Go ahead and post it and we can help you edit it. All of my tutorials are too long. I like to be very thorough. So don’t worry too much about that.
If you’d rather not have the edits be public (I think there is benefit to that as it shows how all of this stuff is an iterative process) you can send it as a pm.
If I have posted a question, received a response on suggestions and recommendations. What is the best way to follow up? I think if I reply to myself three times or more, I’ll get a little nag telling me I’m hogging the topic. I am taking the approach of editing my last entry to add information iteratively. In a current post, I replied, I updated once, and I updated again. Is this the proper approach? Will admins/contributors “see” these updates or will my updates and additional questions potentially go unnoticed, or at least for a longer period of time (e.g., days vs. hours)? Sure, I’m impatient, but I also want to know that I’m using the proper method that will receive warranted “attention”.
Thanks.
Mike
Don’t worry about the forum nags. Every time you add a reply we get a notification. Not for an edit. Several successive posts also show the incremental solution and that will help future readers.
Post away my friend. We can give feedback and you can then edit the original post. Or we can make it a wiki so that others can edit and add.
It looks like the HA folks have adopted this tutorial for posting a good question too. 
Don’t worry, they credited this post.
Perhaps you also could mention these two interactive tutorials with discobot .
There is one for “new users” and one for “advanced users”. I did them both and they were really helpful. 
You usually start a new thread to post a question. You then are assured to be on-topic. Hopping on to somebody else’s thread is discouraged and usually considered rude.
Thus is the path to true wizardry!
Bump for @vzorglub… I think this would be very useful to get in front of new users. We should add something about code fences and anything else missing from this tutorial. FYI, the instructions in the OP of the tutorial topic are incorrect… PM @discobot with start tutorial or start advanced tutorial.
Here is the code fence link I usually use.
How to use code fences - Tutorials & Examples - openHAB Community
I have made the post a wiki, please feel free to edit
I will update the OP to include a reference to the tutorial, but is there a way to edit the tutorial to include a lesson for code fences?
I did some brief searching and it looks like customizing the overall flow is not yet implemented, or if it is implemented there is no documentation I can find for how to do it. Just about everything else can be customized by an admin (i.e. it would take Kai to add it). It might be possible to add the text or a link tutorial to one of the existing flows but I don’t see a way where we could add it and a test that the user did it right. It’s better than nothing though.
Anyone have a suggestion where in the flow it would be best to add it? https://blog.discourse.org/2017/08/who-is-discobot/ has the easiest follow details for how to customize it that I was able to find.
If you want a real discobot tutorial about code fences it’s a bit tricky. Involves custom db query yada yada.
However we could “hijack” the already existing tutorial and add text about code fences.
See:
Oh well did not read properly. 
I propose to add the code-fence tutorial with the quote tutorial
I’ve only asked a couple of questions and so far I’ve gotten some pretty quick and friendly help. I read this article about good questions and since I’m really new, but an old programmer, I’d like to make a few comments and ask a couple of questions of the leadership community.
My observations are much like Rich said, sometimes you get the right answer and sometimes the wrong answer. Having led R&D organizations that selected open source components and freeware and I can honestly say the money saved never approached the cost of the subsequent headaches over commercial solutions. The word hobby was used and that is what this is for me now and presumably many people, so it is OK.
My second comment comes from my past. Having inherited an IT department while leading R&D I soon realized that the massive amount of people needed to support our infrastructure was our own making! I initiated a plan to reduce the size from 25 to 5. My discoveries led me to the realization that poorly documented solutions forced an abundance of “help” needs (translate: easier to call). By sorting the high running rate requests and beefing up the documentation with examples and how-to’s, help calls dropped rapidly. It was also an eye opening exposer to my own product documentation leading to a reduction in my customer service desk.
Someone pointed out that helpdesk people get paid and this forum is free and voluntary, so the approach could never work. However, many volunteer entities accomplish significant results when coordinated.
It does lead me to a question I couldn’t find an answer too. I see there is Board but I didn’t find a steering committee for the distribution of information? From my brief browsing of the forum, there are clearly some experts. Sadly, I’ve seen some experts answering the same questions many times like my helpdesk example. They have even commented on the problem.
My question goes out to the few leaders. Has there ever been a concerted effort to “organize” the forum’s content that goes beyond individual contribution. One that might shorten the learning curve, coagulate information in digestible chunks, and thus reduce the post/reply to the exceptions, not the basics?
Has there ever been a consideration to “increase” the membership cost to support a “coordinator” of volunteers. To examine where the holes are and to initiate a voluntary “enhancement” of the website and the content.
I for one would be willingly to add my expertise to a finite initiative in that direction. I suspect, but can’t honestly speak for others, that they would be willing to document once rather than answer 10 times. I’m really not sure and don’t want to offend anyone. This is my first foray into open/free SW as a user, and maybe the general consensus is this is part of the fun of a hobby. I personally don’t think that because the posts are riddled with “help#$%#@”
Anyway, sorry for the long read. I’m just asking a couple of historians to maybe let me know what has transpired and/or if anyone has ever thought, or discussed something similar.
Thanks in advance
Cliff
Th official documentation written by the developers is very good but people do not look before they post their problem with no helpful information to solve.
There is also this little used area, based on the forum.
Thanks, didn’t know about the other how-tos. I can’t speak for the other people, I’ve spent weeks looking at the documentation. I’ll give you and example. There are numerous examples of cron statements. You can find them everywhere on the forum.
In fact, although the cron syntax is correct, I would prefer a more simple one: “0 0/5 * * * ?” //every 5 Minutes “0 1 0 * * ?” //daily at 12:01 am “0 1 0 1 * ?” //monthly at 01 12:01 am “0 2 0 1 1 ?” //yearly at 01-01 12:02 am year is optional, * is “don’t care”, ? is mandatory either on da…***
However, I was unable to get any cron job to work until I found out that there are “7” fields in the statement, not 6. This may be unique to openhabian, but it wasted countless hours for me. Even on the same page there are examples of 6 and 7. One may say the last is optional, but only the 7 would work for me.
There isn’t one.
Yes and the result is the main docs, which as Bruce points out far too few consult before asking on the forum. We’ve also created a template to fill out in some categories and created lots and lots of posts which provide the answers to commonly asked questions. We tried creating a FAQ post awhile back but it wasn’t really populated nor used.
Even a post like the OP is frankly an attempt to herd cats. Users are going to read the docs or not read the docs and will do what they do. and get mad at us for asking them to read stuff already written instead of rewriting a custom response just for them.
The way the openHAB Foundation is incorporated in Germany as a specific type of non-profit, I don’t think they would be allowed to hire such a person. But there are several who contribute to and coordinate contributions to the docs. @Confectrician is the primary lead on that front right now.
But it’s also important to realize we are in a state of transition. Work on OH 2.x core is done and OH 3 is the main focus. OH 3 is going to require a significant if not complete rewrite of the docs. And since we have no idea what OH 3 will actually be or how it will work, we have to wait before we can initiate that effort.
What I do and what I encourage other forum helpers to do is if you answer the same question more than a couple of times, create a new post that is easily findable and link to that post for subsequent answers. Once that post has seen some exposure and been polished, consider moving the contents to the docs.
But did you look in the docs? Here is the docs for cron triggers.
A cron expression takes the form of six or optionally seven fields:
- Seconds
- Minutes
- Hours
- Day-of-Month
- Month
- Day-of-Week
- Year (optional field)
for more information see the Quartz documentation.
You may also use CronMaker or the generator at FreeFormatter.com to generate cron expressions.
It clearly states how many fields there are and even provides a link to a tool to help you generate the expression you are after.
This kind of leads back to me initial answer and Bruce’s comments. Almost all of the stuff that people struggle with are actually documented in the docs, sometimes in great detail. But far too often users don’t think to look there or don’t bother to.
Now, if there is anything unclear about the docs I quoted above, we more than welcome contributions, updates, and suggestions for improvement. There is a link at the bottom of the page that will take you straight to the form on GitHub where you can edit the source and create a PR to be added to the docs.