How Best To Help
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Hi folks. Tinuviel here, long time asshole first time consultant.
I'm wondering, how do you prefer to be helped?
Do you require, or prefer, being told exactly the information you require at that moment, or are you more preferential to being told where one can find said information? Does this vary based on which information you're after?
For myself: For policy or more 'game specific' information I prefer being told where I can find it. The same for complicated mechanical information (Awakening Mage ritual casting, for instance), whereas for simple mechanical information (like what dicepools I need to roll right this second) I'd prefer a simple explanation.
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For me, it depends on the information entirely. The method in which I prefer to digest that varies heavily based on what information it is. The piece for me that is VITAL is that whatever question I asked is the one that is answered, because if I want to know where I can find something, I will ask 'where can I find something', and if I want an explanation I'll ask 'how does it work' or something.
ETA: Very little drives me as batshit as someone assuming I didn't mean the question I asked (bonus points if it's because I'm a woman who couldn't possibly understand the answer, which I run into in the tech field pretty regularly) and answering what they think I SHOULD have asked, instead. 'Did you mean...' is OK. 'Well, I know you asked where to find it, but the book is really complicated and the system varies, and basically just roll X and Y and your difficulty in this situation is Z' is not.
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@sunny Would you prefer answers be simple explanations, with an "it's on page xxx" attached?
He/Him
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It would depend HEAVILY on what information it is, but as a general baseline for an FAQ or teaching, yep.
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@sunny said in How Best To Help:
ETA: Very little drives me as batshit as someone assuming I didn't mean the question I asked (bonus points if it's because I'm a woman who couldn't possibly understand the answer, which I run into in the tech field pretty regularly) and answering what they think I SHOULD have asked, instead. 'Did you mean...' is OK. 'Well, I know you asked where to find it, but the book is really complicated and the system varies, and basically just roll X and Y and your difficulty in this situation is Z' is not.
This.
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I'm in the same camp as Tinuviel.
If I've asked a theme question, for example, it's pretty great if I can be linked to the page in question (please for the love of god never do the 'It's on the website.' reply). Even better is when you can do the 'Here's the link, it's in this subsection' because holy mother some websites have massive pages and it's easy to get lost in paragraph after paragraph after subsection after list after paragraph.
But when I'm in the middle of combat and go 'Erk, I forgot how to do this exact roll, can someone help?' it sucks to be told 'duh it's in the helpfile' because sometimes? It's easy to read over a helpfile in the middle of HELLA SPAM and miss the exact fiddly roll (and sometimes the exact-fiddly-roll is in a secondary or tertiary helpfile).
But my major peeve are the people who reply on Newbie/Help channels with 'it's on the site' AND SAY NOTHING ELSE. I'll sometimes reply: 'It's on the site, gimme a sec and I'll find it!' so the person knows help is on the way and isn't sitting there waiting for a few minutes in silence while I dig up the link wondering if they're being ignored.
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While I always read news files and wiki pages, sometimes I do miss something I'm looking for. So:
Q: blah blah blah
A: blah blah blah blah. It's on this page with a lot of other good info.That's the best answer.
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Often when I'm answering questions I'll offer up the help file, and then a summation of what they requested from said file. Or a link etc.
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I spent some time tonight both asking for information and asking for where the information is.
Sometimes it’s about the information, sometimes it’s about the context, and sometimes it’s about being able to jump off the information to find more.
