Replies Back to Article

Whilst an IRC channel might appear a good idea, I do not personally favour it. The main reason for this, is the fact that it would require an immense amount of time for someone to actually go through the conversation logs (if any indeed are kept) and actually archive it in some meaningful form.

Whilst the TalkZones might appear slow, in practice you are only talking a few hours until a problem is solved. Some of us who also subscribe to some of the mailing lists, may also recall a situation where one of the fellow members needed a problem resolving in order to meet an extremely tight deadline. If I recall correctly there were only a couple of hours to meet this deadline.

Within minutes, not one, not two, but three solutions were reached enabling the member to select the best option for them and implement it.

This solution is now available for everyone to share as it is archived, it is stored and it can be searched for.

The problem with an IRC conversation is that there is a very strong, and very real chance that the conversation (and hence the solution) is lost forever. At the end of the day, this benefits the person who had the problem initially, but nobody else can benefit from that knowledge once it is lost.

Although one solution to this would be to log the Chat room and make it searchable. Not easy, but indeed feasable.

Indeed, it isn't easy at all. I once set up a system to achieve exactly that aim with a busy chat room that was being used for project collaboration and development.

After only a day it became obvious that a dedicated server was required just to process the data, as I'm sure you can imagine 8 hours of chat produces one heck of a lot of data in the log files (to be precise over 200Mb).

Factor in the amount of chit-chat that doesn't need to be archived (to preserve space), and you are really talking a massive logistical challenge. The main problem is the fact that so much of what is said is irrelevant, but you end up archiving it anyway. To avoid that you have to employ human filtering which  becomes, slow, laborious and above all expensive.

The main plus point for the TalkZones is that every post, every submission is relevant (even if the submission says RTFM, it remains relevant as it points out that the problem is resolved by reading the manual), it is therefore cheaper to maintain, quicker to use, and more relevant to the needs of the user.

A lot of the people that answer the posts on forums only spend about 30 minutes a day on the site. They arrive and work through the questions, answering each one (that they can) in order and then they leave. If they were to instead spend this 30 minutes on IRC telling some Newbie how to configure PWS with Win 98 I can see a lot of knowledge not being used to its potential and the website suffering as a consequence. Just my 5 cents worth.

I agree with Aleksandar.  The greatest benefit of the internet is that it allows very effective asynchronous communication with email being the obvoius method of acheiving this.

The great thing about UDZone is that historical records of previous questions and answers are available to all.

This said however! It would be nice to receive instant answers to questions but in reality I do not think this would happen.

Forums work well for all the reasons others have already posted.

+ Always accessible...like a library, can always look something up.
+ People behave a bit better in forums (they have the time to edit themselves, think a bit more) then when chatting (alot of spontanaity).

...Chat would be nice as a "enchancement" tool...don't loose the forums for the chat. Enchance the forums with chat.

Which tasks would users use which tool for exchanging information?

SafariSister's 2-cents

Good point, but that wont happen here though.
DMXzone can't / wont even respond to basic forum question.

Enjoy that you are so positive.