Unknown Territory, can we sit together, and FAQ’s

First off, anyone else get that onDemand email about a live ColdFusion demo? I know squat about ColdFusion and get schlack all the time at work, indirectly, about how .NET does all this and ColdFusion doesn’t seem to cut what we need, blah blah. Naturally, since I’d love a frikin’ free Flash Remoting tool as I’m screwed development wise when not at home (yes, I know localhost for .NET, I mean actual development of webservices and SCREW PHP, not until that language matures am I touching it unless I have to). Anyway, if anyone else goes, can I sit next to you? Maybe we could find the rtmp address and make our own room … who knows.

FAQ’s, yes the things people never read on the web. Well, I’ve got a site in the making that will host just that: all the frikin’ questions you’ve seen asking 10 million times about Flash. I’m planning to sort it by popularity every week, but I’m still not sure how to do that given that it’s running on the same server as my current site so my Urchin statistics are warped, and it’s MoveableType, so I have no clue how to hack Perl. I’ll think of something, but if anyone has any ideas, from a newbie perspective, that would be great. I remember in the past, Macromedia had mentioned an online knowledge base / documentation thing like PHP.net and mysql.com has for their products. Really cool to see the documetnation and then user comments; very very helpful. Anyway, at this point in my life, it’s time to post nothing but links and teach the leechers to frikin’ shut up, read, or get a new frikin’ profession. All the rest, please read here as you’ll save yourself tons of time getting flamed on the now rude message boards or at least a response for some of them, at least this summer, appear vacant. So, ideas? Currently, my idea is just a blog with entries sorted by search, cateogory, and date. Basically, I’ll post all the common questions as a blog entry subject, “How come my onLoad doesn
t work on a movie clip I loaded a JPEG on?” :: shudders :: Gawd, how many times did we hear that one? Anyway, that would be answered in the posts, and alternate solutions by users would be in the comments. Site’s already set up, as is the MT; just need to bust out my CSS2 skillz (shutup!).

Finally, you ever feel like your an alien? Like, you don’t belong? I go to buy RAM at Comp USA only to find out only weird people buy hardware at a store, and your RAM is either out of date or the kind they carry is 2 months old not allowing you to stock your machine; therefore, by online. …uh, ok… Secondly, you get yelled at by a cop for speeding. Yeah, he was probably ticked he didn’t get me on radar, and I could of killed some poor sod; but damn, I got enough yelling at in my childhood, thank you drive through please. Finally, why in the hell do those people who can’t speak English beyond “soft pack or box” give you gasonline instructions while your pumping gas? You take longer than 2 seconds, and they assume you have a problem so spout gibberish over a 5k speaker system, assuming you now have heard the voice of understanding and know what to do. “Sorry I couldn’t get my card out soon enough, brah… I’m slow like that.” …this all assumes they truly are giving you instructions on how to use the automated gasonline pumps and are not actually asking you if you’d like a cookie; knowing this is the secret password to enter their underground gamgling ring in the back of the freezer. I never found it while I worked there as it was always cold as nuts.

6 Replies to “Unknown Territory, can we sit together, and FAQ’s”

  1. hmm.. good idea. I’ve done something like that on my forum. It’s called an faq forum…. kinda what it says. I find forum software better than blog software ’cause you can search it, edit it delete it, whatever. You don’t have to open another window to see or write comments. and it’s a heck of a lot more effecient (depending on the software).

    It’s cool to start your own up, but there are FAQ’S all over the place. It might be more effective to work with a bigger site… not sure there though.

    rad idea though. I’ve yet to see a thorough and full faq site yet. Can others post to it? If somebody says “I’ve been asked this a thousand times, I think I’ll add it to Jesse’s site!” can they do it?

  2. You can search blog software (jessewarden.com is broken, though, I admit), you can edit it and delete it, but you must be an administrator. I agree that at first, it may sound like it’s a bad thing taking the control away from the very users it helps, but here me out.

    First off, ever heard the phrase, “Search the Archives” on Flashcoders? I wouldn’t wish that on my worst enemy. Wading through tons of bs is not for me, and is a waste of my time, and someone trying to learn time. Granted, it builds character and bs weeding talent, but there are better ways to spend ones time. Therefore, there won’t be any bs, just my posts about Flash concepts, and Flash only. I may invite others to post, but not at first. I agree only one person’s opinion is not helpful all the time.

    Secondly, by controlling the content and how it’s organized, I keep it clean, and therefore easier to search.

    Third, I don’t know about you, but after pretty much adopting Flashn00bz with a few other good people, I see the same questions come up again and again… some even on Flashcoders. Gee, should I go look in the archives and link it there? But who has time to search? Should I go look in the archives in were-here.com? …forumns are just as slow. Are they a member of Flashkit? The list goes on.

    To me, it’s just a way to answer with a hyperlink. Call it a personal collection of links that I utilize to answer the same questions. My utlimate goal, at least for another few months, is to have the capability where I eventually just answer with links, and a few lines of customization based on the user’s problem(s). We usually get more posts of a custom, procedural “how to you do it” type of thing on Flashn00bz, so inenvitably, you have to write way more than code; but that’s what makes that list fun anyway.

    I agree it may be more effective to work with other people; hell, the idea was with a guy from work. However, I’ve been to all the forumns that I need to; and they are just that; a bunch of forumns. People’s discussions saved. That doesn’t help me weed out the information a person needs. They don’t need the bs, nor the prattle, just:

    Here’s the code and here’s how it works. Boom, done.

    All the forumns don’t have that in that you have to weed through the info. Given that my subject is currently pretty specialist, I believe it can be acheived more easily. Granted, it’ll be a work in progress, but it’s a tool for me to help people learn, as well as a reference, and sharing it with others I think helps everyone.

    Again, it’s all me up front (and whatever Eric from work wants to add), but I’m not sure yet. One thing I’ve found out about side projects is that they don’t desearve a thorough process and hard sighted goals. If you go through all of that, you either have a really good project, or it never gets done. The former happens over time, and I’m out of time.

    …then again, I was never patient, but whatever. Full steam ahead, success or bust.

  3. something tells me you’re going to hit the same snag that all others do… when you get enough info, you’re going to have to archive.. then search for that lost link, so you can link it.. LOL
    It’s a rad idea, wanna work together to make a Japanese version of it too?

  4. I totally agree with you on the archive stint; I KNOW it’ll archive. Still, I’d prefer to search through Flash specific material than that mixed in with non-releated material; at least I’ll recognize a topic by the heading.

    How in the world could I make it Japanese? Maybe write an app to throw my RSS to BabelFish or something? I have no localization experience, but sounds like a great plan; the more people I can help, the better. It’d help if learn Japanese, I’m sure, but doesn’t that take like 5 years or something?

  5. hahahhaa, I’ll translate it over if you’re interested, and have a link up on my site to it for more traffic.

    >but doesn’t that take like 5 years or something?

    It took me 3 to get a reasonable amount done to freely converse (not perfect) and another 2 or 3 to get business Japanese down. I still make mistakes, and every once in a while my pronounciation is off but more or less, people get confused when I talk to them on the phone (as in they don’t realize I’m not Japanese)

    Learning another languages is absolutely cool. I recommend it to anyone. Takes a while, but you see a whole new world.

  6. Yo, you too? I’ll be publishing a FAQ-like website very soon… ;) Based on my “Q/A database” from 3 years participatinh of the brazilian Macromedia forums… I’ve had a lot of work translating the stuff to english hehe :)

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