Help us to help you

Our sewing and crafts server gets a fair few help requests. Some of them come from reasonably experienced people (often those who are already active on the server) who've just run into some issue they haven't met before. These people are fine. They know the drill. They've already helped a number of other people, so they know that the best way to get help is to describe what the problem is in reasonable detail, and ideally also upload a photo or two so we can all see exactly what is going on.

And then you get the Bewildered Younglings, like the one in the feature photo. For context, the paragraph that is blurred out is one that relates to a different query, so I removed it to avoid any confusion. "Baroque Mongoose" is me, and "Joke" is my Dutch friend, who, fairly typically for a Dutch person, tends to be pretty direct... which is often what is needed. She and I make a good team, and we quite often find ourselves tag-teaming vague help requests like this one. (In the two paragraphs near the bottom where we're both saying the same thing, we were both typing at once and I just hit return first.)

Quite often, as in this case, the person asking the question doesn't really know what they want. This one turned out to be fairly innocuous, but you do get some who will waste several people's time for an hour or more, which generally results in Joke DMing me with something like "headdesk". We had one not so very long ago who was trying to make a chiffon dress. She said she wanted a babydoll style, so we were coming up with all kinds of ways to gather it under the bust, because that is what babydoll is; but when we finally got her to draw a picture of what she wanted, it was certainly empire line, but babydoll it was not. She also contradicted herself several times; in particular, she was initially reluctant to provide even so much as a sketch and said this was because it was a bit spicy and might offend people, but then later on she said that the look she wanted was "sweet and wholesome". There was a lot more, and it went on for a good deal longer than it need have done, and Joke, who's rather less patient than I am, ended up steaming at the ears. I can't say I was too thrilled with the whole thing myself. This particular girl was also borderline rude... but not nearly as bad as some.

The rude ones get a couple of warnings to get their act together, and if they fail to take heed, they will be kicked off the server by a mod. We had one the other day. She posted in the help channel, then five minutes later showed up in one of the other channels demanding we all go and look at her help request (as if people didn't check that channel regularly anyway). She was told, quite gently, that she didn't need to do that, and came back with a large slice of attitude. Some of us went to the help channel anyway. I looked at her request and felt that other people were better qualified to help her with it than I, so I picked up another help request which had been made before hers; next thing I knew, Miss Impatient was nagging me. "When are you going to help Me?", she demanded, capital letter and all. For that she got another warning, somewhat less gentle this time. She took no notice and continued to demand and make a fuss (someone did answer her question anyway, but she didn't bother to thank them), and in the end she got kicked. At which point she popped up again under another account with the same name, and demanded to know why she'd been kicked. I was deeply tempted to explain, but it wasn't my job... and the mods, understandably, couldn't be bothered. Joke pinged them, and they kicked her again without ceremony.

Thankfully we don't get too many of those, but we do get quite a few requests that go something like "help, I've never done any sewing before and I'm cosplaying [character], I've only got a month to get the costume ready, what do I do?" That sort of request generally involves some diplomatic managing of expectations. If you've never even sewn so much as a tote bag, you're not going to go from there to fully tailored Yaya Han style in a month. You can absolutely do a cosplay, but you just need to be realistic about what you can achieve in the time you have available. I handled a similar request not so long ago that involved knitting. The question was: "For my first knitting project I want to make this slipover [photo attached: plain V-necked slipover in stocking stitch], but I want to make it in a lace stitch, what do I do?"

Now, I will put my hands up and admit I was at fault here. When she said "first knitting project" and described what she wanted to do, I automatically parsed that as "first wearable knitting project", because I just assumed that someone with no knitting experience whatsoever would not be trying to do something so ambitious. So I gave her a long, detailed answer about working tension samples, and she went "???". At which point, up pops Joke (I am so glad we have Joke!) and asks the right question, this being, "Do you mean your first wearable project or your first project ever?"

Needless to say, it was the latter. Our ambitious enquirer had never so much as picked up a pair of knitting needles before, but she was very keen to learn. Well, we could point her in the right direction for that, but it will still be a little while before she's converting a stocking stitch pattern to lace!

So, after all that, the advice I'd give to anyone wanting to ask for help on our server is this:

1. Read the server rules first. It doesn't take five minutes and it'll help you know where you stand.
2. Be polite. (That's in the server rules, obviously, but it's worth emphasising.)
3. Decide what you want before asking the question. "I want to do crafts" could mean anything.
4. Be clear and specific about what you need help with, and post photos if they are necessary for people to see what is going on (they usually are). So, if your sewing machine is tangling the threads (which is quite a common problem), post a photo; people need to know exactly how and where they're tangling in order to sort it out.
5. This one doesn't often need emphasising, but... post the request in the right channel. We have a channel specifically for help requests, and if you stick it elsewhere it may be missed.

And, finally, our mods have a sense of humour. To my great joy, there is a special role on the server called simply "popcorn". You get that for handling long, infuriating, vague and/or rude, patience-straining help requests without losing your rag. Joke and I both got the role on the same day. She likes hers with caramel and I like mine salted. 😁