Quote zojak Quote: Originally Posted by as a systems engineer by trade, i often encounter people who are impacted by a technical outage. I'd say that often, the following questions are usually asked.



1. What exactly is the problem?

2. When can i expect it to be fixed?

3. What are you doing to fix it?

4. How did this happen?

5. What do i do now?



All of these questions are irrelevant when asked by the end user. Let me explain:



1. What are you hoping to gain from this? Are you going to diagnose the problem better than the engineers who are implementing it? Are you going to some how figure out what they can't? This information is pointless in the hands of the powerless.



2. This is a valid question for planning, but is setting the stage to be disappointed. Problems don't come in neatly packaged containers with cooldowns and minute-by-minute updates. If i decline to tell you a timeline, then you'll be upset. If i guess at a timeline and that time passes, you'll be upset. Committing to a timeline means that i now have to hold myself and any other technicians accountable for a timeline i may not have been prepared to meet. None of these situations are conducive to fixing problems.



3. Often, this is just like #1. Why is this a concern for the end user? Your curiosity is misplaced in the midst of a problem.



4. Root cause analysis is something that we do as engineers all the time. This doesn't involve the end user unless the problem originated from the end user. Nevermind that answering this question is pure speculation, 9 times out of 10, an end user wouldn't understand it even if the answer was correct. What purpose does it serve to explain a technical root cause to a person who will never again care about it once they know? So that they can further critique the process from the outside without understanding it?



5. The answer to this is similarly irrelevant. Asking it denotes two sub-problems. First, anything that an engineer tells you to do will be unacceptable, if it's not the thing that you want to do. And second, it isn't the engineer's job to tell you what to do with your life when you can't have what you want. Go outside, read a book, work on something else, etc. You knew this answer before it was asked.



I'm posting this here because i have seen these questions in varying flavors come from swtor players. Yes, you have the right to feel a type of way if you are a subscriber and you aren't playing the game when you should be. Yes, you have the right to post on here with your opinions. But when you back the developers into a corner with your incessant questions that delve into areas you have no business delving into, you're only gumming up the process.



Let them work, it'll be up soon. Relax.



Just my two credits.



:d :d