How do I ask a question in #feds?
By following these best and worst practices it should be clear how to state a properly formed and intelligent question:
Best Practices:
These will get your problem resolved or question answered quickly and with minimal blood loss and/or psychological damage.
• If reporting a problem or asking a question on behalf of a channel, ensure that one representative is selected to communicate with #feds. Do not send 2 users to ask the same question.
• Keep questions as conservative as possible. A user's life story is not required to answer a question relating to IRC.
• Do not be vague. State your question presicely, do not leave conclusions to be drawn by staff as to your meaning or intention.
• Observe the channel rules at all times while being dealt with by an operator, otherwise you will be removed.
• Network rules are interpreted by staff, and punishments allocated accordingly. Our judgement is the final word on a matter.
Worst Practices:
These will cause you to be denied support and removed from the channel bearing more problems than you did when you first joined.
• Having a repugnant attitude or being childish. This includes making "demands" or otherwise acting like an idiot. You're here as a guest on our servers by choice. These servers cost us time and money. Keep this in mind, think before you speak, and read the responses.
• Joining and saying nothing except "hello?" over and over. Get to the point or get out.
• Being evasive or awkward. READ what we say, give us what we ask for, and do not question our decisions. Do not selectively ignore text to suit your needs.
• Lying to get into #feds. Don't do this.
• Pestering staff for attention. If you are forwarded to #feds, you will be dealt with in #feds. Do not annoy staff in other channels to get them to deal with your #feds request. We do #feds at our convenience, not yours.
Example of actual questions asked in #feds:
These are actual questions asked in #feds and are annotated with what the user did right/wrong in asking the question – review these carefully and follow the good examples.
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This is an example of a BAD way to ask a question. Firstly, the user has in fact only made a rather useless statement and not asked a question. Secondly, the user is not accepting any responsibility for his actions – by stating that “somebody hacked” his auth he is automatically assuming he did nothing wrong and that in fact it was security our side that was compromised. This is NOT and will NEVER be the case - Q auths cannot be brute-forced or hacked. In nearly all cases like this the user has given their password away to an un-authorised user or is using a “Free BNC” or bouncer from someone they do not know who intercepts their pass details and uses them. Thirdly, there is no useful information in the “question” at all – his auth, what he was doing/did at the time, who authed to the account etc.
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This is an example of a BAD way to ask a question. Firstly is the poor use of English in the question. If you are not competent in English state this and then speak in your native language and if support for your language is available someone will help you – otherwise you may have to get someone to translate for you. Secondly is the lack of any useful information for us to go on – in this case a trust id, ip address and amount of currently connected clients is required for us to make any adjustments, so state it!
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This is an example of a GOOD question. The user remains polite and undemanding, sticks to a minimum amount of lines of text and gives us plenty of information to look at.