My, my. It took about two weeks, but eventually the man I spoke about in my last post replied. He apologized for being abrupt, and asked for continued assistance. We got his problem sorted out, and he is now a happy member of the site.

But I turned a corner somehow with that experience, so when I was confronted again with a similar situation over the last couple of days, I took my response a little further.

After receiving a help request from someone who couldn't get the registration form to work, I sent the standard reply asking her to check if there were any error messages. I find that about half of such requests are cleared up this way-- people just didn't bother to scroll back up the page and look for the problem.

Her response: "Sorry, but I'm not really that dumb.

Can we move along?"

Apart from the obvious facts that when using her computer at work, she would have to go through their Internet gateway no matter what, and also that she failed to give me the browser version as requested, it seemed to me she was approaching insolence in her response.

This doesn't bother me for my own sake, but I begin to wonder in a situation like this, Why would I go to a lot of trouble to help a person like this join the site, who would be such an unpleasant person to introduce to my other members? I'm interested in helping people have happy trips, and I can't see anyone enjoying the company of someone who is abrupt and dismissive with anyone, let alone someone they are asking help of.

So I echoed her last comment, and replied, "Yes, I think it's probably best if you just move along. The other members of my site would enjoy having patient and polite fellow-travellers as potential companions.

Enjoy your travels.
Brian"

Unlike the previous individual, she responded promptly, and angrily, confirming my impression. She threatened to include an account of my "dark side" in her "blogs," of which she said she had "several." This would be great, actually, as any mention of my site in a popular blog would help boost my Google page ranking, but alas-- on checking her website, her blog had only one entry, no followers, and a Google search failed to turn up any other mentions of her name.

I believe I may have saved somebody a miserable trip.  ;-)