But asking privately only gives one person the answer, instead of many. I’m a bit surprised by your response—I had expected that the group who knows the answer usually has better things to do than answer random emails, while there are a lot of individuals who probably have knowledge like this whose time isn’t as valuable.
I would reply to an email asking something like this about 75% of the time within 1-2 weeks, and suspect the same is true of most other orgs.
Admittedly the answer might be only a few sentences, and might be ‘sorry I don’t know try asking X.’
But it seems worth trying in the first instance. :)
But asking privately only gives one person the answer, instead of many. I’m a bit surprised by your response—I had expected that the group who knows the answer usually has better things to do than answer random emails, while there are a lot of individuals who probably have knowledge like this whose time isn’t as valuable.