All hail the joys and sorrows of patch day!
For many this is the time to dive in to new content with reckless abandon or renew accounts for said content.
For equally as many it is a time of broken addons, frustration and grumpiness.
Your neighborhood Grinch has a section to help ALL people remedy some of the negatives of patch days.
Lets start with addons broken by the patch.
For quite a few of us there is the desire or need(?) to post bug reports or even fixes in the effort to assist in getting things up a running. While I share this desire, there are good and bad ways to go about this.
Bad ways to help:
-Running to your nearest forum and posting "it's broken, fix it. I can't live without it!"
-Posting without doing A) a quick search with the search feature in the upper right, B) simply looking over recent threads for similar issues, or C) look to see if the author uses a bug tracker. Its easier for the authors to follow up on issues if they are consolidated in one place.
-Losing your cool over the simplest of things. This should be a no-brainer but you would be surprised how heated people get on patch day and following weeks.
-Being annoyed at having to repeat the same fix or information over and over. If it bugs you then by all means take a break. It doesn't do anyone any good and it certainly won't help your sanity.
-Doing any of the above without having read the
Holy Site Rules of Wowinterface.com. Just because its patch day and there is a sense of urgency doesn't mean we waive the rules.
Good ways to help:
-Provide detail. As much of it as you can. Any methods you may have used to trouble shoot (remember we aren't there with you) as well as any errors you can provide. To assist in posting errors you can use addons like buggrabber+bugsack to allow for easy copy and paste of errors.
-Follow up feedback is always a good thing. If you happen to figure out what may be causing a problem by all means post about it (in an existing thread if at all possible) to share your info.
-If you choose to share fixes to files with the community at large it is recommended you provide simple to follow instructions. If you opt to provide fixed files please upload them as patches or plug-ins to the original if the option is available for people to access. The
Holy Site Rules of Wowinterface.com has more detail on this.
Now that we have a good mindset for how to help, there is an equally important mindset for asking for it.
Bad ways to seek help:
-Posting 'its broken fix it." (notice a pattern here) with lots of super special awesome extra punctuation.
-Snapping at people trying to help you who appear to be going through rather rudimentary trouble shooting steps. We aren't there with you so we only know what you tell us you've done. (remember info, info, info!)
-Bumping a thread if you don't get a response right away. Sometimes it takes just the right person to help you. Give it time.
Good ways to seek help:
-Detailed information as to what is wrong, what caused it if possible and steps (no matter how simple they seem) that you have tried to fix it or recreate it. Don't forget those error reports!
-A large dose of patience is always helpful. There are many MANY people who volunteer to help out on this site and it is a great community. We all do what we can to help so please show a little courtesy and you will receive it in return.
Of course there are some things you just can't help and for those moments i offer a list of optional bits and pieces that can help relieve the stress of patch day.
Disclaimer!: I do NOT offer these things personally. Nor does Wowinterface.com. No deposit No return, Void where prohibited by law, Must be of legal age to participate, No Purchase necessary, If you pick at it it'll never heal, My sister was bitten by a møøse once, Objects in mirror are closer than they appear, Read instructions for assembly, One size fits all. The Grinch hath spoken!
-Cookies
-A Frosty Beverage
-A Hot Bubble Bath
-Ice Cream
-A nice nap
-Did I mention Cookies?
Thank you for making it this far. I hope it helps you get past patch day hysteria. We now return you to your regularly scheduled website already in progress.