Contacting GPF Comics

No artist can survive without feedback. No business will ever be profitable unless it listens to its customers. If you can't tell us what you think, we won't know what we're doing right or wrong. So we want to hear from you. Over the years, we've experimented with lots of ways to make ourselves available to you, and we want to provide you with as many options as possible. Below, you will find a plethora of contact options to suit just about everyone's personal tastes. You'll also find a few suggestions on how to make sure your signal doesn't get lost against the background radiation.

Before You Contact Us...

Before you fire off that e-mail or send out that Twitter reply, we'd like to provide you with a few guidelines with respect to feedback. We don't want to waste your time or Jeff's, so setting a few ground rules will help connect you a lot easier. Many of these are already mentioned in the GPF FAQ, but we'll summarize them here for your convenience.

• Jeff rarely has time to respond to each and every message. He is usually juggling a day job, a family, two cats, and several flaming chainsaws in addition to trying to put out the comic. That means his time to compose insightful correspondence is limited at best and nonexistent at worst. He also tends to be annoyingly thorough with his replies, which means writing a reply takes longer than for many other humans. Therefore, if you have a nugget of praise or a comment that doesn't necessarily elicit a thoughtful reply, please understand that you may not get a response. That said, Jeff does read every e-mail, private message, and letter he receives, so your thoughts will definitely be heard. He loves hearing what you have to say, even if he can't take time to give you a personal reply.
• If you have a question that does merit a response, please be patient. It sometimes takes Jeff days to respond, simply because he needs to find time to sit down at his laptop and craft his reply. As mentioned above, he errs on the side of verbosely thorough, which can take a while to sit down and type.
• If you have any question at all, check the GPF FAQ first! Yes, we know, it's humongous, but that's because people really do ask all those questions and we respond to them so often that they need to be collected into one convenient place. They've really proliferated over the years, but every one of them is still relevant. If your question can be found in the FAQ, the best you'll get is a terse reply with a link to the relevant question. The worst you'll get is silence.
• Constructive criticism is welcome and cherished. We're always looking for ways to improve the comic and the site, and your thoughts are important to us. Sometimes we'll never know something is wrong until someone speaks up and tells us. Conversely, destructive criticism is pointless and a waste of everyone's time. If you have something to say to help make GPF better for everyone, please, by all means, share it with us! But if all you plan to do is flame Jeff and bash the comic with nothing useful to help us improve, you'll likely just get yourself banned and filtered from all future correspondence.
• As a corollary to the above, be civil and polite, especially if using a more public communications method like the forum. As the old saying goes, you're more likely to attract ants with honey than vinegar. Even criticism is better received when done in a polite, respectful fashion. All of the communication streams listed below consist primarily of text, which loses verbal and visual cues like tone of voice or facial expressions that can influence how it is perceived. Make sure to reread your message before sending it to ensure it won't be misinterpreted.
• Accidents happen. Spam filters can have a false positive, fingers can slip and accidentally hit the Delete key, 'Net connections can be broken, and hard drives do occasionally crash. If you are expecting a response given the stipulations listed above and yet never receive one, feel free to try sending it again. If you still don't get a response, try an alternate method of communication. Odds are that if you're that persistent, Jeff will take notice and give you a higher priority in crafting a response. That said, we still ask you to be patient and understand that a proper response may take time to germinate.
• Jeff communicates primarily in English. While he has dabbled in French, Spanish, Latin, and Klingon via various means over the years, he's not very good at any of these beyond saying things like "Hello", "Goodbye", and "Where do you keep the chocolate?" Therefore, please use English when creating our message. 100% of all foreign-language e-mail Jeff tends to get is spam, so if he can't read it it's likely to get junked. And don't worry too much if English is not your native language; many folks who apologize for their grammar because English is a second language often have better grammar than many native English speakers Jeff has regular correspondence with.

E-Mail

E-mail has always been GPF's oldest and most reliable channel for feedback, as well as Jeff's preferred method. Jeff reads every single e-mail that reaches his inbox and usually keeps it squirreled away for future reference if need be. It is also considered to be our most secure method of contact, as Jeff digitally signs every outgoing message with his GnuPG key and anyone can encrypt messages using this key to send secure information if they desire.

That said, as stated above, Jeff rarely has time to send quality replies. While he gets e-mail on his phone while he's out and about, he doesn't like to send mail from there because he can't sign it. Sometimes, he just doesn't have time, or the answer to a question is right here, on the site. Sometimes legitimate mail gets caught by one of his multiple layers of spam filtering; to make sure this doesn't happen to you, ensure that your subject line is informative and useful so Jeff can rescue it from his discard pile if necessary.

Of course, it would also be helpful to include the e-mail address on this page, wouldn't it? While you may see mail coming from various other user names on the gpf-comics.com domain, everything eventually makes its way to this address: jeff@gpf-comics.com.

Snail Mail

GPF has a good old fashioned post office box for receiving good old fashioned physical mail. No, really. It's true. "Snail mail" does still exist, and you can actually send a physical letter to us, just like they did back in the 20th century. Obviously, "snail mail" is slower and to some degree more expensive (they have these things called "stamps" you have to buy), but Jeff checks this box once or twice a week to clean out the junk sale fliers and rescue the odd occasional real correspondence that meanders its way through. Readers who want to provide a tip but want to send a physical check or money order rather than use an online service can do so by sending it here. The box itself is small, but the post office does have procedures in place to accept larger packages if you're inclined to send one for some bizarre reason.

Our postal address is:

Voice Mail

GPF now has an experimental Google Voice line. We say experimental because we're not exactly sure how we plan to use it, but for now it's a way for you to leave comments by simply giving us a call. It also offers a way for us to provide phone-based support for GPF Premium and the GPF Store.

Our Google Voice number is 1-304-207-0GPF (or 1-304-207-0473 for those without letters on your keypad). Note that this is not a toll-free number and it exists in the United States. As such, long distance fees may apply, depending on your location.

Also note that we are currently using this as a voice-mail-only line, meaning you won't get a human directly most of the time. Please record your message (up to three minutes in length) to give us your thoughts on the comic, the site, and whatever else is on your mind. If you call in regard to a Premium account or a Store order, make sure to include your Premium user name or your Store order number along with a description of the problem you're having. Please do NOT leave any personal or financial information as this is a third-party hosted service and we do not control the servers on which it resides, so we cannot guarantee your privacy.

If you absolutely have to reach us by phone and talk to a human directly, shoot us a message by one of the other contact methods (like e-mail) first and we can arrange for a time when Jeff will forward this number to one of his permanent lines.

GPF Forum

Like e-mail, the GPF Forum has been around almost since the beginning in one form or another. Jeff frequents this forum regularly and while he may not post a great deal (he has a tendency to kill discussion threads if he's not careful), he does read every single post, even when he's out on the road. There are dedicated sections for discussing the comic, to report site problems, and even discuss random geeky stuff. GPF Premium subscribers even have their own private forum to discuss Premium content. Anyone can private message Jeff directly here; his user name, we hope, will be obvious. Please note that registration requires admin approval, but this is strictly a spam-fighting measure and the process usually only takes a few hours at most.

As of this writing the legacy Keenspot forum for GPF appears to be no longer available. We thank Keenspot for keeping it alive for so many years, although we are sad to see all those wonderful interactions disappear forever.

Twitter

We're not immune to the social media buzz. GPF has a fairly active presence on Twitter, and we've broken our content up into multiple accounts/feeds to help you filter what you want:

• @GPFComics is the official GPF announcement feed. This feed includes comic updates, News posts, maintenance down-time, and other official comic-related tweets. Most of these posts will be automatically generated, but you can expect the odd occasional "live" tweet from Jeff when something directly affecting the comic needs immediate dissemination.
• @GPFJeff is Jeff's personal feed, the older of the two. It was formerly "@JeffDarlington", but that user name has been unfortunately lost. (Please update your follow list if you haven't already!) This feed originally hosted official posts, but we decided to split things up to let you guys pick and choose what you want to read. Posts here tend to be more frequent and random, ranging widely in subject, including tech industry commentary, webcomics commentary, and the odd personal nugget of goo. This is a good feed to follow if you want to get inside Jeff's head (it's a squishy place) or get random scraps of humor that may never make it to the comic.
• @GPFConBuzz is our tertiary account for special events, like conventions. Aside from general announcements, convention chatter will be confined to this account and will not invade the more general streams. This should hopefully cut down on "clutter" in the "official" feeds so con chatter won't annoy those who can't make the show. Follow this feed if you want to know what Jeff's up to at a particular show, whether you'll be present or not.

Of course, one of the beauties of Twitter is that it is extremely easy to follow any or all of these separate accounts, allowing you to filter what you receive to only what you want. If you only want official stuff but don't want to know what's on the bottom of Jeff's shoe, follow @GPFComics but not @GPFJeff. If you're feeling particularly fan-ish, follow both to get a fuller picture of what's going on in his head. If you're not going to a particular con he'll be at, ignore the @GPFConBuzz feed. Our Twitter feeds are ala carte, just like Twitter users like them. Of course, you're always welcome to follow them all if you want to drink from the fire hose.

In general, Jeff (and GPF in general) does not tend to follow fans, mostly because he doesn't have time to parse through that many streams of consciousness. No offense, of course, but that's just how it is. If you'd like to direct message him, either send an "@reply" instead (if privacy is not an issue) or an ordinary old-fashioned e-mail (if it is).

Facebook

GPF also has an official Facebook fan page. It provides the typical wall and discussion areas, as well as official and fan posted photos and videos. (The fan-uploaded content is tentatively enabled and may be disabled in the future if abused.) The status feed is pretty much an amalgam of the @GPFComics and @GPFJeff Twitter feeds, including comic and News updates, maintenance announcements, Jeff's random musings, and the like. Thus, if you use both Twitter and Facebook you can choose your preferred social site and still get the same info. While Jeff does have a regular old Facebook account, he prefers to only "friend" actual friends for similar reasons as listed above for Twitter. No offense, but stick to the fan page, please.

Mastodon

Jeff can currently be found on Mastodon at @gpfjeff@twit.social. Mastodon is a free, open-source social network server based on ActivityPub where users can follow friends and discover new ones. On Mastodon, users can publish anything they want: links, pictures, text, video. All Mastodon servers are interoperable as a federated network (users on one server can seamlessly communicate with users from another one, including non-Mastodon software that implements ActivityPub). To learn more about how Mastodon works, please check out the JoinMastodon.org site.

We're still trying to figure out how we're going to use Mastodon. Unlike Twitter, individual Mastondon instances tend to be more highly focused, giving them a tighter community. It's very likely our use of Mastodon will be a lot less formal and not so much "broadcast into the void" as we've been on Twitter and Facebook. We currently have no plans to implement any "bot" accounts like we have on Twitter, since bots are generally frowned upon on Mastodon. (If you want notifications of updates, either check out the Twitter or Facebook accounts or subscribe to one or more of our RSS feeds.)

Other Forms of Communication

Jeff does tend to use other forms of communication. After all, he is a geek up on many of the latest technology trends (or at least he likes to think he is). Here are a number of less-preferred options, as well as a few you're likely to ask about but which he won't use for one reason or another:

• There are dozens of other social media sites out there now, but Jeff doesn't use any of them (yet). If you don't see a service listed above, he's not on it. If you find "Jeff" or "GPF" on a service not listed here, they're likely an impostor.
• Jeff no longer uses any instant messaging platforms, especially since most of them have gone out of fashion.
• Jeff also has a Skype account, but he also keeps this private. He (rarely) uses Skype for personal and sometimes collaborative or even business reasons and usually doesn't have time to chat directly with fans. Sorry.
• Jeff also has a mobile phone and (gasp) he still has a land line. However, he reserves these forms of communications to friends, family, business partners, and telemarketers (who will shortly be on his "first to be mercilessly crushed once world domination is achieved" list).
• Over the years, GPF has had an on-again, off-again relationship with IRC, or Internet Relay Chat. Currently, we're in an off-again cycle; there is no official GPF IRC channel anywhere on the 'Net. That said, Jeff rarely uses IRC himself, so even if such a channel existed you'd be unlikely to find him there.
• GPF has, in the past, had an official unofficial e-mail discussion list. (We say "official unofficial" because the list was neither set up, maintained, nor moderated by Jeff, but he occasionally participated in it, making it unofficially official.) Sadly, this mailing list seems to have fallen to disuse and, as far as we know, is no longer available. There are no other official (or unofficial) mailing lists planned that we know of.