Consolidating information on Model S

[Pete90D]

Maybe this belongs in site feedback, but it was more specific to the Model S.

There was a Model 3 thread where someone mentioned that once Tesla has huge mass production there are going to be a lot more people on the forums. That got me thinking that it will only increase common questions people have. I know that FAQs help, and wiki pages can be used to consolidate information, but it got me thinking if there would be a better way for us to consolidate information that was easier to reference and comment on long term.

One example, there are a lot of threads about phone mounts and a lot of replies and opinions from both new and long time owners. Having a generic FAQ will bundle together a string of comments and questions about a lot of mounts in one place and that gets hard to follow. We could start a wiki page for each mount and then have one page that references all those. It would make it a lot easier to track, but is that the best approach to take?

I'm definitely guilty of derailing topics and I love hearing people's opinions and jokes and sometimes complete nonsense (guilty again), but it would be nice if at some point when a thread "dies", we could "retire" it in a special way that resulted in a summary of the data and references to the original thread(s) for reading pleasure. I'm sure there's tons of useful information in the P85D HP threads, but they are so long and so many that people probably won't read them word for word. I guess the point of retiring is that several threads could be locked to avoid being revived or to consolidate, and then that information is summarized, and then that new topic would likely have less commentary long term and simply be a great reference. There'd be risk of delete-abuse, but a summarized topic that has a new comment "can I see a left angle of that mount", could be updated with a new photo and have the request removed.

I don't know, it popped into my head again tonight and was curious what others thought. I'm big on direct data references so I kind of nerded out on the idea.

 

[Armadillos]

It's not a bad idea really. I know this site already has a Wiki, so we would just have to make sure that everyone would look there first before asking the same questions over and over.

 

[Pete90D]

It's not a bad idea really. I know this site already has a Wiki, so we would just have to make sure that everyone would look there first before asking the same questions over and over.

It's not just about the same questions being asked multiple times, but also about making sure useful information buried in threads can also be seen. If all threads were purely data dumps with exact specs it would be boring, but it can also be hard to find things or easy to overlook comments when there is a lot of other commentary around the useful information.

 

[Andyw2100]

I don't know, it popped into my head again tonight and was curious what others thought. I'm big on direct data references so I kind of nerded out on the idea.

I think the concept and what you're trying to accomplish is good. I think the huge (and probably insurmountable) problem would be implementation. What you're suggesting would take a tremendous amount of time and effort in organizing, editing, etc. The moderators are all volunteers, and are stretched pretty far already, as I understand it, so clearly this isn't anything they could take on. That would leave this to other forum members. On a global, site-wide basis, I just don't see it happening. I could be mistaken, of course, but that's my take on it.

 

[Pete90D]

I think the concept and what you're trying to accomplish is good. I think the huge (and probably insurmountable) problem would be implementation. What you're suggesting would take a tremendous amount of time and effort in organizing, editing, etc. The moderators are all volunteers, and are stretched pretty far already, as I understand it, so clearly this isn't anything they could take on. That would leave this to other forum members. On a global, site-wide basis, I just don't see it happening. I could be mistaken, of course, but that's my take on it.

Agreed. Just thought I'd throw it out there in the event someone had an idea how we could do it more easily.

 

[gizmoboy]

Agreed. Just thought I'd throw it out there in the event someone had an idea how we could do it more easily.

Basically a curated reference source summarizing the best information, either in wiki or faq form.

I agree that'd be a great idea -- and also a lot of work.

It's kind of what the various threads are, if you stripped the of all the jokes, repetitions and OT posts, and condensed the information down to the essence.

It's inherently subjective (which could be a problem), but that's really a function of the editorial quality of your curators.

Really would need to come down to some kind of curated superfaq section that was constantly being updated from forum posts.

You might be able to get some new volunteers to take on a question/topic and curate it... if the time commitment wasn't too crazy, I'd be willing to volunteer to take on a topic or three. But how would you get something like this off the ground? If it's not curated you run the risk of having it devolve into another signal/noise issue as all "hot" threads tend to...