[font=Arial, Helvetica][size=+0]Don't be caught by support burnout. It's nearly impossible to answer every technical question that comes to your channel. In many cases, the problem doesn't lie in the technical aspects of the question; cultural barriers may get in the way of communication, or it may be difficult to explain to a newbie just where to begin. When you try to answer every question, regardless of difficulty, you set yourself up for support burnout.
Support burnout is nearly always accompanied by the feeling that you're losing control of your time, that the people you've set out to help are making unreasonable demands. The problem is that you're taking on too much responsibility; but it begins to appear instead that the problem is the end user who's asking for help.
Different people react to support burnout in different ways. Some offer malicious advice ("rm -rf /" etc.) to newbies. Some insist that every question a newbie asks should be answered with a URL or by lists of manual references. When the staff of a support channel suffer from support burnout, they're likely to set arbitrary rules for participation; these might include prohibiting the use of certain phrases in channel, or disallowing the use of private messages to contact channel members. Staff might promulgate a lengthy, multi-page rules document ending with a special procedure the user must employ to be voiced in the channel (to make sure they've read the entire document before asking any questions).
Such arbitrary rule sets tend to grow longer over time, because they don't solve the real problem. You can't answer every question, and you shouldn't try. Be gentle, be courteous, be flexible and be as patient and helpful as you can---but let someone else try to answer questions that you find too frustrating. Don't try to be a superhuman support machine. [/size][/font]
