List of Resources?

[Eric Bareiss]

I have seen a lot of threads that begin "I need help with..." and I have seen a lot of people that are willingly offering help on any given subject. If there are this many people openly looking for help and willing to give help, maybe someone shold do some mediating.

Starting a thread on chiefdelphi may get the job done, but it is nice to have one person who has extensive experience about your particular subject to help you with your problem from start to finish.

Here's a thought, Why not compile a list of people that are looking for someone to help and make it available to anyone that may need some help.

Break the list into categories such as: motors, animation, inventor, drive trains, etc. Under each category would be a list of the people who are most qualified to help you and also willing to help you, and how to best reach them, email, instant messanger, phone.

Obviously I'm not trying to discourage posting questions on chiefdelphi, but this would help you to get a fast, thorough answer to your problem, and it would also help to eliminate incorrect or unnecessary answers.

I will admit that I am not good at spearheading things, and I don't have much spare time lately, so if someone else wants to take charge of this that would be nice, if not I will do it.

Also, please don't start posting that you want to be put on the list yet, that should be done through email, to avoid having too many unnecessary responses.

[shyra1353]

my only problem that i see with this is that some people may have the same question and the same person may have to reply to different people with the exact same response and it can get tedious .. (thats why people should search before they post to make sure that they arent reasking questions) .. so maybe if once they get an email they could respond and then post it on cd .. but then thats just like posting it on cd in the first place .. also on cd, you can also see what other teams are doing

dont get me wrong, i think this is a great idea ... but this is just what popped in my mind ... maybe for more of the specific questions ....

[Ricky Q.]

This is a good resource thread:

http://www.chiefdelphi.com/forums/showthread.php?t=20603

[Chris Hibner]

I have seen a lot of threads that begin "I need help with..." and I have seen a lot of people that are willingly offering help on any given subject. If there are this many people openly looking for help and willing to give help, maybe someone shold do some mediating.


Here's where I see the problem is: Poor Thread Titles.

I generally browse ChiefDelphi.com during quick breaks at work. To facilitate doing this as quickly as possible, I generally only use the Portal, so I can easily see which posts are the latest.

When seeing the portal, I constantly see thread titles like: "Help", "Please Help", "Help pretty, pretty please with sugar on top", "A Few Questions", etc.

Being the helpful guy that I usually am, at first I was clicking on these to see if I could help. Then, I find out the person wants help on animation, or the chairman's award entry, or something else totally off my area of expertise.

So, what has happened in the mean time? I have just stopped looking at threads like this. I have maybe one or two minutes to see what's up, which means if I click on a thread like that and waste that time, I've pretty much shot my time, which means I didn't answer a question that maybe I could have answered.

So...

- Be SPECIFIC with your thread titles. Do you want help with rendering? Then title your thread "Help with rendering", not "Help". Also, if you want help finding gears, title your thread "Help Finding Gears", not just "gears", because "gears" could mean 50 different things.

- Do NOT be afraid to sound redundant. For instance, a thread titled "Help" on the Chairman's Award forum may make some sence if you're browsing the Chairman's Award forum, but for those of us that use the portal, "Help" is completely ambiguous.

- Once you've gotten sufficient help and fixed the problem, make a post stating so. This way, a lot of people won't waste their time formulating a great solution to a problem that you have already solved.


For the most part, people have been doing a good job. However, if we can fix that last little bit, it would help out a great deal.

Now then, I'm looking forward to these forums becoming a more helpful place.

[kpugh]

I have seen a lot of threads that begin "I need help with..." and I have seen a lot of people that are willingly offering help on any given subject. If there are this many people openly looking for help and willing to give help, maybe someone shold do some mediating.

Starting a thread on chiefdelphi may get the job done, but it is nice to have one person who has extensive experience about your particular subject to help you with your problem from start to finish.

Here's a thought, Why not compile a list of people that are looking for someone to help and make it available to anyone that may need some help.

Break the list into categories such as: motors, animation, inventor, drive trains, etc. Under each category would be a list of the people who are most qualified to help you and also willing to help you, and how to best reach them, email, instant messanger, phone.

Obviously I'm not trying to discourage posting questions on chiefdelphi, but this would help you to get a fast, thorough answer to your problem, and it would also help to eliminate incorrect or unnecessary answers.

To avoid the incorrect/unnecessary answers perhaps the threads in these categories that ask a specific question could be set up such that only people that are truly knowlegable in those areas can respond. These people will be pre-approved by the moderators.

I browse occassionally at work when I get a chance but not very often. It is very hard for me to read through 3 pages of incorrect assumptions/opinions and needless side topics to get to that one post that gives me a reasonable answer to the initial question. Some of these threads get so off topic that by the time I get to the last post I have forgotten what the original topic was!

[JVN]

To avoid the incorrect/unnecessary answers perhaps the threads in these categories that ask a specific question could be set up such that only people that are truly knowlegable in those areas can respond. These people will be pre-approved by the moderators.
This whole things sounds very familiar.

Last year, www.chiefdelphi.com (http://www.chiefdelphi.com) experimented with a "Q & A Forum" where anyone could ask a question, but only certain "qualified" mentors were allowed to answer.

It doesn't exist anymore.
You'd have to ask Brandon why. ;)

John

[Rich Kressly]

Here's a list of teams, resources, field of expertise, and contact emails we compiled at our Rural Support Network. Feel free to contact these esteemed FIRST colleagues who have graciously donated their support.

http://www.cybersonics.org/cybersonics/rural/join.asp

[Eric Bareiss]

Well, due to the tremendous support of my idea, I withdraw my comment. Sorry I tried to help

[Ken Leung]

To avoid the incorrect/unnecessary answers perhaps the threads in these categories that ask a specific question could be set up such that only people that are truly knowlegable in those areas can respond. These people will be pre-approved by the moderators.

I browse occassionally at work when I get a chance but not very often. It is very hard for me to read through 3 pages of incorrect assumptions/opinions and needless side topics to get to that one post that gives me a reasonable answer to the initial question. Some of these threads get so off topic that by the time I get to the last post I have forgotten what the original topic was!


There are a certain line I feel uneasy crossing when I become a moderator. For instance, I would love to keep threads in topic, but I feel uneasy about deleting post that are in fact drawing the thread into a different direction. Sometimes they are just for fun (like a little side comment as a joke) or sometimes it is a seperated but related question. Those are the times I want to delete the side comments, and move the related question into a different thread. But it got hard when people start replying to both topics in one post making it hard to move that post.

So, I want to ask right now, is it ok if I go ahead and delete posts, and move them into new threads if they are off topic? Same questions with answers that are in the form of "I think" "maybe" or "I don't know".

[Ken Leung]

So...

- Be SPECIFIC with your thread titles. Do you want help with rendering? Then title your thread "Help with rendering", not "Help". Also, if you want help finding gears, title your thread "Help Finding Gears", not just "gears", because "gears" could mean 50 different things.

- Do NOT be afraid to sound redundant. For instance, a thread titled "Help" on the Chairman's Award forum may make some sence if you're browsing the Chairman's Award forum, but for those of us that use the portal, "Help" is completely ambiguous.

- Once you've gotten sufficient help and fixed the problem, make a post stating so. This way, a lot of people won't waste their time formulating a great solution to a problem that you have already solved.


For the most part, people have been doing a good job. However, if we can fix that last little bit, it would help out a great deal.

Now then, I'm looking forward to these forums becoming a more helpful place.

An easy solution is if the moderators go ahead and change the thread title into a better one. But I feel like that messing with someone else's writing and some how it doesn't feel right. The question for the rest of you is, would it be ok if your thread title is edited/modified to make it more specific?