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hotosm / osm-tasking-manager2

Designed and built for Humanitarian OpenStreetMap Team collaborative emergency/disaster mapping, the OSM Tasking Manager 2.0 divides an area into individual squares that can be rapidly mapped by thousands of volunteers.
http://tasks.hotosm.org
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Obvious "Help" button for every task #380

Open wonderchook opened 10 years ago

wonderchook commented 10 years ago

People are starting to use the tasking manager in large amounts. There are people that need help. Contact information is available on the front page, but not in an obvious place in each task. A big obvious help button that takes them to a help page could be useful with instructions on how to ask for help.

pgiraud commented 10 years ago

It would be nice to have an idea on what to put in this help page.

Nick-Tallguy commented 10 years ago

See also 201 of hotosm/learnOSM. I've started updating learnOSM to cover this and will improve remainder when I can.

jaakkoh commented 10 years ago

Did I spot / understand correctly that Pierre B. (with perhaps some others) was testing the idea of putting a link to web-based IRC to each task? I think that would be brilliant. .. All in all I think pushing people to web based IRC for help -- and for perhaps more generally -- would be good. I'm taking myself as an example on how it can take time and require some nudging for people to get started with IRC: Having gone through a pretty ("traditional") tech-oriented engineer training in the home country of IRC (and before there were much other channels for interactions) and having gotten the very basic training to use IRC (as part of my freshman year's "Using computer as a shovel" course, our "Computer usage 101") and on top of that having had some on and off interest to start using IRC it still took me -- let me see -- pretty much exactly 15 years and close engagement with OSM and some hand holding (as in, someone advising me in person how to get started, what client to choose, etc) to actually start using IRC.

bgirardot commented 10 years ago

jaakkoh, I agree, I love irc as a help chat facility. Here is one of pierzen's projects with the web based irc client listed in the Instructions tab.

http://tasks.hotosm.org/project/711

I think the web client basically makes it useable by anyone for the most part.

jaakkoh commented 10 years ago

That looks good to me, perhaps a tad larger font + bold to make it stand out just a bit? .. Where should we start sketching the TM templates / standard texts? A page in OSM, Google Doc -- I guess it doesn't matter so long as it happens? @AndrewBuck - opinion? (.. I'd add this simple but good tid bit : link to HOT IRC via Web)

althio commented 9 years ago

I think IRC has its uses and advantages, but I don't think it is for everyone and everything. I disagree that we should pushing people to web based IRC for help.

Because we cannot aim at 24/7 support and immediate response. Also I prefer asynchronous conversation sometimes. You are not giving an answer immediately but at least you do it when you have enough time to do it. I guess there are other people like that. Furthermore we are living in different timezones.

If someone comes for help on IRC... Either people are already chatting (Working group anyone?) and that feels like interrupting their conversation for a 'beginner' question. Or nobody is active and this person could wait an indeterminate amount of time looking and checking the chat. All the while reading some cryptic or useless messages about Ping timeout, people joining and quitting. Regularly checking for no answer is depressing I found. I prefer solutions that 'push' the answer to you with a notification or an email.

In OSM/HOT context IRC sounds good to me for team collaboration across the world but not for hotline/helpdesk. Of course, just my opinion.

aawiseman commented 8 years ago

We discussed something like this at the Missing Maps Summit in Brussels, I think it's a good idea.