08:35 PM
Fandom My car is broken, please fix it.

I like helping people. But the most frustrating thing in the world is this kind of email:

Help! I can't get my story uploaded!

or "I can't get to the story page" or "the website is broken" or some similar thing that tells me ABSOLUTELY NOTHING and leaves me unable to help at all.

Would you take your car to a mechanic, simply tell him it's broken and expect him to fix it with no further info? You wouldn't do that, you'd give him more specific info, "it won't start" or "it starts but then it makes this grinding noise" or "it won't shift into drive" or "when I turn a corner, there's this weird sound" or "when I hit the brakes, they feel squishy" or something.

So please, treat archivists (and anyone else that you're asking for help) like your car mechanic - give us details - did you get an error message and what did it say, if no error message, what happens, if it uploads, is there something wrong with the way it looks, in the archive, in email, what browser are you using, did you try a different browser, have you checked the FAQ. All of that (and more) will help me help you. And that's what I like to do.

And one more thing - if you visit an archive and some essential thing, like the upload page or the search page or something important is broken, PLEASE tell the archivist! Even if you are certain that 50 people have already told the archivist about the problem, tell the archivist anyway! I'd much rather hear from 50+1 people than hear from no-one at all.

It's the old story about the fire, this guy meets a fireman and tells how once he and his buddies were sitting in their office and saw a fire break out in a building across the street. They watched and waited and it took 20 minutes for the Fire Department to come! He asks the fireman why it took so long, the fireman looks at him and says, "Did you call the Fire Department when you saw the fire?" The guy says, "Why no, there were lots of people down on the street, we figured one of them had called." The fireman shakes his head and says, "That's what everyone on the street was thinking too."

Now a broken page on a website isn't as important as a fire but still, the point is there, never assume someone else reported the problem. :)

(Of course, if there's no contact info on the site at all, then obviously there's nothing you can do, but if it's one of my sites, you'll find both contact pages and contact email links because I want to know!)