Copier / Printer Wiki collaboration

[Madnhain]

Hey, I wanted to gauge the interest of a wiki style website for printers / MFDs that would be a knowledge base for troubleshooting. I'd like to put one together but couldn't possibly handle it on my own and would need collaboration from experienced folks familiar with a variety of devices.
I'd like to focus it more on information that is not found in the service manuals. As we all know, the SM just acts as a rough guide and rarely holds the answers for more complex problems.
Also, perhaps a quick reference for commonly used parts, jam / error codes etc.

Thoughts?

[blackcat4866]

Re: Copier / Printer Wiki collaboration

That's the definition of this forum: All those things that don't fit neatly into a manual.

For the last 20+ years I've maintained an Excel spreadsheet with the things I've done, and the things I've learned from others. And I shared out that spreadsheet with fellow techs at IKON.

The difficulty I found when collecting data for this project is getting complete accurate data. My spreadsheet has columns for Manufacturer, Model/Family, call type (codes for symptoms), cause code (coded for area of the machine causing the issue), Symptoms Details, Cause Details, Solution Details, Solution Source (who). I included a nice form in the document requesting each of these items. Quite often though, the contributor was unclear about the exact symptoms or the exact cause or the exact solution. As long as the model, symptoms, & solution are clear, that's fine. But if any of those three categories are unclear, it's not useful to include it as searchable information. It requires a level of candor that not everyone is comfortable with ("I'm not exactly sure if I fixed anything, but this is what I did ... "). And if you don't know you're own name, I'm not going to include it just on principle.

I've always thought that collecting as many observations as possible is extremely useful. That small image anomaly at 45mm might be nothing or unrelated to the original issue, but if it's still there the third time you see the issue, it probably means something.

But back to the original point: That's what this forum is for, and it does a pretty good job, considering all the spam that manages to slip in. And unlike a spreadsheet, the forum member can give feedback. =^..^=

[Madnhain]

Re: Copier / Printer Wiki collaboration

That's the definition of this forum: All those things that don't fit neatly into a manual.

Fair point, That's actually what prompted me to consider a wiki. I can't count the number of times a Google search for an answer has led me to this forum. I thought it might be nice to have all these answers that are spread out around the forum consolidated into a general location.
A spreadsheet with 20 years of info has got to be worth something! LOL
Didn't IKON get bought out a long time ago?

[blackcat4866]

Re: Copier / Printer Wiki collaboration

Ricoh bought IKON around 2008. After that I continued to maintain the spreadsheet, but did not share it out. I was spending 20+ hours a weeks maintaining the spreadsheet. I proposed maintaining a much more broad reaching spreadsheet company-wide, but IKON didn't think it was worth pursuing (or paying me for the time I spent on it).

I had inadvertently followed down the same road as another gentleman, Rusty Dail, who also published a solutions document for many years, and never got paid anything for his efforts. It's too bad. I think it could have continued to help a lot of techs solve a lot of problems. =^..^=