tech support category

[onthespot]

in the recent service dog thread there was brought up that the staff are heavily burdened with tech support queries. How about a tech support category, answered by the members at large, not the responsibility of the mod staff to answer every question. There are sometimes hundreds of people online at any given time that could answer simple tech questions, sometimes complex ones too, and that might ease the load of the mods. That category for sure would still be moderated by them as all the rest are, but it is a lot easier to moderate a category than it is to create the entire content from scratch youself every day. Let the BYC'ers help out the newbies. They are so helpful and knowledgeable in so many areas, I couldn't see them going wrong here. Maybe a few stickies for the top few repeatedly asked qestions, "How Do I Post a Picture On Here" or something like that.

 

[DuckLady]

Great thoughts!

We always encourage members to help others. For instance, Miss_Jayne has a thread on resizing pics.

There are also the FAQ here which were created from member's questions and in a lot cases, their answers.

Please don't anyone feel they can't jump in on a question and answer it if they have the answer.

The search function is also a great resource and it is one that the staff uses to answer questions by uising member's experiences.

 

[Nifty-Chicken]

We do get a lot of questions like this (many via PM and emails) and I encourage all the moderators not to answer privately, but to point the members to the forum so everyone can learn and help together. Too bad some moderators still can't resist helping people via PM (ya, you know who you are!).

In my experience, having a dedicated section won't lessen the number of "tech support" queries we get via PM and email. It is just a function of the number of people that (for whatever reason) don't read the FAQs, use the search tools, or just post their questions publicly.

<smoky bear voice> Only You Can Prevent Moderator Meltdown!