Nitpicker's dashboard

I have this same experience - both trying to connect to a nonexistent corporate server AND briefly seeing salesforce.com. I have to quit my VPN to submit a ticket. I also had this experience when I was trying to download a white paper. – Cathy, on June 05, 2008 22:03

I'll take a look at that. This is my first wiki, and as far as I can tell, no one else in the department that I'm setting it up for has done one either--what I really need is "PBWiki for Super-Dummies"! But the community forum looks like it might be the next best thing. Thanks! – Rich Stewart, on June 04, 2008 20:27

ski: Sorry you're having problems. I notice that you've had other interactions on Get Satisfaction in the past few months, and that PBWiki answered some of those questions for you, so I'm a little unsure about your current confusion. What can we do to help fix the problem you're having now? – Eric Suesz, on May 28, 2008 07:05

Yes, what happens? I needed helped, clicked support, wrote my email, clicked submit, and landed on this page. Huh? Why? Am I supposed to do something here? I just wrote my support request and now it's gone and I don't want to write it again. Is this pbwiki a real company or some kind of school project or what? I'm not joking. I can't tell. I thought it was a real site but now I really have no idea. If it is a school project, great job kids! If it's a "real" company, I'd have to say "needs work."

That's a great idea. Thanks for the suggestion.

Umm no. I know you're kidding but just on the off case that you are not: You aren't working under the same constraints as Twitter and using Twitter to do support would be really difficult. – Jay Allen, on May 19, 2008 09:44

Scott, I don't know the details of what Google Reader does, though I know it doesn't work well for me. Still, don't let perfection be the enemy of better (and doable). – Nitpicker, on May 19, 2008 07:15

Hmmm... interesting point. I guess if I feel like I'm contributing to the conversation as whole -- like maybe the other people in the room might want to hear it -- I add it as a reply, but if I'm really just saying something of value only to that user I use the comment feature. Perhaps this is not the right way to think of it? Even *I'm* still getting used to this new comment system. :) – Amy Muller, on May 19, 2008 05:16

Hi Nipticker. Thanks so much for your thoughts. I am constantly struggling with feeling frustrated that the "help" topics we create aren't more obvious to people in the course of general site use. We have talked about an idea similar to what you suggest here but I'm not sure where we're at with it. You have inspired me to put the fire under it again, though. We will definitely be discussing your ideas this week. Also, fyi, we do have topic forking in the works you will be happy to know! Thanks for the offer of help, though. – Amy Muller, on May 19, 2008 05:11

it's ruby on rails, mysql 5, solr for search, plus lots of other code in ruby. – Scott Fleckenstein, on May 19, 2008 03:32

i like the option like it is on youtube. readers can vote for replies - so could for comments – cekay, on May 19, 2008 03:30

a comment to a reply is a fobolus idea! btw i would like to know what is running behind getsatisfaction.com – cekay, on May 19, 2008 03:27

I suppose I should clarify, I'm talking about tracking "seen content" in the manner that google reader considers it. That means we have to track seen/unseen status per-reply, rather than as a single timestamp per-topic per-person. I was basing my comment off of the work i did before rather than what mdy suggested. I'm sorry about that. The single timestamp method is not hard, I agree, but I think that, while better than the current state of things, is inferior to the more granular approach. Thanks for your input nitpicker! – Scott Fleckenstein, on May 19, 2008 03:16

Nope, I don't have a problem with it. In fact I worked on some prototypes for it around october last year. It's not so much that disk space costs, it's about writing, querying, processing all that data at scale. It wouldn't be a big deal, I agree if we are only talking about just in emails messages, but tracking (and properly displaying) what content you've seen on a topic page would be the most expensive part of serving a page by a long shot. Most things on a topic page we can share between users, but this would add an entirely new level of personalization. We'll most likely be dealing w/ this problem if/when we build out the ability to ignore someone, and so it will probably get much more within our grasp then. – Scott Fleckenstein, on May 19, 2008 03:03

You have a problem with that? Contact me or BZWebTech.com for an affordable, no cure, no pay contract to fix that within a month. Disks are cheap and the problem is not so big. I guarantee it. – Nitpicker, on May 19, 2008 02:09

Ask me for help. Please. 707-546-6760 (home) 707-228-9716 (cell) – Nitpicker, on May 19, 2008 01:57

It's not very easy to do at all nitpicker. Keeping track of what everyone has seen on the site is a google-scale problem to solve; We're talking tons and tons of data, and lots of tricks to make it performant. We'll get there eventually, but we need to grow before we have the resources to achieve that. – Scott Fleckenstein, on May 19, 2008 01:42

We should learn from the success of Wikipedia and create topic articles (at the top of each topic) to summarize and continually refine the best understanding of the topic. The original question/problem/whatever with its replies and comments constitutes the Talk page for the topic article.

The largely time sequenced replies and comments just make the topic LONGER. The gems of value get buried. The article at the top can get BETTER over time. That's a tremendous advantage.

Treat the article as in a wiki so damage can be reverted and attribution for changes is hidden in the history. You can make the history a third part of the topic at the bottom if you like.

The forum style replies and comments should, I feel, remain subject to deletion and revision by only their authors, but not for a mere 15 minutes, forever. History? I don't know. We don't even have access to the goals for the whole Get Satisafaction process. Let's have explicit goals and an actual user's manual highly visible (by link) at the top of every single topic. Links don't take much room.

This is a major comment and suggests to me that, again like wikis, it should be made easy to fork off another topic from any existing topic, leaving a link to the new topic at the location of the reply or comment which fostered it. This is a more complex system than we have now, but visualize how much richer and easier to understand things could become if this were done. It could make GS into a truly remarkable and compelling resource for participating companies and their customers.

If the idea intrigues but seems too complicated for you to accomplish on your own, I can help you find experts who can accomplish this from scratch in a matter of months, and not so many, either. Private comments can be sent to dick at cfcl dot com, but to get past my spam filters, please include Nitpicker in the subject line

good point nitpicker. I don't know if we every though about people who have problems with low contrasts. – Scott Fleckenstein, on May 19, 2008 01:38

Should be a comment. Good content. See reply below. Replies offer better formatting. Where is the manual that distinguishes comments from replies??? – Nitpicker, on May 19, 2008 01:18