The helper approach for questions coming through a chat

When a friend asks me about the market in a chat, I answer very little. This article is what I answer and what I point at instead.

Why chat is a bad medium for this

Chat is fast, informal, and easy to lose in a scroll. Any step by step guide I would write in a chat is going to be read at chat speed, which is too fast for the reader to actually follow along.

Chat also leaves a record in a service I did not build. Anything I write in the chat lives on somebody else's server for some length of time.

Both of those are reasons to keep chat answers short.

What I usually answer

I answer questions about where to find the address, by naming this site. I answer questions about what browser to use, in one sentence, by naming Tor Browser. I answer questions about the general shape of the market only when I can do it in a couple of sentences without leaving anything critical out.

I answer questions about my own use of the market briefly, if I choose to. I do not answer questions on behalf of the market.

What I refuse to answer in a chat

Anything that involves the friend's specific account, their password, their money, their address. Those are conversations to have on a call at best, and on paper at second best. Chat is not for those.

Any request for a specific onion address I have in my head. If they want the address, I point at this site. I do not paste it into a chat where a substitution could happen.

Any request for a full walk through. A full walk through goes in a longer format, or in the desk session from the other article in this group.

What I point at instead

This site. Not a specific page unless the question maps to one. Just this site. The domain is short, they can copy it, they can open it in Tor Browser.

The Tor Browser download page, if they do not have it yet. Nothing else that is not necessary.

The friend themselves. If a question is really about a choice only they can make, I say so and I do not answer the choice for them.

How I phrase the pointing

Short. One sentence. Here is where to look. Not here is what I think about the choice. That keeps the chat from becoming a substitute for the friend doing the reading themselves.

Short pointers also reduce the chance that I write something wrong in a rush. Long answers in chat are where mistakes multiply.

The three addresses, and the chat

The three onion addresses at the top of this article are on this site, not in any chat I would send. If a friend needs an address, they open this site and copy one. That is the correct handoff.

Copying an address into a chat looks helpful and it moves the trust question sideways. The friend then has to trust the chat as much as they trust this site. The chat should not carry that weight.

When I move the conversation off chat

• When the friend is asking about anything account related.
• When the answer requires more than two sentences.
• When the friend keeps asking the same question in different phrasing, which means the chat is not landing.
• When I notice I am typing a paragraph and then deleting it and then typing another one. That is a sign the conversation is bigger than chat.

What the helper role looks like in this medium

It looks like a series of small nudges and one honest pointer at this site. It does not look like a tutorial. If the friend needs a tutorial, chat is not where that tutorial happens.

This article is here so I remember to keep the chats small and to do the bigger help in a bigger place.

What this article is not. This is not a claim that answering in a chat is a good way to teach. It is a claim about the shape a chat answer should have.