We received the following e-mail concerning a page problem:
Received: from undisclosed surfer:
Nearly a dozen sites I clicked, said not on this server. Is something
wrong? Thanks.
Note that this person did not indicate at what address she was having
her problem. We have anticipated that many people do not say
where they are experiencing their problems, and have done more
than most websites do, by
coding the "report a problem" link with
an address that tells us where the viewer was
when they sent the e-mail:
Message-ID:
Date: Tue, 02 Dec 1997 22:26:51 -0800
X-Mailer: Mozilla 3.01 (Win16; U)
MIME-Version: 1.0
To: rdindex.prob@janyce.com
Subject: Problems
You can see it above in the "To: rdindex.prob@janyce.com" .The "rd" is root diggin and "index" is the Genealogy home page & index. However, this is only a clue, as many visitors report problems from a page other than the one which they are having problems.
With that in mind, this was our reply:
At 10:26 PM 12/2/97 -0800, you wrote:
>Nearly a dozen sites I clicked, said not on this server. Is
something
>wrong? Thanks.
You don't say which of our 134 pages you are talking about. Assuming you are talking about the page you sent your e-mail from (The Root Diggin' Dept. Index page), then one of several things could be the problem:
1) Our server was temporarly down after you downloaded the index page.
2) You hand-copied the address to you browser address bar incorrectly (instead of letting the button send you there).
3) You had previously requested the page(s) when the server was temporarly down and your browser remembered the "NO DNS" - if that is the problem click on the reload / refresh button to clear the memory of that particular page.
4) You were not on our domain. You can check by watching the address bar of your browser; if it doesn't read www.janyce.com , then you were on someone elses pages and you need to contact them.
If our server was down you should get a "host not responding" message. If the internet was down you should get a "NO DNS" message.
We recommend trying to get a page and failing for three days in-a-row, prior to reporting a page problem and expect trying unsuccessfully for a minimum of five hours in addition to the time between 8 pm and 8 am.
It is our guess your were most likely not on one of or pages. When sending
notes reporting problems please include all information, including the
address of the page you were on when experiencing the problem. See:
http://www.janyce.com/gene/newbie.html and
http://www.janyce.com/misc/newbie.html
Thank you for writing
She responded:
From: (confidential viewer)
I am sorry to say I was on YOUR PAGE, and I would not try any page for five
days before I got it. I used my button to click and it DID say it was not
on that server. SORRY I could not give you the exact site as they were too
numerous. THANK YOU>At 10:26 PM 12/2/97 -0800, you wrote:
Having received no information, we attempted to make some guesses as to
what her problem might be.
She was not only not thankful for our attempt, but started shouting
at us, as well. She appeared to be so "hot under the coller," that she
mis-read "five hours" to be "five days."
From a webmasters viewpoint, this is a perfect example of how not
to get a very busy webmaster to help you. This "lady" may have
had an argument with her husband, was having "a bad hair day," had a
pounding headache, or was ready to shoot her computer with a gun like
that guy in the paper last Spring.
But to have this kind of attitude is to have most webmasters just throw
her e-mail in the circle file along with all the e-mail ads that waste
our time.
We didn't doubt she was having problems, but she was also refusing to
give us even one address to check out. To this day, we have no idea
where she was having her problem.
We have all been where this lady was. We all talk to our computers. Most
of us swear at our computers at one time or another.
And that is an interesting delema, because
computers do exactly as they have been told. And it's people who tell
computer what to do.
She was mad, angry and very unhappy and shouting at us,
while being totally
uncooperative. She was mad because we weren't putting out the fire, but
at the same time, she wouldn't tell us where the fire was.
Problems are sometimes hard to track down, even for the most experienced
person. But in all cases, the problem has to be defined before it can be
solved. We still don't know what this person's problem was because she
wouldn't be cooperative; and choose instead to stomp her feet and yell
and screem. Maybe that works in her home, but it won't work on the
internet.
We were a little unclear on one thing that could have been confusing
if this viewer was more of a newbie than she wanted to admit: There are
two
address bars on most browsers that are not using "frames."
The first address bar is on top and tells you where you are, or, if you
put an address in and hit return/enter, will take you to a site.
There is another address bar at the very bottom of older browsers and will
usually say "Document Done" or something similar.
If you place your mouse
cursor over a link (without clicking),
the address of where it is going to send you,
will appear instead of the "Done."
What this lady didn't understand, we think, is that the links she was
trying to get to were probably not on our domain, and would have shown
up this way had she known more about what she was doing.
We want to know about these problem links too,
as we don't want dead links, but it is
beyond our power to do anything about someone elses pages that aren't
working or have been deleted or moved.
You can be assured of one thing that this lady ignored:
Be humble and polite;
observe the Internet "Rules of the Road," and you
might be surprised at what lengths a webmaster will go to, to help you.
Act like a spoiled child, and no one will help you.
If you were the webmaster, how would you have replied
to this lady ... if you
replied at all?
We decided on a bitter-sweet reply. Here is what we wrote back:
Received: from tulnas1-34.ionet.net
by mail with SMTP id XXXXXXXX for
Date: Wed, 3 Dec 1997 01:36:07 -0600 (CST)
Message-Id: (confidential viewer)
X-Sender:
X-Mailer: Windows Eudora Version 1.4.4
Mime-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"
To: "Janyce.com, Inc. Yakima WA USA"
Subject: Re: Problems
X-UIDL: d834c91cb834370a507621061c4df704
>>Nearly a dozen sites I clicked, said not on this server.
Is something
>>wrong? Thanks.
>>You don't say which
<snip>
You appear to be very upset and for that I apologise. I did the best possible to determine your problem considering you supplied no particular information.
Here you seem to be angry and upset, and I still have no particular page or links to check.
I did not, nor do I now, imply you were not telling the truth when you say you are having problems, but you have given me absolutely nothing to go on; like even one link that is not working for you. As mentioned in my previous e-mail we have 134 web pages and around 1500 links. I am sorry, but it is impracticle to hand check each one of 1500+ links.
Considering the lack of information you have supplied, I spent and am still spending considerable amount time trying to help you. My hands are tied. You have cried fire! but twice in a row failed to say at what address the fire is.
I can do no more to help you as I have insufficiently developed my mind- reading capabilities.
May your evening get better and your communication skills improve at a faster rate than my mind-reading improves.
BTW, again assuming you are having problems with one of the Root Diggin Departments, (you have never said), the first six departments are not only working, but appear to be being delivered at a faster-than-normal speed.
p.s. are you aware that using all upper case characters is considered to be shouting on the internet and is very rude? I will give you benefit of a doubt and assume you didn't know any better.
You also might consider a little reading comprehension study. I said five
*hours* after 8 am, not five days. That is because most servers don't have
someone on duty all night long (although we do), and most servers close
down at eight pm., therefore it is being thoughtful to
give them five hours (after 8 am) to
identify and fix the problem prior to reporting it.
(when it is a
large-scale problem as she suggested.)
There are two other solutions: One is to become your own server,
that way you
will know that everything runs smoothly and perfectly.
The other, is to
not bother with imperfect electronics and equipment that is constantly
malfunctioning and wearing out, and get your information from the library.
It's all rather silly to get in a dither about, don't you think?
The following morning this lady replied:
From: (confidential viewer
Thank you for your respones. Yes I am aware all caps are shouting, your
letter was quite rude. When I wrote you< I thought
I might be helping to
let you know about the problem. As I said I would have to repeat my steps
to tell you but they were links off the main page best I remember.
However,
I will not waste my time as even your response this time seems quite
rude to me.
Three e-mails later, she still has not told us the address of the
problem page, the location on the page (or the link name), and has
admitted to shouting at us and being rude. She is obviously too lazy to
retrace even one of her steps in order to give us the information
necessary to solve her problem.
Instead, she chose to spend more time complaining than it
would have taken to give us one problem address.
She makes it clear that
she will continue to be rude and uninformative.
This person has
presented herself in an extreemly arrogant manner, while it is very
obvious she has much to learn about how the Internet works, how her
computer works, how her software works, and generally
expected Netiquette. Five
years ago she would have been totally ignored and ostracized by most
everyone on the net.
As a result of all the above,
we have placed her e-mail address in our e-mail filter to
automatically send her e-mail to trash, so that she will no longer
waste our
time and insult us in the process.
We do hope that whatever is really troubling her, improves.
We are grateful that
this person has provided us with something we could not have done as
well, without her help . . . that being to provide us
an excellent example of complaining instead of cooperative
informing. Thank you "Jane" for setting an example.
NOTE:
We depend on you, our visitor, to let us know of problem links. But if
you don't give us enough information to find the problem, you are
wasting both your time and ours. When done correctly we a very
thankful for your help in reporting page problems.
If you are not sure if it is your error, our error, or an error by one
of our linked sites, DO CONTACT US, but explain that you are not sure
where the problem is, and give us all the vital information. And, surely,
it's not asking too much that you be polite and courteous.
The moral?
So, Don't be like this arrogant woman.
Thank You,
Janyce.com, Inc.
Received: from somewhere.net
by mail.mail.somewhere.net (0.0.0/0.0.0) with SMTP id ABCDEFGH for
Date: Wed, 3 Dec 1997 13:53:22 -0600 (CST)
Message-Id: <199712031953.somewhere.net>
X-Sender: somewhere.net
X-Mailer: Windows Eudora Version 1.4.4
Mime-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"
To: "Janyce.com, Inc. Yakima WA USA"
Subject: Re: Problems
X-UIDL: 6bc5dd523adb83ec9c1b8f28536fb12d
Janyce.com has a fair number of visitors at any given time. We received
no other complaints during or within twenty-four hours of this person's
reported problem. This is not to suggest she wasn't having trouble.
But it does suggest she was doing something wrong or not doing
something she should have done.
You always get more help with honey, than you do with a sour lemon.
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