I have noticed a lot of threads asking for a fleet. I understand that a few people do it, but as so many people do it, I wonder:
Do those people actually look through this forum? Or are they just lazy, and want to make a post instead of looking?
I would appreciate feedback on this. I may be totally confused, but I would be interested in other people's thoughts on this.
Comments
Also some folks have the opinion that whatever they;re asking, they're the first to ask for it. (That's usually why the search function doesn't get used that often) Or they like to have a fresh answer. Or an answer directly for themselves and no one else.
I've been doing tech support for *cough* years and have helped on many of the top level support forums. Millions have been spent on studies on interaction with support and how to make things better and easier.
Almost always comes down to a single reason.
People are f'ing lazy.
It takes two seconds to throw up a post asking to be spoonfed. Takes more than that to do your own research.
Not everybody is like that of course. And some support forums have 96 pixel text saying that folks are expected to do a search first before posting and could face problems if they don't.
I worked with a webhost once that charged a $5 fee for submitting a question that was already answered in the forums or as a FAQ. The money was donated to a charity every month and there was a joke thread where folks willingly asked a dumb question just to chip in the five bucks so the webhost didn;t take the money and users learned very quickly what was expected of them. (The fee was never enforced. They also had a 6 month 90%+ retention rate which is unheard of in the industry so they were doing something right.)
Maybe I;m a bit confused but those fleet request threads are being posted correctly into the Starbase One subforum.
I;m not seeing folks being unable to find that subforum as an issue since they are posting to the correct place.
I thought of another reason. it could be just a fleet trying to drum up support for their fleet. Have a f2p player make a request on what fleet that they should join and have a [deep voice now]responsible and trust worth fleet officer post a suggestion that they should look at their fleet[/deep voice].
You never know.
:rolleyes:
But they are getting there. That's why I'm asking. I don;t see the issue in this specific case.
I think any poster who asks a question that's been asked more than five times owes every one on the forums at that time 1m in ecs.
Why is Fleet recruitment below the Foundry and Support? Personally for a main page the Feedback section looks too large IMHO but at the very least Fleet Recruitment should be above the Foundry. If you eliminate the scrolling aspect then there is no excuse for not being able to find it and any further such posts would more likely be the fake posts to drum up more recruits as you say.
Im no web designer but I do know that on a main page you want to eliminate scrolling as much as possible.
Agreed but then you get into the issue of having too much information above the fold. That leads to information overload and that's a mid level nono for design work.
The big header image and the breadcrumb section don;t help either since that's half of the available screen real estate. At least on my screen.
When I look at the front of the page, I can see as far down as Release Notes. I have to scroll for everything. I do see thing that the page continues downward. I would hope scrolling (or paging down at least) would be assumed.
Sorry, I didn't make it to your post. What was that?
"turn it off and on again"
Rule two of tech support
"is it plugged in"
Rule three of tech support
"is the modem switched on"
(never done the job myself but My Cousin does it for a living for AOL)
That's why I always confirm what process they're doing and/or ask for a walkthru to the steps that they;re doing.
May not solve 90% of the problems but seems like it's at least 50%.
Been there. I've got the voice prompts for the cable company's automatic troubleshooter memorized. I started unplugging my modem so it has no choice but to send me the a human being.
Then you quickly, calmly, and politely cover what you've done already.
"I;ve done this specific step. tried this specific step as well. I also did this specific step that I found on your tech support website."
9 times out of 10 that line comes out with a "I;m not stupid" or whining or something along those lines. (edit: "I tried everything!" Well if you did, then you still wouldn;t be having a problem now.
We just had a thread like that a few days ago here in the forums.....
Then say that you've searched. That will go a long way with folks answering questions. List the steps that you've done. Show that you've put in a least some effort in finding a solution. Takes two seconds and it'll show that you've at least made the attempt to look for your solution.
if you do that chances are you'll get a lot better result when you ask a question.
In your last thread, you at least walked through the situation and showed that yes you did in fact poke around to see what was going on.
Want to see the exact opposite? Search the forums for mobile and see how many of the first posts in those threads include the statement "Has anyone suggested this previously?"
edit: The irony of all this is that on the show, the library computer was used for research all the time.
To go along with that, aren't they also removed after 6 months or a year? I remember seeing something about forum threads age from a dev in another thread somewhere. Can't remember which dev or what thread though. Am I correct in that statement?
Or at least autoclosed.
I have to admit that I don;t like that rule. I know in all of the "how to get help" stickies, searching is encouraged and well you know my opinion on the matter. It's kind of backwards to suggest to folks to search forst and then ignore what they find. I would rather have them ask a question if they don;t understand in the thread that they find instead of start a new thread, ask a question and the rest of us have no clue as to what they're referencing because they (of course) don't link to the past thread.