[sword-devel] sword-support volunteer

[Jerry Hastings]

At 05:46 PM 6/6/2002 -0700, Troy A. Griffitts wrote:

>         We get tons of support emails daily and we just aren't keeping up 
> with them all.

Have you thought of adding an autoresponder on the support list? (To be 
sent to the user not the list members.) One of the things the 
autoresponse  message could do is let people know that support is given by 
volunteers, and that it may take days to get a response but the user should 
feel free to post another message if it seems like the message has been 
lost. Some of the messages to the support list are really bug reports. The 
autoresponse message could list some of the common bugs being reported and 
let people know that they are being worked on, and that they may wish to 
subscribe to the sword-info list to receive news about new releases that 
may fix the bugs. For already fixed bugs it could let them know how to tell 
if they have the latest version and if another is out. A lot of the support 
messages are about a few issues, such as fonts, verse order and missing 
books. These popular issues could be answered in the autoresponse and/or 
given links to answers.

Lately, I have not been answering support messages because I have been tied 
up with other things. But even when I do, I don't answer bug reports 
because I am not in the code and I do not know what the status of bug fixes 
is. In helping some users I have found that a little typo or misinformation 
from typing off the top of my head instead of verifying a thing, can make 
it very hard for the user. It may be good to have a source of stock answers 
that we can cut and paste or link to.

Jerry