New FAQ Section

We finally have some progress to report on the New FAQ Section. After several calls from senior members of the community, we have made a big effort to improve the WSO FAQ section and we decided to announce it now to start collecting feedback. We are still a LONG LONG way from done, but what we have is several weeks of work and I know that some of you will likely have new FAQs to add and/or corrections on our current FAQs.

What was initially brought up by Compbanker in this thread in not an easy task. How do you identify / organize and summarize so many pieces of information to help new chimps find their way?

This is our first try so please be patient. It is by far from complete and I am sure there is some inaccurate information / typos / etc...in an effort to continually improve the FAQ, please let us know:

1) If you have any other FAQs you think should be included (and under what section)
2) If we have any typos and/or inaccurate information

Hopefully this will allow us to start pointing some of our new chimps with a lot of questions to this section with much less guilt.

Thanks!
Patrick

 

Yea, that was definitely a good idea, hopefully help the new members get their bearings and the older members not have to ask so many random questions.

"You stop being an asshole when it sucks to be you." -IlliniProgrammer "Your grammar made me wish I'd been aborted." -happypantsmcgee
 

I saw a few very, very minor formatting errors but overall, that's incredibly comprehensive and is far more than a skeleton. It leaves room for addition without lacking enough weight on its own.

Thanks so much for all the effort.

I am permanently behind on PMs, it's not personal.
 
Best Response

I think it might be nice to include one more section in there that links to well-written posts on industries other than investment banking. I know that there was a good hedge fund thread buried somewhere in the HF forum, there was a good startup related one, a CorpDev/F500 one, and recently a sobering PE one. Those threads will probably answer questions better than an FAQ ever will (since it's hard to cover annoying questions for every industry).

This would make the FAQ useful for some more senior monkeys as well... and those golden threads deserve to be preserved somehow anyway and being linked to the FAQ is a good way to do that.

 

Nice job!. I think that it might be also nice to give a little more international perspective, for example regarding target school in europe/asia. The board has been really helpful, great job..

Valor is of no service, chance rules all, and the bravest often fall by the hands of cowards. - Tacitus Dr. Nick Riviera: Hey, don't worry. You don't have to make up stories here. Save that for court!
 
 

Damn, someone's been lurking and reading all the good threads haha

"You stop being an asshole when it sucks to be you." -IlliniProgrammer "Your grammar made me wish I'd been aborted." -happypantsmcgee
 

I really don't see the reason to go and try to make WSO into M&A like some suggested. I think the informative and well discussed threads are by far more interesting and valuable then a single article you can read somewhere else. Having different opinions on a subject really adds a lot of value.

What I would suggest is to try and improve the search functions so it will be easier to find information and have the information come to you. For example, let's say you make an improved search page. Entering the page would show you the terms being searched the most (might be under different categories to make it easier to navigate) and latest searches to give some idea on what's going on and what people choose to read.

Now when you would like to read about something and search for it you should see the most relevant threads, not the latest. Most relevant should be defined by the quality of the thread. I can assume that the most well discussed and informative threads have higher number of silver bananas awarded to the different participants and this could be one variable you can add to the search code to show quality. Also, I guess those threads would also be longer by length so this is another variable you can look into.

To take it even further, the 'information comes to you' part would be to have a system that suggest hot/relevant topics you might find useful based on your different searches. You can go as far as having the members rank the topics they've read to help them find the information they want and also you get more in depth idea on the activity of the members and if you're creative enough I'm sure you will find ways to make that useful :)

I think here is no need to make the FAQ a new M&I. WSO's strongest point lays within its community and you should take advantage over that fact (as you do).

Another suggestion is to tweak the bananas system a bit. People simply don't have bananas to reward good and quality post as they should. Great posts are often receiving 1SB at the most while there are way more members who actually read enjoy and value that post, so the number of SB's don't really reflect how good some posts are which is something to think about. Unless by doing that I'll ruin your multi million dollar business selling credits, it's something to think about :)

All in all, this site is great and I'm really happy to come across it.

 
bigimot:
I really don't see the reason to go and try to make WSO into M&A like some suggested. I think the informative and well discussed threads are by far more interesting and valuable then a single article you can read somewhere else. Having different opinions on a subject really adds a lot of value.

What I would suggest is to try and improve the search functions so it will be easier to find information and have the information come to you. For example, let's say you make an improved search page. Entering the page would show you the terms being searched the most (might be under different categories to make it easier to navigate) and latest searches to give some idea on what's going on and what people choose to read.

Now when you would like to read about something and search for it you should see the most relevant threads, not the latest. Most relevant should be defined by the quality of the thread. I can assume that the most well discussed and informative threads have higher number of silver bananas awarded to the different participants and this could be one variable you can add to the search code to show quality. Also, I guess those threads would also be longer by length so this is another variable you can look into.

To take it even further, the 'information comes to you' part would be to have a system that suggest hot/relevant topics you might find useful based on your different searches. You can go as far as having the members rank the topics they've read to help them find the information they want and also you get more in depth idea on the activity of the members and if you're creative enough I'm sure you will find ways to make that useful :)

I think here is no need to make the FAQ a new M&I. WSO's strongest point lays within its community and you should take advantage over that fact (as you do).

Another suggestion is to tweak the bananas system a bit. People simply don't have bananas to reward good and quality post as they should. Great posts are often receiving 1SB at the most while there are way more members who actually read enjoy and value that post, so the number of SB's don't really reflect how good some posts are which is something to think about. Unless by doing that I'll ruin your multi million dollar business selling credits, it's something to think about :)

All in all, this site is great and I'm really happy to come across it.

DM, bigimot highlights the fact that we do need an FAQ section to clearly explain what wso credits are, what SBs and monkey shits are, etc. We already have a 5 banana ranking system for a specific discussion that ranks the content (thread specific ranking). The SBs and Monkey Shits are PEER ranking systems and it is to reward users (and punish trolls and/or users that do not argue constructively) for specific comments. It rewards the authors, and these SBs / Shits are attributed to the author.

As far as Search goes, it is actually very powerful. We have already tweaked it so that date has no relevance on which posts are brought up in a search. How relevant the content is #1 most important. Secondly, we also favor threads that have more comments (as you suggested we do). Finally, after a search you also have the ability to filter that search by date, author, relevancy, etc...

We are not trying to be M&I, but having a slightly more comprehensive FAQ (if you look at M&I, he writes entire articles on specific question -- most much more detailed than what we are addressing). I see our FAQ as a way to take some of the burden off of our Certified Users so that they can focus on more interesting discussions to them, instead of answering redundant questions. I don't think the FAQ will stop these questions, but I do think it will provide the Certified Users an easy place they can point to...

We also just added a "Hot Topics" block in the past week which is again just a view based on # of comments...speaking of the content coming to you.

Thanks for the feedback everyone, please keep them coming. We are also likely to add a FAQ section called "Best Discussions in..." and list each industry. Under each one we will list 5-10 threads that we feel offer the best advice so if people just want to find high quality content, the FAQ can do that as well.

Thanks, Patrick

 

The FAQ is more of a guideline to give you a basic understanding of a certain area. It then links you to a number of select threads on the topic as well as a direct link to automatically search for that topic. So, it gives you a basic overview of whatever the question is and then offers you the chance to see what WSO members have to say on the subject.

"You stop being an asshole when it sucks to be you." -IlliniProgrammer "Your grammar made me wish I'd been aborted." -happypantsmcgee
 

The Best Discussions In... is definitely a great idea, there are definitely some threads around that give more information from more perspectives than any one of us could ever give.

"You stop being an asshole when it sucks to be you." -IlliniProgrammer "Your grammar made me wish I'd been aborted." -happypantsmcgee
 

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