up vote 2 down vote favorite

I'm wondering if this is a complete enough answer: http://smugmug.stackexchange.com/a/190/177? It requires you to read a bunch of other articles to get the actual answer (the content is mostly not in the actual answer). And, I'm worried that those links are not all that permanent as they appear to be some sort of back-end article system.

On a separate note, should I have asked this question here in meta? Or in a comment to the answer?

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Meta is the perfect place to raise these sorts of issues. It goes to the understanding at education of the community about how to best conduct this site. – Robert Cartaino♦ Feb 4 '12 at 3:17
On the note about the links, I think we should ask that folks use the smugmug.com/help/English-name-here help links rather than the helpdesk article number links whenever possible. – cabbey Feb 5 '12 at 5:48
@cabbey - how does one get the help/English-name-here links? – jfriend00 Feb 5 '12 at 5:57
@jfriend00, that's a very good question. One I thought of a couple hours after I posted that while I was in bed. It's easy for me, because I wrote the code that redirects from english names to help doc urls... but I'm trying to think how everyone else would get them. :( – cabbey Feb 5 '12 at 17:59
If you go to the help pages at help.smugmug.com and click on an article link or use search the URL will give the help.smugmug.com/customer/portal/articles/… We are quickly adding more articles than ever had the smugmug.com/help/English-name-here versions so I don't think we will be able to keep up with that forever. – Doc Walker♦ Feb 6 '12 at 16:04

3 Answers

up vote 5 down vote

In only the most literal sense has the author answered that user's question… but consider for a moment, the larger philosophy of why you have a Stack Exchange site—

Does it improve the Internet as a whole?

No. A list of links does little more than add another barrier between the folks searching and the information they seek. The primary use case of this site is search. After you've helped that one user, there will be hundreds (perhaps thousands) of people looking for that information. This site isn't really about one-on-one customer service and helping that one user. It's about creating a canon of the best possible answers for those who come after. That's the whole point.

I'm not saying that you should reproduce the entire content of the SmugMug web pages in this Q&A. But consider how you can provide a better answer to that question than simply saying "yes, I have your information. Go find it here." Perhaps a statement about how social networking fits into the SmugMug ecosystem. Perhaps a helpful summary about the various options so they don't HAVE to read a set of disparate links to figure out what they are looking for.

Creating a simple index to the answers already contained on SmugMug isn't making this site or SmugMug any better. Think about how you can provide the best possible answer; where other folks will try and do the same and the best overall information will rise to the top. A list of links does not do that.

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Note: The action item here -- and how this site is designed to work -- is to go back to that question and post a more awesome answer so it gets voted up and becomes The canonical answer on the topic. – Robert Cartaino♦ Feb 4 '12 at 3:21
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Robert, I've got to say, I'm glad you and your position at SE exists :) Thank you for the guidance. – dpollitt♦ Feb 4 '12 at 5:12
up vote 0 down vote

I guess in this scenario I'd prefer to see a bulleted list for each of the 3 options like and a little follow up:

  • Friends & Family: Most of what you're looking for to keep track of your friends
  • Etc...

And this would be the wrap up to the effect of: But its not a complete solution yet and more social.... etc... It should be somewhere between a post of mostly links and a post containing no links and is just copy-pasted from the source.

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up vote 0 down vote

I believe that there should be some more actual information to explain why a reader would want to click the other links as Shizam alluded to. What I have done in the past is a post such as:

The Friends & Family tools allows for selected people to make comments on your photos, such as adding a better caption. It also allows you to keep track of their activities. It might not help drive new users but it will keep people involved. You can find more info about it at ..... linky

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