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About Forum Moderation

  1. thistimethisspace
    Member

    If drmike is taking aim at this post http://en.forums.wordpress.com/topic.php?id=10799 then I would consider his tirade posted on page 2 to be completely off-base. The thread above did not contain spam or troll posts therefore I did not put up a modlook tag.

    I made the correct guess which was that the widget problem was not related to css so, I could answer the question myself, rather than making the blogger wait until someone skilled in css responded to it. And I gave the OP the correct direction which was to send a feedback to staff.

  2. mark
    Staff

    sunburntkamel - I think you are right. Widgets will only keep coming and they do indeed deserve an area just for themselves. On it's way :)

  3. drmike
    Member

    If you modlook a post and say it needs a different forum I'll happily move it.

    Just for reference, I'm moving over a dozen posts a day into new threads without anyone pointing them out. It gets taken care of. Some times I mark them. Usually I don't.

    Also considering that the original poster is unable to move it themselves, what you're doing is chewing them out for something that they are unable to fix so it's moot. The only option is for them to make a new post and then I or Trent have to clean it up. It's easier for us to just move it ourselves and we do. Trust me. Been here five minutes and I've already moved three.

    We're supposed to be helping folks here in these forums. If they want to make themselves look like they don't know what they are doing, quite a few of them are perfectly capable of doing it themselves without being called out for it.

    if you don't ever tell anyone that they're not supposed to put their widget requests in the CSS forum, how are they ever going to know

    If they've already made the post, it's moot as they can't change it afterwards. Those are ones that I usually mention that it got moved. It gets dealt with.

    if you want to mention it in passing as part of a solution, that's fine. When you write most of a post on the issue, that's excessive.

  4. trent
    Member

    Yeah, I move posts to the 'best' forum if they seem out of place all the time as well without moving them. Creating a new post for the topic is really overkill as it then becomes confusing for everyone which post to use. It is easier to just tag it and then we move it if it really matters to anyone. Duplicate posts, I find are just confusing and I prefer moving them!

    Trent

  5. timethief
    Member

    I think it's important for volunteers to be warned that if you use words to the following effect when answering a question on the forum:

    If your aim is to provoke discussion of wordpress policy on the form then know that we are not permitted to do so. Please send your feedback directly to staff.

    drmike will interpret this as an attempt to moderate the forum. http://en.forums.wordpress.com/topic.php?id=5078

  6. timethief
    Member

    When this thread was first posted I had hoped that we could develop some forum guidelines for volunteers so we knew exactly what volunteers could do and say and what they weren't allowed to do or say. But that idea was "nixed".

    So as it now stands the person or person(s) that drmike may be aiming the thread at on any given day may not even know it's aimed at them. Alternatively, a person could do what I have previously done and assume it was aimed at them when it wasn't.

    IMO the scattergun approach is ineffectual. And in the hope that thread can actually serve a useful purpose I posted the warning directly above this one.

  7. drmike
    Member

    *sigh*

    Fine. If you would like me to name names and point at specifics, I'll go ahead and start doing that.

    I'm politely asking you to stop posting to the forum. Instead I'm requesting that you deal directly with staff.

    Timethief, you are not a moderator. What you said is unacceptable.

  8. dirkgently
    Member

    Seems to me an obvious way for things to improve, is to rethink the design of the help/forum/FAQ section. Force people asking new questions to select from a drop down menu the subject they are having probs with, have a list of FAQ's related to that subject pop up there in response with the question "is this what you're looking for?", make them proper help pages, instead of blog entries with a whole set of bloggers saying meaningless bullsh#t like "oh wow".....just cut off the comments on those.

    Force people to fit into these grooves, so they will probably find out that "no, you can't use AdSense" etc without posting a new thread. That's the reason why you have many duplicate threads worded differently.....because the design of the help sucks. Yes, some people will be lazy and not look, this forces them to look.....it also frees up VOLUNTEERS to stop answering the same questions over and over again. It lets them help answer NEW questions that someone hasn't thought of before.....in short it helps WordPress grow and mature rather than spin it's wheels and get little traction.

    You can't blame the VOLUNTEERS who happily spend THEIR free time NOT GETTING PAID, helping others in a flawed system not to get pissed at yet another question they already answered 100's of times before. I haven't been here long but spotted the flaws quickly, how much time do the regular forum helpers like drmike, timethief, raincoaster etc (sorry I could only remember three offhand, you know who you are) spend repeating themselves? Is it not respectful to THEIR time and efforts to design a system which minimizes their workload? As has been mentioned, if WordPress are paying people to be broken records, then fine.....but volunteers deserve more respect.

  9. dirkgently
    Member

    Another additional benefit of a proper help setup is that bloggers with questions can easily get answers there and then, instead of spending time writing a help question and waiting for someone to respond with either sarcasm or a link or both. It's quicker for EVERYONE involved and feels more like a professional service.

    Most of the stuff WordPress can do is already known, so prepare technical "how-to"s on each and set up a proper help system. The policies on everything from AdSense to javascript is known too.....so apply the same there. List the widgets by name with a "how do I use .....?"

    Have ".co. v .org" as a section, explaining that this help is for .com only.....triggered by the need to put a blog URL in to submit....which will detect if it's a subdomain of wordpress.com or not, and give a message if it's .org.

    If people are forced to look through a well designed setup it benefits ALL users and volunteers. Tag clouds don't work in the help section. Only one page of the most active threads don't work in the help forum. A rethink and redesign is the obvious solution.......but actually think "how people would use it to find answers to their problem" when working it out.

  10. timethief
    Member

    It's unfortunate that you found my response "unacceptable". I found the lengthy attention seeking diatribes by the blogger posted into multiple threads to be "unacceptable" too.
    Rest assured that if the blogger in question and I had been eyeball to eyeball I would have still invited him to deal directly with staff. It seemed obvious to me that this attention seeking blogger, who has so many ideas about changing so many things about wordpress.com, needs to take his brilliant ideas straight to the top.

  11. dirkgently
    Member

    The crux of this thread seems to be "respect". Asking volunteers to respect newbies, but WordPress don't seem to respect the contributers much. How many times does a volunteer have to answer the same question before they get pissed off and don't bother contributing? How much is someones time worth?

    If the answer given has to be "the officially sanctioned" solution and not just "a" solution, and their contribution is deleted....how long before they give up offering help? Given the fact that the volunteers on the forums are not paid for their time and efforts, nor are they trained with the same fact sheet, or have the same skills set....is it worth their hassle trying to help others?

    By trying to bite the hand that feeds, you're not doing WordPress much good. As an experiment, why don't ALL the unpaid VOLUNTEERS stop helping for a few days, let the paid people answer all the questions....see how that goes.

    On the redesign idea......if I have a question about AdSense, and at the time I need help, nobody has asked about AdSense in a couple of days...the tag cloud may not even show it. If I don't see it listed, I assume it's not there and ask.

    In short, do you seriously expect respect when you offer none? It's pretty obvious that this is a young company which is built on community participation for support. It's also pretty obvious that parts of it are seriously flawed.

  12. drmike
    Member

    Adsense is a different beast though. It's covered in the sticky.

    If someone does ask about Adsense, it just shows that they've ignored the stickies at the top of the forum.

  13. dirkgently
    Member

    I just spotted this from earlier....

    The CSS has it's own forum because it's a distinct issue which people will want repeated help. It makes sense to have the information concentrated in one place. It's also the case that you can get per-forum feeds so that might be useful to some.
    Nothing else jumps out as needing a forum of it's own - is there one?

    Given the amount of times the same questions are asked and answered, I'd have imagined the answer to that question would be self evident. Could CSS be the only one because it's a paid add-on and therefor the need to keep the paying bloggers happy to avoid them jumping ship to a professional setup?

    Adsense is a different beast though. It's covered in the sticky.

    If someone does ask about Adsense, it just shows that they've ignored the stickies at the top of the forum.

    A politicians answer there drmike, look at the specific to avoid the context. If my example was RSS or Flikr the response would be?

  14. drmike
    Member

    *sigh* I hate being in the middle of all this.

  15. judyb12
    Member

    quick question: can moderators and key masters see who added a modlook tag? Just curious

  16. timethief
    Member

    @drmike
    As far as I'm considered you're not in the middle;
    you're at the top of my wp-MU guru list
    and I'm your biggest fan. :)
    There will be times when we disagree but I don't take these issues to heart.

  17. mark
    Staff

    judyb12 - no. We could guess based on when the tag appears in our feed (if I made the last post before /after the tag was applied) but that doesn't matter. I wouldn't bother to find out - the tag is there to look, not find out who said to look.

  18. judyb12
    Member

    ok. Like i said, just curious ;)

  19. wank
    Member

    why don't ALL the unpaid VOLUNTEERS stop helping for a few days, let the paid people answer all the questions....see how that goes.

    Because then the users don't get the support. If volunteers were happy about the prospect of leaving users in the lurch, they wouldn't be doing the volunteering in the first place.

    Support is a bit like whack-a-mole. You beat one disillusioned volunteer into the ground, a fresh one springs up to replace them. Consequently there's no incentive to make their lives easier by, say, not releasing new themes just before shutting down feedback for the weekend.

  20. timethief
    Member

    Support is a bit like whack-a-mole. You beat one disillusioned volunteer into the ground, a fresh one springs up to replace them. Consequently there's no incentive to make their lives easier...

    AMEN

  21. dirkgently
    Member

    Ever get the feeling that two competing ideologies are at work here? WordPress seem to want the quality of paid support with the wages of volunteers.......it don't work like that, it's either or.....not both. Effort has to be rewarded for it to continue, wages or respect.....to forget that will see the effort dry up, leaving a stagnant community and a bad reputation.

    I understand the idea that the volunteers don't like leaving people in the lurch....which is EXACTLY the flaw (character trait) that's being exploited. Take advantage of people's good nature, knowing they will continue regardless.......what a fantastic community this could be.

  22. judyb12
    Member

    Consequently there's no incentive to make their lives easier by, say, not releasing new themes just before shutting down feedback for the weekend.

    an unannounced, broken theme to boot. I have backed off from answering a lot of questions here for a number of reasons, one of which is the lack of thought put into Friday afternoon changes.

  23. raincoaster
    Member

    Yes, I'm not happy that they seem to do their changes on Friday, perhaps hoping that the forum volunteers will handle whatever shitstorm ensues.

  24. drmike
    Member

    Just a quick mention once again that adding modlook as a tag to a thread is the best way to handle an issue.

    "This isn't a wordpress.com issue so I'm not sure why you posted this."

    ...isn't. :)

    Please make a staff member or a moderator aware of a situation by using the tag. Please remember that we don't have forum police here at wp.com and by posting that, you're trying to act as such. It's not necessary.

  25. dirkgently
    Member

    A memo to the paid staff directed yet again at volunteers, why does this not surprise? If you want quality control over the support given you need to employ people to give orders to.

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