Never e-mail individual volunteers. You don't know when someone is on vacation, has switched away from being responsible for the thing you're asking about, etc..

Try to ask all questions and make all requests through opening Bugzilla bugs. Below, we will address specific common uncertainties about whether it really makes sense to use Bugzilla, but the answer is always yes, Bugzilla is the right place to send the first message about your issue.

If some technical problem prevents you from using Bugzilla (or the portal, for the special-case request kinds that have their own pages there), e-mail a group alias, not a hardcoded list of individuals. This would be admins@hcoop.net for technical problems.

If you have a question about policy and nothing technical is going wrong, then you should be using Bugzilla. There is a component "Official Board questions" that is appropriate for soliciting official position statements. If you don't want your question appearing in our bug database, you can e-mail board@hcoop.net instead.

If you have a question about paying your dues, open a bug in the "Financial" Bugzilla component. Sensitive questions can be e-mailed to payment@hcoop.net instead, but Bugzilla is more convenient for our volunteers, so try to use it if you can.

If you don't know how to do something with your HCoop account, but you suspect that all you need is more information rather than admin intervention, then you will probably get a faster response by posting to the hcoop-help mailing list. You can subscribe to that list using your preferences page on the portal.

If you have lost your HCoop password, you will need to prove that you are you by making a small payment with the same PayPal or Google Checkout account that you used to open your HCoop account.

• If you made your first payment with PayPal, visit the random password generator and save the ID and password it gives you. Then make any sized PayPal payment, writing "lost password: N" in the comment field, where N is the ID that you saved. Do not e-mail the password!

• If you made your first payment with Google Checkout, visit the random password generator and e-mail admins@hcoop.net with the ID you get, announcing your desire for a password reset, before you make any Checkout payment. Then make any Checkout payment. Do not e-mail the password!

If you want to close your account, open a bug in the "Financial" category. Include instructions on what we should do with the remainder of your balance and deposit. Giving a PayPal address is the easiest way to have your remaining balance returned. You can also opt to donate your balance to the co-op.

Any question is welcome on either Bugzilla or hcoop-help, and any request is welcome on Bugzilla. Don't worry about asking a "stupid" or inappropriate question. Admins are watching both of these channels and will redirect you in case you really are sending a message to the wrong place.

Our IrcChannel is a secondary source of support. Admins consider themselves under no obligation to reply to support requests on IRC, since it is very hard to track a set of open support issues when communication happens over so unstructured a medium as IRC. Nonetheless, some admins may be in the mood to help you at some times, and we have a good number of helpful channel regulars who aren't admins.