Bouregard
2014-07-29, 01:52 PM
I work in customer technical service for a online product. Recently I have the sinking feeling that people get worse with their PCs. No, not the usual "Address bar? What's that? I just have Google!" and then it turns out they use Bing! ... it's more a general inability to think outside of their own browser window.
Any thoughts? Other "commandments" for the digital age?
(1) If you ask for help, help future people.
Did you ever search an error message, had a question or simply tried to solve a difficult problem? Don't worry the internet is here for you.
If you use the right search terms you're almost guaranteed to find a thread that asks the exact same question.
But wait, the original thread creator never said if it worked or not. Does he still have the problem? Did a solution make it worse?
Please people, communicate. If you search for a solution or ask a question please thank the right answerer and specify that it worked!
a) Future people with a similar problem will be able to immediately find the right answer.
b) Common decency. If someone helps you, you thank him.
c) You'll encourage other people to research answers, post solutions
(2) Add stuff to the internet.
Found a spelling mistake on a wiki, an incorrect article description or missing opening hours for your favourite doctor on Google maps?
Fill the blanks! You won't need much time, in most wikis you won't even need an account for small corrections. It's 4 minutes of work for you, but can potentially saves someone hours of work!
(3) Torrent ethics.
Seed more than you leech. Easy. Torrents are one of the best ways to get stuff downloaded. There's absolutely no drawback to limit the upload of your favourite torrent software to something that won't impact your normal tasks and you're good to go.
a) If everyone does it torrents are by far the most economical way to distribute stuff
b) You're thanking the creators of the file in the easiest way possible.
(4) Email ethics.
A email is not an accursed SMS!
Write complete sentences. You have the space and email is not live communication! Keep in mind an email is a non-live communication. This means that your counterpart will check his email when it's convenient, not when you expect it and this works for you too. So if you sent a question with insufficient information you'll have to wait nearly twice as long for your expected answer.
Also please disable email accounts you no longer use. That's right DELETE/DISABLE them. Do not simply stop using them. It's frustrating to send person X an email and 3 weeks later it turns out X doesn't use that email account no more. If X closed his account than I would've received a automated response that the email account is no longer valid and could've contacted you another way.
Any thoughts? Other "commandments" for the digital age?
(1) If you ask for help, help future people.
Did you ever search an error message, had a question or simply tried to solve a difficult problem? Don't worry the internet is here for you.
If you use the right search terms you're almost guaranteed to find a thread that asks the exact same question.
But wait, the original thread creator never said if it worked or not. Does he still have the problem? Did a solution make it worse?
Please people, communicate. If you search for a solution or ask a question please thank the right answerer and specify that it worked!
a) Future people with a similar problem will be able to immediately find the right answer.
b) Common decency. If someone helps you, you thank him.
c) You'll encourage other people to research answers, post solutions
(2) Add stuff to the internet.
Found a spelling mistake on a wiki, an incorrect article description or missing opening hours for your favourite doctor on Google maps?
Fill the blanks! You won't need much time, in most wikis you won't even need an account for small corrections. It's 4 minutes of work for you, but can potentially saves someone hours of work!
(3) Torrent ethics.
Seed more than you leech. Easy. Torrents are one of the best ways to get stuff downloaded. There's absolutely no drawback to limit the upload of your favourite torrent software to something that won't impact your normal tasks and you're good to go.
a) If everyone does it torrents are by far the most economical way to distribute stuff
b) You're thanking the creators of the file in the easiest way possible.
(4) Email ethics.
A email is not an accursed SMS!
Write complete sentences. You have the space and email is not live communication! Keep in mind an email is a non-live communication. This means that your counterpart will check his email when it's convenient, not when you expect it and this works for you too. So if you sent a question with insufficient information you'll have to wait nearly twice as long for your expected answer.
Also please disable email accounts you no longer use. That's right DELETE/DISABLE them. Do not simply stop using them. It's frustrating to send person X an email and 3 weeks later it turns out X doesn't use that email account no more. If X closed his account than I would've received a automated response that the email account is no longer valid and could've contacted you another way.