[Typo3] Blank Space help

[Michael Scharkow]

Alex Heizer wrote:
> If you ran a 
> restaurant and had no patrons you would wonder why your tables were 
> empty. If you discovered that 1000 people in town were of the opinion 
> that your waiters were rude but one person says the service is 
> competent, it doesn't take a genius to figure out that despite your best 
> intentions as a restaurateur, you need to look at finding the cause of 
> the problem if you want to fill your seats. 

Again, Joey is *not* selling anything to anyone in the U.S. So *if* you 
want to keep that analogy, than he'd not be the restaurateur but a 
customer that you'd like to remove because he scares off other 
customers. But again, that comparisons sucks as well...

> The fact is, yes, you may 
> see no rudeness in his language and he is not intending to be rude, but 
> I have seen over the years a lot of comments from people who do not 
> share your views, in general, of the mailing list. The fact is TYPO3 has 
> lost a lot of customers because of the *perception* of rudeness, and it 
> needs to be addressed if TYPO3 is to gain more acceptance in the US.

Again, these lists are *not* for customer support. Support is something 
you pay for, community is something you give back to. A large share of 
the people here *only* ask questions and never give anything back. 
That's all good and fair, since we can't distinguish between free riders 
and aspiring community members, so practically all questions are 
answered. But only getting your questions answered does not mean you 
have *any* entitlement to answers, or even polite answers. This consumer 
attitude is completely wrong here.

> Whether any one person is being rude or not, if the perception is there, 
> we need to actively counteract it in order to change TYPO3's reputation 
> in a market that it wants to break into. 

You can actively counteract this by keeping regular customers off these 
lists by not telling them that they could get free support here and 
doing support yourself.

Greetings,
Michael

PS: Still, I think that an overwhelming share of responses *are* very 
polite and friendly. I would even claim that these lists are as friendly 
as any paid customer support.