PMDG has seen the future- and it's Wiki'd!

[rsrandazzo 6,353]

Captains-Nine years ago when PMDG first opened for business, Technical Support was a simple affair comprised of answering a few email a week. For the past seven years, AVSim has hosted PMDG's customer support forum- and it is within this space that many of you have come to know PMDG, our development team, and one another.The truly wonderful thing about this forum is that it serves as a wonderful "self help" tool because you can ask questions and any of tens of thousands of other users may answer you and provide almost immediate help, answers or input to your question. A forum is very open ended and you can receive help with technical aspects of the software itself- or you can learn the finer aspects of operating the sophisticated airplanes that we model in our products- the choice is entirely yours!As we have grown- and as our products become more popular, we have found that this forum's strengths also serve as it's weakness- because many topics and questions are regenerated again and again as new customers discover old stumbling blocks- or old customers forget the answers to commonly asked questions.The busier we get, the harder it is for some customers to find the answers they are looking for because the answer often lies buried in a long thread or discussion from many months in the past.A few months I told you that we had begun a comprehensive process to revamp the way in which we communicate information and provide technical support to you, our loyal customers. During 2006, we have invested considerable effort toward studying emerging trends in technical support and customer communication with an eye toward developing new ways to use technology to improve your ability to have answers immediately at your fingertips- while reducing our workload in order to improve our response times for technical support....(That almost sounds like one of those corporate mission statements, doesn't it? Uh oh.... we're getting too big.... hahahaha)Early this year Ryan Maziarz joined PMDG in the new position of Customer Resource Specialist. Ryan's role is to help us develop innovative ways to help you solve questions/problems. Today, I'm proud to announce that we are introducing you to the biggest enhancement in PMDG Technical Support since we began using this forum seven years ago:Our very own server-based Wiki tool known as: PMDG OPSToday we have opened for business a brand new server to host our very own, Wiki based PMDG customer resource center known as "PMDG Ops." Some of you are probably familiar with other popular

[Chaos81 110]

WOW! This is very cool and I'm loving the idea so far.

[G7USL 117]

Great Idea Robert. PMDG is tops.Dave T. .........On the Devon Riviera and active 'FlightSim User's Group' member at http://www.flightsimgrpuk.free-online.co.uk/http://www.captainsim.com/user/dl/c130/c130_captain.gifhttp://www.precisionmanuals.com/images/forum/supporter.jpg

[David Roch 1,982]

whaooow!!Robert, take a good lawyer because with all the time I spend enjoying your products, courses and website(s) my wife will sue you soon!!A very warm thanks indeed :-)David in Jerusalem

[phoenixphire 50]

Once again an incredible advancement in the Sim-world. Thank you for such a powerful tool and enhancing our experience and knowledge.

[Guest dickwu]

Really a nice idea I have to say.

[Guest Clansman]

Great initiative!I'm all in favour of wiki websites and sharing documentation. It's really a big step forward in terms of community cooperativity towards a(nother) solid documentation base.Cheers,Pedro Venda.p.s.: can you confirm that the wiki website is running on a Linux server? Netcraft says so. Excelent choice!

[StamPilot 4]

I have a question: does this mean you will no longer provide support at this forum?

[Guest Voodoo]

What a fantastic idea! Congratulations PMDG! Although you are not allowed to use wikipedia as source for publications at my univeristy I think it is a great addition for the use in the Flight Simulator community. Let's hope that enough people with enough knowledge check it from time to time to add and correct facts.Way to go :-rotor !regards,Christianhttp://img.photobucket.com/albums/v232/chrismo/sigsky.jpgVacation: wasted time between 2 flights!

[Tabs 2,790]

>I have a question: does this mean you will no longer provide>support at this forum?Not at all - the forum is absolutely still a support venue. What Ops is going to allow us to do is catalog all the frequently asked stuff so that when someone asks a question here we can just post a link to the relevant section of Ops rather than typing it all out again or searching through months of forum posts for the last time we wrote the answer... ;)

[Tabs 2,790]

>p.s.: can you confirm that the wiki website is running on a>Linux server? Netcraft says so. Excelent choice!Yep - RedHat...

[rsrandazzo 6,353]

Gents-To follow up with one of Ryan's answer from above- we've gotten some feedback from users who feel a bit confused about what PMDG OPS is for- and how to use it...We'll put some clearer guidelines up to help you guys out- but in the mean time- here is a simple overview:WHAT PMDG OPS IS:=================PMDG OPS is a searchable database of information that you can use to find answers to common and not-so-common problems. It's added value comes from the fact that users can freely author information to be added to PMDG OPS if they feel compelled. Thus PMDG OPS becomes increasingly valuable as a research tool to find answers to user problems!We are hoping that many of you who frequent the forum as experts will also take the time to add your expertise to PMDG OPS.... Then we all save time by using links to PMDG OPS articles to answer frequently asked questions here in the forum- and users can find those same answers themselves!WHAT PMDG OPS IS NOT:=====================PMDG OPS is not a replacement for this forum. PMDG OPS is designed for static articles containing facts and information- where the forum is designed for dynamic discussion and opinions.If you need help with something- look to PMDG OPS for self-help answers. If you want to discuss something or offer an opinion- do so here in the forum.PMDG OPS is not a replacement for anything. It is a new and additional tool for you to use!

[Guest D17S]

Can you recommend any tools that will allow simple conversions from a Word doc to Wiki format? Unless it's totally click-n-convert, with arrows and pictures . . . Even though (so I've heard) Wiki's a simple markup format, we even simpler folks could go blind hunting for that : that should have been a ; . . . then give up! I'd like a means to tweak around with something in Word, then "publish" via a simple cut-n-paste into Wiki.

[Guest Clansman]

>Can you recommend any tools that will allow simple>conversions from a Word doc to Wiki format? Unless it's>totally click-n-convert, with arrows and pictures . . . > >Even though (so I've heard) Wiki's a simple markup format, we>even simpler folks could go blind hunting for that : that>should have been a ; . . . then give up! I'd like a means to>tweak around with something in Word, then "publish" via a>simple cut-n-paste into Wiki. Hi,Although there *are* .doc friendly wikis, that support transparent conversion, I don't think mediawiki is one of them.It would be much easier (and friendly) do find a ".rtf" or ".odw" filter.--- google for 2 min ---Actually...(good reading) http://mail.wikipedia.org/pipermail/mediaw...rch/004198.html(the converters)http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Word_macroshttp://openwetware.org/wiki/Converting_doc...ediawiki_markupSo there are such filters/converters! And most importantly thei're on the user side!Cheers,Pedro Venda.

[Guest D17S]

"It would be much easier (and friendly) do find a ".rtf" or ".odw" filter."Do the 10 second Google for what? . . . . Simple minds want to know