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Contact the Depot
The editors read everything. Replies are written by humans on a human schedule.
01The address
Editorial mail goes to editor@vbdepot.com. One address, one inbox, read daily-ish. For anything concerning corrections on reference pages, most importantly the timeline, which we hold to reference standards, put "CORRECTION" in the subject line and it jumps the queue, as correcting the record always should.
02What we want to hear about
- Story pitches. Firsthand accounts of the classic VB era: shipping shareware from a bedroom in 1994, a VB6 system that quietly ran a factory for two decades, the migration that went gloriously wrong. History is first-person or it is hearsay.
- Corrections. A wrong date, a misattributed quote, a version feature misplaced (send the page), the error, and if possible a source. See our standards in About VB Depot.
- Archives. Sample CDs, magazine cover discs, documentation, abandoned codebases you own: we help route material to the preservation efforts mapped in the community guide.
- Press and cross-publication. Reproduction requests, interview asks, translation enquiries. We answer these and usually say yes; crediting the depot and linking back is the whole fee.
03What happens to your pitch
Every pitch is read by an editor, usually within a few days. If the answer is yes, you will hear from us with next steps: a call, an outline, a word count and (our one non-negotiable) a fact-checking pass against documentation for anything dated, from release dates to support milestones. We pay contributors for commissioned longform, and we say so up front because publications that are vague about this are vague about other things too. If the answer is no, we try to say so quickly and honestly; a pitch that isn't right for the depot is often right for one of the community venues we keep in the ecosystem guide, and we will point you there when it fits.
04What we can't help with
We are a magazine, not a support desk. Individual VB6, VBA or VBScript problems, the broken macro, the OCX that won't register, are answered faster and better by the communities catalogued in Where Classic VB Lives On. Similarly, we cannot value old software, broker licences for discontinued products, or provide installation media. For practical guidance on living systems, the honest answers start with Migrating VB6 Applications Today and the idioms preserved in the code depot.
05Before you write
Three pointers that will make any message land better. First, tell us which dialect your story involves, VB6, VBA, VBScript or VB.NET, since the family map matters more than outsiders expect (the distinctions are drawn across the history and the timeline). Second, if you are reporting an error, include the URL and, where possible, a checkable source; our corrections process is described in About VB Depot. Third, if you are sharing archive material, do not send the only copy anywhere, scan or duplicate first; irreplaceable media travels badly.
Pitching etiquette, 1991 edition, still binding: say what the story is in the first two sentences. We were raised on README files and we stand by the format.
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