[arm-allstar] Common sense rules for this forum

[Doug Crompton]

First of all we encourage your questions and remarks here but sometimes it
is difficult to understand questions and establish a link to prior
messages. So here are some basic rules -

DON'T reply to digest messages. In fact it says don't do that right in the
message. This leads to a trail of messages tagging along other than your
topic with no subject stating the actual topic. Instead compose a new
message to the forum with your subject and text.

By the way for those who are using the digest method be aware that
virtually all email clients allow you to sort messages into a folder so all
your arm-allstar email could come in non-digest form and go into a folder
called arm-allstar or whatever you call it as it is sent. This also makes
more sense if you are actually asking questions as digests are only sent
out daily or after so many messages making the question/answer round robin
cycle very long.

When you do send a message please make sure it makes sense. Include all
pertinent data. Don't say something like "my radio doesn't have audio."
This tells us nothing that could specifically help you with your problem.
Instead specify the type of radio, how it is interfaced, the type of USB
FOB, some of the symptoms you experienced and what you have done to try and
solve the problem yourself. Anything that would help us better diagnose the
problem. This is just one example but to avoid many emails back and forth
including as much information as possible is important.

Soon we will have a simple diagnostic script that will allow you to send
information about your system back to us so we can more easily diagnose the
problem without asking you so many questions and instructing you how to
assemble all the information manually. More often than not problems are
operator error but we understand that can happen and making it easier to
diagnose the problem means a saving in time and gets you are back in
operation more quickly.

We have also discussed a node specifically for technical questions where we
could meet up one on one or a group to answer questions either at specific
times or on demand. I do find that phone calls or any kind of verbal
communications in many cases often works better than email.


*73 Doug*

*WA3DSP*

*http://www.crompton.com/hamradio <http://www.crompton.com/hamradio>*