Search the forum

I totally agree with you. I also often times see people asking the same questions.

However, my biggest frustration is when I find people asking for help in the fashion of "Hi, what am I doing wrong? Thanks. /end", without describing their problem and without providing any code.

Alot of people also give up WAY too easy on their problems or they ask for the answer to a quiz or challange without explaining what they tried first.

I hear ya that's why I try and give such a good explaination. We all get learning code sometimes Google or the easy way out is ok.

Ha-ha let me tell you a story. One day I was working on Linux idk 7 years ago. I googled how to change permissions. I thought I found it on stack trace until I tried it. I was in a root for and changed perms with a capital r. Ahhh I know -R and it is recursive. I effed up the entire file system. No one could log in or so anything. You realize quick the internet is the best and the worst. Lol just a story I'll never forget and felt the need to share lol.

If you don't know what you are doing don't do it. Learn its not easy but if you can't search the forum first. Are you really serious? Maybe yes but how do I the one providing an answer know that you are? That is the question lol

I agree also. I suggested a quick video on formatting and searching prior to being allowed on the forum for the first time, but it has not happened. And I just realized that the original post does not have a link to the Markdown Cheatsheet. Doh.

I agree that you see the same questions floating around, and as Christian mentioned there are those empty questions as well. It seems to me, though, that these repetitive posts are typically from new Treehouse Students, who aren't fully familiar or comfortable with Treehouse yet or forums in general.

Most web designers and developers learn early on that if you don't know something to just look it up because you'll almost always find your answer elsewhere. I think the key that's missing here is actually teaching new ones HOW to do their own research. Maybe when someone first joins Treehouse or first starts a course there could be a Video or blurb or something about how to get the most out of Treehouse and how to properly use the forums, as well how important it is to learn to do your own research. Learn how to learn.

I do see a lot of people giving up easily and not putting in the effort to solve the problem or go back and review the video and notes. Often times when this happens I wonder how many of those people are kids in a classroom using Treehouse and are just trying to get by and get their work done quickly, like kids usually do in school. So maybe they don't fully understand yet the value and sense of accomplishment you feel when you do solve a problem on your own.

I also think if you are tired of answering the same questions over and over again then maybe it's ok for you to stop answering those repetitive questions and instead leave them for those who are starting to answer forum questions for the first time and who aren't MODs. As someone who isn't a MOD and who is learning how to best answer people's forum questions, it can be frustrating at times when you see a simple question that you can finally answer and a MOD has already beaten you to it, or posts their answer as your still trying to find the words to answer yourself. So maybe it's ok to take a break from time to time? Or maybe that's against MOD rules, I dunno. :)

The End.

Kristopher, those are good points. We are encouraged to be active in the forums as part of our being moderators, but I think we can be too fast. I have certainly cemented my understanding of concepts by answering similar questions over and over. I am thinking of OOP in PHP in particular.

You're right Ted, Kristopher Van Sant does bring up some great points. I, myself, owe a great deal of what and how I've learnt here on Treehouse to answering questions in the community. Like he she said, figuring out how to best word an answer often requires a little bit of a review (which really helps with remembering what you learned last month). Maybe, sometimes I am like you and respond very quickly. IDK... maybe holding back a bit and letting the newer students have more of an opportunity to contribute is a good idea?

I also, completely agree about repeat questions. One in particular comes to mind and that's the JS question about MAX value in the if/else statement... If I had a nickel for every time... :)

But all in all, I thoroughly enjoy being a moderator here on Treehouse.

Keep Coding Everyone! :)

I think it would be a great addition to Treehouse if we could have a moderators corner somewhere, just so we can all agree on how we should handle certain situations. Perhaps it could also be our portal to more easily reach staff members. If this isn't possible to do within Treehouse, then maybe a reddit section would be a solution - if other mods think this is a good idea, and if staff can monitor it as well.

For example, there was a guy that posted a question not long ago that was very well written with many details, and he described everything he did. Really good effort on his part. Then another member replied with "Here is the answer:" and just pasting in the solution.

Pasting solutions doesn't benefit anyone who wants to learn, and I was this close in deleting the answer and posting my own answer with a detailed explanation. But then I decided not to as I wasn't sure on whether or not it was the right thing to do. So this would be something I'd ask other mods or staff about.

I've had other cases in the past where I've wanted to either ask other mods or staff, but the current platform is very restrictive for moderators, and I'd like to see that change for the better somehow. We mods are really a team where each one is working solo for a pretty large community - and that needs change.

Another thing that would be Awesome would be if you could sticky posts. Maybe as was suggested here, have a bunch of links to stackoverflow and other good sites, for the new programmers. Any content really could be written for the communitys' attention.

What do you guys think?

this message sent to support:

Here is a link to a very good discussion that I think the Treehouse decision makers should review and weigh in on. It has turned into a Moderator discussion about the forum and how to improve it.

https://teamtreehouse.com/community/search-the-forum

Ted

Hey this has turned out to be pretty active.

I didn't post this in vain, I posted this out of frustration and figured I would find out if others felt the same. More of a blow off steam or am I alone in this. It's just a forum post but eh I could of done it a million reasons and vain could of been one lol.

I wish I saw your server workload issue. It would be sweet to answer question not related directly to treehouse courses ya know. Expand the forum to a more stack overflow type of thing.

1. Everyone always asks why am I on task two and it says task 1 failed. I get that weekly,

2. I get dozens of python questions from people saying they were not taught that topic. I agree, many of the challenges you will notice are indeed not talked about until the next video.

3. Find a way to identify questions or categories with the most questions and review wju there might be so many. Could just be a hard topic bit maybe it just needs improvement.

4. Having stickys is probably a good idea, maybe stickys per topic or a little k to a module that has a tab for sticky answers. Some answers I know have taken me up to 30 minutes lol. But no one reads them after page 2 lol

Either search isn't getting them what they want (this is true I can never find my older posts) or people just want the answer now and don't want to work for also totally true.

Anyway I feel better that I am not alone and think this turned out very positive for treehouse whether out of vain or anything else.

I have received a reply from Dave McFarland and this has been forwarded to the appropriate Treehouse teams. It will be interesting to see what comes of it.

With respect to searching, I have searched for phrases that I know I used in answers and have not been able to find them. The only way to find something is to look at my subscribed list and scroll.

Ohh just thought of this. There should be a link from the challenge for your module to the forum posts related to your challenge. You can ask a new question but can't go directly to the forum to see related questions.

That might help reduce redundancy of questions since we all ask questions so differently they don't get caught in the when opening a question.

Hey folks! I'm the web product manager here that helps set the roadmap for the website, Community included. I'm really thankful you all care so much about helping folks and are taking your valuable time to talk through this. I definitely feel your pain on a lot of these points. Let's go through them one by one:

1. Students asking repeat questions. I feel like there’s two ways we can think about this. The obvious way is to say we’re not doing a good enough job of surfacing answers to common questions and that slows students down and is a bad experience. The other and more nuanced position is that students need the opportunity to ask questions in order to learn how to communicate about code, and other students need the opportunity to answer those questions as well. I think there needs to be a careful balance between allowing people get easy answers to easy questions, while still providing the learning opportunity that comes with trying to communicate technical concepts. I agree with you all that we don’t have that careful balance today. We have plans to make discovering existing answers easier, but only if they were recently asked. I think that will make the situation much better than today. Thank you so much for answering repeat questions and being good stewards of the Community in the interim. You are literally the best.

2. Students asking bad questions. This is a harder one to fix. We could potentially provide moderators a tool that requests a student update their question with more information, and provides them detailed instructions on how to ask good questions? I’m open to suggestions here. We recently updated the “Ask a Question” modal from the learning flow to provide more guidance on how to ask quality questions with just this problem in mind, but we don't necessarily have any data that shows it's made a marked improvement.

3. Moderator-only discussion area. Agreed 100%. You folks need a way to communicate with one another and with our staff. Look for this in the coming months.

4. Stickies. Yes.

Thanks in large part to your work, around 50% of all questions get marked with a best answer, and time to best answer is the lowest it’s ever been. Keep it up, and thanks for being such a huge part of the Treehouse Community.

Kyle Meyer thank you for your reply. My frustration with the search feature deals with my inability to find posts on specific topics. One example is a post I replied to that had a clearfix issue. If I search clearfix, I cannot find my answer. The only way I can find it is scrolling through my subscribed posts. That, in my opinion, is a broken search feature.

My largest frustration with the forum is the lack of training/video on how to post. There is nothing on markdown, nothing on snapshots. I would have a short video that must be viewed that explains those basics along with having to post code to get answers. Another perplexing thing is that the markdown cheatsheet is not linked on the page that students use to ask questions about quizzes. It is not realistic to expect proper formatting when they have no access to the directions.

I don't think it makes sense to attempt to eliminate "stupid" or repeat questions, but some repeat questions do indicate problems with the courses that should be examined.

Finally, code challenges often pass step one, but return an error with step one when you actually fail step 2. That needs to be fixed because it leads to much confusion.

I look forward to these and other improvements.

Edit; this is in relation to searches for clearfix that do not show up in my search results.

This one

And this one

There are almost certainly more.

Thanks for your response Kyle Meyer!

I'm really excited to hear that the moderator-only section will be coming, as well as the ability to post sticky posts. I really think the mod section will help us mods tackle issues and deal with questions in a uniform way, and bring our work closer to the Treehouse staff. The ability to have stickies are great for advisory posts and announcements, such as a "how to post guide", useful links or FAQs.

I see many people asking why their code doesn't work, and it might just be a silly mistake or something as simple as a missing closing bracket. If we had a sticky with links to pages, such as the W3C validation service, many people would find the mistake right away.

Glad to see these improvements come. Great stuff!

As for the repeat questions - I do think the search feature could be improved and it would help alleviate this issue. Another thing I've noticed is how members are encouraged to ask a question during a code challenge or quiz. There is a "get help" button and also a "feedback" button once you have completed a badge, and neither of these are clear that you are posting a topic on the forums. This is especially true for the latter one, and might give the user the impression that they are just submitting feedback to the staff directly.

Some people also seem to have the impression that their code or quiz answers are submitted to the teacher by using either of these 2 buttons. This might also be partially responsible to why there are "dumb" questions, such as "Why is my code not working? /fullstop" without any more details or attached code, because they believe their code is already attached or otherwise visible to the teacher.

Another problem that may follow to the one just described is when a moderator steps in and asks for more details, because their post is simply lacking any information. For example asking what they tried to solve the task or asking to paste their code. However, many times a member will step in and reply with the dry solution to the challenge "here is the answer /copy-paste". Following this, the OP marks that post as "Best Answer" and ignores the moderator since his issue is now solved. The problem with this is that it interrupts with the moderational procedures taken to maintain the forums quality, effectiveness and usefulness, because this way the forums are being populated with solutions, rather than explanations, and will not be helpful (in an educational way, at least) to someone who might find the topic in the future by using the search-feature, who really wants to understand and learn.

When I see this I usually post an explanation to the issue anyway, as well as the solution, but sometimes I don't know the answer, or it's a topic/langauge I'm not familiar with, and so I cannot provide that.

The above goes back to why I suggested to have a moderators section, so that all mods can agree to a uniform way of dealing with problems, such as that one. If all mods can agree that X problem is dealt this way, and Y problem that way, then all of us would know how to handle each situation.

Bottom line - Helping people in posting good questions should be possible with better clues and guides on the website. Perhaps a script that checks for certain elements within a topic, such as post-length and attached codes, and alerts the user if any of those conditions failed. However, bad questions cannot be prevented, and it would be our job as moderators to step in and ask the OP to provide the details required, until it meets the basic criteria for posting such topic. Until they do that though, maybe there could be a mod-option to either hide or lock the topic from accepting answers from other members.

I also agree with Ryan Ruscett that sometimes you just want to ask your own question and get an answer tailored specifically to what you asked and how you asked it, even if there are similar questions with similar answers. Sometimes an answer might be helpful to one person, but not clear enough for the other. I actually don't mind the repeat questions other than those that are exceptionally basic. What grinds my gears are the questions that show little or no effort.

Dave McFarland, there is an issue that I think would be a quick fix with the PHP Slim course. The current name, Building Websites with PHP is misleading students into thinking this is a beginning class. Here is an example. Changing the name to imply that it is an intermediate course, which it is, would be very helpful. I have worked with several beginning PHP students on this course because they do not have the experience to troubleshoot and understand the content.

The continued validity of the course should be examined after Slim 3.0 is released because I understand that there may some changes that may impact the content of the course.

(I cannot wait for a moderator's forum for issues like this :) )