Peter's Gekko

public Blog MyNotepad : Imho { }

A blog is not a helpdesk

Please forgive me when this appears a little rude, but I just have to get this of my chest.

I do answer every email question but recently I am bombarded with comments asking for help on some this or that. I know my blog has a lot of hints to solve many a small tidbit you just have to get solved to get your app up and running. Nothing special but they can be the end of a long search for something stupid. Some of these posts have become a hang-out place for a whole community. That's very nice and I am honored to serve as a host for that. But recently I feel some comments are turning into a direction I can no longer manage. With all kinds of questions which are off topic (how to send email form asp.net on a post on a linkbutton), easier to find with google (YFGI) or already contain the answer. Not all comments are written that clearly (there is no .NET 1.4) and/or contain dead links. The good thing is I can edit comments with CS. Did you know you can even contain an image in a comment? This is the result after my edit. I didn't change the 1.4 part..

But now the hard part. What am I to do with all these questions/comments? Delete them ? Shout JFGI ? Write a new post on them ? What may sound quite OT to me is somebody else's serious problem of the week. Where and how to draw the line ?

Any advice is more than welcome.

Published Feb 27 2007, 09:43 AM by pvanooijen

Filed under: Chatter

Comments

Bill Pierce said:

I have a similar problem (on a much, much smaller scale). I had troubleshooted getting a Sound Blaster Live sound card working with Vista and now I'm Creative tech support on the issue (http://www.google.com/search?q=vista+sound+blaster+live).

I generally just leave the specific questions there and have found that other commenters actually answer them. If the questions get too demanding or rude then I usually delete them.

-Bill

# February 27, 2007 10:57 AM

sergiopereira said:

Just delete all the comments you think are abusive. Wait! No! Not this one! Noooooooo!!

# February 27, 2007 12:04 PM

Had to do it said:

Hey guys, I'm trying to get a programming job but I keep getting stuck on this "FizzBuzz" stuff. Is there some code you can show me (or show me where to download it). Plz help!

</cheTONGUEek>

# February 27, 2007 6:07 PM

Christian said:

Its a tough one. I guess it depends on two things: What (do you) think is spam? And does it help the conversation?

To me, spam is something that doesn't contribute to the conversation. Regardless if its a link for wetsloppysnatches.com or a question that is so far off topic.

Delete it!

# February 27, 2007 9:52 PM

Sahil Malik said:

I get a lot of such emails and comments myself.

Don't let it piss you off. I answer whatever I can without affecting my work, if not, the next guy leaving a comment answers it frequently.

# February 27, 2007 11:37 PM

Jon Galloway said:

I'm with Sahil. It's nice to make someone's day when I have the time. The readers who post desperate pleas don't know what a blog is; they just stumbled on your site because Google took them there.

# February 28, 2007 12:40 AM

pvanooijen said:

Thanks everybody for your wise advice. Inspiration for further thoughts. When they have Crystal-ized (pun intended) I'll post them.

@Bill: How make my Soundblaster Video Editor work with Vista, me nOOby :)

# February 28, 2007 2:49 AM

Erjan Gavalji said:

I recently re-read a book I had read a long time ago - "The Day of the Triffids" and I had similar thoughts on that. Basically there is not much you can do to help everyone - this is just impossible. What you can make is leave the choice of "whom-to-help" to the destiny :) Think of a request number (or percent of all the questions you get) that you can handle, write a small piece of software, that will give you the indexes of the help requests and then try helpinng these guys.

This would be fair enough (at least for your self esteem, as you would not be responsible for the decision) :)

Cheers

# March 1, 2007 2:09 AM