Joho the Blog
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January 10, 2007
When I posted yesterday about my problem with Thunderbird and its possible solution, I did so in part because I wanted to make it findable by others with the same problem. So, I did the most basic search-engine optimization stuff of making sure I used some words and tags people are likely to search for. Then, yesterday afternoon I was part of a brief conversation with Andy Oram in which he talked about his interest in the phenomenon of bottom-up tech support. Googling for solutions to problems works but only sort of, says Andy. And that got me thinking that it'd be useful if we started tagging such posts with some standard tags, such as (perhaps): troubleshooting, operating system, application name, error message, problem area, solved/unsolved. So, my post on Thunderbird would be tagged: troubleshooting, xp, thunderbird, "rebuilding index", folders, solved. Something like that. In fact, perhaps we could use a microformat for technical problems and solutions. [Tags: microformats troubleshooting andy_oram everything_is_miscellaneous] Posted
by D. Weinberger at January 10, 2007 03:41 PM
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Comments
Or working with T-bird's organization in reporting problems:
http://www.mozilla.org/support/thunderbird/bugs
OB
Posted by: Charlie Green | January 10, 2007 08:15 PM
Searching for solutions is increasingly confounded by the sheer number of forum posts that answer questions with "google for the answer" instead of providing the answer.
How do you think I found your forum post in the first place?!?
Posted by: Adam Fields | January 10, 2007 11:40 PM
Hey, just to let you know your blog content is being duplicated elsewhere: http://media.genuinesign.com/2007/01/10/distributed-troubleshooting/
Anyway, I had a very similar experience with my Mail.app. As far as the microformat, perhaps you should draft an email to one of the discuss lists.
Posted by: Jon Williams | January 10, 2007 11:41 PM
The main reason I started a blog of my own was because I found so many solutions to technical problems in blogs (by googling.) So most of what I write is driven by some technical problem I had to figure out.
To make things googlable, I generally write titles and key phrases as I would type them if I were seraching. E.g. "How to disable xyz in ruby on mac os x." I think this might actually work better in the long run than trying to tag things.
I get probably one or two comments a month from people hitting some random article, saying "thanks I had that problem too."
Posted by: billo | January 11, 2007 11:01 AM
Often when Googling fails, looking in Wikipedia succeeds. Perhaps we need the Wikipedia equivalent of a tech-support site.
Posted by: Mark | January 13, 2007 09:41 PM