Talk:Troubleshooting

Wiki Education Foundation-supported course assignment

This article was the subject of a Wiki Education Foundation-supported course assignment, between 14 January 2021 and 11 April 2021. Further details are available on the course page. Student editor(s): TA chrisjenkins.

Above undated message substituted from Template:Dashboard.wikiedu.org assignment by PrimeBOT (talk) 11:45, 17 January 2022 (UTC)

web 2.0 approach to troubleshooting

I would like to add external link to fixya.com a community troubleshooting site. Let me know if you have any thoughts. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 80.230.211.106 (talk) 19:59, 21 April 2007 (UTC).

I modified the above post by removing empty tables and other tags.

I am looking (still searching) for a web 2.0 tool we can use collaboratively in our IT shop to share info and diagnose performance issues that involve teams. Walkingstick3 (talk) 17:00, 19 April 2010 (UTC)

Products and Processes

I have realigned the article to focus on products and processes rather than the very woolly term "systems". The term is most commonly applied to breakdowns in machines and engineering products, but is of course used in many branches of study. The text needs some expansion to give it a sharper focus. Peterlewis (talk) 10:54, 2 February 2009 (UTC) '''Insert non-formatted text uhere''' i am bavan and computer hardware

Trouble-shooting vs troubleshooting

Is it a word; sources? manolo (talk) 11:19, 7 November 2009 (UTC)

Misquote of definition of intermittent

I'm the Steven Litt who is quoted in this article, and to the best of my remembrance I never defined "intermittent" as written in this article. Here are some definitions from me:

"An intermittent is a problem for which there is no known procedure to consistently reproduce its symptom.", http://www.troubleshooters.com/tpromag/9812.htm#DefinitionofanIntermittent.

"[An intermittent is] A symptom for which there is no known procedure to consistently reproduce it.", http://www.troubleshooters.com/tinterm.htm#Definitions.

"The definition of an intermittent is a problem for which there is no known reproduction procedure.", http://www.troubleshooters.com/tpromag/200504/200504.htm#_The_Switch_that_Would_Not_Stay_Rebooted, in the Final Note section of that article.

I don't feel equipped to make the change myself because an accurate reflection of my definition would require a moderate change to the intermittents' section. Could somebody better at Wikipedia entries than I please make the change and update the reference?

Thanks

Steve LittStevelitt (talk) 06:57, 18 November 2009 (UTC)

It looks to me like that change has been made, so I just wanted to note that here for convenience to save others from spending time verifying it like I just did. Spalding (talk) 19:23, 8 December 2013 (UTC)

Origin of the word "troubleshooter"

I have not been able to find specific references to the etymology of the words "troubleshooter" "trouble shooter" or "trouble-shooter".

It is my understanding that the word "troubleshooter" originated in the United States from the term "trouble shooter" used in the mid to late 19th century. A "trouble shooter" was employed by the telegraph and rail road companies building rail lines in the western part of the United States. It was the job of the "trouble shooter" to find those that were being "trouble" during the construction and to shoot them. The role continued after the completion of the telegraph and rail lines and was expanded to that of a general problem solver, which is the current usage of the word

Given the lack of any other reference or source, I would like to have this etymology added to the article.

Thank you, Colnel b (talk) 00:42, 12 March 2010 (UTC)

More citation needed for verification of current contents is false

The template {{More citations needed}} from June 2010 is inappropriate: current contents of this article is well founded and verifiable through current references. {{More inline citations needed}} (or links background and additional reading in External links section) could be welcome.

Problem with this article shall be that troubleshooting is a vast concept, including a chaos of fields (from e.g. aircraft design and manufacturing to crash investigations, through petrol platform troubleshooting, through nautical, social, urban planning, medical etc. etc.). Each of such areas has their own schools of thought, masters and teachers, and partially special and very diverse language/vocabulary. There are probably more tens of millions or even much more than onla millions of people who are actually doing it, but not many academics trying to systemize it that I knew of, and that's why this article is also IMO a stub only.

I did a bit of search and I'll add some possible external links, but I'll not have time to read them through, so I'll not change the template at the moment.

What I found when I used Google (AI interface) to find integrated info about theory and practice of use in every area (where known to be used) I got integration only from psychological, AI developmental and other (also very specialized) fields, and no general ones encompassing similar procedures used in all diverse fields yet.

What I added in external links should anyway make current contents amply verifiable and safe from removal, and possibly usable for some limited expansion. Marjan Tomki SI (talk) 00:06, 15 October 2026 (UTC)

I'd add a mention of Bo Sundgren's (and his team's) from Statistics Sweden and later EU ECE about infological approach and conceptual modelling, which was usable in any situation, but used mostly in developing and improving statistical information systems (and subsystems). Because statistics addresses (or should address) any situation of interest that includes enough elements, events etc., those principles were inherently generalized and generally useful, but I don't see them used. Marjan Tomki SI (talk) 02:06, 15 October 2026 (UTC)