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And You Think You'd Like To Run a Message Board...

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I'm a realist. Not everyone is going to be able to operate a personal computer. It's just that simple. It's beyond many. But don't think intelligence or lack thereof determines one's ability. It doesn't. Being employed in higher education in an IT role for close to 15 years now, I've learned a simple fact: with education, with knowledge, with intelligence, with the most brilliant mind, none of this guarantees competence in operating a PC.

How do I define competence? I expect:

- Willingness to learn/explore/patience
- Read and follow basic instructions on a computer monitor
- Type in a combination of upper and lower case with numbers
- Ability to enter and then remember a user name and password sequence
- Willingness to learn/explore/patience (oh, already listed that one)
- Know what to do when a PC freezes up (ie., reboot)
- Read and follow basic instructions on a computer monitor (oh, already listed that one...)
- Willingness to learn/explore/patience (oh, already listed that one)
- Understand the basics of web etiquette (those basics they taught us in first grade, applied to the web)

Greatest issue with all? Inability and lack of willingness to read and follow basic instructions. Lack of patience. Adherence to the Golden Rule: that problem which I'm experiencing is the fault of the site owner, and therefore they must be smacked up the side of the head with my attitiude! There, take that!

What follows is a genuine email response received recently, but edited for brevity.

User: I'm trying to log into the Cafe and can't.

Cafe response: I don't see your email address listed in the database of user names. I'll need your user name or the email address you registered with so I can locate your account.

User: I don't remember any of that. Why can't you just let me post without the hassle.

Cafe response: sorry, there'd be so much spam you wouldn't want to post here. In order for us to help you, I need the email address you originally registered with or your user name.

User: I don't really remember but it might have been (information removed here)

- so, we finally locate the user.

Cafe: OK, I've updated your email account, your user name is (information removed here) and the password reset has been sent in a separate email directly from the forum with instructions on logging in. Have fun.

User: (two days later) OK, I've spent two days trying to log in and can't. The password was a huge list of numbers. I can't type that! Can't my password just be something I can remember, like 'password' ? Why does this have to be so difficult?

Cafe: sorry you're having trouble. There are eight numbers in the password sent. Try this password (information removed here)... think 'pass1' or some other non-safe password.

User: (two days later) OK, I've spent two days trying to post. Every time I do it won't let me.

Cafe: are you receiving an error message? What message are you provided when you can't post? I need to know what the problem is before I can help you.

User: Why are you making it so difficult for me? You control all of this and you're doing nothing more than trying to make it impossible for me to post. I don't know why you'd be doing this. What have I done to upset you? I just want to POST a ####### NOTE.

Cafe: not necessary to personally insult me in order to use this forum. There are over 14,000 users and I really don't have the time to single people out and hassle them. If you can't provide the error message you're receiving, I can help you no further.

End of story. Three days later this arrives: "Guess what? I figured out how to post! I was clicking the Register button every time I came to the forum because it's the first thing I did when I found it. You need to clear that up. Confusing. Kept telling me my user name and email were already in use! But now, every time I leave the forum, I have to re-enter all of that login information! What a ####ing hassle!"

I didn't reply to that last one, but an apology from this individual would have been appropriate. I suppose that "Remember Me" checkbox by the login, one of only three entries you can select, is not obvious enough. . If the user had simply relayed what errors messages they were receiving, the problem would have been obvious and easily corrected.

Think this is a rare case? Think again. It's a daily occurrence, only this one was extreme and went on for two weeks. There were four this morning. Mostly typical issues are misplaced user names and passwords--never mind there's a utility for retrieving the password--it's just easier to ask for human contact. No big deal, but once in awhile one of these little gems comes along and you can only think, ah, the glory of owning a message board.

If they only knew.

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Updated Dec-27-2008 at 10:01am by Scott Tichenor

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