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Today's E-mail Rant
by Raul Gallegos on Wednesday, August 15 2007I was going through all my E-mail today and noticed how many messages, both personal and mailing list related, had cryptic subjects or were just plain hard to read. Don’t get me wrong, I like helping out as much as the next guy, but sometimes a little netiquette can go a long way. The below are just some of my thoughts and suggestions when writing to the GW mailing lists or to the support box. Following these suggestions will go a long way for both the person who is asking questions and the person who is trying to answer them.
First off, as you all know, we don’t really like policing each individual message and all in all, the guidelines for the GW mailing lists are not so tight that people are hand slapped for every infringement. So, keeping this in mind, read on:
Topics Discussed
As you know, the GW-info lists and the support box are for GW Micro products. There are always going to be gray areas because of the fact that our products such as Window-Eyes interact with your computer and with other applications. However, asking how to install memory on your computer, or how to burn cds on your computer are not really GW Micro product questions because they are not related directly to our products. Now, in the example of burning cds, you could ask the following and it would be related. "How can I make Nero more accessible with Window-Eyes so that I can burn a cd?" Again, this is just an example. In short, messages which are about using other products or learning new things are better answered on other lists which may specialize in such topics, and messages which ask how to use our products, report problems with our products, giving tips and tricks on our products, ETC, are appropriate and very much welcome.
Message Subjects
It is very important for your message subject to reflect what it is you want to discuss. A generic message subject like the following examples are generic and most likely won’t get answered as quickly.
v help
v question
v still waiting
v hello
v no subject
v answer please
v can I do this
v bug
Many people are subscribed to various lists and get over 300 messages per day. Because of this, they depend on the message subject. Let’s say that a new user of Thunderbird and Window-Eyes posts a message to the list because he needs help. However the message subject is simply, "help." Now, let’s say that someone who is real good with Thunderbird is going through all her messages later that day. She gets well over 300 messages and so does not have the time or the inclination to open every single message. So, instead, she just checks out the message subjects and if someone is asking about something she is familiar with, she’ll open the message and answer it. Because the person asking for help on Thunderbird and Window-Eyes just used the word help in the subject, she just skips over that message, not knowing someone was asking for help with Thunderbird. Had the person written something like, "Help with Thunderbird and Window-Eyes 6.1" The person who is good at Thunderbird would immediately know by the message subject that the person who needs help is using Thunderbird and Window-Eyes 6.1. In most cases, she would not skip the message and then the question would be answered.
We the staff at GW Micro read all messages regardless of the subject, but many times we too have no idea what the message will be about until after we open it because of the subject being so vague. So, in short, try to practice good netiquette and put an appropriate and detailed message subjects when posting your messages. In fact, I personally would put the name of the program and version number along with the version of Window-Eyes I’m using, but that is just me.
Giving Detailed Steps
Many times when we read messages about problems people are having, we may not be able to duplicate the problems. As you know, we must be able to duplicate the problem in order to take steps to correct it. In order for us to try and reproduce the problem or offer help in solving any problems, giving exact steps, even if they are a lot, will help. Sometimes even telling us that you scratched your nose or sneezed in the middle of reproducing a problem will give us the necessary insight to solve the problem. Let’s say for example that someone writes a message saying that they want to change the rate of their speech to a slower speed, but it gets faster instead of slower. Since there are multiple ways of doing this, we would want to know what steps this person has taken to change the rate of the speech. The below example is a good step-by-step list of what the person can write.
1) I press control-backslash to open the Window-Eyes panel.
2) I press alt-s to open the Screen menu.
3) I press down arrow once and I hear, "Rate = 60 R."
4) I press enter.
5) I press down arrow to slow it down, but the number increases and the voice gets faster.
If the person had just written a simple message like, I press down arrow and the speech gets faster, the first thing I would have thought is that maybe they are not pressing control-alt-down-arrow since that is the on the fly command to slow down the speech. I would have written them, telling them that they need to press control-alt-down-arrow, instead of just down arrow. The person would then either be confused, or would have tried pressing control-alt-down-arrow while in the rate dialog box and would still not get the results he was wanting. Since however, he gave me detailed steps above, I figured out that because of the way the rate scroll slider is designed in Window-Eyes, pressing down or right arrow increases the number, making speech faster. Pressing left or up arrow decreases the number, making the speech slower. I then can write a response based on the information he wrote in his steps. In the long run, he took a little more time to write the message, but he got his answer after one reply. This way, no going back and forth E-mails were sent while everyone tries to guess what he meant.
Have Fun
We want this to be an enjoyable list where users can share their experience and knowledge with other users. Just because I ranted for three Word pages about how the list should follow my suggestions, I’d still like to see everyone have a good time when posting to our lists and our support box. Got complaints and comments? just send them to my E-mail address. Make sure to put an appropriate subject so I don’t miss it. Oh, and make sure to give me detailed steps of how you came to the conclusion of your comment or complaint.
