Trimming Troubleshooting Commentary

A SNO having technical issues will often start a post requesting assistance in the Troubleshooting category. SNO’s have been and are welcome to assist each other to resolve each other’s issues. One of the strong benefits of this community is that we try to help each other succeed with Storj’s software by helping one another.

Due to the increased volume of discussions, we find that many Troubleshooting threads get sidetracked by commentary and off-topic communication that would be better served in another topic or new post. It makes it difficult for all parties looking for a resolution to an issue to follow which responses are about the particular issue and which are extraneous.

To improve the structure of the Troubleshooting threads (And only the Troubleshooting threads), the Admins may choose to hide responses that are off-topic, not helpful, comments, or anything else we feel is not assisting with the issue the post is about. The admins will use their own discretion when they hide any responses like this, and they won’t necessarily explain or move the response to a new topic. In this case, it’s about efficiency. There are plenty of conversation threads available to present thoughts and ideas without having a troubleshooting thread go sideways. Please take those conversations there or start a new thread of your own if you feel like it. We’re always interested in your opinions and ideas; we just want to keep the troubleshooting threads orderly to make it easier to answer issues and refer them to engineers, as well as find results for people performing a search.

Don’t take it personally if one of your responses was hidden, even if you feel it was on topic or was helpful. Our goal is to keep the troubleshooting threads tidy.

If you have any questions, feel free to ask them here.

15 Likes

I don’t know if it’s possible, but could any first-posts in the Troubleshooting channel receive an autoresponse with some tips?

A SNO having technical issues will often… not use search. Or scan the first page of topics in the channel for similar issues. Or even look at the first post :slight_smile: . They often don’t mention their platform, or version, or filesystem, or post any logs (or know how to post logs that don’t get their formatting mangled). Or mention if it’s a new install or an old one that has been running fine. Or look at troubleshooting tips.

Having a bot give them some immediate direction could mean there’s more to work with by the time other humans arrive to help.

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Makes sense. I will look into what we can do there. Thanks for the suggestion.

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I appreciate this @knowledge. I’ve unfortunately given up on threads that were flooded with offtopic stuff, despite good back and forth around an ongoing issue before those distractions. I know hou traditionally prefer light moderation, but if it’s hurting both node operators and Storj engineers, I think more strict moderation is certainly warranted.

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Maybe do even automated first responses based on keywords. So often people write with problems with DB and get the same answers every time.

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yes, it’s already implemented. When you type the title for the post, the Discourse (our forum platform) will suggest you topics, which are close to the typed sentence.
However, the user can ignore it and publish anyway.

yea that’s not enough, i would even see it as separate support option (but still also here on forum, maybe a popup with bot chat (wonder if latest discourse development allow solutions for this? should be possible, coz this is the new trend with all that A.i. bots):

so if You need help, instead of writing a public post, perfect if You could first talk to a bot, that is feed with all the forum posts. One might find out, that posting a new forum thread isn’t necessary. In case bot can NOT solve the problem, user could be presented with option to post this on forum as new Thread only then. (with the whole conversation with the bot)

Major benefit from such approach would be the drastic reduction of new threads with the same problem, i hope for, which will be a huge problem i predict, even for Alex to put it in order, the further we go with the project, the more new ppl join.

I’m seeing more commentary hidden in other categories now (like Node Operators) than Troubleshooting. But I guess off-topic is off-topic :wink:

Those are flagged by users and considered individually by the admins. Some have multiple flags on them.

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There are two types:

  1. flagged by the Community
  2. hided by the moderator

For the first type only the flag from the Regular will hide the post right away, other levels requires more than a one flag from the Community.
For the second case it will be hided right away.
However, you cannot distinguish the last one from the hide by the Regular, I guess.

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I don’t like things getting hidden immediately on one vote. It gives busy bodies too much power.

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It shoupdnt hide them on one vote, but it does bring the post to our attention and then we determine whether it is off topic, spam, or various other types of posts.