Danial.Beta wrote:
One of the hardest things to help with is when people claim to not be able to log into the pager, or are getting errors like "BYOND Central is not available". It is nearly impossible for me to track down the source, and truth be told, I'm pretty sure it is a problem with the BYOND servers when it happens, but there is no easy way to confirm nor really direct the BYOND Staff to said posts in a timely manner. The best case scenario is one where the BYOND Staff made a point to browse the BYOND Help forums from time to time. Problem is, what would that make my job, then? As guildmaster of the BYOND Help guild, I'd practically be twittling my thumbs on the sidelines if the BYOND Staff actually started answering questions there, and it would put a lot of burden on them.
If it was an easy modification I would love to see a small history of outage type of thing. A list of times when the server went down in the past week or so would allow us to safely ignore any of those posts that were made during those times. It doesn't exactly sound feasible though, "if the site's not working, make it do work to record its downtime."
Danial.Beta wrote:
One of the hardest things to help with is when people claim to not be able to log into the pager, or are getting errors like "BYOND Central is not available". It is nearly impossible for me to track down the source, and truth be told, I'm pretty sure it is a problem with the BYOND servers when it happens, but there is no easy way to confirm nor really direct the BYOND Staff to said posts in a timely manner. The best case scenario is one where the BYOND Staff made a point to browse the BYOND Help forums from time to time. Problem is, what would that make my job, then? As guildmaster of the BYOND Help guild, I'd practically be twittling my thumbs on the sidelines if the BYOND Staff actually started answering questions there, and it would put a lot of burden on them. I wouldn't mind tackling some of the tougher questions there if I found time for it. Problem is I do tend to forget to look there. One of the issues I've had with support requests is very similar to your issue though: Some of the questions have occasionally been beyond my scope to answer. That's happened less and less as I've gotten to know the hub, but now and then I run across something that leaves me scratching my head on how to proceed. I can tell you at least that "BYOND Central is not accessible" is more often a connection problem at the user's end. Sometimes it happens site-wide and it affects multiple people, but more often than not it means the user is simply unable to reach the hub. Perhaps we should bring up this line of conversation. The big problem is, BYOND Help is a big forum for BYOND. Second only to the developer forums. Yet, it gets a fraction of the traffic, and a smaller fraction still of the oldbies and gurus who can really help. I had hoped that the change in the BYOND site, once complete(as it is now) would allow easier monitoring of multiple forums, but it has not. It's hard to bring yourself to monitoring two different forums, especially when you time might be limited, as most of our time. Most of us have lifes. Full time jobs. Kids. Wifes. Old people who demand our attention. All of these things pull on our free time, and even the extra few clicks of going to another forum seems like a lifetime of wasted time. Perhaps the true solution is a better way to see all the forums that interest you. Tom's still working on a forum change that would help in that area. Lummox JR | |
Danial.Beta wrote:
I've started a strict policy of not helping users who don't fill out a template, unless it is a general question like "Where is x option in the BYOND pager?". This helps a lot, as we can be sure we have plenty of information before helping the user. These people bug the hell out of me as well. I got sick and tired of repeated asking for the same thing information wise. That's why I wrote up my latest post in BYOND Help. I'm unsure if it was successful in aiding us in our goal to aid people. But I'm glad to see I'm not the only one referencing it. Point is, I'm just over answering the same questions over and over again. There's only so many times you can tell someone how to forward a port or how to execute DreamDaemon before you really start to question if what you're doing is really making a difference. | |
Perhaps the help forums need "form letter" replies. This kind of thing can be a huge help when answering the same questions over and over.
Lummox JR | |
I use a basic "form letter" when asking people to fill out a template, but a built in system for form letters would be totally awesome. I could come up with many of the basics, then anyone with, say, Helper rank or above would have them to choose from on the reply page.
Yes, that does sound good. If you/Tom doesn't implement a system like that, I bet I could wip up a greasemonkey script to do the job. | |
The big problem is, as Foomer suggested, that it is full of stupid questions and unhelpful users(the ones posting for help, mind you). I've tried to foster a community of help there, but most of the BYOND Help staff looses interest really quickly. I have lost interest a couple of times already, I just normally work my way back into helping.
I've started a strict policy of not helping users who don't fill out a template, unless it is a general question like "Where is x option in the BYOND pager?". This helps a lot, as we can be sure we have plenty of information before helping the user.
One of the hardest things to help with is when people claim to not be able to log into the pager, or are getting errors like "BYOND Central is not available". It is nearly impossible for me to track down the source, and truth be told, I'm pretty sure it is a problem with the BYOND servers when it happens, but there is no easy way to confirm nor really direct the BYOND Staff to said posts in a timely manner. The best case scenario is one where the BYOND Staff made a point to browse the BYOND Help forums from time to time. Problem is, what would that make my job, then? As guildmaster of the BYOND Help guild, I'd practically be twittling my thumbs on the sidelines if the BYOND Staff actually started answering questions there, and it would put a lot of burden on them.
Perhaps we should bring up this line of conversation. The big problem is, BYOND Help is a big forum for BYOND. Second only to the developer forums. Yet, it gets a fraction of the traffic, and a smaller fraction still of the oldbies and gurus who can really help. I had hoped that the change in the BYOND site, once complete(as it is now) would allow easier monitoring of multiple forums, but it has not. It's hard to bring yourself to monitoring two different forums, especially when you time might be limited, as most of our time. Most of us have lifes. Full time jobs. Kids. Wifes. Old people who demand our attention. All of these things pull on our free time, and even the extra few clicks of going to another forum seems like a lifetime of wasted time. Perhaps the true solution is a better way to see all the forums that interest you.