How about a search course for newbies?
 

I am a newbie myself. The thing that bothers me is seeing the same questions over and over and over on the forums.

The people that answer these questions would be better off helping people with new problems or unique problems in my view.

Maybe before someone can become a member and post questions they should be required to take a "thread search course" .

There are always people who will let others do the work.

I have a lot of respect for the people that do try and help and respond. I feel their time is a very valuable asset to us and I do not want to see them turned off by the same questions.

Only one persons opinion.

Yeah I also think that ppl should use search more but on the other hand I dont find search on these forums efficient. When I enter more than 1 keyword I usually get loads of unrelevant links. When I search for the same on google I get much more acurate answer (many times links to threads on these forums)

I agree that more should use the search more often but I also find it efficient though as well. I think the main problem that some face when searching is that they don't really know what to search for when they have a question, which is understandable at times. But I also feel that some of those irrelevant links, well, that's always going to happen and your just going to have to sort thru them at times. People didn't rush to California during the Gold Rush to find a pot of gold sitting on the beach waiting for them, they had to search for it, dig a little and so on.... ;)

The problem I've always had searching is exactly what trickykid just said - I don't always know what to search for. It is difficult. There is, however, no way to solve this. I also agree that searching requires more than just punching two words into the search form. The tricky part is that most threads on these forums (esp. ones with ten replies or more) tend to veer off into areas that are not at all covered by the thread title. It is unreasonable to expect a thread title that asks the exact question you have, and one reply in the thread giving the exact answer you need.

This is one of the many reasons we ask members to try and make their titles more direct into what their question is actually about.
Who knows how many threads people miss that might actually help them just because someone put the "Help Me" and only something along those lines in their title...

Regards.

I think part of the reason for this problem (repeated questions) is the ineffiency of the 'Has this been asked?' search.

Just for a test, I clicked 'new thread', then typed in the title 'Can't get my scroll mouse to work'. Then hit 'Has this been asked?' I tried again with 'Can't get my wheel mouse to work'.

The result was a page with 10 threads:

Mouse in X
Mouse Config
Memory and CPU questions......
Memory and CPU questions......
Sound Card Configuration
mouse config
Window Manager Roundup
Turtle Beach Montego II / Linux
Multiple IP adds on 1 interface
Will the MS Office Suite work in Mandrake Linux 8.1?

Of these, only one actually deals with a scroll mouse problem. And that thread only deals with a mouse that's scrolling the wrong direction (up is down). Probably not much help for the conscientious (and all-too-uncommon) newbie who hits 'Has this been asked?'

For comparison, when searching for the terms 'scroll mouse' (and 'wheel mouse') from a search page, I reached a page with threads 1-25 of 278 (and 1-25 of 302), and of the first 25, 12 (and 9) dealt with the typical 'How do I make my scroll mouse work?' question.

Maybe it would be more helpful if there were A VERY, VERY, VERY CONSPICUOUS NOTICE which suggested that the poster try searching for relevant terms before posting his/her question. It's important to point out to people that this is beneficial to them (since they may find an answer immediately, rather than waiting for someone to post an answer) as well as to the forum in general (because the search feature won't have to churn through the hundreds of repeated postings of the same question, and neither will other members).

Gee, now anyone who searches for 'scroll mouse' will be directed to this thread as well. Oh well, by next week it probably won't show up on the first page of search results ;-)

Enjoy!
--- Cerbere

Perhaps you could integrate this into the forum? At the end of every thread let members vote/type what topic the thread has helped them on, and you could then search for top rated threads on specific topics.

On the other hand, I've spent days searching and found nothing that helps, and now no-one is replying to my thread :(

search course
 

good idea; have another, catergories ie: hardware ,
software problems solutions. how to from expierence.
also request help from expeirenced linux members with
techincal help.

We do have a rating for every thread - see the bottom of the page. The thing is, if you vote on what helped you may end up voting that "this helped me find a friend in my area" which is a very specific topic. Also, the rating system is hugely underused and we have experimented with having Answered/Unanswered against each thread - these things are only useful if they are used. If only one person votes and their success is totally unrelated to the reason for the post, the results will be skewed.

The search function works, repeated use will educate you on how to use it. The aim is to make this forum as browseable as possible and often, bringing things to the forefront can be considered annoying and may end up turning people off LQ.

I agree that the search is kind of hard to use.

A lot of times I wouldn't know enough specifics as to what the problem was to be able to search efficiently.

Maybe there could be something like a "FAQ" or "FPQ" Frequently Posted Questions" to deal with the most commonly posted questions.

xaveirp; agree with you. i`m newbie too however since attempt to learn as
much as possible on any linux tend to acknowledge that linux is complex
therefore needs to be learned thouroghly. the more you know the easier it
becomes. yes jump-in but not into the deep-end first,the shallow end best.
and go slow with a lot of patience. confidence builds with time and perservence. suggest that take time to look into everything slowly but thouroghly. I`m still finding all kinds of problems and answers slowly.

You still need a search course
 

A lot of posts, but few answers.

For instance, is there a way to do a AND function in the search?

If I put "KDE" and "help" in the search field, and "build search index" in the exact phrase box, I seem to get every thread that mentions KDE or help.

There seems to be no way to limit the search, and no information on how the search works.

At least put in a FAQ on how to use the search efficiently.

Please.

I'm of two minds about this. On the one hand, I do get frustrated at answering questions that I've already answered. I also get frustrated when people clearly haven't even done a Google search for something--I mean, I don't even know the answer to the question, but I do a Google search and the answer is the first result.

On the other hand, one of the reasons I was able to make the switch was a generally patient and helpful attitude on the part of the Linux community. If we had a RTFM attitude and ignored silly posts, rather than teaching people to search properly, we'd more than likely just drive people off and have them continue to think "Linux is too hard."

Also, answers change. For example, the extremely popular "Which distro should I choose?" can be exasperating, but it may be different every time, depending on what the asker says she needs and also the development of new distros. A few years ago, we couldn't have recommended Ubuntu to anyone, for example.

Do I believe people could be smarter about things? Yes.

I don't know what to do about it, though. If they're not smart enough to search for things before asking, they'll definitely ignore any kind of recommendation that they search.

Also, there will always be semi-new Linux folks like me who actually learn something by answering these "old" questions. When they get too old for me, there will be someone for whom answering is new...

:confused:
I don't understand your response. I consider myself a fairly competent Googler, but Google is not an option on LQ unless I am a "contributing member". Which, as a Linux newbie, I don't see possible.

My problem is with the built-in forum search engine. As best as I can determine, by trial and error, it is seriously lacking. There seems to be no official documentation, and tring to use the search engine to find information on the search engine is driving me nuts.

Google as in plain old www.google.com or even www.google.com/linux I believe ;)

Plus with the google Advanced Search I believe you can search within specific domains as well. So I don't see why google should be a problem. You *can* search within LQ using google by using the plain old google interface as well.