Well... part of the problem is how much effort people are prepared to expend. As computers become purchased as appliances, the percentage of users willing to do research is going to get close to zero.

Most people who have problems with their computer will not seek anyone's help, they'll just not bother using it. Look at how few people ever knew how to program their video recorders.

A certain percentage will ask for help, but most of them won't bother doing any research themselves.

An even smaller percentage will do research before asking for help.

I think the long-term solution for this is some kind of "internet console" for ordinary users, with PCs being aimed mainly at professionals and serious users.

Games consoles allow people to use high end gaming hardware without needing any computing knowledge. There ought to be something like that to allow internet use without any computing knowledge.

Perhaps the upcoming wave of internet-compatible television sets will become "internet consoles"?

I'm not so sure about that.. almost every product in history has a "support" line or customer service ... because many people *do* want their stuff to work.. they just dont want to do it themselves. So they pay.

Even linux is this way, Red Hat, SuSE, Mandrake, etc. all have pay services to help people with problems.. and many people choose to go that route.

However, I am not entirely sure the "N900" has something like this setup by Nokia. I don't know if you can "pay" them to tell you how to reflash your device. So, this could be a case where users do not have an option to not do anything themselves and have to come here and ask. Unfortunately, some people don't want to help or deal with those kinds of people.. making a device such as the N900 slightly un-friendly.

I think this may be a reason why all of these to-date, N770, N800, N810, N900 have been referred to as "early adopter" or "geeks toys".. I may be wrong tho. Does Nokia professional support help with software-related N900 problems?

Some people use support lines, most people don't care enough to bother, especially if the problem isn't critical.

Professionals would obviously pay, because time is money and problems waste their time, but consumers don't see things that way.

I'm pretty sure Dell makes quite a bit of money through it's help lines... businesses pay for their gold or platinum or whatever service... but they get a *lot* of standard calls as well..

right, so I took some ideas from here and made a solution for he brainstorm about talk forum improvements, solution #13.

http://maemo.org/community/brainstor...sign_for_2010/

I like it. Although several times a threads Title should be renamed to accurately reflect the problem, and that's it's fixed.

I think Experts Exchange works similar to this.

heh, i have been pondering the same issue for a number of years.

then there is those that want to see a "drivers license" for responsible internet use.

still, after reading http://futureoftheinternet.org/ i am no longer so sure its a good idea to go appliance on the net...

While a knowledge base or a more accessible, better organized, and well maintained FAQ would be great, please don't think that threads provide easily usable answers. Posts provide answers.

A user with a question does not want to read through pages and pages of posts on a thread trying to find the one with the answer, especially when there may be multiple, conflicting answers. I've been there. As a new N810 user, I tried to find out whether or not I should turn it off or leave it in standby. There were multiple threads on this, each with multiple opinions. Eventually, I found one thread which pointed me to a wiki (which I didn't know existed) entry on this.

If someone would go to the trouble of copying a thread to the solutions area and then deleting all posts from it except for the OP question and the post with the answer, that would work. OTOH, if someone is doing that much editing, it would probably be more useful to spend the time creating a new FAQ topic.

No.. just, like EE, allow the user to select a button that said says "Answer" or "Assisted Answer"... then once the thread moves to the FAQ section a link appears at the top that says "See answers" and takes you directly to the related post.

This requires more coding up front to build the system.. but less overhead over time as all you have to do is move the thread. Whereas, as you said, having a mod constantly rearranging a thread it would just be better to rewrite a FAQ.

People tend to ignore FAQ's tho.. I feel that if you leave the original thread OP's wording (in content, not necessarily title) it would appeal to more people with the same problem than re-wording it to fit the FAQ.

Friendlier. I like the ring to it.