UBB.Developers Forums General Discussion Chit Chat the attitude

So I surfed in from the vB boards today to see this thread. Interesting how "We can't help" seems to be a resounding theme around here. We can't help because we're a UBB help community, and we strive to close any thread not directly related to that topic, even when that thread is located in the "Chit Chat" forum.

You guys are turning into SK (what used to be SK, now is just the IP support forums). I really thought you guys were above that.

That's watcha get for thinkin....

Yeah, um, no offense, but are you suggesting that the vB people give UBB support over there? Somehow I doubt that.

Yes, we do close threads related to the competition. How often do you think Microsoft entertains support requests for Red Hat? How often does Adobe give people help with Corel DRAW? Have you ever seen a Taco Bell that sells Big Macs? I think I've made my point.

---Skorpion

Um yeah actually we sometimes do. Being nice won't kill anyone.

Would you like to point to 5 threads on the vB support boards that are semi-recent that discuss, in detail, the "competition"? They were civilized discussions between people that consisted of 95% vB junkies and 5% others, and yet somehow, someway, the thread didn't get closed, no one blew their top, and no one slammed competing products. That's my whole point. The attitude that exists both here and at IP is horrendous. You can't discuss the merits of one product versus another because you even mention another product and the thread gets closed and you get banned. Did anyone stop to think that if they were helpful instead of *****y that maybe someone might keep that in mind if they were looking for forum software, and think "Hey, those guys at xxx company were nice, maybe I'll see what their product looks like". Not everything revolves around sales right here and now. You have to think in the long-term, and not burn future bridges (I feel a country song coming on :D) with potential customers, or people who are customers who happen to own other software too.
I have 2 UBB licenses and 1 vB license. I bought the UBB licenses last year, and now I really don't care much for the UBB, but that's my opinion. If someone asks for help with it, I'll try to give them a hand, whether it's here or at vB's support forums or somewhere else that I happen to be.
I don't think your examples really hold any weight. This is not a pay-per-incident tech support line, it is a fan-based hacking community. All of your examples involve situtations where money is involved; where you're purchasing a product or service (or calling a specific tech support line) that is exclusive of other competing products by nature. There is no "chit chat" support line for MS or Adobe. There is a rather large difference between calling MS and asking for support with Red Hat and posting a message here in the chit-chat forum asking what happened to someone who happened to write some forum software.

That's right, we can't help find people. I think you'll find that www.infospace.com is the correct place to look for help regarding finding/locating people. Our time is limited, we help an extrodinarily large number of people on a large number of topics. I'm sure that if you needed to get hold of someone from say, infopop or ubbdev, we can probably help there. But if you want help on vbulletin, ikonboard, ezboard, zcomboard, or any of a multitude of other boards, well, we can't help. We don't know the specifics of any of those things, much as, say, I don't know anything at all about sculpting with Legos. If you wouldn't ask me for help on that subject, but would instead go somewhere where the answers could be found, why would you ask for help regarding something else we don't know about?.

Thanks for your comments, please feel free to ask any UBB related questions you may have, I'm sure you'll find we're more than helpful on matters we are actually knowledgable about. We're just not omniscient, much as we'd like to be.

[ April 16, 2001 09:06 PM: Message edited by: Lucia ]

Lucia, you can't build with legos? What a horrible childhood you must have had!

See that's exactly my point. Why does a post in the chit-chat forum have to be related to UBB? No one is forcing you to reply to a post that you know nothing about. Just as I can't reply to a post about doing something in-depth in Perl, why does anyone who knows nothing about whatever forum they were talking about have to reply to a post about that? And why does the thread have to be closed? So maybe you don't know the answer. Neither did I. But someone here possibly might! Not everyone here is an owner of only a UBB license. Maybe I'm talking to a wall, I don't know. I just don't understand why it's so wrong to try to help someone in the chit-chat forum.

Anyone who had the answer to that question, was more than welcome to email the person who started the thread. However, I didn't think it was fair to Zanardi and his forums, if they were discussed at length here, which might not be the most uncritical of audiences. This isn't the place to discuss other forum softwares, too many people feel too passionate about their own particular choices, not necessarily rationally. I didn't want people insulting Zanardi's product, any more than I would want others insulting UBB on a forum dedicated to other forum software. It's not fair to anyone involved, and biased opinions will always arise on sites such as this, no matter how mature the participants are. To be fair to Zanardi, we won't discuss his product here, which was what the thread was ultimately inviting.

Again, thanks for your comments, they have been noted. It is simply our policy to keep this as friendly a community, and as fair a community as possible. We don't discuss other forum software in either a negative or positive light, because we're not the best people to do so. I'm sure you can appreciate that.