FOSS has many challenges. One of these is the balancing act of fostering an active community, encouraging discussion and mutual sharing of knowledge against the requests for free tech support. But there’s overlap between the two. In fact, most community discussions are around problems with the software or questions about its installation / usage. So, what makes a community discussion different than free tech support (FTS)?

It’s a binary classification problem and I think a weighted score helps differentiate one from the other:

• What is the ratio of answers to questions of the person? If a person only asks questions and never participates in other discussions, this counts toward a higher likelihood of FTS.
• It this person using the software for hobby or a commercial project?
• Is this person asking questions on company time?
• Has the person took the time to read all relevant FAQs and existing documentation?
• Is this person open to share solutions, datasets, etc. ? For example has this person ever answered himself to share a solution when none else replied?

I’d like to argue that allowing too much free tech support kills the spirit of a community; it drives away the very contributors that help a community thrive. Almost none wants to spend their free time in places where there’s a never ending list of FTS requests.

So what can be done about it?

Small communities don’t need to worry about it. They need all the participation they can get. Medium and large communities could take steps to limit the ability for new users to post questions. Since FTS relies on the expectation of immediate help. I think imposing a mandatory delay for new participants for opening new threads is a good first step. E.g. posting a new question only gets approved after 5 days. This is to be enforced until the person has accumulated a questions to answers ratio that is sufficient to remove the delay. Moderators should also be on the lookout for existing users that create too many FTS requests and impose such delay.

Yes, this is inconvenient for a handful of well-intentioned people. But the alternative is to turn a community into unpaid tech support.