Seeking FAQs

[Chris Hostetter <ho...@fucit.org>]

Hey everybody,

I was lookin at the FAQ today, and I realized it hasn't really changed
much in the past year ... in fact, only two people besides myself have
added questions (thanks Thorsten and Darren) in the entire time Solr
has been in incubation -- which is not to say that Erik and Respaldo's
efforts to fix my typo's aren't equally helpful :)

	http://wiki.apache.org/solr/FAQ

In my experience, FAQs are one of the few pieces of documentation that are
really hard for developers to write, because we are so use to dealing with
the systems we work on, we don't allways notice when a question has been
asked more then once or twice (unless it gets asked over and over and
*over*).  The best source of FAQ updates tend to come from users who have
a question, and either find the answer in the mailing list archives, or
notice the same question asked by someone else later.

So If there are any "gotchas" you remember having when you first started
using Solr, or questions you've noticed asked more then once please feel
free to add them to the wiki.  The Convention is to only add a question if
you're also adding an answer, but even if you don't think a satisfactory
answer has ever been given, or you're not sure how to best summarize
multiple answers given in the past, just including links to
instances in the mailing list archives where the question was asked is
helpful -- both in the short term as pointers for people looking for help,
and in the long term as starter points for people who want to flesh out a
detailed answer.

Thanks in advance for anyone who helps contribute to the FAQ!


PS: Don't be shy about contributing to any of the other Wiki documentation
that you think are lacking, that's why it's a wiki.

Re: Seeking FAQs

[Thorsten Scherler <th...@apache.org>]

On Sat, 2007-01-06 at 10:25 -0500, David Halsted wrote:
> I wonder what would happen if we used a clustering engine like Carrot
> to categorize either the e-mails in the archive or the results of
> searches against them?  Perhaps we'd find some candidates for the FAQ
> that way.

Not sure about tools but IMO this works fine done by user/committer. I
think the one that asked the question on the list is a likely candidate
to add an entry in the faq.

The typical scenario should be:
user asks question -> user get answers from community -> user adds FAQ
entry with the solution that worked for her

This way the one asking the question can give a little something back to
the community.

If you follow the lists a bit one can identify some faq's right away:
- Searching multiple indeces 
- Clustering solr (custom scorer, highlighter, ...)
- ...


> 
> Dave
> 
> On 1/5/07, Chris Hostetter <ho...@fucit.org> wrote:
> >
> > Hey everybody,
> >
> > I was lookin at the FAQ today, and I realized it hasn't really changed
> > much in the past year ... in fact, only two people besides myself have
> > added questions (thanks Thorsten and Darren) in the entire time Solr
> > has been in incubation -- which is not to say that Erik and Respaldo's
> > efforts to fix my typo's aren't equally helpful :)
> >
> >         http://wiki.apache.org/solr/FAQ
> >
> > In my experience, FAQs are one of the few pieces of documentation that are
> > really hard for developers to write, because we are so use to dealing with
> > the systems we work on, we don't allways notice when a question has been
> > asked more then once or twice (unless it gets asked over and over and
> > *over*).  The best source of FAQ updates tend to come from users who have
> > a question, and either find the answer in the mailing list archives, or
> > notice the same question asked by someone else later.
> >

Yes, I totally agree. Sometimes the content for the solution can be
found in the wiki. One would just need to link to the wiki page from the
FAQ.

> > So If there are any "gotchas" you remember having when you first started
> > using Solr, or questions you've noticed asked more then once please feel
> > free to add them to the wiki.  The Convention is to only add a question if
> > you're also adding an answer, but even if you don't think a satisfactory
> > answer has ever been given, or you're not sure how to best summarize
> > multiple answers given in the past, just including links to
> > instances in the mailing list archives where the question was asked is
> > helpful -- both in the short term as pointers for people looking for help,
> > and in the long term as starter points for people who want to flesh out a
> > detailed answer.
> >

In the long run the content of the wiki that has proved solution should
IMO go directly in the official documentation. 

salu2
-- 
thorsten

"Together we stand, divided we fall!" 
Hey you (Pink Floyd)

Re: Seeking FAQs

[David Halsted <da...@gmail.com>]

I wonder what would happen if we used a clustering engine like Carrot
to categorize either the e-mails in the archive or the results of
searches against them?  Perhaps we'd find some candidates for the FAQ
that way.

Dave

On 1/5/07, Chris Hostetter <ho...@fucit.org> wrote:
>
> Hey everybody,
>
> I was lookin at the FAQ today, and I realized it hasn't really changed
> much in the past year ... in fact, only two people besides myself have
> added questions (thanks Thorsten and Darren) in the entire time Solr
> has been in incubation -- which is not to say that Erik and Respaldo's
> efforts to fix my typo's aren't equally helpful :)
>
>         http://wiki.apache.org/solr/FAQ
>
> In my experience, FAQs are one of the few pieces of documentation that are
> really hard for developers to write, because we are so use to dealing with
> the systems we work on, we don't allways notice when a question has been
> asked more then once or twice (unless it gets asked over and over and
> *over*).  The best source of FAQ updates tend to come from users who have
> a question, and either find the answer in the mailing list archives, or
> notice the same question asked by someone else later.
>
> So If there are any "gotchas" you remember having when you first started
> using Solr, or questions you've noticed asked more then once please feel
> free to add them to the wiki.  The Convention is to only add a question if
> you're also adding an answer, but even if you don't think a satisfactory
> answer has ever been given, or you're not sure how to best summarize
> multiple answers given in the past, just including links to
> instances in the mailing list archives where the question was asked is
> helpful -- both in the short term as pointers for people looking for help,
> and in the long term as starter points for people who want to flesh out a
> detailed answer.
>
> Thanks in advance for anyone who helps contribute to the FAQ!
>
>
> PS: Don't be shy about contributing to any of the other Wiki documentation
> that you think are lacking, that's why it's a wiki.
>
>