CmdrTaco's Journal: How to Ask for Help

I am in a position where I get a fair amount of requests for help from people. This is cool. This is part of my job. But there are a few things that need to happen before I can help anyone.

First off, the intelligent subject. "Hey" or "Hello" or "Help" doesn't really help me very much. My inbox is full, and I need to quickly seperate the "Oh shit the server is crashing" from the "Hey, I'm having problems logging in can you help me." I'm not asking for much, perhaps something like "User Bob Can't Login" or "Moderation Feature Request" or something.

Of course it goes without saying that the user emailing would have had the foresight to read the FAQ. "It goes without saying" is a nice way to say "You should do this, but nobody does." But I don't really mind when people email me to ask important questions like "Where does your nickname come from" or "Please make the rejected Submission Queue Available for readers to view". I honestly dont' really mind when peopel email me something clearly explained in the FAQ... I have a nifty little templated reply system... I can have a message whizzing off to them within 5 seconds explaining that they should read the FAQ... or in the case of bug reports & feature requests, they should use the SourceForge project to track bugs.

Now here's the tricky part. Including all the relevant data. I can't begin to tell you the number of emails I have got over the years where the gist of the messages was:

• I can't post
• I am banned
• I got moderated unfairly
• I have a question about this moderation
• I can't login

But this call for help fails to provide the approx. time when it occurs, the IP trying to do whatever it is that can't be done, the comment moderated unfairly, or even THE NICKNAME OF THE USER WHO CAN'T DO SOMETHING. Do users really think I'm psychic? Do they think I read all 10,500 comments yesterday and will remember the thread they are describing? I guess my point is to include all relevant information. Nickname. Time. Browser. IP. You may not think you need it, but it doesn't hurt. It means when it comes to your message, we have a bleeding chance of helping you!

Next, don't be rude! You're asking for help... just don't be a dick! I'm not saying the first sentance of your email should be "Oh great and powerful Rob" or even "Excuse me". I don't ask for a please. I don't ask for a thank you. All I ask is that you aren't rude. I shit you not, I have got emails from users that say things like "I know you won't even fucking read this, but I can't login. And I know you don't give a shit, but my nickname is blahblah". If you really believe that we are horrible rotten people, you can keep it to yourself for just the 3 sentances necessary to ask for help.

What I find amusing is scanning my junk folder. I do this a couple times a week because there are occasionally a few false matches. It sucks, but between Mail.app & Spamassassin, and hundreds of emails/day, it's inevitable. I find poor guys who are emailing me from blacklisted domains or whatever, and writing in all caps and I find 3 messages, each more angry then the previous, as they proclaiming my AssFactor is rising with each successive unanswered attempt to get feedback regarding a moderation or something.

I'm cool helping people, but If you're an ass, I've got 10 other people I want to help first. And then, if it's 7:30pm, I think I'd rather watch some anime then help the guy who calls me names.

Also, don't email using an anonymizer or something. People email me thinking that I will have some sort of vendetta against them. Now don't get me wrong- I will clearly have a vendetta against you if you are an ass. But if you ask a fair question "Was this modded fairly?" or "Can you help me login?" and are polite, I will totally look at it. Now in the case of moderation questions, I don't usually bother replying. I check the message, and if there's a problem I do something (moderate or something) but usually when I see issues with moderation, I let M2 take care of it. M2 works surprisingly well. But people try to do stuff like ask for help with a user account, but they won't tell me what user account it is... and they send their message from an anonymous remailer.

Finally, your reply-to better friggin' work. I bet 5 times a week I write out a lengthy explanation, or I track somethign down for a user, only to have my reply bounce.

So there it is:

• Read the FAQ first. If it takes you 5 minutes to read the index, and me 2 hours to get to your email, you'll get your answer faster. Besides, if you ask a FAQ, I'm just gonna tell you to read the FAQ ;)
• You don't have to say please & thank you, but you don't have to be an ass either. You may think me to be an ass, but if you start our discussion by telling me this, rest assured that I will go out of my way to live up to your expectations!
• Provide all information: IP, Browser, Time, Direct URLs, User Account, and a working email address to reply to! Put the most important info in the Subject!

Seems obvious, but I can't tell you how many emails we get over here a week that fail on one of these 3 points. Could save dozens of emails and countless hours of waiting on each end of the discussion!