Re: W[h]ither the mail list?

At 8/15/2011 02:29 PM +0100, Sean Reilly wrote:
>  - the Tender forums (http://help.infinitekind.com) are primarily 
> for customer support and helping people use moneydance, but also 
> for reporting bugs and requesting features

Sean,

The problem is that people, usually new users, are coming to this 
list for customer support and help in use -- exactly the things that 
you say should be in the Tender forums. It's that misdirection which 
caused me to bring up the question of whether this list should be 
closed. What ideas do you have for making sure those queries get 
directed where they will get the best support?

Samples of recent queries here (please DON'T anyone answer these 
here, these are PAST topics):

-- MD can't import my QDFM file.

-- I need to connect with Royal Bank, CIBC, TD and Amex Costco Credit Card.

-- Some transactions without a yellow dot in the Cleared column 
aren't showing in the reconcile window.

-- MD has trashed all my data.

-- How do I undo a reconciliation?

-- How do I connect with First Tech Federal Credit Union?

These very obviously fit your categorization of requests which should 
be in the Tender forums.

When these come from new users (not always the case), they obviously 
believe that they have found the approved support channel. Since MD 
support staff don't monitor this list regularly, if one of us user 
subscribers doesn't answer, the requester will think their support 
request got sucked up by a black hole. I try to redirect them, but I 
don't check this list every day, sometimes not every week.

So there's a structural issue here that you need to address. You want 
to keep this open as a "back channel", and I think that's great. But 
you need to do something about the misdirected requests and not count 
on the rather small number of active users here to redirect them. 
Whether that's by improved labeling of the sign-up (knowing that some 
people just won't read it no matter how obvious you make it), by 
having one of the MD support staff check the list a couple of times a 
day, or something else ... whatever works. But it needs to be addressed.

Edward