In quite a few threads I have noticed people saying “email me if you need any help” or “email me if there is anything I can do”. I am thinking specifically of the thread about the Doper who lost his/her home. Quite a few people said “email me if you need anything”. Why not just email the people in question? If you want to do something for them, send them an email telling them what it is you can do to help, and asking if that is something that would be useful to them. I noticed the same thing in the thread here in the Pit where Guin was having a bit of a rant, somone said “mail me if you want me to send you a little present”.
I am not in any way complaining that people are offering to be nice, but why the hell not just mail the person from their email button saying “Hey hon, I would like to send you a small chrismas gift, mail me back with your postal addy if you are comfortable giving that out”, or “Hi there Doper, I would like to help out with your current problem, what I can do is [this]. Mail me back if thats something you could use.”.
If you want to give, or be nice or whatever then thats wonderful! It really is Gives me faith in the internet :D, but I really don’t see the point in making the recipient “go the extra mile” and ask (in some cases again) for your help.
As I said, not a rant, see? Not a single curseword even. It’s just a suggestion regarding something that has mildly bothered me over the past couple of days. Have a good one!
I can understand why some people would be uncomfortable emailing the needy person directly. You can never be sure exactly how they will react, as some people had rather ask for help rather then have it offered to them. Anyway, to each his own I suppose.
I can see that point too brianjedi, I was going to address it in the OP, but I figured I would wait. Sure I can understand that it’s uncomfortable to mail the person directly, but perhaps swallowing that discomfort is a part of the “giving feeling” rather than having somone who is already in a difficult situation have to mail you directly…
Also it let’s the person know what sort of help you are willing to offer, instead of putting “let me know if there is anything I can do” and they mail you with “Thanks for the offer, I see you are in my area, can you let me sleep on your couch” when you might have been thinking something more along the lines of watering their plants for them …
Does the person in question have their email address hidden? It’s a little tricky to email someone when you don’t acutally know their email address.
I think this is a fairly lame irritated suggestion. I can think of many reasons why I would put the offer out there and then leave it up to the other person to follow it up if they are interested. I have always felt uncomfortable contacting people outside of these boards - just as I would feel uncomfortable calling a co-worker at home. I may be odd in that respect, but I suspect I’m not alone.
(I don’t have a problem with people contacting me outside the SDMB, I just have a lot of reservations about imposing on others… )
Not everybody has their email address public on the board; if you took pity on me and wanted to help, you wouldn’t be able to email me to say so; asking me to email you would be the only option.
I’ve often offered help WRT pregnancy loss but I do only say please email me if I can help because I know how overwhelming it can be.
I’m still miffed though by a couple of people who have mentioned in at least 2 threads how they have personally emailed and thanked every person who offered help. Ummm, no. It’s petty but if you’re going to say it, make sure you did contact everybody or those of us who didn’t get contacted, feel a bit weird.
Well that’s my incredibly petty hijack of the day, I’ll just go away now…
Another point: Many many people delete or block messages from email addresses that they’ve never seen before, so your message might never reach the intended recipient.
Gives me faith in the internet :D, but I really don’t see the point in making the recipient “go the extra mile” and ask (in some cases again) for your help.