Tag: contact

It’s not a secret I deleted my contact form back in February. It’s been a few months since, and for the most part it’s been the greatest feeling when it comes to writing for this site.

I do miss the random cool questions people had that would lead to new posts. But that is really it.

The hate mail is a lovely thing to not get. Oh sure people still leave comments in whatever open post they can to tell me off, but those never see the light of day.

Let me just share with you the common sort of hate mail I get. Please note, this is word-for-word what was said. The only part I redacted was exactly what I’d done (and to whom) to deserve this.

You are a real piece of shit. Someone came to you with respect and in good faith to ask you but a simple request […] and you chose to fucking lecture them?

Congrats at showing what an insipid androgynous cunt you are.
You’ve now lost another user

Yeah. Someone thought that was okay to talk like that. Wanna know what brought it on? I was explaining to someone that we do not have the technical capability of deleting forum accounts on WordPress.org, and we’re probably not bound by any UN statutes seeing as everything you post on .org is of your own volition. The tl;dr is “If you don’t want things to be in public, don’t post them in public.”

This guy hid his email … or so he thought. I’m aware of who it is. So are the other forum mods, so if he comes back and acts up on .org, we’re prepared. Following people home and treating them like that is not welcome in any community I’d want to be a part of.

So deleting the comment form? Smartest thing I’ve done in years.

On Monday the 8th I deleted my contact form from this site and my personal one.

That means this may be the end of the mailbag.

Why did it happen? Well, looking back on the last 7 months of messages I got, I can group them as follows:

• Requests that were meant for plugins@wordpress.org
• Password reset requests for the forums
• Requests to delete forum posts (we don’t do that by the way)
• Requests to be hired (even though the page said no)
• Solicitations to write for people for ‘exposure’
• Questions people should have asked in the forums
• A ‘quick’ question that’s an essay
• Complains that I suck
• Complaints that I blocked someone on Twitter/Facebook
• Spam

The legitimate messages that were interesting and thought provoking were few and far between. If I got 4 a month, then it was less than 10% of what my inbox was seeing. And worse, blocking someone via the comment blacklist didn’t stop them from submitting a contact.

After someone informed me, via the contact form, that a post I commented on in the WordPress forums over a year ago was out of date, I said enough was enough, and removed it.

How do you contact me?

Why do you need to?

Look, my family and close friends already have my email. Anyone from WordPress who absolutely has to get a hold of me knows how to (they can view my email in my forum profile after all). And the random masses of humanity who just want to ask me something for a quick fix?

You really don’t need to contact me. At all. You just want to because you think it’s faster and cheaper. I value my time more than that these days. I simply cannot spend my time helping everyone. Not with everything else on my plate for WordPress and for work and for life.

Of course if you post in the plugin forums for my plugins I’ll help (maybe not as fast as people might like, but hey, you’re getting free help). Of course if it’s work related I’ll be there.

But I’m not for hire. I’m not here for a ‘quick’ email (which by the way, most of you send me essays). And I’m definitely not here for your abuse.