -0600 Message-ID: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit X-Priority: 3 (Normal) X-MSMail-Priority: Normal X-Mailer: Microsoft Outlook IMO, Build 9.0.2416 (9.0.2910.0) In-Reply-To: Importance: Normal X-MimeOLE: Produced By Microsoft MimeOLE V5.50.4522.1200 Sender: owner-freebsd-doc@FreeBSD.ORG Precedence: bulk X-Loop: FreeBSD.org I made a proposal for the 'Ultimate Help System' on Gnome Devel and Johnathon , suggested that I join the gnome-doc list. The response on the Gnome-Devel and Debian Devel lists have been highly positive and a couple of people have volunteered to help implement it... (I've CCed the other documentation lists since I assume implementing such a system would be best done as a cooperative project, please post follow ups to gnome-doc-list only...) Here is the proposal ****Begin Ultimate Help System Proposal***** I have an interest in substantially improving the help systems that are provided for Free software. Specifically, I'd like to make them easier to use, and more useful for both power and new users and reduce the number of 'stupid'/'repetitive' questions that are asked in the IRC channels. First my critique of current help systems The reason users use help as a last resort, is that help is generally almost USELESS to users who are not skilled at picking the search terms that the help creator used. Instead, they will ask someone who is knowledgeable about what they want to do, or is good at searching help. Another reason that users use help as a 'last resort' is that there is a fairly good chance that what they want to do may not be explained in the Help. The third reason is that help does not necessarily explain the answer in such a way that the user can understand. In order to solve the above problems, I propose the following 1) synonym mapping of search queries If a trusted developer can map the search terms that a typical user types to more accurate terms, then a large step towards eliminating the problem of using different search terms from the help creator can be made. I'd guess that 50% of the time that naive users don't find the help that they are looking for is because the term that they are searching on is not the same as what the help document author used. To make it even more useful, fuzzy matching can be used for misspelled words (another common problem with searches by unskilled searchers...) or alternatively offer other potential spellings (as is done on some of the popular search engines such as google.) 2) help linked to IRC If the query doesn't immediately find what the user was looking for, the question can be submitted to a IRC help channel (one populated with 'trusted' respondents so that they don't get profanity, etc. as a response). The IRC person then searches help and maps the question to the question listed in the help (if the answer exists in help). The question then goes to a database to be added to the help system on the next update. If the query does not exist, then the following can be done... a) Request more information - the IRC person creates a yes/no question for the user to solicit more information again, submitted to the database for future reference (this would be similar to the Microsoft guided help...) b) Create a tutorial on how to solve the problem - this could be a script description generated from actually doing the action, with comments inserted. Thus for 'how can I make my text bold faced' - I would select text, click on the bold font character. Two scripts would be generated, one a text description as above, the other a visual hint system, that would highlight the next action to be done. Thus a small box near the text say 'highlight text'. Then after the text is highlighted, a box above the boldface icon 'click on icon'. This would also be amendable to text to speech (TTS) software as well. This could also use the custom mappings of the user, so they can use their keybindings in the explanation... This addresses all of the problems above, and could save tech people and users many hundreds of hours. Tech support at some companies would likely voluntarily hang out in the IRC help room (or be required by management..). 3) submit more information if the help person in the IRC channel does not have sufficient information, then a button can be used that submits a screenshot of the users program. Also, a brief listing of current software can be submitted (I.e. - I am using Debian Potatoe version foo.bar with Gnome version fuz.baz, etc.) This can avoid the problem of having the user look up the assorted information themselves, and save the tech and the user time. 4) put my computer in the users state The above info can be used to put the techs computer in a state similar to the users computer temporarily. (the degree to which this can be done will certainly vary, but at least going to the same window manager with the same programs open might be useful...). Of course once the user has been helped, the question and the solution can be added to the help system (if not automagically, then with a small amount of clean up, or with a review by a 'trusted' developer). I sincerely believe that this might cut the amount of time spent helping new users and solving problems on free software operating systems substantially. This would also give us a significant edge in ease of problem solving over many of the commercial software systems. ****Begin Ultimate Help System Proposal***** I'd appreciate your thoughts and comments, Tom M. TomM@pentstar.com To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-doc" in the body of the message