• DocumentCode
    449913
  • Title

    Open Source Technical Support: A Look at Peer Help-Giving

  • Author

    Singh, Vandana ; Twidal, Michael B. ; Rathi, Dinesh

  • Author_Institution
    University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
  • Volume
    6
  • fYear
    2006
  • fDate
    04-07 Jan. 2006
  • Abstract
    We explore online technical support of open source software by a study of postings to discussion boards. Our results indicate that there are several types of detail that are required by the help-givers to be able to diagnose and remediate help-seekers’ difficulties. As a result help interactions may iterate somewhat inefficiently. These findings are compared with studies of telephone technical help lines for commercial software, and library reference interviews. By considering certain rather problematic interactions we can identify ways to improve the process.
  • Keywords
    Books; Computational efficiency; Costs; Linux; Manuals; Open source software; Peer to peer computing; Software libraries; Telephony; Usability;
  • fLanguage
    English
  • Publisher
    ieee
  • Conference_Titel
    System Sciences, 2006. HICSS '06. Proceedings of the 39th Annual Hawaii International Conference on
  • ISSN
    1530-1605
  • Print_ISBN
    0-7695-2507-5
  • Type

    conf

  • DOI
    10.1109/HICSS.2006.370
  • Filename
    1579528