Chapter 6

Manning the Help Desk

As the maintainer, you are the default destination for any questions or complaints 

concerning your module. Even if you didn't include your e mail address in your 

module documentation (you hermit!), CPAN has it on record. Suffice it to say that 

if your module is used, you will receive e mail about it.

The e mail you'll receive falls roughly into two categories useful and bewil 

dering. The useful e mail will contain feature requests, bug reports, and questions. 

In the second category, you'll find e mail that sounds like a bug report but doesn't 

contain nearly enough information for you to be sure usually something along 

the lines of  it doesn't work!!!  In this case you need to do a little coaching; explain 

what information you need in a bug report and how such users should go about 

getting it. You may have to repeat your advice several times, but hang in there. 

Sometimes there's a real bug to be found, and the sooner you find it the better. 

Also, it's sometimes necessary to point out that you're providing this service for 

free; people with limited experience in the open source community will occa 

sionally slip into  irate customer mode . The sooner you correct that behavior, the 

better, for you and for them!

Running a Mailing List

Running a help desk is a useful service, but it doesn't tend to foster much of a com 

munity. The interaction is entirely one to one with you and each user carrying on 

private conversations. This is time consuming and often thankless work. In order 

to get the most out of your user community, you need a more inclusive system. 

Running a mailing list can help turn individual users into a user community.

On a mailing list, users can interact with one another rather than solely with 

you. When you answer a question on the mailing list, your answer will be read by 

all the list members. This can help reduce the number of questions you receive. 

Over time members of the mailing list will be able to help you answer questions 

from new users.

Experienced users on your mailing list can help you answer questions about 

your module's development. When you have an idea for a new feature, you can 

post it to the mailing list and get reactions from your users. Your mailing list is also 

a good place for you and your users to float RFCs for related modules (see Chapter 

5 for an explanation of RFCs) and make announcements of general interest.

A mailing list also attracts a class of users who wouldn't use a help desk lurkers. A 

lurker is a user who doesn't say much that user will subscribe to a mailing list for a 

project just to listen and learn. However, that doesn't mean lurkers are totally 

useless; they will still occasionally submit bug reports and every once in a while 

140