This is the Helpers conference, a place where those of us insane
enough to volunteer our time to help the new users can discuss
help-related issues.  Enjoy!

126 responses total.

Out of curiosity, it was mesg -h y, wasn't it?

Yes.

Are there enough "helpers"? About half the times that I log in, there
are no helper flags up (that are not leftovers). At this moment,
there was only our helper-honcho, robh, until I joined conf. Almost
every time I am the lone helper, I get a  write help. I suspect that
there are long periods with no on-line helpers available. Do we need
to appeal for more helpers?

We probably should.  One user asked me what hours the help-staff
was available.  I laughed at first, but when you think of it, we
really are only available during certain hours.

Does anyone want to post an appeal in Agora?  I'm still
boycotting the place.

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To all of you helpers who want more helpers, I decided to join as a helper.
I am usually on only when helpers aren't, and someone wrote me for help, even
though i wasnt, so, anyways, I guess i am a helper...

Welcome to the club! I enjoy being helpful - especially when I provide
correct information! ;-).

Welcome, Ken.

One of the best things I learned was how to say, "I don't know,
but I know the right person to ask--that way we can both find out."
After that, I'd mail staff and ask for the answer to be sent to the
person requesting help and myself.

I also read the entire info conference.  Some of what's in 
there is too specific to be of use, but a lot of it has
answers to questions people ask all the time.

I turn on my helper flag when I'm on and have time to deal with people
asking for help.  That hasn't been that often lately, but I'll try to
remember to do it more.

I have a macro in .cfonce that turns on my flag when I enter bbs
and turns it off when I shell out. I figure if I'm conferencing,
I'm available for others doing the same that need help. 

how do i change my telephone number and how do i find out my mail address?
done

Welcome to Grex, warblade.  Your e-mail address on Grex is
warblade@cyberspace.org.  As for changing your phone number, you'll have
to talk to your local phone complany about that. ;)  Actually, all that
information you gave to Grex when you ran the newuser program (well, a lot
of it, anyway) is in a file in your home directory called .plan, which you can
edit.  There are a variety of editors to choose from on Grex.  My favorite
is pico.  To use pico to edit your .plan, type "!pico .plan" (without the
quotes) at the next prompt you get to.  It's a pretty easy full screen
editor.  You can move around it with the arrow keys, and all the commands
you need to know are listed at the bottom of the screen.

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(But make sure to avoid item #1 there.  It's a real waste...)

By the way, I guess I've also joined the club!  I even went so far as to 
put that command in my .login file.  Is that brave, or what?!?  8*)

Welcome to the club! I have the command in my .cfonce file, as well as
one to do mesg -h n when I leave Picospan. My Unix Shell is My Refuge.

I've been figuring lately that if I get as far down in my .cflist as the
helpers conference, I must have time to turn my help flag on.

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I'd like to be one of the helpers, but I need some help first
myself. Do I need to set my help flag whenever I logon ? If so
can I put the command to do so in my .login or .cshrc so it
turns on whenever I login ?

Indeed, I have "mesg -h y" in my .login.

(Remember, .login is for commands you want executed when
you log in, .cshrc is for setting environment variables
and stuff like that, not executing commands.)

Well I've been living on grex for over a week now. I'm on every day and
sometimes all day. So I wanted to see if there was anyway that I could be more
useful and the funny thing was I first mentioned this to Robh the first time we
meet....well.... need I say more. Nice to be here and beable to offer what
limeted knowlage I have and also nice to meet all of you.

Welcome Brett

Welcome to Grex, head!

q
!q
!done
done

Hello cyc!  Welcome to Grex!

Welcome to Grex, cyc!  Try joining the help confernce.  This one 
is probably not of much use to you . . . yet.  8*)

heh, I remember my first bbs responce.  ANyway, robh is a great helper.
I have decided to help out too.  I will have the help flag on every
minute that I am on grex (unless I am REALLY busy) and for all teh regular
grex users who check the users lists (who finger users w etc.) know I'm
on grex a whole lot.  Also, I'd like to add, I would of been a grex helper
about a month or so earlier, but i didnt' know hwo to turn the help flag, 
on, and i wouldnt' ask anyone, cuz then it would be kinda stupid to not
know how to be a helper, but want to be one. (understand that?)  It wasn't
until i accidentally read the manual pages on mesg that i realized
how to turn the flag on.  
Also, I like helping users out for teh fowling reasons:
1.  It makes others think grex is a wonderful place (which it is)
2.  I like to help other people out.
3.  Being a helper is a wonderful way to meet all sorts of new people.
4.  hold on, a helper just wrote me =)
5.  and finally, i knew how frustrating things were when i first got on
grex, and i had never heard of bbs, unix or anything before

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Not much. Enough to set the flag. We discussed criteria somewhere once
(maybe even here?) and the default-concensus was that there would be
no criteria (a default-concensus is not a concensus, but what happens
when people get tired of discussing the matter - nothing). The real
question is, when does a helper decide that she/he can't answer enough
questions, and quits? Some probably should quit, but don't. I keep my
helper flag on, and find I can answer *most* questions about Grex, but
I am a dummy about scripting...and party (which I refer to others).
By the way, I had to ask how fix it so that my helper flag turned off
when I left conf....would you have told me to figure it out myself,
Valerie? [Actually, I approve of your responses, Valerie, but one gets
a reputation as being hard-nosed that way...welcome to the club - we
need more discipline in our lives.]

  I think you should know the basics; uploading, downloading, deleting 
files and directories, logging on and off, setting flags, etc.

 and also how to refer people to staff, when you cannot answer a question
appropriatly.

IMHO, you should know as much about Grex as you can, and you
should know how to refer a help-seeker when you haven't got
a clue.

(And yes, if you don't know how to automatically set your help
flag every time you log on, you probably shouldn't be a helper.  >8)

I also like your answer, Valerie.  I think it makes for a grext "test" of the
proficiency of a potential helper.  

I would, however, also probably tell him *why* I didn't tell him how exactly
to do it.  I would probably explain that if he couldn't figure out how to read
the man pages and turn his flag on using the info from the man pages, then
he would probably be doing a disservice to many of the people he was trying
to help.  

Whaddya think?

A lot of the help-seeker questions I get need less knowledge than editing
a script file.  In that situation I definitely would not have (and of
course could not have without root access) gone in and done it for him. 
But I would have told him what to do and why it would work.  That would at
least let him know enough about a few things that he'd be more helpful to
someone in the future.  

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 Done. I wrote tinman and asked him to tell me his problem, and I would try
to help.

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 I spoke with kklee about 2 days ago, and we had a very nice conversation.
I don't recall her problem, but it was dealt with.

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Don't panic, I talked to her and I think we've got it sorted out.

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