mfh's Journal: Google Groups: Troubleshooting Group

Do you have no time? Are you tired of being the guy everyone comes to with problems?

Now there is hope.

Send everyone you know who pesters you with questions to this Google Group.

All topics are permitted, as long as they relate to business.

The other thing I ask is that all of us sign up to the group and occasionally post answers as they come in. Kind of like a distributed workload.

The format is:

1. User A has a question about topic X... posts it.
2. People post answers and debate the problem until it's resolved.

What's the Payoff?

The payoff is that this will make your job easier.

For any question, regardless of how complex it is, you can now simply say:

"Try the Google Group for Troubleshooting -- they can answer any business question."

And then you can simply say, "I'm a member there, so I will chime in when you post your question."

Then walk away and smile. The person will appreciate you wanting to take their problem seriously, but they will LOVE the fact that you are bringing a whole team in to help them problem solve.

Open problem solving helps get more minds on the issue and it's one of the fun aspects of Slashdot.

But the drawbacks of Slashdot or any other website for that matter is that they are restricted by topic. I am making the policy that Troubleshooting will answer any question, whether ethical, programming related, technology related -- in an open forum, the way it should be.

Because you can give someone fish, or you can teach them to fish.