3 ms·

Is there a point of having support forums if you're not going to have official replies to the questions posted. To me that just shows that no one cares about th

Is there a point of having support forums if you're not going to have official replies to the questions posted. To me that just shows that no one cares about the product.

NackerHughes 5y ago
Google have managed well enough without giving a flying fuck about any of their products or users for over 20 years.
- agumonkey 5y ago
  almost makes me miss paid private MS dev boards
yuvalr1 5y ago
On the bottom of the page we can see the way Google "replied": > This question is locked and replying has been disabled.
- buzzwords 5y ago
  But that's not an official reply. That's just "ok, this question is valid and bring out people's frustration. We're going to stop that now"
  - yuvalr1 5y ago
    You're right, of course. It only goes to show that their attempts to offload their support requirements to sorts of "Community Support" don't solve the problem, and can sometimes (like here) only make it worse.
perryizgr8 5y ago
Isn't that the whole point of having a forum? Otherwise they would have a phone number, if they wanted to provide official support.
lrem 5y ago
I'm a Googler working on an internal-only product. We do have an internal-only support forum and I can tell you: one can't give good expert answers to everyone even at three orders of magnitude smaller audience. Being a TL working on the thing for more than 3 years, you keep finding yourself taking a couple hours to answer a single interesting question. So, for the uninteresting ones, you leave the users to fend for each other. Which is the point of a support forum, instead of a support email alias (or any other form where you expect "an official answer" to everything).
- axiosgunnar 5y ago
  For a long time I had the suspicion that Big Tech creates products that are only profitable because they externalize most of the cost factors on users or society, and your post confirms this. Facebook also always argues that „sorry having humans monitor all Facebook posts would mean we would go out of business!“ Well, then maybe you should go out of business? :-) Or at least have gotten too big and should be split up?
  - kcartlidge 5y ago
    Too true. Scale becomes an excuse for avoiding responsibility, whereas unfulfillable responsibilities should be a reason to not scale.
    - axiosgunnar 5y ago
      Well put.

Is there a point of having support forums if you're not going to have official replies to the questions posted. To me that just shows that no one cares about the product.

NackerHughes 5y ago

Google have managed well enough without giving a flying fuck about any of their products or users for over 20 years.

agumonkey 5y ago
almost makes me miss paid private MS dev boards

yuvalr1 5y ago

On the bottom of the page we can see the way Google "replied": > This question is locked and replying has been disabled.

buzzwords 5y ago
But that's not an official reply. That's just "ok, this question is valid and bring out people's frustration. We're going to stop that now"
- yuvalr1 5y ago
  You're right, of course. It only goes to show that their attempts to offload their support requirements to sorts of "Community Support" don't solve the problem, and can sometimes (like here) only make it worse.

perryizgr8 5y ago

Isn't that the whole point of having a forum? Otherwise they would have a phone number, if they wanted to provide official support.

lrem 5y ago

I'm a Googler working on an internal-only product. We do have an internal-only support forum and I can tell you: one can't give good expert answers to everyone even at three orders of magnitude smaller audience. Being a TL working on the thing for more than 3 years, you keep finding yourself taking a couple hours to answer a single interesting question. So, for the uninteresting ones, you leave the users to fend for each other. Which is the point of a support forum, instead of a support email alias (or any other form where you expect "an official answer" to everything).

axiosgunnar 5y ago
For a long time I had the suspicion that Big Tech creates products that are only profitable because they externalize most of the cost factors on users or society, and your post confirms this. Facebook also always argues that „sorry having humans monitor all Facebook posts would mean we would go out of business!“ Well, then maybe you should go out of business? :-) Or at least have gotten too big and should be split up?
- kcartlidge 5y ago
  Too true. Scale becomes an excuse for avoiding responsibility, whereas unfulfillable responsibilities should be a reason to not scale.
  - axiosgunnar 5y ago
    Well put.