Idea: AI Tool to Help Find Solutions in Citroën / PSA Forum Threads – Would You Use It?

[milancen]

Hi everyone,
I’ve noticed that many of us spend a lot of time searching through old threads to find solutions to common Citroën / PSA problems. Often the answer already exists somewhere on the forum — it’s just hard to find quickly.
I’m thinking of building a small web tool that uses AI to search through forum threads, find similar problems, and then show the most relevant posts and solutions, with direct links to the original threads.
In simple terms:
You describe your car and your problem, and the tool finds past forum posts where the same issue was solved — so you don’t have to dig through hundreds of pages.
It would not replace the forum, and it would always reference and link back to the original posts so credit stays with the contributors.
Before I start building it, I wanted to ask:
Would you find a tool like this useful?
And if yes — what features would you want it to have?
Any feedback from members and mechanics is welcome.
Thanks!

[mickthemaverick]

Not for me, I avoid AI at all costs!

[xantia_v6]

I think that the proposal is technically interesting.
Can you give bit more detail about how you propose to implement it?
Would you use a commercial AI engine or train your own database?

[milancen]

I think that the proposal is technically interesting.
Can you give bit more detail about how you propose to implement it?
Would you use a commercial AI engine or train your own database?

The idea is not to replace the forum or build some “mystery AI”, but to make a smart search tool on top of the existing forum content.
In practical terms, the plan would be:
Collect and index public forum threads (only reading publicly available posts, nothing private)
Use an existing proven AI language engine to understand the meaning of a question (for example “C4 knocking noise at low speed”)
The tool then searches the indexed forum database for threads with similar problems
It returns the most relevant posts and highlights where the solution was discussed
Every result links directly back to the original forum thread, so credit stays with the original contributors

From the user’s point of view, it would feel like: “Ask a question ? instantly get links to the best existing threads where the same problem was solved.”

I’m mainly checking if people here would actually find such a tool useful before investing time into building it.

[shtu]

Alternatively, some key words and "site:frenchcarforum.co.uk/forum/" in Google will do the same thing.

eg
https://www.google.com/search?q=C4+knoc ... 2Fforum%2F

Then, if you're a fan of the chatty, overly-confident tone of AI based results, click on the AI Mode tab.

https://www.google.com/search?q=C4+knoc ... hbIPy5z0IA

Even the old-school advanced search page will help a lot, https://www.google.co.uk/advanced_search

Can't see any need for a seperate tool, bearing in mind all the forum content has already been scraped and indexed by every search engine out there.

[pi14]

Hi! Great idea. This could be an advanced searching tool

[myglaren]

It would certainly be very helpful to have the forum organised as a database to quickly and easily locate previous answers to problems, after all the same faults do keep occurring on different cars.

It is naturally time consuming to search the forum but as Shtu mentions, the advanced Google search is quite helpful with such searches and something I sometimes employ.

On the surface an AI bot doing the search sounds to be quite useful but like Mick, I too have something of an aversion to AI, mostly due to all the nonsense I see generated by AI's by people who should never be allowed anywhere near them.

[milancen]

It would certainly be very helpful to have the forum organised as a database to quickly and easily locate previous answers to problems, after all the same faults do keep occurring on different cars.

It is naturally time consuming to search the forum but as Shtu mentions, the advanced Google search is quite helpful with such searches and something I sometimes employ.

On the surface an AI bot doing the search sounds to be quite useful but like Mick, I too have something of an aversion to AI, mostly due to all the nonsense I see generated by AI's by people who should never be allowed anywhere near them.

One more thing I’d like to add: I’d also want this tool to be able to search non-English Citroën/PSA forums, like Russian or Eastern European discussion boards. I’ve often found great solutions on Russian sites that don’t show up easily with standard search engines, and I think bringing those together in one searchable database

And I do understand your pov, its very helpful

[Richard_C]

I think I would still prefer to use the exisiting forum search functions even if it took me a while. If AI produced no relevant results I would want to use common sense and do it myself in case AI has misunderstood the question. Even worse if it produces superficially credible but wrong results.

As I would have no idea how it had been 'taught' I wouldn't know how specific it was: if I had a problem with (say) a 1.6 Blue diesel engine in a C4 Picasso, I would want to know it had looked for the same engine in Peugeots and Citroens various, and Grand Picasso and Spacetourer. I would want to know that a search for C5 III also looked for C5 3 and C5 X7, C5 2008? etc. I'm sure AI could do it, but how would I know? The forum isn't massive like "all the knowledge on earth" massive so with patience most people who know enough to fix a problem also know enough to do a search.

It also raises the question of ownership of the AI tool - the forum is run by willing volunteers, if an AI tool is introduced who maintains it, who 'owns' it if that person leaves for any reason. What happens to the distilled knowledge that the AI tool produces, what's to stop the combined wisdom of years of contributions to the forum being commercialised? Maybe I'm just a pessimistic grumpy old guy.

(* when I was growing up, the AI man came round to farms in a Bedford CA Van, bringing a scary looking sort of syringe-pump thing with the objective of improving the breed and in turn milk yields)

[the-termin8r]

I personally prefer the old school method as well. Often times wading through other results means I either get ideas about things or solutions to other problems; these are things that the AI would theoretically filter out as they're not a direct and exact answer to a search. I don't trust a computer to do my thinking for me or to have the same thought process as me.

[PaulC5]

I do not like the AI stuff google produces. On a search it always shows an AI result first and reads as if it might be correct when it should have a disclaimer saying it might be a load of rubbish. Then a bit further down the search are often the same words from the source so it appears to only have looked at one result. Then as you go further down the search results it keeps giving AI stuff.