Underlining own forum answers we consider interesting
Thread poster: Pablo Bouvier
Pablo Bouvier
Pablo Bouvier  Identity Verified
Local time: 14:40
German to Spanish
+ ...
Jan 20, 2010

The questions in the forums often recur. I want to believe that people take the trouble to search trough them before asking. Nevertheless I admit that it is a quite tedious task.

One of the things I miss, is some way to check (mark) answers that we have already given and consider interesting or recurrent. This way we were able to answer repeated questions simply by linking to them, instead to reading trough the hundreds or thousands of answers we may have given before.

... See more
The questions in the forums often recur. I want to believe that people take the trouble to search trough them before asking. Nevertheless I admit that it is a quite tedious task.

One of the things I miss, is some way to check (mark) answers that we have already given and consider interesting or recurrent. This way we were able to answer repeated questions simply by linking to them, instead to reading trough the hundreds or thousands of answers we may have given before.

I guess this feature will be specially useful for technical forums.
¿What do you think about?

[Editado a las 2010-01-20 08:50 GMT]
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Yasutomo Kanazawa
Yasutomo Kanazawa  Identity Verified
Japan
Local time: 22:40
Member (2005)
English to Japanese
+ ...
How about the "My Forum Posts"? Jan 20, 2010

Pablo Bouvier wrote:

The questions in the forums often recur. I want to believe that people take the trouble to search trough them before asking. Nevertheless I admit that it is a quite tedious task.

One of the things I miss, is some way to check (mark) answers that we have already given and consider interesting or recurrent. This way we were able to answer repeated questions simply by linking to them, instead to reading trough the hundreds or thousands of answers we may have given before.

I guess this feature will be specially useful for technical forums.
¿What do you think about?

[Editado a las 2010-01-20 08:50 GMT]


Correct me if I'm wrong, but I believe you have access to the forums you have contributed to in the past by placing your cursor on My Proz. com and a list will be shown where there is a My Forum Posts tab. Are you talking about this?


 
Pablo Bouvier
Pablo Bouvier  Identity Verified
Local time: 14:40
German to Spanish
+ ...
TOPIC STARTER
Underlining own forum answers we consider interesting Jan 20, 2010

Yasutomo Kanazawa wrote:

Pablo Bouvier wrote:

The questions in the forums often recur. I want to believe that people take the trouble to search trough them before asking. Nevertheless I admit that it is a quite tedious task.

One of the things I miss, is some way to check (mark) answers that we have already given and consider interesting or recurrent. This way we were able to answer repeated questions simply by linking to them, instead to reading trough the hundreds or thousands of answers we may have given before.

I guess this feature will be specially useful for technical forums.
¿What do you think about?

[Editado a las 2010-01-20 08:50 GMT]


Correct me if I'm wrong, but I believe you have access to the forums you have contributed to in the past by placing your cursor on My Proz. com and a list will be shown where there is a My Forum Posts tab. Are you talking about this?



No. What I am trying to say is that it is very slow to look trough the own forum answers, if it does not exist any way of highlighting those that we are interested in. For example, latter times several persons have realized the same question formulated in different ways (how and wich cat tools can be used under Mac/OS X, etc.). Take a look at this questions and you will understand what I am meaning.

http://www.proz.com/forum/cat_tools_technical_help/155048-sdlx_lite_is_it_compatible_with_mac.html

http://www.proz.com/forum/smart_shoppers/155435-cat_tools_for_macbook_pro.html#1304425

http://www.proz.com/forum/translator_resources/102157-cat_tools_for_mac_os_x_leopard.html

All they have near the same answer. If we had the alternative of marking the technical answers that we have given previously, it would not be necessary to look trough all the answers of our forum answers in order to answer all of them with a simply and unique link.


 
Kevin Lossner
Kevin Lossner  Identity Verified
Portugal
Local time: 13:40
German to English
+ ...
Make a custom tab Jan 20, 2010

I faced this same issue and created the "How To" tab on my profile, which includes links to particular information that was asked often. You could get the URLs to your specific post answers using the button under the comment and place these on your ow custom tab.

 
Stanislaw Czech, MCIL CL
Stanislaw Czech, MCIL CL  Identity Verified
United Kingdom
Local time: 13:40
Member (2006)
English to Polish
+ ...
SITE LOCALIZER
Why only our own? Jan 20, 2010

Some way of flagging particularly useful/interesting posts would be definitely interesting but why limit it to our own posts only?

Best Regards
Stanislaw


 
Pablo Bouvier
Pablo Bouvier  Identity Verified
Local time: 14:40
German to Spanish
+ ...
TOPIC STARTER
Underlining own forum answers we consider interesting Jan 20, 2010

Stanislaw Czech wrote:

Some way of flagging particularly useful/interesting posts would be definitely interesting but why limit it to our own posts only?

Best Regards
Stanislaw


I had also had thought about this possibility. Nevertheless, I believe that from the point of view of PHP programming , it would be quite involved.

I guess we have "My Forums" option by filtering forums unique database by our name, but if all of us need to mark other people forums, this will mean one field more pro Proz member in all the forums registers. Namely it would create an enormous database, impossible to manage in a reasonable time. Maybe this is possible trough SQL filtering, but my knowledge does not go so far.


[Editado a las 2010-01-20 11:26 GMT]


 
Attila Piróth
Attila Piróth  Identity Verified
France
Local time: 14:40
Member
English to Hungarian
+ ...
Makeshift solution: advanced forum search Jan 20, 2010

I have been in this situation several times, and I found that the advanced forum search option was sufficiently fast. By typing my ID and specifying a number of words and/or the specific forum in which the post was published, I got a short list, in which I could find the relevant post easily. The whole process does not usually take more than 30 seconds, lock, stock, and barrel.
In certain cases, a google search restricted to proz.com/forum (site:proz.com/forum) was even quicker.
... See more
I have been in this situation several times, and I found that the advanced forum search option was sufficiently fast. By typing my ID and specifying a number of words and/or the specific forum in which the post was published, I got a short list, in which I could find the relevant post easily. The whole process does not usually take more than 30 seconds, lock, stock, and barrel.
In certain cases, a google search restricted to proz.com/forum (site:proz.com/forum) was even quicker.

This is not to say that marking / tagging forum posts would not be useful. The simpler version with a restriction on one's own posts is probably simpler to implement, but I think it would save little time for few people, whereas a more comprehensive solution with no restrictions would be considerably more useful – and would justify the required development time.

Attila
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Pablo Bouvier
Pablo Bouvier  Identity Verified
Local time: 14:40
German to Spanish
+ ...
TOPIC STARTER
Underlining own forum answers we consider interesting Jan 20, 2010

Attila Piróth wrote:

I have been in this situation several times, and I found that the advanced forum search option was sufficiently fast. By typing my ID and specifying a number of words and/or the specific forum in which the post was published, I got a short list, in which I could find the relevant post easily. The whole process does not usually take more than 30 seconds, lock, stock, and barrel.
In certain cases, a google search restricted to proz.com/forum (site:proz.com/forum) was even quicker.

This is not to say that marking / tagging forum posts would not be useful. The simpler version with a restriction on one's own posts is probably simpler to implement, but I think it would save little time for few people, whereas a more comprehensive solution with no restrictions would be considerably more useful – and would justify the required development time.

Attila


I just run a short test with the advanced search tool with following restrictions:

Keywords: +MAC +OSX
Post date: within a year
Forum language: English
Search: Post and titles
Sort by: Relevancy
Show results: as posts

and I got 505 answers! Do you think this is an easy methode to look for? Then, OK. You can tell me, I have had to select a specific forum too. But, to wich forum belong a question like if SDLX is compatible with MAC: To CAT'S forum thecnical help? Or to the forum of the MAC operating system? As for own forums answers the method you have explained is OK.

[Editado a las 2010-01-20 12:32 GMT]


 
Pablo Bouvier
Pablo Bouvier  Identity Verified
Local time: 14:40
German to Spanish
+ ...
TOPIC STARTER
Underlining own forum answers we consider interesting Jan 20, 2010

Kevin Lossner wrote:


I faced this same issue and created the "How To" tab on my profile, which includes links to particular information that was asked often. You could get the URLs to your specific post answers using the button under the comment and place these on your ow custom tab.


Many thanks for pointing this workaround as this can be used to link not only own forums answers, but other interesting forum answers too.

[Editado a las 2010-01-20 12:44 GMT]


 
Attila Piróth
Attila Piróth  Identity Verified
France
Local time: 14:40
Member
English to Hungarian
+ ...
Advance search with poster specified Jan 20, 2010

Pablo Bouvier wrote:

I just run a short test with the advanced search tool with following restrictions:

Keywords: +MAC +OSX
Post date: within a year
Forum language: English
Search: Post and titles
Sort by: Relevancy
Show results: as posts

and I got 505 answers! Do you think this is an easy methode to look for?


Hi again, Pablo,
If you want to look for your own posts, specify the poster:

Keywords: MAC OSX
Poster: 68557
Search by: ID

This gives 7 search results, which looks quite manageable to me.

On the other hand, if you do not specify the poster, you get hundreds of matches, so marking / tagging them would make a big difference.

Kind regards,
Attila


 
Pablo Bouvier
Pablo Bouvier  Identity Verified
Local time: 14:40
German to Spanish
+ ...
TOPIC STARTER
Underlining own forum answers we consider interesting Jan 20, 2010

Attila Piróth wrote:

Pablo Bouvier wrote:

I just run a short test with the advanced search tool with following restrictions:

Keywords: +MAC +OSX
Post date: within a year
Forum language: English
Search: Post and titles
Sort by: Relevancy
Show results: as posts

and I got 505 answers! Do you think this is an easy methode to look for?


Hi again, Pablo,
If you want to look for your own posts, specify the poster:

Keywords: MAC OSX
Poster: 68557
Search by: ID

This gives 7 search results, which looks quite manageable to me.

On the other hand, if you do not specify the poster, you get hundreds of matches, so marking / tagging them would make a big difference.

Kind regards,
Attila


Hi, Attila: This makes sense. I added a last line to my answer before (as for own forums answers the method you have explained is OK.) you may have not read. Thanks a lot for your help!

Kind regards
Pablo B.


 
British Diana
British Diana
Germany
Local time: 14:40
German to English
+ ...
stuck at Kevin's suggestion Jan 24, 2010

I'm still stuck at Kevin's suggestion quite near the beginning of this thread:

"I faced this same issue and created the "How To" tab on my profile, which includes links to particular information that was asked often. You could get the URLs to your specific post answers using the button under the comment and place these on your own custom tab."

Sorry, but I have no idea what you are talking about, Kevin!

What is a custom tab? A "How to" tab?

Is
... See more
I'm still stuck at Kevin's suggestion quite near the beginning of this thread:

"I faced this same issue and created the "How To" tab on my profile, which includes links to particular information that was asked often. You could get the URLs to your specific post answers using the button under the comment and place these on your own custom tab."

Sorry, but I have no idea what you are talking about, Kevin!

What is a custom tab? A "How to" tab?

Is there any way you could explain what to do to an IT layperson like myself?
Thanks in advance!

Diana
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Pablo Bouvier
Pablo Bouvier  Identity Verified
Local time: 14:40
German to Spanish
+ ...
TOPIC STARTER
Underlining own forum answers we consider interesting Jan 24, 2010

British Diana wrote:

I'm still stuck at Kevin's suggestion quite near the beginning of this thread:

"I faced this same issue and created the "How To" tab on my profile, which includes links to particular information that was asked often. You could get the URLs to your specific post answers using the button under the comment and place these on your own custom tab."

Sorry, but I have no idea what you are talking about, Kevin!

What is a custom tab? A "How to" tab?

Is there any way you could explain what to do to an IT layperson like myself?
Thanks in advance!

Diana


A custom tab is a tab you can customize yourself to your needs. Goto your profile and select the Settings tab:

Profile > Setting Tabs >

At the left menu select the link and click:

Custom tabs

At right of the menu a new screen will appear.

Click on the link:

Click here tu add a tab

At right of the menu a new screen were you can set a new tab or tabs will appear. Give it/them a title, write the content you want (in my case, forum links), and save.

Have a nice weekend!

[Editado a las 2010-01-25 01:11 GMT]


 
British Diana
British Diana
Germany
Local time: 14:40
German to English
+ ...
That's great, Pablo ! Jan 24, 2010

Thanks a lot Pablo (and Kevin) for explaining what to do. I am now the proud owner of a custom tab (as I am not a paid-up member I get just one, but that should be enough) for Forum posts.
Now all I have to do is copy and paste the URL of any interesting forums into this space, am I right there?
I'll start off by doing this with our forum here....
Diana


 


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Underlining own forum answers we consider interesting






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