I think there can be value in both avenues of support, and I think this only ads to the picture. It’s great that there are people who hang out in IRC and newsgroups, etc. who are also willing to provide support, but it is different (not that we have to say it’s “better” or “worse”) to have people specifically logged in and ready to take personal incoming chat requests about their specific areas of expertise.

As for the technical means of communication they chose to use, I think IM was probably more suited to their target audience, as opposed to more passive support request/response systems or informal group conversation.

I think the idea is to make it a lot easier for the average user to get help with X product, because when they describe their problem, they’re immediately connected to someone who is registered to provide support for that particular product, without having to know where to find that person, etc.

I guess this service would be easier to use since many people already have their IM accounts but other than that I don’t understand it’s novelty.

Anyway, the point was I’m not trying to be Digg or Slashdot. I’ll post on things that are 300 years old if I find them interesting.

Most of my posts aren’t meant to be news posts, they’re just me offering my opinions on various things, regardless of when they happened.

I didn’t see anyone else making the connections or points that I did here. I’m sure someone, somewhere has, but even if they did, so what? I’m not going to research every time I mention something technical on here just to be sure that no one else has already mentioned it somewhere before.

They don’t get that on IRC either, unless they just happen to be on when someone else is asking the question they need answered, which is pretty unlikely. And if you’ve got a large channel with multiple questions being asked and answered simultaneously it can be hard to read, unless the question is answered over private messages, in which case everyone else does not see it.

For the group support dynamic, I’d say searching (web & newsgroups) and / or forum based approaches are generally better, especially for common problems, although not as speedy.

If you need immediate answers, you could go for IRC, but I’m guessing they did it this way because it’s easier to use for the end user who needs help.

I don’t have anything against IRC, but I do think there are benefits for QUNU to do it this way instead. They could always also make their chat archives searchable to provide the shared support; they may already do this, actually - I didn’t really look at it too closely.

I don’t have a problem with IRC, but I think in this case direct IM is actually more appropriate. The experts would only sign on when they’re available anyway, so I don’t think it’s really any more intrusive than anything else.

Of course, I rarely ever have IM on, definitely not when I’m working, and I imagine that anyone who offers their assistance using this model would only do so during times when they don’t mind being “interrupted”.