Forum Moderators: phranque
In these cases I reply with a form letter that I send out which thanks them for their interest but reiterates that due to time constraints I am not able to reply individually to most emails.
A number of people lately seem to get really angry over getting this form letter, even though I've worded it as politely as I possibly can.
Do you think it is better to just not reply to them at all? Or when you get a lot of email are a certain number of the people who write bound to be a bit odd no matter what you do?
Generally the questions are either answered very clearly on my site, or easily found by doing a G search with quotes, ie:
"where can I find brass widgets, I've looked everywhere"
answer:
[google.com...]
Whenever I can I try to include affiliate code links in my answers. That has made it worth my time to answer questions.
Is it necessary to provide a contact email at all on this site, since you have this problem with those contacts?
I do get a lot of very interesting and thoughtful email, too, from people who have enjoyed the site. So I hate to take my email address out altogether.
Maybe you didn't realize this but it's National Ask Websites Stupid Questions Month - apparently it's being sponsored by AOL.
My husband got a good laugh when I repeated that comment to him. He has had to listen to a lot of complaints from me about my email from AOL users in the past.
