NeoOffice Development Plans and Support Levels for 2007

OPENSTEP · Posted: Sat Mar 10, 2007 5:18 am Post subject:

Also, another very, very, very important point...

Never use e-mail, trinity private messaging, or other personal contact details Patrick, myself, or anyone else here have provided in order to ask user support questions. This is extremely offensive to myself unless it's one of my close friends or coworkers/volunteers.

We have the forums and this is where user support questions belong.

My private communication channels are for my friends, coworkers, and personal business. Anonymously asking a user support question through using our private contact information is the surest way for it to be ignored and deleted with spite.

Others may do reply and provide private one-on-one support, but it's something that's frankly just totally ridiculous to even assume us to do so for friends, much less people you've never even heard of. If others volunteer to do this or say it's acceptable on a person to person basis that's one thing; I have never done so nor ever intended to do so in the past unless explicitly stated. In the absence of a public statement of desire for people to personally undertake one-on-one support, I would directly assume that any unsolicited support request received by direct e-mail or private message is not desired and will be treated as spam/spim.

This is how I treat just about everything coming through personal channels from people I don't already know these days Very Happy

Please note that this wasn't precipitated by any of the back and forth that's unfortunately occurred with some of the aqua & toolbar related bugs; over the last couple days a few new users suddenly started to assume I was a personal help desk; I am not.

ed

ovvldc · Posted: Sat Mar 10, 2007 7:20 am Post subject:

Yeah, I got one too. Unfortunately, it happens once in a few months that a total newbie thinks he or she can get a faster answer by PMing all of the moderators.

I tend to send back messages that explain that this is a counterproductive approach. In the most recent case, the offending user had already been pointed to the wiki by other forum regulars by the time I even saw the message....

OPENSTEP · Posted: Sat Mar 10, 2007 11:26 am Post subject:

Some newbies also submit support requests via the "Submit News" link from the main page...

Do you think there's any way we could make the process clearer? The server does have the registration e-mail that gets sent; perhaps we can include better instructions in addition to links to the wiki, users guide, etc.

I think that was a great suggestion, fairly straightforward to implement (although translation may be non-trivial via e-mail...), and could have a good immediate effect.

Thoughts?

ed

ovvldc · Posted: Sat Mar 10, 2007 3:04 pm Post subject:

Well, who uses the 'submit news' button? I am wondering if it shouldn't just be taken of the main page.

As for the registration e-mails, I do not know which languages it gets sent in, but I am sure we can work out something out on the English version.

It comes to a point where I would consider e-mailing a 'quickstart guide' in PDf or protected ODF out with the registration e-mail to catch the usual stuff (I still have that Finnish migration FAQ stuff if someone cares).

Best wishes,
Oscar

Samwise · Posted: Sun Mar 11, 2007 9:05 am Post subject:

RoyFocker · Posted: Sun Mar 11, 2007 9:21 am Post subject:

ED: I usually send to Patrick the spanish translation of the yellow messages that he puts on the neooffice home page.
There's another way to do that? I don't want to offend no one! Sad

pluby · The Architect Joined: Jun 16, 2003 Posts: 11949

ovvldc · Posted: Sun Mar 11, 2007 1:06 pm Post subject:

OPENSTEP · Posted: Mon Mar 12, 2007 8:49 pm Post subject:

Yeah, no worries...I mean if you're answering the topic here you're probably definitely not one of the kinds of people who do this Wink

There are some people who, for some reason or another, think the world revolves around them and will happily send e-mails with their "ohmigod why don't I have the double borders? really if I had this I'd just ditch office!!! lolz" kind of question, post to multiple forums, start private messaging everyone and anyone who's answered a support question in the past, trying to contact us by AIM, calling on the phone (yes, it's happened to me...).

No offense, but I can't help but think people who think that much of themselves almost deserve to not get helped and perhaps bring them a bit closer to reality Wink

ed

LemonAid · Posted: Tue Mar 13, 2007 12:31 am Post subject:

Samwise · Posted: Tue Mar 13, 2007 10:36 am Post subject:

pluby · The Architect Joined: Jun 16, 2003 Posts: 11949

So I want to thank the helpful people that have been evaluating bugs. However, I've noticed one small problem: evaluators who close the bug never see any of the response postings.

Generally, this is because posting to a bug does not cause Bugzilla to send you e-mail of any future postings. In order to get such e-mail, you have to add yourself to the bug's cc: list or have yourself as the person assigned to the bug.

There are some options that we can do:

1. Just ignore the response posts like we do now

-or-

2. Get used to adding ourselves to the cc: list when we evaluate a bug

-or-

3. Have me add the common evaluators to the "Developer" group in Bugzilla so that you can assign the bug to yourself when you evaluate or close it

- or -

4. Have me modify the Bugzilla code so that all posters to the bug get an e-mail

Which preference does everyone prefer?

Patrick

Samwise · Posted: Thu Mar 15, 2007 12:40 pm Post subject:

Personally I'm trying option 2. I'm not against options 3 and 4 though; but I don't like option 1.

pluby · The Architect Joined: Jun 16, 2003 Posts: 11949

sardisson · Town Crier Joined: Feb 01, 2004 Posts: 4588

I actually regularly scan the "closed" bugs list for new comments, particularly for bugs I've closed, so I don't add myself to cc lists except of bugs I'm actively interested in (I get too much email as-is).

I think I'm really the only person not cc'ing myself to such bugs; most everyone else is doing 2.

Smokey