Weird support mail

None of the official mentions of getting support for Bugzilla say to mail me. They all point at newsgroups or mailing lists. But every so often, someone decides to mail me directly anyway, probably because they found my email address on the header of a source file or something listed as a contributor, or off the project history page or something. Sometimes I try to help, most of the time I just refer them back to the support page on the website. Anyhow, the ones I do get are often quite strange. Take this one for example:

Dear Sir,

I need free bugzilla books, i want to know about bugzilla,.

Send it through mail or particullar site address.

waiting for your reply

(name omitted)

So I sent this courteous (I thought) reply:

http://www.bugzilla.org/docs/ is your best bet if you want free. It’s
viewable online or you can download and print the PDF.

All done, right? Not so, I got this back from him:

Dear Sir,

Thank you, I found it.

It’s contain lot of topics.. I am going to learn this. I am very
interesting to learn this.

Can you please send me the way of studing, that means, what should i
do, what should not i do,

Beacause when i install it, i have faced lot of problems, which is made by me..

Beacause i confused to do..

So, Can you please send me the Crisp Notation of Bugzilla, It should
be Short & Sweet.

Thanking You

With Warm Regards

(name omitted)

I don’t know about you, but to me this is an incredibly vague request. That’s like saying “please tell me everything there is to know about the world in 20 words or less.”

I replied pointing him at the support page on the website, and suggesting he ask more-specific questions when he gets there.

One Reply to “Weird support mail”

  1. Every free software project gets these nowadays. The Mozillazine forums are full of the same thing, except substituting “Bugzilla” with “Firefox”. It’s sort of the hungry-baby-bird method of self-education.

    – Chris

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