Doug the newbie here. I have noted than there are users who report a problem and provide no details of the application they were using, the settings, the filament type in the case of 3D printing , what they were doing at the time of the problem. Which results in many helpful users asking questions to get to the nub of the problem.
Can I ask fellow users who report a problem or request some advice to also include everything that they can about what they were doing and using at the time. It would help reduce Forum confusion and chatter and hopefully speed up a resolution to your request.
It will be much more helpful if users can provide detail information, I think itâs ok to ask for that.
I suggest to write a article about âHow to ask questions correctlyâ, so that we can learn how to ask and you donât need to say it again and again.
30 years of IT support and development has taught me that users will not give you the information you require. Hereâs an example that I am currently dealing with: âthe user gets an error when they request a reportâ. Which user? Which report? Whatâs the error? What system?
It is urgent for them to get it resolved (it was reported - and I use that word most incorrectly - yesterday) but they never give me even basic information so it isnât getting worked on until they do.
Doug the newbie here, a retired IT guy⊠started working in 1971 and I agree with you.
However, I became Doug the Dreaded in my support roles. I would tell people supply the information or go away. If you make the rules known and the information required, people will eventually comply.
As you know, we can waste a lot of time and resources trying to diagnose problems with only parts of the puzzle.
Itâs difficult to make people change and let them do as suggested, but it will be worthy as a long term effort. Users will follow this when they realize it may help them solving problems faster, so I think itâs worth to try.
Yeah, the only people youâll usually find that will give you most of the information you require are developers by trade whose duties include troubleshooting issues.
We should do what the OctoPrint forum does. They have installed in their forum a template that gets inserted into posts in the âGet helpâ section. It looks like this:
What is the problem?
What did you already try to solve it?
Additional information about your setup (OctoPrint version, OctoPi version, printer, firmware, octoprint.log, serial.log or output on terminal tab, âŠ)
We should do our own version of that. They are called âTopic Templatesâ and can be customized per each topic. @whimsycwd, are they enabled in this forum? Or does it require a discourse plug-in?
We should include in that template: âHave you searched the forum FIRST???â
Hereâs an interesting feature too: Type Form example (Donât know if you need a Discourse login for this??)