You are welcome to solicit assistance in any (reasonable) way you wish. However, if you want to receive assistance, don't redact, omit, or alter information.*
Doing so can:
- Force people to guess rather than investigate. Guessing is both difficult and inaccurate. Even if you get an answer, it is much less likely to be helpful.
- Create extra work to figure out details you could have easily provided.
- Omit the exact information needed to help. This is perfectly normal; it's often impossible to know what information is needed to solve a problem without knowing the solution. And if you knew the solution, you wouldn't have the problem.
Each of these things makes it harder to help you. If you want help, make it easy to help you!
Many of our members are active participants on our forum and help others all the time. They are volunteers and can use whatever criteria they want to decide whether to help you. If they do, they are doing it for free, out of the goodness of their hearts. We treasure those people. We hope you will too by respecting the value of their freely-given time.
We also participate extensively in the forum. When we do, it becomes a searchable record of what happened and what troubleshooting steps were used. Other members in the future will be able to find it, learn from it, and solve their own problems. Complete, accurate information is crucial. Providing it is how you obtain our help.
If your forum inquiry would require us to investigate or dig up information you could have provided, or if you omit or redact information that we believe would damage its value as a learning resource, we won't outright refuse to help you. We'll still take a look! And if you've provided enough information for us to identify something that we need to fix, we'll fix it. Otherwise, we'll refer you to this FAQ entry. And we'll still be around if you change your mind.
If, despite this, you are uncomfortable posting information in the forum that we feel is reasonable and appropriate for your question, that is a very good indication that subscription membership may be right for you. It includes the option of individual private support.
*Except, you know, passwords and other security credentials that would grant others access to your stuff.