How to help first-time posters

[diddi]

yeh i must admit that stickies arent really my thing. i tend to look and see what others are doing and go from there.

as an example of indexing, i really like what chip pearson is doing with his index.

http://www.cpearson.com/excel/topic.aspx

i wouldnt index everything on mrexcel but the standout solutions to perennial problems and the interesting one-offs would be most valuable. i acknowledge the logistics are challenging, and that in the end it my not be viable.

 

[crook_101]

Hi all,

Being relative new here, I also must admit when I first asked a Q, I didn't look at any of the stickies....

An index would be great however I realise that this could be difficult to set up/manage/maintain. Also I am sure that it would be mainly used by the respondents as a reference point/to link responses to and not the OP as if we follow the logic through from above, they are not going to trawl through the index if they don't actually know what they are looking for eg, no use calling a index reference "How to Concatenate Cells" if the OP is looking for, in their mind "how can I join these three cells together....??"

Whilst I admire the aims, I think that we may gain something from this exercise but I don't think it is going to be used mainly by newbies.

My tuppence worth

Cheers,
Ian

 

[diddi]

in many ways mrexcel is a victim of its own success because it so often appears in the top hits from search engines. type in 'excel help' and there it is. perfect! now make a post: i want to redesign a nuclear power station using excel. how do i start a blank sheet?

if we index the basic stuff using everyday language as crook_101 says, but ensure it is well categorised to avoid trawling excel noobs (as distinct from mrexcel noobs) might be invited to 'start here'

i still think that indexing as i described previously would be very useful. just the other day i tried for ages to find a thread i had been posting to, but did not start. it had a stupid title completely unrelated to the contents and i didnt ever end up finding it. i think it was titled 'help needed'. that cut it down straight away....

 

[SydneyGeek]

i still think that indexing as i described previously would be very useful. just the other day i tried for ages to find a thread i had been posting to, but did not start. it had a stupid title completely unrelated to the contents and i didnt ever end up finding it. i think it was titled 'help needed'. that cut it down straight away....

I agree with the idea. Just not sure how it could be implemented, is all.
And surely a helpful title like 'Help Needed' would have reduced the search to no more than about 50,000 threads?

Denis

 

[yytsunamiyy]

my 2 cents:

First timers will or will not read any information thrown their way, no matter how it is presented (sticky, mail, extra bar ....).
If they don't read it, their post may be suboptimal.
If they are lucky, a kind soul will spend time to find out what it is they are actually after, if not they might start thinking about changing their question / wording / explaining their problem better.
If they don't they won't get help.

This is their problem, not mine. The information is there - read it and use it. If you are too lazy, don't be surprised if you don't get the desired help.

What ever additional information you offer first timers, they will still have to read it first.

An index is a nice idea, but won't be terribly useful to somebody who has the calculator next to his computer to input the sums in Excel. If an experienced poster links to an indexed article, the OP will often come back asking "I don't see how summing figures automatically helps me. Can you please redesign the nuclear power station for me? - And please don't forget that I have to power it with green bananas."

Same goes for good posts / bad posts examples. It is difficult to strike the right balance between enough and too much info. I tend to err on to the side of too much. Only experience gives you an idea of how much info is needed to answer your question. And if you don't even know what your question is - then how would you know how much information is needed?

Example: I have heard of pivot tables and have seen them in action. I never have designed one myself (no need so far / no large enough data-set). If I ever needed to design a pivot table, how would I know what to ask for and which information you need to give me a helpfull answer?

Would: "I have a data-set with speeds, times and direction of cars on some streets. I want to find out on which street at which time the cars go fastest on average. Can you help me make a pivot table that gives me the answer?" suffice? Or would you need waaaaaaaaaay more info? How would I know if I don't know which info is needed to set up a meaningful pivot table? how would an example post help me?

EDIT: This actually looks more like a dime than 2c to me

 

[JamesW]

First timers will or will not read any information thrown their way, no matter how it is presented (sticky, mail, extra bar ....).
If they don't read it, their post may be suboptimal.
If they are lucky, a kind soul will spend time to find out what it is they are actually after, if not they might start thinking about changing their question / wording / explaining their problem better.
If they don't they won't get help.

Which is why I suggested having a 'YOU MUST READ THIS BEFORE POSTING' thread appear automatically when first signing up. That way you force users to read the 'rules'

Same goes for good posts / bad posts examples. It is difficult to strike the right balance between enough and too much info. I tend to err on to the side of too much. Only experience gives you an idea of how much info is needed to answer your question. And if you don't even know what your question is - then how would you know how much information is needed?

Example: I have heard of pivot tables and have seen them in action. I never have designed one myself (no need so far / no large enough data-set). If I ever needed to design a pivot table, how would I know what to ask for and which information you need to give me a helpfull answer?

Would: "I have a data-set with speeds, times and direction of cars on some streets. I want to find out on which street at which time the cars go fastest on average. Can you help me make a pivot table that gives me the answer?" suffice? Or would you need waaaaaaaaaay more info? How would I know if I don't know which info is needed to set up a meaningful pivot table? how would an example post help me?

You would probably need some example data, which can be explained in the 'good post' example, such as:

A2:A100 contains the street
B2:B100 contains speeds
C2:C100 contains times
D2:D100 contains direction

Which can easily be answered with a 'tutorial' on pivot tables.

 

[snowblizz]

Which is why I suggested having a 'YOU MUST READ THIS BEFORE POSTING' thread appear automatically when first signing up. That way you force users to read the 'rules'

Technically you don't force anyone to read the rules, you force them to click past a screen with the rules. There's a difference.

When was the last time you read a software license agreement? The one that pops up anytime you install something. Personally for me it's a "yeah yeah blah blah click next" situation.

What it could do I guess is get a few extra people to look at it, but other than that I'd say it is hoping too much.

 

[Expiry]

I think the biggest hurdle in all of this, which you'll never get past is that most first time users that ask an Excel question are not Excel users. This means that they don't know what they're asking for and often the ultimate solution actually highlights that the problem they have is not the problem they thought they had.

An example: I've helped someone at my work redesign a report. He has a rag status on various sections and I've asked him how he determines this with the aim of using conditional formatting for him. He just said that he just decides, so it's not something that a formula can be used for. It turns out that actually, he decides whether it's red or green based on a series of scores that he's worked out on an unrelated piece of work.

So he already had the information, but he only realised that because I quizzed him on it and forced him to open up.

We're almost like Psychiatrists.

 

[JamesW]

Technically you don't force anyone to read the rules, you force them to click past a screen with the rules. There's a difference.

When was the last time you read a software license agreement? The one that pops up anytime you install something. Personally for me it's a "yeah yeah blah blah click next" situation.

What it could do I guess is get a few extra people to look at it, but other than that I'd say it is hoping too much.

Yes but users will actually be shown the 'rules' rather than them having to click and open them. I'm sure alot of people never even open the rules sticky and read it.

I'm not sure how you can compare license agreements with forum rules. License agreements are lengthy and contain mostly the same information as each other. Whereas the forum rules would contain example posts etc.

 

[RoryA]

IME, the more people use the forum, the better they get at posting (especially if given a few gentle nudges). One-off posters will never read rules, hints or tips or use the search feature generally (though I wonder how many are only one-off posters because they don't get a response to their incomprehensible questions?)
One thing that might help would be if the new post screen had a few comments on it about useful thread titles or specifying versions. I rarely even read questions with titles like "Excel help" these days, but I appreciate the forum ethos is not to enforce titles and tags and whatnot.