Why are the community professionals here dirtbags?

Hi Ben,

Here's one of your dirtbags filling in some details for you.

First, the vast, vast majority of the folks who "troll" here do not work for Adobe and, in fact, volunteer their time to try and help folks. There is no vetting of them, and some are better, and some are worse.

Second, you may not see some of the "dirtbags" we deal with who do not appear to want any help but want to let out steam and rip Adobe and/or the product into shreds. I ignore most of these because they do not want answers; they just want to rant.

Third, I have to agree with you; some "less than good" helpers here. I consider those being the folks who will answer an issue with "rebuild your Preferences," and that's the extent of their comment. If I suggest a process, I ALWAYS include the instructions on how to do it and often with screenshots if I feel it will help. Others do as well. It's inconsistent because, as I said, there is no vetting, and there are no rulebooks to do this. 

Probably less than 3% of the folks who ask for help DO provide information on what their OS is (and what release) and the release number of the product they are using. I would say that 40% of those asked for that information do not provide it in subsequent comments in the thread. Last week I was in a thread where another helper and I kept asking the same question repeatedly for more information to try and help that person. No answer ever came, so I left the thread.

As far as answers go, sometimes there may not be ONE. OR, the solution to the problem is a new feature or a fix of a bug that may not come for many, many months (or years). Sometimes answers are easy. I'm a Mac user, and I can help with Mac questions, but I leave Windows help to those who know that platform. Sometimes the problem is not Acrobat but for a problem with someone's computer. Consider that there are perhaps millions of folks with any given application, and if there is a real bug, it will show up on many computers. If the problem is VERY rare, it's less likely to be with Acrobat but with the person's computer.

I know these comments do not solve anything, but hopefully, it tells you a bit about the sausage-making here.

Best and good luck!