Black Balling Practices in this Group?

  • Thread starter Thread starter Edw. Peach
  • Start date Start date
E

Edw. Peach

I posted a message a while ago, and made what I thought was a humorous
comment about MS's great wealth and power in the computer industry,
and since that time I've posted about five messages on various WinXP
problems and received no help at all, not even a single reply. I have
left my 'humorous' comments out of my comments...

Do you people, esp. the 'real' Microsoft experts who are paid by the
company, somehow have a way of labelling group members and tag one
another not to comment on a particular naughty member's questions? It
sure seems that way. ;)

Don't forget, I do support you and spend hundreds of dollars in
Microsoft software, and continue to do so.

If that is your practice here, just let me know OFFICIALLY
(inotherwords, someone who is legitimately a member of the MS staff)
and I'll stop posting questions.

Thanks
 
Hi, sorry to say that all contributors here are voluntary and unpaid, not MS
employees, try addressing your comments to MS directly. Feel free to repost
your questions, and I'll have a look at them and perhaps you will get an
answer this time.....
Chris C
 
Edw. Peach said:
I posted a message a while ago, and made what I thought was a humorous
comment about MS's great wealth and power in the computer industry,
and since that time I've posted about five messages on various WinXP
problems and received no help at all, not even a single reply. I have
left my 'humorous' comments out of my comments...

Do you people, esp. the 'real' Microsoft experts who are paid by the
company, somehow have a way of labelling group members and tag one
another not to comment on a particular naughty member's questions? It
sure seems that way. ;)

Don't forget, I do support you and spend hundreds of dollars in
Microsoft software, and continue to do so.

If that is your practice here, just let me know OFFICIALLY
(inotherwords, someone who is legitimately a member of the MS staff)
and I'll stop posting questions.

Thanks
Click to expand...

The contributors here (MVPs, etals) are in no way affiliated, nor are they
in the employ of Microsoft. They simply, of their own volition, come here
and offer help on their own time. They, also have no such authority or power
to remove messages, but the actual MS employees who venture in here from
time to time do, and that may have happened. Keep posting, and don't be
afraid to be humorous, even if some of the actual employees, or the MVP
status folks are tight-a**ed about such comments, or off the cuff remarks.
 
I can't answer for anyone else, I am not inclined to help anyone who is
rude, demanding or posts derogatory comments. I have worked on a help desk
and also refused to help such people. That is just me

I do not work for MS nor have any affiliation with them.

Testy
 
Don't be so 'testy'.
Testy said:
I can't answer for anyone else, I am not inclined to help anyone who is
rude, demanding or posts derogatory comments. I have worked on a help desk
and also refused to help such people. That is just me

I do not work for MS nor have any affiliation with them.

Testy
Click to expand...
 
Hi Edw,

You will be surprised to know that majority of us (in fact all of us here)
are unpaid and doing this because we don't have anything better to do
unless of course EURO 2004 starts next week
(http://news.bbc.co.uk/sport1/hi/football/euro_2004/results/default.stm).

Also, majority of us don't even read people's names because we don't
expect people to give their correct name or email address. For example
the name bogus_addie is not very common in my part of the world. Also, we
don't remember what people have said because we read thousands of messages
a day.

As to remuneration I have already said above. It would be nice if we got
paid $5 for each question answered satisfactorily as in my case I have no
other means of income because of my age. Incidentally, it is quite legal
to discriminate on grounds of age in the UK. You may not know it but this
is what happens. We are required to give our date of birth when applying
for jobs. We are also required to state our sex/gender and our ethnic
origin although an employer can't discriminate on grounds of sex or ethnic
origin.

You also have to realise that there are certain times of the day you are
not likely to get any meaningfl replies because people are either asleep
or at work. By the time they are online, there are about 1000 more
messages and so it is easy to deal with the ones that are recent.

I am sorry to hear that none of your questions have been answered but you
are within your rights to complain. What you can't do is sue us if our
advice results in your computer bursting into flames or that your dog
dies. There should be a valuable consideration for any contract to be
binding. Also, human beings like to be respected. Rudeness to
individuals is not a good strategy when you despeately need help. Saying
please and thank you does not cost at all and it gets things done
promptly. I have always been polite to people working for me and
surprisingly they do the work properly with high degree of dexterity and
motivation.

Hope this helps.
 
I've found over the years that every newsgroup has it's own 'personality'. A
lot has to do with the personalities of the regulars who camp out on the
board. I was (am) subscribed to alt.windows98 for years until this spring
when I built a new box and installed my first version of XP and started
hanging out here. It took me a while to get used to the difference between
the two groups. There is much less discussion and/or argument here. And far
fewer direct answers to questions but rather links to Websites where you can
find it yourself. You rarely see more than one or two responses to a problem
which I think is due to the "he's got it" syndrome with the regulars. After
being here a while you can see why this is. This group gets 10 times the
volume that alt.windows98 ever got even in 98's heyday. I lurk to pick up
tricks and tweaks and sometimes it is just too damned much crap to wade
through even when you're not a responder. Then there is the FAQ syndrome. I
am a somewhat knowledgeable person in my own field and reply to questions
posed on another group. I often find myself skipping over the same old
questions that have been answered a hundred times figuring that someone else
will get it and they usually do. But it is a less active board. I've found
it faster and easier at times to use google's newsgroup search function to
query issues and found that there are hundreds of hits on the topic. A lot
of the MVPs here have websites with lots of XP info. Collect and save the
links and just go there first, it is usually faster than waiting to see if
you get a correct response here. If you get ignored it would probably help
to be more forceful in your subject line when you repost the question.
 
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