As we often say, WE HAVE A DREAM, and that is of a world in which, whenever we need help or information, the lack of which is holding us back, about ANYTHING, but particularly about things in the areas in which we’re the most interested – health and technology – that there’s an ordinary email address we can use to send an email requesting that help and information, and, (1) we get an acknowledgement of our exact email within an hour or so, (not an automated response,) and, (2) within 3 or 4 days, or more or less, or sooner, if possible, we get back a high quality response focused on our needs exactly, and, where we’ve sought help in carrying things out, we get step by step guides in carrying them out, which we can print out and follow.
What’s required for the dream we’ve described to become a reality? It’s very simple – it has to become worthwhile for people, (and we emphasise, “people,” not organisations,) to provide the high quality responses we’ve described. These people can be working for organisations on salaries provided by the organisation, or they can be working on their own, charging for what they provide, doing two things – (1) providing help and information out of their own areas of expertise, or, (2) where their own areas of expertise don’t cover what’s required, providing suggestions as to who else may be able to help, if they know of any.
As more and more of these people exist, working as we’ve described, the more our dream will become a reality.
Two things interest us about this.
Firstly, how few good teachers there seem to be about.
If you do a Google search on, “How do I get Google Analytics working on my blog?” as we have just done, results like this come up.
But almost always such things can’t be followed because too much is assumed by their authors. One of the greatest things about the internet is that authors of things like this can provide links to further explanations of things that people might not understand. For instance, to “Sign in to Blogger,” a link could and should be added to provide an explanation as to how to do this – but it’s seldom done. Nothing should be taken for granted. We find that, invariably, when we try to follow guides like this, we get to a point where, despite our very best efforts, we just can’t understand the next step – and so all the precious time and effort which we’ve spent in getting as far as we’ve is wasted.
Of course, there’s a simple answer to this, and that is that there’s an ordinary email address we can use to ask the author for further help – but that’s seldom how it is. In this case, we went to Blogger’s website, and after a fair bit of searching, we found a “Help Centre” button, and when we clicked on it, we were taken to a field in which we invited to “Describe your issue,” and when we typed, “How do we sign in to Blogger?” we were taken to at least 50 answers to this question which we were expected to plough through until we found the right answer, if there was one.
Do other people feel like we do about these things?
One of the main aims of this blog is to find people who do things as we feel they should be done – how we feel people should be demanding that they be done. And to let our readers know about them.
More later.
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