If it’s one thing I can’t stand, it’s people who come around looking for WordPress support who don’t bother to search. Look to the top-right. Observe the search box, beconing.
You should search for the problem or plugin or topic that you wish to ask questions about, and then add your comment to an appropriate post. Do not add your comment, for example, to a post about my friend that recently died.
Assuming that you can’t find a related post, however improbable that is, my email is at the very bottom of the page, linked where it says “Owen Winkler”. At the bottom of every page, in fact. Now it’s not an actual email address, since it’s encoded so it won’t be harvested by spammers, but if you don’t have the intelligence to decrypt it, I don’t want your email anyway.
Of course, there will always be morons. This is the tale of a moron in bloom…
While on a week’s vacation (during which I typically answer my emails more slowly) I received this message via email:
Dear Owen, I donnu if I've reached the right email, anyway, i'll try to leave you a comment too! Hmm.....went to your website http://www.redalt.com and love the kubrickr soooo much, I've got my own photos and really wanna generate it to kubrick header, just mind if you could send me the code so I could generate myself or anyways I could generate my lovely picture to Kubrick header? Please reply.....Thanks so much!!!! Stchatterbox
You want me to send you code for a feature that I’ve built on a site that basically serves only those tools? Outrageous! But you never know unless you ask. Of course, the answer is outright, “No freakin’ way”.
But he said he would leave a comment. Oh boy! So I checked my comment moderation queue. Lo and behold, a comment! But not on an appropriate post. This was not a terribly big surprise.
I was talking about a disk I found that’s 100% virus free, and Doofus stopped by to leave his question, just as he said he would do in his email:
hi, owen, just wanna know any ways to generate my pictures to kubrick header? i know you offer kubrickr at redalt.com but the pictures aren't really those i want. please leave me a comment in my website or reply to my email, waiting for it, a million thanks.
Hmm, that doesn’t have anything to do with virus-free diskettes. Not very appropriate, is it?
Well, this guy has already lost all of his privileges to my help. I’ll just delete his message.
But then, the next day, I found that this post about my trip to the zoo with Abby had a new comment from the same dude:
Dear Owen, Just would like to know if you have received my email and comment ;I just notice it was deleted :( hmmm....just wonder how i can make my own pictures to kubrick header. thanks
You know what buddy, I wonder how you’re going to do that, too, considering that I’m deleting all of your comments and not providing you with any help. Maybe I should provide some direction or response to make this more clear.
So I wrote an email pointing him to some relevant posts about how his comments aren’t appropriate:
Please see: http://asymptomatic.net/wp/2005/02/28/1349/wearing-on-my-patience/ http://asymptomatic.net/wp/2005/06/02/1641/you-are-stupid-stop-writing-to-me/Your first email would have been enough, which I didn’t answer immediately because I was on vacation. But then you went and posted comments like those. Sorry.
I thought that would be enough, but apparently his normal mode of communication is by leaving comments all over the place, since he must not have read the email or taken the hint. I found yet another comment today on this post about Flag Day:
Dear Owen, I failed to contact you. Please reply to my email. I'm not a spammer, just a wordpress user hungry to change my kubrick header. Is there anyway you could help me? Please, Mr Owen. Thanks a lot.
Well, that does it. I don’t usually like to do this, because I hope that people see the error of their ways and start to behave, but how much should I have to put up with?
So I sent him another email, though I doubt he’ll ever see it:
I do not accept unrelated comments on my posts, especially regarding WordPress help. You had two options: 1) Search for and comment on a post related to your question 2) Send me email and wait for a response.Unfortunately, you have now left comments on three unrelated posts. As I have made very clear in the posts that I forwarded to you in my last email, I don’t provide support to people who leave support-related comments on personal posts.
No, you can’t have my code. Please do not comment on my site again.
Hopefully that wards him off. If not, maybe he’ll read this post before he comments on it.
