Structuring the Data

[ultramods]

I am wondering if the forum should have a database that captures the decisions that members make with regards to funding, foundation/slab spec, roof walls, windows, heating, hot water, cladding/ rain screen. Location / size of house etc, and the reasons behind each decision. And also maybe a link to the house floor plans and elevations and photos during the build. This would provide more structure to a lot of the data the is currently hiding within various forum topics. 

 

Also a time line on the key stages during the build with the ability to annotate, to highlight problems that have led to delays.

 

I could create the database and the associated web pages.

[ToughButterCup]

Ah yes, data structures. The key to life. Dont'cha just love a beautifully normalised database?

 

It's a huge undertaking. Huge. And people are here because they have a house to build. So they are prepared to put the leg work in to reading because it's mostly high-stakes stuff. Just one sentence saved me at least £10,000 . But it took a year to find it.

 

Drilling down into messy data  is a long-winded process. What you propose is useful, but extremely expensive in terms of time. Meanwhile the architect calls, the chippy asks, the brickie needs, the ironing remains, the dog needs walking.

 

Thanks very much for the suggestion. I appreciate the keenness. Summarising key threads is hard enough. Simple precis is as far as I think anyone - who also has a build to finish - can take it.

[oldkettle]

The best I can suggest (while on a train) is a "solution" tag to mark a post. Nowadays the search plus a tag system usually beat a specialised database. 

[Nickfromwales]

7 hours ago, ultramods said:

I am wondering if the forum should have a database that captures the decisions that members make..........

I think they're called a Blog  

[ToughButterCup]

1 hour ago, oldkettle said:

The best I can suggest (while on a train) is a "solution" tag to mark a post.[...]

 

What a good idea. Needs unpacking a bit, hence:

 

Solution to what (?) is my first unfiltered reaction......

Given the way that threads meander (think bathroom, think @Onoff )  the thread might be the solution to many readers'  issues - but highly likely - not to the problem that  was the  one the OP had. So tagging that post solution  might well mislead.

 

I have invested a good deal of my professional life into trying to solve exactly the problem @ultramods raises. God knows it needs to be addressed. Just think of the prize of being able efficiently to drill down to key (for you)  information ( or maybe data).

 

Unfortunately (because it's expensive) the answer seems to be, at the moment,  use-a-human.  Would that it were not.

 

Think of it like this. Ask a plumbing question. A Welsh plumber cuts through all the noise and messy conflicting information and answers. There's no hint of shared ignorance, no jokes, no asides, no errors of fact.  Solution.

 

But posts aren't like that are they? 

That's why it's such a relief to have technocrats like @TerryE, @JSHarris, @Onoff, @Construction Channel, @Nickfromwales, @PeterW and others who have technical authority on BH.

 

But most of us here are or have become or are in the process of becoming experts by experience (what else do you call someone who has completed 6 self-builds , @Stones ? ) . If we could all do just a bit more tagging, stick to the topic just a little more, draft posts more carefully sometimes, then we would be well on the way to making readers' jobs easier and more efficient.

 

240 square meters of parging call.

 

 

 

 

 

[Onoff]

Let's be honest my thread might have been better as a blog...possibly on another forum!

[daiking]

3 hours ago, Onoff said:

Let's be honest my thread might have been better as a blog...possibly on another forum!

 

Or as therapist’s notes.

[jack]

One approach would be a pinned post at the start of at least major sub-forums (eg, foundations, windows), with a summary of what people have done, and links to relevant posts. 

 

As @recoveringacademic says though, this would be a massive undertaking.

 

Another option, which I've mentioned in the past, is to set up a self-build wiki. Again, summaries of what people have learned, with links (onsite and offsite) to relevant content.

 

Again, a massive undertaking.

[ToughButterCup]

22 minutes ago, daiking said:

Or as therapist’s notes.

 

I read @Onoff's bathroom fable as exactly that: even experienced guys get it wrong, get distracted, get it badly wrong, have wives who demonstrate the highest level of patience, teach me loads without knowing that they're doing so..... 

[oldkettle]

13 hours ago, recoveringacademic said:

 

Solution to what (?) is my first unfiltered reaction......

Given the way that threads meander (think bathroom, think @Onoff )  the thread might be the solution to many readers'  issues - but highly likely - not to the problem that  was the  one the OP had. So tagging that post solution  might well mislead.

 

I have invested a good deal of my professional life into trying to solve exactly the problem @ultramods raises. God knows it needs to be addressed. Just think of the prize of being able efficiently to drill down to key (for you)  information ( or maybe data).

 

Unfortunately (because it's expensive) the answer seems to be, at the moment,  use-a-human.  Would that it were not.

OK, I actually did think we'd need "plumbing solution", "rendering solution" etc. but then decided it would probably not make search any easier. 

 

It is of course for us to tag posts. I didn't mean the original post though, I meant the one with the answer to "a problem" which is not necessarily the one raised in the root post. Could help a lot in my view. 

[Construction Channel]

I think this all stems back to something @recoveringacademic mentioned a LONG time ago in the management forum, and I think it really could happen if people with the right mentality are willing to contribute to the task. 

 

We need moderators. Not like most people consider moderators (which would be more accurately described as forum police), but people that are willing to help summarise/collate the valuable parts of what can sometimes be very “diluted” threads

 

@ultramods mentiones that he may be willing to help with this in the Op, perhaps this is the time to open it up to a wider audience and see if there are people willing to in part collate the masses of information on this forum?

[SteamyTea]

5 minutes ago, Construction Channel said:

We need moderators. Not like most people consider moderators (which would be more accurately described as forum police), but people that are willing to help summarise/collate the valuable parts of what can sometimes be very “diluted” threads

Aren't they called feature editors?

[ultramods]

What I was thinking for example is all the variable/formulas required to perform heat loss calculations for a house are probably scattered about this forum. However Jeremy's spreadsheet makes it far easier to calculate as all the information is in one place, all the user needs to provide are some variables specific to their build design. Similar could be done for other aspects of the build - What sort of house spec should I use to achieve y based on my budget x (and obviously various other variables such as location).

 

Edited May 11, 2018 by ultramods

[Construction Channel]

According to the links Ian has provided, no,

 

i read them all and it looks like we all have the wrong idea on what a “moderator” should do. 

 

From what I have read and keeping it brief the mods should primarily assist learning. The people that keep the peace fall under a different title. 

[PeterW]

8 hours ago, ultramods said:

What I was thinking for example is all the variable/formulas required to perform heat loss calculations for a house are probably scattered about this forum. However Jeremy's spreadsheet makes it far easier to calculate as all the information is in one place, all the user needs to provide are some variables specific to their build design. Similar could be done for other aspects of the build - What sort of house spec should I use to achieve y based on my budget x (and obviously various other variables such as location).

 

 

Ok so that sounds like a series of workbooks that allow stuff from doing a basic costing and feasibility down to ones that help with heat demand, insulation types etc. is that the sort of thing you are looking for ..??

[ToughButterCup]

9 hours ago, Construction Channel said:

[...]

i read them all and it looks like we all have the wrong idea on what a “moderator” should do. 

[...]

 

Ed, not quite.

I merely meant to suggest that in addition to the essential policing role played by moderators, some members (not necessarily moderators)  might like to summarise, precis, derive checklists...

 

But it takes time and effort. And all of us are really busy anyway - or if not, then knackered.

@SteamyTea has it about right .... I mean a form of editing : clearing up the mess, making stuff easy to read, linking ideas, laying out jumbled thought into an easy to understand order.

[SteamyTea]

All depends if we want to inform, educated and entertain.

I shall stick with entertain as there seems too many barriers to educate.

[newhome]

I think the ‘workbook’ idea as @PeterW puts it is a great idea. Trying to do more with the data here to summarise, recommend, help troubleshoot or whatever from the huge range of posts on here would be a huge undertaking. Everyone has a different build, different ideas, needs, challenges, budgets and tastes so I think that using tags, searches, and maybe encouraging people to summarise their builds more in a sort of lessons learned style may be the easiest approach. It’s certainly much less labour intensive for the admin team. 

 

If you wanted to mature the lessons learned approach a little more rather than making it completely free form you could perhaps provide a template to facilitate this. This could be completed at the end of the build or during as a living document as people have addressed and overcome their challenges. Contributors could also be encouraged to link to content on here that helped them move forward. It would however be reliant on contributors making this commitment and as always you will have those that will and those that won’t. C’est la vie. 

 

The blogs and posts on here are great but there is a lot to wade through to get to the punchline, and that’s on a forum that has only been around for just shy of 2 years, so any attempt to encourage summarisation by the OP (or other members if they so choose) may be beneficial. 

 

 

[PeterW]

5,400 topics and 95,000 posts and counting ...

 

Unstructured data is a mare to make sense of unless you can use third party data mining tools to find patterns - tags are a low tech method and on the whole work well.

 

If everyone who got a question answered went back and tagged their original post then it would be a gold mine .....   

[ultramods]

@PeterW I appreciate the complexities of working with the existing unstructured data (I develop software products that need to do this for optimising oil and gas production), but I am not suggesting that.

 

I might now have made my self clear. I wasn't meaning to structure all the existing data. As @newhome and I suggested there could be templates to capture project information such as house type, location, size,  u-value, build method, windows, DHW, heating, flooring, wall tiles, roofing, kitchen details. For each item an optional reason for choosing for example ASHP could be given and also optionally the cost of each item. A timeline of build with key milestones could also be included. Final cost psm. Key suppliers.

 

This would be similar to what the various self build magazines note but in more useful detail.

 

And of course photos of the build.

 

 

 

Edited May 12, 2018 by ultramods

[newhome]

18 minutes ago, PeterW said:

 

If everyone who got a question answered went back and tagged their original post then it would be a gold mine .....   

 

Still difficult however when threads run to many many pages, often taking a life of their own when they go off topic, so how does anyone find the answer? My nightmare heating thread ran to 38 pages, and @Onoff's Boxing In is on page 65 although that one is more about looking for the meaning of life I think . It would be useful if you could tag the entire thread as answered but then tag the actual post(s) containing the answer too thus letting someone go straight from a to b whilst cutting out the noise in between unless someone wants to read more. I don't think you can tag individual posts though can you? 

[PeterW]

2 minutes ago, newhome said:

My nightmare heating thread ran to 38 pages, and @Onoff's Boxing In is on page 65 although that one is more about looking for the meaning of life I think

 

Yeh but you got results from yours, he’s just trying for a world record post length ..!! 

 

@ultramods what you are suggesting sounds like some sort of “fact file” for each build - something that could probably be done with a reasonably template. 

 

 

[ultramods]

A fact file, rolodex, electronic clipboard (certainly not a database) that could be queried.

 

@PeterWwe are now into semantics

 

 

Edited May 12, 2018 by ultramods

[newhome]

1 minute ago, ultramods said:

@PeterWwe are now into semantics

 

Your idea - first dibs on the first draft to you then - chop chop! 

 

 

[ultramods]

@newhomedid I mention I have a house build to PM?  

 

Seriously though I would have been happy to develop something, however from the comments there seams to be resistance to it and or people don't think it's required or would be useful.