Requesting Help and Advice

Submitted by Stephen Winters on Mon, 09/17/2012 - 21:19

I’m happy to give advice or help you with your projects, when I have time. The Contact or Feedback forms of my main website, www.wintersewing.com, are primarily for the use of my potential upholstery clients. The Contact/Feedback form on this website is for people just need a quick answer about something, or who have questions about how to register, login, or use this website. For most questions, use the following method to request help.

Asking For Help

For people who are looking for help or advice on a project, here is the process. Many of the inquiries I get require a fair amount of time to give an appropriate response. To save my time (so that I don’t have to repeatedly answer similar questions), and to be better able to help others, I prefer the message and responses be posted here on this website so that others also may read them and benefit. To post* your message, you must first register and log on to the website. Here is the procedure. (If you have any questions, please use the feedback form and ask. Clearly explain what youhave done and what the response was, including any error messages.)

  1. Register as a user of this website. After you register a validation email will be sent to you with your username and password. (Note: if you have trouble registering, or never receive your registration email, email me or use the Contact form. I'll register to you manually so you can log in and post your message.
  2. Now you are ready to post a message.
    1. If you have a general question, ask it in the forums.
    2. If, & only if, you are asking a question about one of the articles on the website, post your comment or question, in the comment form, at the bottom of that article. (If you are unsure where to post your message, post it in one of the forums.)
    3. The administrator(s) of this website will be automatically notified of your posted message no matter where you put it on this website. Your message will be answered as time allows.
  3. Not Working Yet: You will be notified when someone replies to your message. This website is equipped with a subscription module. Whenever anyone posts a comment in reply to any of your messages or comments, you will be automatically notified by email, which will contain the link to the response message. Click on the link and you will be taken to the comment that has been posted to your message on this website.

Additional Notes:

There are multiple types of Questions and Answers
Asking for Help
When you ask for help, your question should contain all the information needed. If you ask a quick question without thinking out what you are really asking, then you are delaying any response. When you ask a quick question, then it requires that the responder to ask you a series of questions so they can get enough information to answer your question. If I'm the one who sees your question I might not answer your question because of all the time it would take to get anough information so I can answer the question..
 
To ask a question:
Supply a picture when appropriate. This requires you to learn how to add pictures to your messages. A picture can literally get you a better answer than giving hundreds of words in explanation.
Take the time to think out what you are really asking. For ideas about how to  ask a question, go here and here, only apply those principles to asking a question about upholstery.
 
You might want to write it out on your Microsoft Notepad in advance (if you use a typical Word Processor, it complicates the copying process.) When you have your request written out, you can copy copy the text from your Notepad window and paste it into the textbox window of this website.
 
Answering a Question, There are two main ways of answering a question: 1. How it was done, and 2. How to do it.. 
  1. How it was Done: This type of answer tells you how something was done. This is not a step by step of how to do something, but is rather just a guidepost to point you in the right direction. You will still have to figure out a lot yourself. This reply can be anything from one sentence up to a short paragraph. This is the most common type of reply because it doesn't take much time to write out. This type of answer might be all that another profession may need because the pro already knows what is necessary to ... He/she just needs to be reminded of what to do. However, this short answer often doesn't tell the amatuer how to do it.
  2. How to do it. This type of instruction will go into much more detail, clearly explaining each step that the amatuer needs to know in order to complete his/her project. However, this detailed type of instruction takes a lot more time and effort to write. Since we only have a limited amount of time I mainly write this amount of detail in one of the articles on this website. I mainly choose to write articles that apply to a wide variety of people. 

*Note: if you have followed all the instructions and are still unable to post the message, send the message to me (using the Contact for or email) and I'll post it for you, then give you a response.

 

Please do not post any messages at the bottom this page. Post messages in the forum or at the bottom of appropriate pages. Thank you.