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How can we encourage community to answer more questions in this forum?

also, why the upvote and correct answer buttons are not much used even for good answers and questions? 

How to make this forum. More active?

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Also, people don't search for similar questions before posting new ones - so there are a lot of questions that keep getting asked. See https://www.odoo.com/forum/help-1/question/meta-why-do-some-questions-get-answers-and-others-dont-25620

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Thank you Ray. Having the same issue since 2013 calls for asking the question again :)

Yep good catch from you Ray. I see a lot of questions recurring every once in a while too..

"asking the question again" - if you ask the question MORE than once, then someone looking for an answer will have to look in multiple places, wont they?

I don't answer some questions because they are not specific questions. Also, because some people wants all the work done, if you give them a path they don't like it.

This forum could work if people create their questions like a FAQ: Specific questions, clear explanation, and upvote if the answer is correct.

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Hi Odoo developers.

Yenthe and zbik gave many good reasons.

I started to learn the new Odoo 8 framework two months ago. At the beginning, when I read the Odoo official documentation, I didn't understand anything until I bought the 'Odoo Developments Essentials' book by Daniel Reis. After that, many things made sense, but I needed to do more complicated things which are not explained in the official documentation.

I was trying to find answers to my questions in this forum, but it's true that a lot of questions are not answered, and many of them are related to the old OpenERP framework, not to the new one.

Reasons:

1) Many people is learning the new Odoo framework now, and we all need time for this.

2) People who is learning this framework now (like me) haven't sufficient knowledge to answer complicated questions. More time is necessary.

3) I'm sorry Odoo team, but the official documentation is not good. It's not well explained, there isn't examples to do complicated things and the tutorials only cover the basic things. 
This means that there are more people looking for answers that people who can answer them

4) This forum's funcionalities are very poor compared to other forums. For example, I haven't been able to put an image in the right place into a post yet. You can't highlight the source code and many more things are not possible.

5) I think that the Odoo developers community is not enough big yet, compared to other communities in other enviroments like Django, Symfony, Laravel, ... .

6) Sometimes, many people don't have enough time to read a lot of questions, try to understand them and then answered them.

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Eduardo, I agree with many of your point; however it is fair to say that odoo documentation is improving. check this out: https://www.odoo.com/documentation/8.0/

OdooTec, Hesham ELMAHDY, I have read most of the Odoo official documentation. The web pages design has changed but not the content, that is the most important thing. Anyway, I hope an improvement on its content in the next months.

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Hi Hesham,

Sadly there are a few 'problems' at the base of that. The first problem is that there isn't very much documentation from Odoo itself, which makes it hard(er) for non-Odoo people to help with everything. It takes some time to get going with Odoo and learn how it works, especially without docs.
A second problem is that most of the people that are on this forum are here more often to ask questions and get help than helping others. A lot of people make an account to get an answer on a question and when it is answered they're gone.
A third problem, I think, is that the people that do help don't get a lot of thank you's and upvotes. This discourages you to take the time for helping others..

In honesty a simple upvote, accepted answer or thank you does a lot. I started helping on these forums when I noticed I actually learned a lot about Odoo through helping others. So for anybody that reads this, please, give it a try to return the favour by helping somebody else!

I'm not sure how to get the forum active(r) though. I don't think a lot of people look on the help and the forum isn't the most user friendly. Perhaps thats a reason..

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Indeed, I believe the gamification of upvote and correct answer would encourage people more. Thank you. Upvoted you now but will not check `answered` to keep the question going.

Yep! But the forum is still young and still has to grow/mature. Eventually it will improve (I think) and I'd love it to go a bit more in to Stackoverflow style. As for the checked, I understand, I hope more people respond on this. You can hand out the accepted option on the answer you like the most at the end I'd say :)

@Yenthe, your answer is very good. Here people doesn't know manners. The seeks answer but they will not even say "Thank you" or upvote the answer. And next time if they not get an answer, starts to complain. I see some peoples complaining to Odoo about poor documentation, but why they can't able to understand that whatever Odoo has provided till now, it is enough. How you can expect everything from an opensource company ???? If you want to get good help then choose microsoft, but people don't want to pay money. They just want to get everything in free, free, free !!!! It's not a problem, its about the mindset.

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A huge disadvantage of this forum is weak search engine. In my opinion, people search answers for similar questions but... without expected effect. For example, try to find the title of this question. Everyone wants to look for it by typing "questions not answered". But then they receive no results. This is the main reason repetition of topics. The more duplicate questions, the less answers.

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You are right. The search engine of this forum could be improved. It's more useful searching on Google using 'site' keyword.

True !

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I started to work with Odoo quite from some time and not without suffering...  It's true that there are many repetitive questions and the search function is far from perfect but it's also true there aren't many people really active here.

All I can do here is give a hand to others with small problems (for now) and mark my question as "solved" (see my profile) to help others with similar issues, beside, I don't expect to have a ready-to-go solution for me: I'm here to LEARN. 
Odoo isn't perfect and sometimes is hard to customize it without a series of trial and rebuild. Need patience and time! 

My 2c.

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Use Linkedin. Join an Odoo group and ask your questions there. My latest experience has been a good one.

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Needless to say, TinyERP/OpenERP/Odoo is successful project.

They launched their product,

implemented it at live customers,

made it as OpenSource, which I think was critical to its success and popularity.

It is still evolving as a product. I think that its documentation won't be complete and sufficient until the product itself reached its maturity compared to other products in the market.

One step could enhance the lake of sufficient documentation is to dedicate a separate team for the documentation, and I think this is already existing. The point is that this team needs to be enlarged and get more focus. Also we needs, as a community, to know them and have a contact with them.

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