[Openstack] Cloud Computing StackExchange site proposal

Michael Pittaro mikeyp at lahondaresearch.org
Wed Nov 30 00:06:48 UTC 2011


On Tue, Nov 29, 2011 at 11:54 AM, Stefano Maffulli
<stefano at openstack.org> wrote:
> On Tue, 2011-11-29 at 10:14 -0800, Michael Pittaro wrote:
>>  * a method or process for flagging topics which should migrate  into
>> documentation and/or the wiki
>
> Sounds interesting. If I understand you correctly, you want to have a
> way to mark questions about topics that may be improved in the official
> docs. Would this be something like 'transform this question into a bug
> filed against the documentation project' or something different?
>
> Can you elaborate a bit more on the use case? How would this work?
>
> thanks,
> stef
>

Maybe the anti-pattern I'm trying to avoid here is a better place
to start :-)

A lot of knowledge discovery happens on a Q&A site, as well as lists
and forums.   However, a common problem with those tools is where
the all the knowledge ends up being scattered in those locations
(and often replicated), and the real documentation and/or wiki never
gets updated.   ( This seems to be more common with lists and forums
than Q&A sites.)  This is compounded by the natural aging of a
discussion or question - at some point, it's just no longer relevant.

I think two pieces are required:

1) As you suggest, a way of flagging a question or discussion
   as a doc bug, a potential enhancement, or even a product bug.

2) A way of closing the loop, and updating the question to indicate
  the issue is resolved/fixed, and no longer relevant.

The method I've used in the past is where the 'question' had a link
to a one or more 'bugs', and when a 'bug' was fixed the 'question'
got updated automatically.

There are various ways to do this; I think the important point is
just to close the knowledge loop in some way, and to avoid having
to do it manually.

mike




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