Date: Tue, 7 Mar 2000 11:28:21 -0600 (EST)
| From: | Jon Winters |
|
winters@obscurasite.com Reply-To: unrev-II@onelist.com |
| To: | unrev-II@onelist.com |
| Subject: | Knowledge Repository War Stories... |
Having learned long ago that we should learn from our mistakes I would be interested in hearing any stories of knowledge repositories gone horribly wrong.
In the past I have set up a couple of different web based discussion forums and I currently maintain a private NNTP server. The NNTP server limits the audience to those geeky enough to know what a newsreader is and how to use it. Depending on your target audience this is a good thing or a bad thing. In our case switching to NNTP gave us a more technical audience and seeded out a lot of the off topic drivel.
The web based systems reached different audience. Hypernews was working great for a photographers forum that I was running. It was very easy to use and extremely stable once it was in place. Many of the photographers who used it were not computer people and they appreciated the ease of use.
Unfortunately I had it on a server owned by my employer and they shut down the office pulling the plug. One day I would like to re-install Hypernews on my own server.
Lastly I've noticed that new users will always ask the same questions even if they have been answered many times before and there are tools to search the previous posts.
Is it human nature to want to ask someone instead of searching a knowledge repository?
If so then an agent or bot might be in order. The bot acts just like a visitor to the site. The bot hangs out and listens for frequently asked questions and when it gets a hit it searches the repository, old chat logs, etc and replies with an intelligent answer. (in chat or email or whatever system the visitor was using when they asked)
Now the bot should identify itself as a bot and it should be smart enough not to send out duplicate replies if the visitor did not find what they were looking for the first time.
Bots should not behave like those dreaded phone menu systems. (if at all possible)
Being an admin Its also rough to decide what to keep and what to throw away. Currently my NNTP server is set to expire articles every 100 days. I would like a system that would expire by default after 100 days unless a post were flagged as a keeper. Keepers get moved to archival storage.
The old hypernews system I was using kept everything and over time the signal to noise ratio degraded.
Post your stories if you have them... change the names to protect the innocent if you need to.
Thanks
Jon Winters
winters@obscurasite.com
http://www.obscurasite.com/jon/
OpenVerse
http://www.openverse.org/