Computer Related

Internet Based Discussion Forum

John Ecel M. Espinola

Dhavy Jane B. Animos
Arielyn Bea R. Sales
Anton Christopher S. Severino
 Background of the Study
Here in the Philippines the IT community or
those computer related people are growing
faster and larger, many students are taking up
computer related courses as it is now the trend
and needed by companies and most people
now are using computers because it is now a
necessity or as they say a bread and butter of
life nowadays.
As of using the computer we will all encounter a
problem and there are thing we don’t know
about whether it is in terms of programming,
software and even in hardware. Usually we
will search it in the search engine sites like
Google, but the problem is not all the
questions have an answer in it aside from that,
there are a lot of forum websites that are in
foreign language to look on too, but not all the
Filipinos are that knowledgeable or fluent in
understanding foreign language.
Yes, there are several Filipino websites but they lack
of some things like it is hard to find which one of
those answers is/are correct or is the best answer
for the question that is asked and one thing is that
they let the users troll and not answering the
question seriously. Even programmers here in the
Philippines made a group in Facebook called
Programmers,Developers which has a purpose
like a forum and just like other forums you will
not know what is the correct answer in a glance,
trolling is there and worst is some of them are
cursing each other which is inappropriate and
feels like they don’t respect one another.
The group aims to create just like the other
forum sites but an upgraded one which we will
add a feature that you will see first the best
answer from an answered question which will
be picked by the one who asked the question.
Another one is we would not tolerate trolling
in our website.
 Statement of the Problem
1.Search engines today do not necessarily
answer all the questions or problems on IT
related questions.

2.The difficulty in understanding the English

language by the search engine users.

3.Violate of rights and unethical actions by the

users of search engine sites.
 Description of the Project

The proposed project is a website that is a Q&A or

what they call a forum. Its main purpose is to connect
people who are in need of help with their problem in
terms of computer related stuffs like programming,
software, hardware and etc. People who will use this
will need to create an account and log in so they can
post questions or comment answers in it. They can also
upvote or downvote questions or comment if they agree
or disagree and they can also report users who just
intend to troll. They can search for questions if it’s
already posted by another user and if not they can just
post it on their own.
 Scope and Limitation
Scope
The focus of this project is to develop a website
for people here in the Philippines to help them
find answers to their problem/question with the
help of other users of the website. People can post
questions and comment an answer to the post.
They can use upvote and downvote to state that a
question or the answer is helpful or not. They can
gain or lose points for being upvoted or
downvoted by users. They can also be reported
and get banned on the website.
 Scope and Limitation
Limitation
This website will let users(programmers, technicians,
computer-related students and those non-computer
related people who needs help with their computer) to
freely interact with each other, letting them to ask or to
answer questions. The post will be limited to computer
related stuffs like problems in programming, or
something is not working on a computer part, errors on
a computer and etc. Users can only upvote and
downvote ones in every single post or comment. Every
user will be limited to have twenty reports if they got
reported twenty times then that’s the time they’ll get
banned.
 Assumption
1. Users should have at least a cellphone or a
computer and specially an internet connection.

2. Users should be knowledgeable in searching

through the internet.

3. Intended users should create an account to be able

to access the functions of it like posting,
commenting and etc.
 Definition of Terms
Internet - a connection to access the Askdevph.com.

Forum - a group discussion which you can ask and

answer questions.

Users - People who will use the website.

Account – an established relationship between the

user and the website.
 Definition of Terms
Problem - something that is difficult to dealt with
and needs a solution.
Question - A problem of the user he/she will ask to
gain answer.
Answer - A suggestion/answer that will be given by
a user to a question.
Upvote - it will state that the posted question or
answer is helpful.
 Definition of Terms
Downvote – it will state that the posted question
or answer is unhelpful.
Points – this will be gained when users upvoted a
question or answer a user posted.
 Study Objective
1. To create a website that can be used to ask and
answer questions posted by the users.

2. To give suggestions to the post asked by users.

3. To encourage Filipino users to use the Filipino

language for easy understanding.

4. To encourage users to observe ethics in their post

or comments.
 Related Literature
Q and A forum
E. Z. Liu, S. Cheng & C. H. Lin (Nov 2013) Stated that
online Q&A discussion forums have recently become
important information resources for students and
studies have shown that online discussion forums
have a positive influence on learning outcomes.
Statistical results reveal that students using more
elaborate online Q&A discussion forums are more
likely to actively participate in online discussions,
engaging at a higher cognitive level, and enjoying
superior learning performance when compared to
those using forums that are more rudimentary.
Problems with Programming
J. E. Moström (2011) of Department of Computing
Science stated that Programming is a core subject
within Computer Science curricula and many also
consider it a particularly difficult subject to learn. Not
only do students have problems with programming,
they also have problems with designing software.
Even graduating students fail to a large extent on
simple design tasks. Most researchers/teachers claim
that students have difficulties because of non-
determinism, not understanding synchronization, etc.
According to our results the students themselves do
not seem to think that concurrency is significantly
more difficult than any other subject.
Trolling
S. Herring , K. Job-Sluder , R. Scheckler & S. Barab (2011) in
their book Searching for Safety Online: Managing
"Trolling" in a Feminist Forum. A common phenomenon in
online discussion groups is the individual who baits and
provokes other group members, often with the result of
drawing them into fruitless argument and diverting attention
from the stated purposes of the group. They analyze the
strategies that make the troller successful and the targeted
group largely ineffectual in responding to this attack, as a
means to understand how such behavior might be
minimized and managed in general. The analysis further
suggests that feminist and other nonmainstream online
forums are especially vulnerable, in that they must balance
inclusive ideals against the need for protection and safety, a
tension that can be exploited by disruptive elements to
generate intragroup conflict.
Upvote
Y. Yao, H. Tong, T. Xie, L. Akoglu, F. Xu & J. Lu in
their book Joint Voting Prediction for Questions
and Answers in CQA, Community Question
Answering (CQA) sites have become valuable
repositories that host a massive volume of human
knowledge. How can we detect a high-value
answer which clears the doubts of many users?
Can we tell the user if the question s/he is posting
would attract a good answer? Their key
observation is that the voting score of an answer
is strongly positively correlated with that of its
question, and such correlation could be in turn
used to boost the prediction performance.
Internet
According to J. Bolstridge(2009) the Internet has
important environmental and business
implications. The Internet holds many promising
types of information, some things to watch out for
on the Internet are: 1. Do not assume that
the Internet is an easy-to-use source of answers
you need to really search and have time to find for
it. 2. Do not give up easily it’s best to have
patience, the internet is large so give your self a
time to be in. 3. Do not be afraid to ask questions
users are there, they might help you find answers.
PHP
According to K. Cullen (Sep 2008) in his book PHP: An
open source solution for Web programming and
dynamic content. Millions of Web domains
have PHP installed and hundreds of thousands of Web
sites use it. PHP is a server-side, cross-platform,
HTML embedded scripting language. While PHP is
closely identified with Apache, it will work with other
Web servers. Unlike JSP and ASP, PHP has its own
language. PHP has an impressive range of built-in
functions, probably because it is an open source
product in its fourth version.
SQL
E. E. Kim (Jan 2008) said that anyone who knows
SQL will know how to query MySQL databases,
with a few adjustments here and there. While the
database sections on programming MySQL are
excellent, developers will use standard APIs to
program MySQL, and thus, these sections are
hardly indispensable. However, MySQL really
shines in its coverage of MySQL's quirks and
oddities, such as administering MySQL databases.
 Needs Assessment

Problem of the IT students and people here

in the Philippines with the lack of knowledge
with the everyday use of computers whether it is
in terms of programming, software and even in
hardware. Not all search engine sites can answer
all of their specific questions and there are those
foreign forum sites but not all Filipinos are that
fluent in the English.
 Needs Assessment

The researchers are designing a website that will

help the users to find answers for their
questions that will be answered or to give
suggestions by another user. The project aims
to lessen the trolling of the users and have
respect with each other. They need to register
to have an account and log into their account
to gain the full function of the website.
 Target Users
The main target users of this project are the
people who are in need of help with their
problems in terms of computer specially those
students of IT, Computer Science, computer
engineer and other courses related to
computers. They are the ones who need help
the most because their curiosity and eagerness
to learn makes them to ask more questions.
 Conceptual Framework
- A Conceptual Framework is a tool to organize
ideas, and make conceptual distinctions.
- In our Conceptual Framework, the input is the first
step, the users will have a access in the website.
- The Process is getting the input that the
information that is needed or required to the
website.
- The Output is the result of the process that the
users can continue to access.
Conceptual Framework