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Automatic Answer Generator

Sometimes, you see a question in the LabVIEW board about a subject that you know well and are tempted to give it a few minutes to post an answer.

 

However, after clicking it and reading its description, you realize the OP is an absolute beginner and did not follow the forum guidelines AT ALL (most of the time he did not even know they existed). So, what should have been a quick answer turns into you writing tons of boilerplate guidelines, which have already been repeated thousands of times on the forum.

 

Wouldn't that be great to have a tool to auto-generate these guidelines, so that we can concentrate on the real issues?

 

Here is a mockup based on my typical answers:

 

raphschru_0-1728829746333.png

 

I'm curious how YOUR mockup would look like 😁

 

The goal here is more humorous than a real critic of how some beginners post there issues.

I know beginning with a new language is hard and you can easily get lost on the forums, but as a frequent "answerer" myself, I sometimes get discouraged when I see that the OP did not even do the bare minimum to be helped correctly.

 

Feel free to share your thoughts!

 

Regards,

Raphaël.

Message 1 of 8
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This is something that could be replaced by AI. No manual tool needed. 😄

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Message 2 of 8
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Indeed, the AI could analyze the issues submitted on the forum and give warnings when it thinks it does not follow the guidelines or misses important details or attachments.

 

There are tons of examples where the OP says "I attached my VIs", but then forgets to attach anything. The AI could easily help detect such simple inconsistencies.

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Message 3 of 8
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@raphschru wrote:

There are tons of examples where the OP says "I attached my VIs", but then forgets to attach anything. The AI could easily help detect such simple inconsistencies.


Of course this will backfire like in outlook that simply seems to look for the presence of the string "attach...". So if I reply that the OP also needs to "attach" the required dependencies, it will prevent me from answering until I jump through some hoops. Also here, AI could better understand the situation in the future.

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On a more serious note, have you looked at Macros in the forums? If you click on your avatar in the top-right corner of a forum page, there is an option for "My Settings". Go in there and there is a tab for Macros. You can create up to 15 macros. The Macro part is HTML. The name is used in the drop down in the toolbar when you are creating a post.


GCentral
There are only two ways to tell somebody thanks: Kudos and Marked Solutions
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"Not that we are sufficient in ourselves to claim anything as coming from us, but our sufficiency is from God" - 2 Corinthians 3:5
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@crossrulz wrote:

On a more serious note, have you looked at Macros in the forums? If you click on your avatar in the top-right corner of a forum page, there is an option for "My Settings". Go in there and there is a tab for Macros. You can create up to 15 macros. The Macro part is HTML. The name is used in the drop down in the toolbar when you are creating a post.


Nice, I never noticed!

Can it take some parameters (and execute logic) or does is just paste the macro content is the message?

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@raphschru wrote:

@crossrulz wrote:

On a more serious note, have you looked at Macros in the forums? If you click on your avatar in the top-right corner of a forum page, there is an option for "My Settings". Go in there and there is a tab for Macros. You can create up to 15 macros. The Macro part is HTML. The name is used in the drop down in the toolbar when you are creating a post.


Nice, I never noticed!

Can it take some parameters (and execute logic) or does is just paste the macro content is the message?


It just pastes the HTML into the post. No extra logic. But you can edit what it pastes into the editor.


GCentral
There are only two ways to tell somebody thanks: Kudos and Marked Solutions
Unofficial Forum Rules and Guidelines
"Not that we are sufficient in ourselves to claim anything as coming from us, but our sufficiency is from God" - 2 Corinthians 3:5
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Message 7 of 8
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Hi @raphschru 

 

I appreciate your willingness to jump in and help. I've spent many mental cycles thinking of ways we could help our new users and the folks that want to answer. We actually had a project a couple of years ago to add some checks to the question creation process, but, in the end, we couldn't get the UX and technology quite right and we had some other priorities that took over.

 

I've also been thinking about ways that generative AI/LLM could support the community. The tool you outline is an interesting layer to that. 

 

More to come.

 

Best,

Mark

Product Manager
Customer Learning, Community, Online Documentation, and Support
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