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There was a mildly off-topic discussion going on the user forum I moderate. I usually don't bother stopping them as long as nobody complains and it doesn't get personal or abusive.
The discussion had to do with how a certain group of people, who should be using our sofware or hiring people with enough expertise not to NEED our software, manage to fark things up trying to do it themselves on the cheap. [I know that was clear as mud; I apologize that I cannot say more without revealing who I and my company are].
One of our more notoriously annoying* users decided to offer a solution to the problem on our behalf. She suggested "it would be a simple task" for us to post a list of common output from our program on a web page. The simplicity bit is true, but why couldn't, say, Professor Helpful do it herself?
That said, it's not a horrible idea to give some milk out for free in the hopes that people will see how great it is and buy the cow. If Professor Helpful had simply stopped there, I wouldn't have posted this.
But she went on...
Her next thought had to do with posting an two sentence explanation that output from our program might not be intuitive and things not found on the list should not be created unless you knew what you were doing.
That's not bad. We actually give customers that advice ourselves.
But she went on further still...
And mentioned that we could "easily provide a free service" to supply output not found on the web page.
Yup. No good reason we can't do that. We'll get RIGHT on it, Professor! Just as soon as your university starts giving free classes to everyone.
*Note: One her more annoying qualities is telling us how we ought to run our business. Didja guess?
The discussion had to do with how a certain group of people, who should be using our sofware or hiring people with enough expertise not to NEED our software, manage to fark things up trying to do it themselves on the cheap. [I know that was clear as mud; I apologize that I cannot say more without revealing who I and my company are].
One of our more notoriously annoying* users decided to offer a solution to the problem on our behalf. She suggested "it would be a simple task" for us to post a list of common output from our program on a web page. The simplicity bit is true, but why couldn't, say, Professor Helpful do it herself?
That said, it's not a horrible idea to give some milk out for free in the hopes that people will see how great it is and buy the cow. If Professor Helpful had simply stopped there, I wouldn't have posted this.
But she went on...
Her next thought had to do with posting an two sentence explanation that output from our program might not be intuitive and things not found on the list should not be created unless you knew what you were doing.
That's not bad. We actually give customers that advice ourselves.
But she went on further still...
And mentioned that we could "easily provide a free service" to supply output not found on the web page.
Yup. No good reason we can't do that. We'll get RIGHT on it, Professor! Just as soon as your university starts giving free classes to everyone.
*Note: One her more annoying qualities is telling us how we ought to run our business. Didja guess?
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