View source for Convivial Help Sites

The word "tool" in its broadest sense includes objects or artefacts designed to help us learn, such as books or instructional websites. One large category of instructional websites are so-called "help sites," which are intended to  provide the user with help for specific problems. 

==Types of Help Websites==
There exist a great many sites that provide all sorts of help in virtually any field of activity. The main types of help websites include the following:
*[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Online_help Online help] generally refers to guided assistance to a user of a software product
*A [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Review_site review site] prevents reviews about products or services, posted either by professional writers or by site users (see also [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rating_sites rating sites])
*A [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_question-and-answer_websites question-and-answer site] (Q&A site) is a collaborative website which allows any user to post a question or to answer a question posted by another user
*An online [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Online_forum forum] (also called message board) is a discussion website - forums are frequently used as question-and-answer sites
*A [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wiki wiki] is a collaborative website which allows any user to create or to edit the web pages making up the site

==Making Help Websites Convivial==
The "convivial tool" is one which increases the user's autonomy, augmenting their ability to solve their own problems. While providing help is thus a convivial activity in itself, most help websites are far from being "convivial" since their [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Usability usability] is generally low. Anyone who has searched for answers in online [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Online_forum forum]s knows that this experience can resemble searching for a needle in a haystack. Another problem with most help websites is that the information presented is too often untrustworthy, because of the bias or ignorance of the contributors (on a forum one will often find ten wrong anwsers for each right one).

A Convivial Help Site thus needs strong [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Editing editing], in order to limit the bias and to provide the users with answers that are verified to be correct. The current fashion for content that is collaborative and crowd-sourced makes us forget the added value that editorial control brings to content. Such editorial control could enhance both the help website's contents and its [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Usability usability], thereby getting closer to the ideal of a Convivial Help Site.

==See Also==
*[[Convivial Internet]]
*[[Michael's Projects]]

[[Category:Projects]]