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April 1996

Sooner or later we all need help, whether it's with technical computer issues or Japanese ikibana  (flower arranging). There is a community out there, the USENET world of newsgroups. There's even local flavor, several Sirius newsgroups and a large number of Bay Area newsgroups, including:

• sirius.announce announcements
  
• sirius.discuss general discussion
  
• sirius.tech technical issues
  
• sirius.web web-oriented issues

• ba.announce announcements
  
• ba.bicycles bicycles
  
• ba.consumers consumers
  
• ba.dance dance
  
• ba.food something to nibble
  
• ba.forsale the open marketplace
  
• ba.helping-hand assisting others
  
• ba.housing housing
  
• ba.internet Internet, ISPs
  
• ba.singles singles

There are more, this is just a sampling. These aren't even the best of show, the for sale newsgroup is less directed than product-specific groups such as

misc.forsale.computers.mac-specific.portables

Seek and ye shall find, ask and it shall be given.

Oh yes, that's what I wanted to talk about today. Not about the existence of newsgroups, but about asking for help. Specifically about asking for help about technical issues.

I monitor the Sirius and Macintosh (comp.sys.mac.*) newsgroups, and I'm dismayed by the number of people who sincerely ask for help but do so in a manner that discourages assistance. I put the following on 29 September 1994 into my web pages, but I reproduce it here because it's as relevant today as ever, whether you're sending a bug report to the author of software, getting ready to call technical support, or posting a plea for assistance on a newsgroup.

I've been in the computer science field since 1979, when I stumbled across an Korean-war surplus Teletype model 33 in my high school guidance counsellor's office. It connected to a nearby university, which gave us all the computer time we could eat up running NCR BASIC.

I wrote my first computer program, Fibonacci numbers, shortly thereafter. It had a problem (no stopping condition) and I was introduced to bug reporting about one minute after loading the paper tape, downloading my program, and executing it.

A usable bug report (feature request, suggestion, etc.) will give the following information:

1. What happened.
2. Why you think this is wrong.
3. What you would have liked to happen.
4. How you caused this wrong action to take place. (Reproducibiity)
5. Your hardware and software configuration.

Please send one bug per bug report. Your feedback will be put into a bug database, and everything after the first bug will either be overlooked or require that someone read, understand, and carve up your multiple-bug message into small pieces. Do it yourself.

Just for grins I've included a bug report that I recently sent:

Date: Sun, 28 Aug 1994 21:17:59 -0700
To: Murry Altheim
From: Michael 'Mickey' Sattler
Subject: HTML.edit: prematurely quits

Hardware: Mac PowerBook 520c, 12mb RAM (max'd to 70mb)
Software: MacOS 7.1.1, System Update 3.0, MacTCP 2.0.4, lots of INITs/CDEVs
Target: HTML.edit v1.1.1b

Good day. I've just downloaded your program and find that it quits with an error of 1 about one-half second after it comes up. If I do nothing MacOS tells me of the error. If I jump in and grab the import text button I can specify an html file before it goes away.

I've noticed in beta-testing other software tha the changes for the blackbird-class powerbooks was non-trivial if you are making assumptions about the system resoures (specifically WDEF 0) available to you.

Sorry I have nothing better to report. :-( M

--
                          Michael 'Mickey' Sattler 
                                  FTP Software, West Coast Operations
Don't try to teach a pig to sing;        Quality Assurance Manager
It's a waste of time & it annoys the pig.

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