# Terrible forum/support experience **URL:** \ **Category:** Asterisk General\ **Created:** [July 25, 2011, 5:39pm UTC](https://community.asterisk.org/t/terrible-forum-support-experience/36092 "2011-07-25T17:39:32Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 5\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![system](https://global.discourse-cdn.com/asterisk/original/2X/4/475d0c889911cfb84ac4881ad6df8b523e3f9105.png) [@system](https://community.asterisk.org/u/system)\ **Post date:** [July 25, 2011, 5:39pm UTC](https://community.asterisk.org/t/terrible-forum-support-experience/36092/1 "2011-07-25T17:39:32Z")
My experience (and that of my co-worker) on this forum has been absolutely dreadful. I have posted two questions, both of which got NO REPLIES OF ANY KIND (aside from my own bump). My co-worker has posted at least once, and has also gotten no reply. I look at the boards and find that most topics have many views, but one or two replies at most. Generally, these replies are of a “bump” nature - that is, the original poster trying to call attention to his/her own post, in the hope that it will get some attention from someone more knowledgeable. I know I am not alone in this experience, and I hope that I can get some support from other users who feel the same way. This is absolutely ridiculous. If the intent is to only provide support to paying customers, then you should SAY SO!! Don’t just leave us all hanging here waiting for a response that will never come. ---
**Author:** ![david55](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/e19adc/32.png) [@david55](https://community.asterisk.org/u/david55)\ **Post date:** [July 25, 2011, 9:38pm UTC](https://community.asterisk.org/t/terrible-forum-support-experience/36092/2 "2011-07-25T21:38:49Z")
This is a peer support board for non-paying Asterisk users to provide support to other non-paying Asterisk users. This forum isn’t actually a support forum; the support forum for Asterisk without GUIs is Asterisk Support and there are some AsteriskNow forums as well. The quality of support on peer support forums depend on non-paying users being prepared to pay with their time. Have you answered any of the questions posted by others? Malcolm Davenport, is a Digium employee, but I suspect he answers questions from non-users of Digium commercial products as a volunteer; he may or may not be officially tasked with directing questions covered by Digium commercial support to that support. I think everyone else who answers here are users who are not employed by Digium in any way. I can think of much bigger companies who have no employees at all on some of their peer support forums, e.g. I’m not sure I ever saw an Adobe employee on one of their forums. I haven’t looked at your questions, but typical reasons for questions being ignored on this sort of forum are that they are too easy (you should have read the documentation), they are too difficult (no-one knows without doing significant research, or too demanding (people ask for a set of step by step instructions written just for them and assuming no prior knowledge). ---
**Author:** ![malcolmd](https://sea1.discourse-cdn.com/asterisk/user_avatar/community.asterisk.org/malcolmd/32/5_2.png) [@malcolmd](https://community.asterisk.org/u/malcolmd)\ **Post date:** [July 25, 2011, 9:41pm UTC](https://community.asterisk.org/t/terrible-forum-support-experience/36092/3 "2011-07-25T21:41:15Z")
Thanks for the kind words, David. 😄 +1 to the fact that there are plenty of kind-hearted users on the forums, helping plenty of people; and that the lack of a response doesn’t mean that anyone’s trying to eek out some money. ---
**Author:** ![david55](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/e19adc/32.png) [@david55](https://community.asterisk.org/u/david55)\ **Post date:** [July 25, 2011, 9:55pm UTC](https://community.asterisk.org/t/terrible-forum-support-experience/36092/4 "2011-07-25T21:55:27Z")
Looking at posting history, you are asking technical question on a forum for GUI users, and a question that actually has no AsteriskNow contents at all. It’s an unfortunate fact of life that GUI users use GUIs because they want canned solutions and don’t want any depth of understanding. I think that is basically the reason why hardly any questions on the AteriskNow forums ever get answered, there are takers but no givers. Non-GUI users may well know a solution but not how to implement it under the GUI, and GUIs tend to do easy things easily and difficult ones not at all. However, pending some more research, I suspect, in this case, you are trying to make a back to back user agent behave like a proxy. ---
**Author:** ![system](https://global.discourse-cdn.com/asterisk/original/2X/4/475d0c889911cfb84ac4881ad6df8b523e3f9105.png) [@system](https://community.asterisk.org/u/system)\ **Post date:** [July 26, 2011, 6:29pm UTC](https://community.asterisk.org/t/terrible-forum-support-experience/36092/5 "2011-07-26T18:29:36Z")
> [@david55](#): > > This forum isn’t actually a support forum; the support forum for Asterisk without GUIs is Asterisk Support and there are some AsteriskNow forums as well. that’s why I posted this particular thread in “asterisk general” and not one of the technical forums - it isn’t relevant to those other forums. if you’re going to be pedantic, I guess I’ll have to be more specific. my experience with [forums.asterisk.org](http://forums.asterisk.org) in general has been lousy, and I know there are others like me. My understanding was that this site was run by asterisk, and that they might occasionally provide support through it. I’ve seen many companies who have a forum for non-paying customers, where their support techs post at their leisure, while providing direct (phone/IM/email) support only for paying customers, so forgive me if I got the wrong impression. if, in fact, this site is entirely and exclusively run by users, then I guess my complaints are misplaced.