I got another PM asking for technical assistance

[Virchanza]

Today I received a PM from a forum member who wanted technical assistance.

If you read my signature, you'll see that I refuse to respond to PM's if the questions being asked should have been asked on the public forums.

But anyway I got to thinking, I wonder how much of this goes on? How many of you here receive PM's from time to time with people asking you questions that should have been asked on the public forums?

To the people that receive these PM's, I'd like to ask you not to respond to them. Instead, just give a polite reply suggesting that the sender post his questions on the public forum.

We all gain from the discussions that go on on the public forum. We gain from other people correcting our mistakes, and we gain from other people suggesting better alternatives.

Keep it public, people. There's dozens, if not hundreds of experts on this forum who can work together to find fantastic solutions to problems and questions. Plus it's nice to see regular life on the public forums.

Just my suggestions, of course.

[Snayler]

I received a PM today, it's not the first time it happens. Normally I just delete the message.

[g3ksan]

I started replying to them, for some reason I did something to attract it, I barely post, I mostly lurk, but eventually I just stopped. Not worth the effort.

[TAPE]

I reply to some depending on the nature of the question, and the manner in which it is formulated.

If you hadn't noticed, when you first join, the forums can be a damn harsh place, and if you are not
sure about whether you should post or not, you usually don't for fear of doing something wrong /
get the dreaded LMGTFY or possibly even infractions.. at least I felt that way.

Sometimes the real easy questions are the ones you dont want to make a post on as its 'linux / networking 101'
but can drive you mad if you can't find the answer when you need it.

That being said, I received one yesterday which was obviously on the road to no good but well formulated and explained
and to that I will also respond but in this case advising that next time it gets forwarded straight to the mods.

[lupin]

I get PMs that request technical assistance, as do many of the mods, and I generally ignore them unless I already know the sender or the subject falls specifically into an area of my knowledge and the answer is too specific to be of interest to others here.

Otherwise its my opinion that the questions should be asked on the open forums so everyone can benefit from the answer.

If anyone receives PMs that are particularly bothersome, such as messages on topics that violate any of the forum rules, you can feel free to report it and one of the moderators will investigate.

[Archangel-Amael]

My inbox is generally always overflowing. So then the system sends me email telling me of this fact.
I accept it as part of the mod job. However I am with most others, I do not generally help per PM. It does defeat the forum purpose.
Also note that each user can choose to turn of the ability to receive PM's in their user control panel.
While this may eliminate the questions for assistance it will also eliminate all others as well.
My best advice is to ignore/delete them. If they become a problem from the same user over and over feel free to report it.

[Citruspers]

This used to happen to me all the time when I was a moderator at a large forum, but as a normal member here it only happens occasionally. I usually tell them to keep it public when the subject is not relevant. I did have a couple of PM exchanges regarding a very specific issue which was okay with me (no public benefit)

[macphail]

i just got one yesterday. since it doesn't happen much to me, i can answer it personally. of course, that answer is 'stop it with the PM support requests, already.'


my two cents says that unless there is a specific reason that you are contacting someone directly (previous conversation, SME on a specific topic, whatever) then questions should be in the forums...

and I can't help but wonder; with the timing of this thread, is it the same n00b that spammed everyone here over the last couple of days asking for help?

[TAPE]

Possibly.. and refrain from using the word nOOb if you will. It hurts me


Edit

Deleted drunken attitude

And considering the resonse I just got, doubt I will be responding much myself to PMs soon...

[lvlarc]

I sent a few people a short and clear message seeking some guidance, simply because new members have to wait for their threads to be submitted and I wasn't sure how long this would take, or if it would even be approved, besides flooding the forum with another topic. If you didn't have the time nor cared to respond then you could've simply deleted the message. Anways I'd like to thank the kind fella who did take a minute of his time to help me out as I managed to crack the AP with some MAC tweaking. Any noobies out there come unstuck as I did, then fire away with your PM's and I'll do my best