This is a fabulous place, and you're in early, able to help shape it. Indeed, if you know where to comment, your questions and suggestions go straight to the top. Co-founder, co-owner, co-developer Bill Ottman is visionary CEO and chief designer. Often on online talk shows describing Minds, Bill (@ottman) is also somehow all over the site. Bill says, “You won't find another network where founders communicate this directly with users.”

You won't.

That person troubleshooting for you in Help and Support who calls himself @jack is COO Jack Ottman, Bill's brother. The gentleman identified as @john is Minds co-founder and chairman, John Ottman, their father. The Ottmans somehow make time to walk around the decks, answering our questions, fixing glitches, listening seriously to our requests. Co-founder and Chief Technical Officer Mark Harding (@mark) rarely pops up to answer questions in Support, but if the problem is fundamental, he and his team will fix it. Our feedback tells them what's working and what isn't -- and on what devices. They do moreover care how we're faring.

You simply have to know where to make feature requests, where and how to ask which kinds of questions.

BEFORE ASKING ANY GENERAL QUESTION

Check the Frequently Asked Questions [FAQ] list, which is in the pulldown menu attached to your avatar (that is, your logo, your icon, the graphic you chose). If you haven't chosen a personal avatar yet, no worries. The pulldown menu is attached to the lightbulb in the upper righthand corner..

TECHNICAL SUPPORT

Private Matters Like Billing: info@Minds.com

Outages: These are rare, but if one happens, go to Minds Status for up-to-date information on how the repair's coming.

All Other Tech Support: If something's not working for you, go to Help and Support, where the core people take turns helping you. In order both to help the coders get a bead on how their latest builds are working and to help them help you faster:

1. Tell them four things about what you're running -- a) what kind of device you're on (desktop? laptop? mobile?) b) what brand (Apple? Asus? Chrome? etc.) c) what systems software it uses (Linux? Windows? Apple? etc.) and d) what browser you came in on (Firefox? Opera? etc.)
2. Make a short clear statement of what's wrong.
3. Be calm, friendly and patient, because the coders are.
4. Expect a delay before your question or suggestion posts. Help and Support is moderated NOT to censor complaints but to prevent spam.

MINDS SOURCE CODE:

To Read The Minds Platform Code. Minds is Open Source. All changes are reflected as they're made. Go to Gitlab to see it.

To Add To The Minds Code: If you're a programmer with Angular2, React javascript and PHP skills and have a computer that can handle a running instance of Minds in a virtual environment and you want to add something neat to the Minds code, Minds has a sandbox. If you have questions, go to Minds/Docs.

FEATURE REQUESTS:

ODDLY, DO NOT USE THE "FEATURE REQUESTS" area to offer suggestions to management. Feature Requests is a group created by a user. That's a great place to discuss potential changes, but the development team does not often have time to check it. To actually make a Feature Request, speak directly to the developers in Help and Support. Tip: They're super busy. Keep your request very short and clear.

THE DECIDEDLY UNAUTHORIZED STORY OF MINDS

Check out Bill Ottman's Minds, Leading the Charge Against the Globals

MORE

This is the short version of key places. More? Go to Dragon's Interactive Treasure Trove of Resources for Learning and Using Minds

THE BEST PLACES TO MAKE SUGGESTIONS, ASK QUESTIONS -- AND GET ANSWERS -- ABOUT MINDS: