After talking to someone last night, I almost feel as though
"write help" has done some of Grex's users a disservice.
(Now there's a catch-line, huh?)

A help seeker last night was having many problems.  Problems
with the system, of course, or he wouldn't be writing help.
But he was also having trouble typing his messages, because
his English wasn't very good, and I suspect he was a bit
embarassed about that.  At the end, he asked me if he could
"write help" so he'd have a chance to formulate his thoughts
more cohesively.  I just told him to mail me, and I'd take
care of it.

Later on, though, I realized that we do indeed have "help"
as a mail address, which a few of our old-timers, er,
experienced users are still handling.  popcorn, remmers,
and mju, if I remember correctly.  I don't know if they're
still doing anything with it, or if it's even being used
now that "write help" is available.

It occurs to me, though, that there are probably some users
out there who would be more comfortable asking for help via
e-mail, either becuase their English isn't good, or they're
just plain shy, or whatever.

I haven't asked popcorn yet - I probably should, but I'm
not going to abort this item and retype it later - but what
do people think about handling "mail help" requests as well
as "write help" requests?  Should we make the "mail help"
option more widely known, for those who would prefer it?
popcorn, how busy is "mail help" these days?  Would you
mind adding people to the list?

12 responses total.

Seems to me that this would put us back into the "designated helpers"
mode, rather than the wider body of on-line volunteers. I often do
say I'll get back to a person seeking help, via e-mail, and that
works satisfactorily. But the first question is, as robh asks, whether
users are writing to "help".

I kind of wondered about that 'help' id. ..

Especially now, since there are times when a helper is not always
available (ie, logged on) I think that the 'help mail' would be a good 
idea.

One idea (and, yes, I will fully admit that it ha some problems, but
this is supposed to be akin to brainstorming, is it not?) would be to
forward mail to help to a 'world readable' file that anyone could 
invoke with 'mail -f <whatever/help/file>'  Of course, this has some 
obvious problems that I won't go into.

Perhaps another (and better) idea would be to set up a mailing list
alias for the 'help' id and then either have a prog or two laying
around that would add or remove those individuals who want to be
added (or removed) from the help distribution list (of course with disk
space the way it is, this could cause a few problems with 25+ copies of 
the same message laying about).

Perhaps the best solution lies in "education."  If we (you, sorry) can
encourage people to use PicoSpan for seeking answers, then I think that
the problems will be mostly taken care of.  However, getting people to
a level where they are confortable with asking "generic" questions in
PS is quite a task unto itself (maybe I'll 'write help' to figure out
how to do that!).

One thing that *needs* to be done, regardless, is that the helpers 
response must also be available so that other helpers do not see that
a "problem" has gone unanswered and respond themselves, leaving the 
poor asker with 20 different responses from 20 different people (that
is, 20 different response that add nothing new).

-bt

I assume we'd handle that as staff does, CC'ing all responses
to help, so if I signed on, saw someone's question, and saw that
(for instance) rcurl had already answered it, I could ignore it.

Re 2- I reread this response thanks to a bad participation file,
and thought I'd remind everyone of something:

The main reason we have "write help" is to provide immediate
assistance to these pour souls who don't know how to read their
old mail, delete a file, use ftp, etc.  Picospan is great, of
course, but how long do you have to wait for someone to post
an answer to your response?

Just today, someone wrote to me in a state of panic because
he thought he'd deleted an important message.  It turned out
he hadn't, I told him about the -f switch for the mail
programs, he was much relieved.  Now how long would he
have been panicking if he'd had to wait a few hours, or a few
days, to find that out?

Well, that's why I wanted "write help", anyway.

Oh don't get me wrong -- I'm not in any way shape or form
advocating the 'write help' facility.  No siree.

I just feel that there should be another way for help, what
happens if there are not any helpers on at the moment?  What
about a situation that requires a rather lengthy explanation
(in either reporting the problem, or in its solution)?
'Write' just isn't the tool of choice for these sorts of 
scenarios.

One thing that we used to do at another facility, was take all
mail addressed to 'help' and forward it to the apporpriate 
helper (for instance, one person was in charge of mail protocols,
one was the usenet/bb expert, etc).  Of course, as you've pointed 
out, rob, the answer may be a few days forthcoming (which to a 
slightly paniced user can seem an eternity), and this also requires 
yet another task to be performed by an already overworked staff 
(correct?).

How about something like this .. I notice that there is no system
'help' command available, prehaps help could just paginate a little
file that briefly covers 'write help' as a first resort, using party
as a second place to seek answers, perhaps (a BIG perhaps) the 'man -k'
command could make a guest appearance, I would guess that PicoSpan
should also make an appearance (and my hat to whomeever can come up
with the help text to that) and failing all else, send mail to help, 
or staff, or whomever.  Of course, that still leaves unanswered
how to handle that mail (if any of it ever gets through the initial 
filters).  Pointing users to a FAQ may also be beneficial.

"What do you think, sirs?"

-bt

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Perhaps there could be a e-mail alias that could direct all of that mail to a
shell process that could be checked on by anyone.  Another thing: for those who
get on here via the internet, mailing 'help' is a good thing, because they can
d it from their home system...

This is a good point!  Frequently, users ask me to mail answers
to their home sites.  (When they mail me for help, that is.)

How was this whole 'mail help' thing resolved, anyway?

ending mail to "help" now sends mail to the staff, sort of.

Uhm, I send mail to help like last month about a user who was getting
harassing mail from some user on grex who apparently was just using grex as a 
mailing address.  Did any of the recipents ever do anything about it?

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