Open Technical Support?

Dang. My web sites are down again.


Could you imagine the chaos that would ensue if a webhost tried to give technical support online?

The clients would be YELLING at the webhost while the marketers at the webhost would be doing all that they can to misdirect and spin the support calls to fit current marketing plans.

Opening a technical support call to public scrutiny would do nothing but destroy the ability of the people needing technical support to communicate with the support provider.

A technical support call is best performed in private. A frustrated client calls some poor stiff being forced to work Thanksgiving Night to complain about a web outage.

An open technical support call simply could not work.

I need to let people know that the cloud server hosting the Community Color sites crashed again today. They've been offline for the last six hours. The ETA is 3:00AM ... but is likely to be later.

An outage on Black Friday will be terrible for me. Because of all the previous outages, the income of the sites fell off the cliff. I made only $6 from Nov 1-Nov 24. I was really hoping to make something on Black Friday through Cyber Monday.

I had actually spent several hours loading the site with coupons and sale notices in a desparate attempt to save the sites.

When the sites went down, I thought about logging into a hosting forum and venting against my webhost.

But nothing good could possibly come from such a public train wreck.

My petty little complaint is that people won't see my listing of coupons on Black Friday. So What?

So instead of venting against the people forced to work Thanksgiving Day, I started to think about the absurd expectations we have about the word "open."

From the "open society" to "open source." "Open" is the buzzword of the day. Yet, excessive openess simply destroys the ability to communicate.

It my tech support call, I simply wished the workers a Happy Thanksgiving and asked for information on the outage.

There is no point in venting at a person who is working a really lousy shift.

I tried imagining the same communication on a public forum like Twitter .... it simply could not have worked.

An attempt to have "open" technical support would be absurd ... perhaps most of the ideas surrounding the buzzword "open" are absurd as well.

Anyway, Community Color is down again. I don't know when it will be back up.

The silly little coupons are also on the site aFountainOfBargains.com  (which is hosted by a different company). I wish the world a Happy Thanksgiving. Let's hope I am back online tomorrow.