Standalone application to answer unanswered community questions

This is a proposed project (still at the stage of conception) to Canonical/Ubuntu Community team make a standalone application called "alaide" (in French "A L'aide!" means "Help!" ) The application has a goal to simplify the task of answering large amount of unanswered questions from Ubuntu users. It assists the knowledgeable community member by quickly presenting with questions that they can be the first to answer.

Topics with zero replies are a community concern since it demonstrate that no one cares about their topic or problem. The less empty topics there are, the better. We don't want users to go away from launchpad answers or ubuntu forums thinking that they cannot get community assistance.

The application is currently spec'd to plug into Launchpad Answers and ubuntuforums.org, with an open plugin interface to encourage adding third party sites, and possibly unanswered mailing lists posts as alternate sources for questions.

The application has a simple interface which consists of a question (pulled from the service), an answer button (which opens up an answer box) and a next or "I don't know" button.

Mock up 0.1 http://people.canonical.com/~komputes/mockup0.1.png (simplified concept of interface)

Jorge C., Jono B. and David B. have discussed possible issues that may arrose, such as the need for a central server which will lock a specific question to a user, so that it does not give the same question to two people willing to help. We have also discussed the assignment to a person based on their launchpad groups, preferred package, language or keywords.