zidormi
(Zidormi)
1
I know it may be opening a can of worms, but would the site benefit from having a user-side questions area? I know we get users coming in from time to time with their questions, and while some of them are easy for us, I know there have been a few that I learned something by attempting to troubleshoot, or from the answer being given.
I’m sticking this in Water Cooler since it’s really more of a discussion than a feature request, but I’d be interested in what people think of it. 
9 Spice ups
techguy75
(TechGuy75)
2
or they can just go a google search on spiceworks and find the thread with their answer. or just use google to begin with.
4 Spice ups
inkmaster
(InkMaster)
3
Agreed. The Spiceworks community is for IT professionals to seek support and sometimes just vent.
Opening it up to end-users kills that for IT pros and disturbs our sanctuary.
4 Spice ups
breffni
(Breffni Potter)
4
Not really, Others will chime in with more eloquent replies.
ranhalt
(ranhalt)
6
That would address more than half of the new threads that we already get from IT pros.
1 Spice up
ranhalt
(ranhalt)
7
I would never discourage my users from at least attempting to look up their own problem if it’s within their abilities. Catastrophic failure is one thing, but if it’s just “Word gives me an error that says XYZ, how do I fix it?”, I would just google it too. Granted, out of almost 400 users, only a small fraction of mine have that initiative or would understand to google an error message on their screen verbatim. My users literally walk into my office with the excuse that they wouldn’t know how to explain their issue, then they go ahead and explain it with their mouth words instead of their writing words, and they don’t see the difference. Sometimes they provide their findings in the ticket they submit saying they found it, but didn’t want to experiment on their own, which is fine. When it comes down to it, I only want my IT staff working on IT problems, not my users. It doesn’t really take the bread out of my mouth, they’re just dumb and would break things.
Putting all of that aside, the other issue with introducing your own users to other IT pros is that those IT pros don’t know your environment or your users. They don’t know how your things work. So while a user’s symptom may be generic and most likely have a simple answer, you might have a completely unique situation that you know or hopefully document. Someone else’s “fix” for your user’s problem might not work, or make things worse. And then who does your user blame? This is another reason so many Spiceheads refused to use the Spiceworks-hosted knowledgebase on their portals. Users could theoretically look up an issue, but receive instructions from an outside party that don’t apply to them. Or worse yet, some Spicehead’s documentation that only applied to them with confidential information leaks out (“hypothetically”).
1 Spice up
zidormi
(Zidormi)
8
I do suppose trusting users to google may be a little much.
I just kind of feel bad when a user finds their way here(because they want to solve their own issue rather than bother someone) and then are lambasted by multiple people. IT already kind of have a stereotype of being hard to get along with. I don’t think we need to make it worse per say.
1 Spice up
dabeast
(da Beast)
9
My users submit tickets to have me get rid of that box that pops up when patches have been applied but you have not rebooted yet. (reboots are done on Friday night so if they install before Friday…) I close them and tell them to click the “reboot now” button.
I don’t think I want my users trying to figure out anything technical. FYI - I work for a Hospital so these are not dumb people.
I think you would burn out a lot of spice heads if they answered end user questions all day. Most of us deal with this already from our day jobs.
2 Spice ups
techguy75
(TechGuy75)
11
that is true and something i have been guilty of from time to time.
1 Spice up
ranhalt
(ranhalt)
12
It’s just disappointing that so much recorded effort seems to go to waste over time. The amount of it is bad, but on an individual basis, it’s still not as bad as people posting to Reddit - Dive into anything asking for help with Spiceworks itself.
techguy75
(TechGuy75)
13
see now that really makes no sense.
Colts
(Colts)
15
NOOOOOOO!!! I agree with the ‘disturbs our sanctuary’ comment! (Thanks InkMaster)
jstear
(Jstear)
16
There is a Newbie group, if you really want to check it out.
birdlaw
(WealthyEmu)
17
Remember when they did that to Facebook? Facebook went from cool and exclusive to less cool and exclusive to being just a stupid advertising platform.