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Hi, I'm very new to using PC forums and I'd like to know, do these forums provide free tech support without paying for anything?

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    It depends on what you mean by "PC forums"... Are you asking about superuser.com, or about Internet forums in general?
    – grawity
    Commented Mar 18, 2011 at 23:56
  • Lets say it internet forums in general including this site..
    – user72240
    Commented Mar 19, 2011 at 0:05
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    The FAQ is not exactly difficult to find
    – Phoshi
    Commented Mar 19, 2011 at 0:13
  • This site isn't a forum.
    – Wuffers
    Commented Mar 22, 2011 at 17:43
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    +1: I rather like this question, it's exactly the kind of thing my Grandad would ask if I sent him here...
    – deworde
    Commented Mar 14, 2012 at 10:20

2 Answers 2

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To answer this seriously:

First, this isn't a forum. It's powered by similar but different software and the goal of this site is different. Main difference is that forums usually allow long discussions on a topic, while sites such as this one expect users to ask questions which can be answered.

To see what kinds of questions are welcome here, please read this.

As for technical support, well, the answer is no. We here don't charge anything for viewing the site and asking questions (and we get no money for answering questions), so the free part is true. The technical support part is not so true. There is no guarantee that people here will answer your question and there is no guarantee that they will even attempt to read it. Same is true for many other free Q&A sites and forums.

So to get as much free technical support from this site as possible, you should write questions which will show that you did some research before coming here (we don't have "too simple to be answered" category, but people don't like it if you ask some questions which may appear to have very obvious answers, especially if the answer can be obtained just by typing title into Google) and you should write questions in such way as to be as descriptive as possible. So if you're having problem with some program, please do tell us exactly what operating system you're using, which version of program is problematic information about your computer and so on.

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  • Note: the link here at this time points (through redirects) to a very generic /tour page that does not say at all what kinds of questions to ask here.
    – Nathan Hinchey
    Commented Apr 15, 2019 at 5:10
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    @Nathan Hinchey Yeah, indeed! It seems that in the strive to continuously improve the website, Super User got rid of the nicely readable FAQ and replaced it with completely useless tour.
    – AndrejaKo
    Commented Apr 15, 2019 at 6:01
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Not everything can be measured in money. I came onto superuser since i outgrew many of the resources i used to get answers, and gave back when i knew the answers to the questions of others - and that's what the site is about. Knowledge is the currency we pay, and get paid in.

Reputation dosen't hurt as well XD

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