predcon: No, it's going to make people less likely to offer what they THINK is help, but isn't.
Posting "First" posts on support boards earns you a second eternity in Hell. Or your netherworld of choice. You could even split your two eternities between two hells, but it's still two.
Gundato: So, the solution to GoG's generally overworked tech support staff is:
Insist that community tech support be held to a higher standard than just about any PAID tech support?
Seriously, they are good ideas, but combined with the other "suggestions" of "Don't help if you aren't going to do it right", all you are doing is killing the tech support pool.
As much as the idiots suck, it is a necessary evil. At the very least, it will encourage the "good guys" to go the extra five miles and do "proper" tech support.
This has nothing to do with the paid staff. It's their job to be professional. The root word of professional is "profession", which means job. Actually, the root word is "profess", but that's not the point. Having a mercenary attitude of "I'm just gonna half-ass it unless I'm getting paid" is no help to anyone. You think kids in school today would "volunteer" to do anything if they weren't getting class credit for it? It's a rare bastard that would. But again, that's not the point.
The point of this thread is to encourage people to trim out unnecessary information like "Well gee, I'm not having the same problem you are. Everything's hunky-dory for me." and uncalled-for criticism like "You stupid 'tard. You can't run that game with just integrated graphics. That's why it's crashing."
Idiots aren't a "necessary" evil to encourage anybody. You don't hire sloppy doctors to "encourage" the good ones to perform better to preserve the good name of a hospital. You don't hire inept technicians at a nuclear power plant to "encourage" the smart ones to pull their weight for them, so the whole place doesn't go up. You don't put a clumsy soldier on a squad to "encourage" the sharper ones to keep up that level of attention for their surroundings, in case the dumbass should trip an IED or tip off a waiting insurgent. Idiots may be an inevitability, but it's important to recognize these people in professional environs, so they may be weeded out, or at least reassigned to a department more suited to their abilities. It's also something seen in nature. You may have heard of it, it's called "natural selection".
