Today I received an email from a WordPress user who was having problems making our WordPress backup plugin work with her site. Something she included in her message stood out to me immediately:
I know that my sql DB alone is larger than 8 Gb
I emailed her a few minutes later saying that our plugin doesn’t support sites that large and that the current version wouldn’t work for her.
The next email I got from her was as follows:
Shouldn’t that be disclosed in your instruction or features? You just cost me two days of frustration and LOTS of money for pricey Internet connection while traveling overseas. I am thoroughly disgusted.
Fair enough. It probably should be mentioned. Her point is valid. I understand that she was likely very frustrated at spending some time and not being able to make the plugin work for her. I’ve been there myself with many plugins and it can be an aggravating experience when you’re not able to do what you’d like to do. This, however is completely the wrong way to talk with plugin author.
Most WordPress plugin authors are providing a free software to allow you to do something new and awesome with your website. They don’t deserve abusive emails. If you have a recommendation, please, do make it heard but do so in a respectful way as if you were talking face to face with them.
Unfortunately, the above email is not the exception to the rule. There is about a 50/50 split in the type of emails I typically get as the main support person for our plugins. Half are quiet grateful and happy to get a response (which I usually like to do the same day but I’ve been exceptionally busy the last couple weeks.) I love helping these people. The other half are, as Aaron Wall from SEOBook calls them, freetards. They start their emails with things like “Why the f*** is your plugin not working for me? It’s give me a T_STATIC error” (the answer to which should be “You’re using PHP4 and you’ll need PHP5. Ask your host to upgrade you” but I don’t bother responding to those folks.
In conversations with other WP plugin authors, I’ve realized that I’m not the only one getting these types of ridiculous emails, which I why I’m writing this post. This type of behavior is truly unacceptable so I’d like to propose a set of guidelines that WordPress plugin authors can post on the support page for their plugins.
Guidelines For Requesting Support For WordPress Plugins:
- Realize that the plugin took the author some time and/or money to develop. It didn’t appear out of thin air.
- Replying to support requests isn’t the authors obligation. If they do, they are doing you a favor. Please appreciate it as they could be spending time with their family or working on projects that would make them real money or make them happy.
- Understand that they may not be available within 24-hours to reply to a support request. You are not Jack Bauer and a nuclear power plant won’t melt down if someone doesn’t do exactly what you ask them to do at this very minute.
- Write as if you were talking with them face to face. Be respectful and don’t overreact. Be nice and others will be nice to you.
- Please be as thorough in your description of the problem as possible. “The plugin doesn’t work” doesn’t provide us with enough info to help you.
I’d like your feedback on them so please leave your comments below.
{ 4 comments }
Completely understand your frustration and truly, I sometimes thoroughly dislike internet “people” as the ones with little respect seem to (at times) be more abroad and around than the people who have respect and understranding.
I want to just say how much I appreciate all that you have done and built for the wordpress community.
Thanks Ariel. I don’t feel like I’ve done a ton for the community yet (more to come soon) but it is indeed frustrating at times.
It does seem like people expect a lot more for something that is free when its online. People don’t walk into a dollar store and expect to find the best of everything.
Thank you for this great plugin, it is good to know that there are size limits on the DB.
Is there a log file for troubleshooting I could look at. It works on one of my sites, but not the other.
They are both going to the same S3 account and the folder/bucket gets created. Just nothing gets uploaded.
I’ll go check my DB size right now!
Unfortunately, the people who would take the time to read this post are already the people who would approach plugin authors the right way.