Unpaid forum volunteers get no respect.

[Nancy OShea]

These product support communities are a great resource for Adobe customers to find quick & accurate answers to product-related questions 24/7. 

The majority of us who field questions here DO NOT work for Adobe.  Unless you see an official STAFF badge beside our name, we are fellow product users with careers of our own who also donate time to these forums.  Collectively, we have thousands of hours of community & product experience between us.  We know a lot.  But we are not consulted about product development, branding,  system requirements, changes to software, activation, prices, the terms of use or who can & cannot purchase software.  Those are upper level Adobe decisions over which we have no control. 

Despite this, when users don't like the answers they receive, they sometimes resort to name calling, insults, filing abuse reports and demand that we be FIRED from jobs we don't even have.  On the social rung, we are a lot like service-industry workers who take a heap of unnecessary crap from angry customers without receiving adequate compensation for it.  Mind you, I'm not ranting.  I honestly don't expect to be paid for what I do here because I can choose to stop whenever I wish.  

We don't know what's going on in your personal life or what challenges you may be facing with the pandemic, mental health, economy, politics, aging, Russian sanctions or war in Ukraine.  It's not that we don't care or don't want to care but we can't get personally involved because that's not our role here. 

Likewise, please do not reach out by private message and ask me or my fellow community members to work for free or give you free software.  We can't do that.  When you have a question, post it in the public forum where other community professionals will see it and respond to your query. 

Thank you.

[osgood_]

'Unpaid forum volunteers get no respect'

In some cases probably not but in some cases they/we most probably forget a lot of questions are being asked by non-professionals, so the answers provided may not be communicated very well or over and above what was requested. A lack of knowledge can lead to frustration. I dont take it personally, it is what it is....on the other hand there are a lot of posters who should be acknowledged as being extremely grateful and its always nice of course to hear that.