First, I'm EVER so grateful for this site, which has saved my life multiple times!

However, I've had problems a couple times where an expert has responded once and asked me a followup question and then disappeared completely. Usually, no other expert will respond once this happens. In fact, once you have 3 posts, people assume someone is helping you.

Sometimes, I have sent a very cordial email to the expert asking them to check back when they get a chance. Sometimes this works great.

I guess I wondered if there was some way the original poster could add a flag to the post noting that they have not yet received help, which could be removed once someone is really helping them.

Thanks SO MUCH for all you do!

Hi lizgold. I looked over all the topics you posted and I can see your concerns. When i first came to the board to receive assistance many years ago, I, too was eager to receive help as quickly as possible. Your concern is something we constantly monitor and brainstorm on ways in which to improve upon. Thank you for your comments.

Yes, I understand what you mean, but at the same time I feel like it is the person who first offered to help you's responsibility to help you to the best of their ability, and pass the torch at only the most rare of occasions. You also have to take into account that not everyone is in your timezone (My helper wasn't), and that your day time, might be their night time.

Though, this is not always checkable, as some people (sorry, but the above post is an example) either do not wish to say where they are from, or believe it does not matter.

Besides, are you paying by the hour? =)

But I'm glad your issue was eventually resolved!

This post has been edited by axesever: Feb 11 2008, 04:37 PM

lizgold

I am glad that you were able to find the help you needed. We appreciate your positive comments.

Looking back through the topics you have started, you had a Malware topic which you said was resolved the same day you posted it. Many people wait days to receive help, so this is not uncommon. There are thousands of people asking for help and only a handful of staff to assist.

Once you were assisted by a staff member and he did not continue to help you. We do not condone this behavior, however our staff do not know everything, when they give a suggestion and its already been tried, he may be out of ideas. The Tech Team here relies on teamwork. They often help each other out and rarely do they need to request someone else's help for that to happen. Its not uncommon to have 3-4 techs giving ideas in a single thread. Once your request waited 3 days, you could have requested assistance in the "Waiting Room" forum. At that point someone would have noticed it and would have gotten to you. I suppose this could constitute a "flag" to show that you were not being helped yet.

The other thread where you were assisted was not by a member of the staff, it was by another member like yourself. We likely overlooked that one because it had quite a few replies.

axeseverFor privacy reasons we can not and will not force people to reveal their locations. They may if they wish, however it will never be mandatory.
There are 2 methods that we follow here. In Malware Removal, we allow only one staff member at a time to assist a victim. If that person needs help, they request help in our staff forums, but still, only that staff member can post back to the victim unless he/she requests that someone take over.

In the Tech Forums things are done differently. Many of the Tech staff are "nomads". They move from forum to forum finding threads that they believe they can help with. Many are professional computer techs and have specialties, others are general "whiz-kids" who can answer most any question.

Tech questions are sometimes very difficult to diagnose. Often times there are multiple ways to fix a problem, or there could be multiple causes of a symptom. The tech staff often work together to find a solution, however with the nature of these forums there is no "passing of a torch". The same applies as I said above, even if someone has answered you, if they haven't answered back in 3 days, you are encouraged to post in the "Waiting Room" forum.

Hey, thanks so much for reading and considering my comments!

I didn't know about the Waiting Room forum, which would definitely take care of my concerns.

Thanks again to you all for everything you do to help us struggling folk out here. We really do appreciate it.