If you need support, go to the forums. If you want to help make Support awesome, stay here.
If your comment is for support, it will be deleted. If it looks like spam, it will be deleted. Sorry, but there’s no other way to keep up with things.
The section Your WordPress on the forums might have made sense at the beginning when few of us were using WordPress, but now that it’s so popular, there are better avenues for someone to “Strut their stuff” and get feedback.
These days this section contains mostly spammers and moderators tend to give that section less attention. In my opinion, this section is not worth keeping, but I may have not considered something.
Care to voice your opinion filling out the survey and/or leaving a comment?
Voted yes however I would prefer something more advanced in its place…
It could be a plugin that sends information about the blog to this site i.e. theme, plugins, website name etc. Along with that the webmaster can describe their site, it’s purpose, the team and have questions that help us to determine why they use WordPress.
I think in short my idea is a community moderated portfolio. Effort would be required to get the WordPress on this forum. Screenshot of the WordPress should be included. The plugin rating system could be used especially now that it is tied into a review approach.
Is this not something worth considering so that people do have a free place to show off their WordPress on an official WordPress domain and it is done in a way that spammers wouldn’t have time for?
What you’re describing is the Showcase — and there’s no move to get rid of that!
Indeed.. I should have clarified, I’m suggesting that we remove this section – http://wordpress.org/support/forum/your-wordpress
not the showcase – http://wordpress.org/showcase/
If we don’t scrap them, we could introduce more strict guidelines on how to post.
Forrst.com is a website that dedicates itself to a community a review system. People can post their work and review other people’s work. Forrst deals with the same sorts of crap but they resolve it by allowing users to mark work as:
“Needs more work. Forrster hasn’t put enough time into their post for community feedback to be useful.”
“Overly Promotional. The post doesn’t contribute enough opportunity for the community to learn.”
“Lacks purpose. Forrster hasn’t asked for specific feedback, highlighted successful ideas, or shared insight into their work.”
We could take their guidelines as criteria that users must meet when posting their own work. Then if people don’t meet those guidelines, we could delete their threads.
I can see how introducing these guidelines would mean moderating the Your WordPress forum more, but the frequency of threads opening up there is really low, so it may not need too much moderation.
Voted “YES!” I think it’s time for the Your WordPress sub-forum to be shown the door.
Occasionally you’ll get some really good posts (I’m still impressed with Bea’s site) but the majority of the posts are people attempting to get Google Juice out of posting the a link.
Many of those are just plain awful and as Andrew used to point out not different from the theme’s demo site. It’s not really serving it’s original purpose anymore.
Yes, pretty much all of the sites I have reviewed on there since I can remember have been exactly the same as the themes they derive. Basically people want others to review their actual content, which of course does not contribute anything to the community. I often now reply, “I think the developers of theme X have done a really good job” when people try to take credit for them.
More rules/guidelines won’t help. If people don’t read the ones we have, and they don’t, it won’t change the pain that is both that forum and the Meetups one.
I vote to dump. It was a great idea when WP was a smaller community, we’re a bit mammoth 
I think its time is long gone.
Granted… due to full time school+work, I haven’t been super active in the forums (I’ll be back!), but since I started hanging out on the forums, I’ve seen that section kind of devolve. It used to be a bit useful, a meet and greet, and beginners really looking for input – heck I was in there when I made my first couple of themes from scratch (man, they are ugly). It just doesn’t really serve that, or any, purpose any longer.
I think something outside the forum with a formal submission process would be a much better idea if the community wanted to keep something like this around at all. That way the moderators could create guidelines as to what can be submitted and a lot of the mess will not be published.
Any chance you could just block it to new submissions? It’s pretty useful to me at the minute while I’m researching WP history.
ah ah… I knew there would be something I hadn’t thought about. Good point.
That would be good. Put up a sticky on that sub-forum with “No more submissions etc.” and leave it for historical purposes.
Can we delete advertising/ spam/ lacking purpose/ lacking detail threads to make room for the good ones on the first page?
It’s tricky. If someone’s spaming any forum then *ZAP! Buh-buy!* that post.
But so much of Your WordPress is just “What do you think of this site?” and that’s kinda/sorta permitted provided it’s actually a WordPress site.
There’s one guy who every few months posts his client work link. The sites are WordPress and not bad per se but those posts don’t really serve a point IMHO. It’s just really an attempt to get a link.
The problem there is the manual work involved. Frankly, I have no interest in curating that. I’d rather actually help people 
Kill it and grill it. (Well, maybe not grill it.) But I think it is time for it to be turned into an historical archive, as suggested above.
Only twelve (thirteen if I count the one that I don’t even know what he’s asking…). If you can jump in and help out, remember to link to trac and mark the ticket resolved if there’s a trac ticket
ETA : Nine moar!
so close!
Hi support team. I would like to include Support in our Gnome participation this summer if there are any applicants interested in working in the forums etc over the summer. @ipstenu and/or other experienced team members: Head over to http://codex.wordpress.org/Gnome_Summer_Program_for_Women#Support and fill in project ideas (optional, I made a default idea that basically covers answering questions and beefing up support docs) and info on whoever from this team is willing/able to mentor an intern (ideally we put more than one mentor with each student so the time commitment isn’t too heavy). No idea yet how many student slots we’ll get.
Posts in Alpha/Beta that need help either solving or triaging. Once we have a trac ticket that’s accepted and picked up for a bug, we can mark the post as resolved (since we don’t expect to debug more in the forums).
Anything that isn’t ‘resolved’ is fair game
This post is the DRAFT of my regular forum sticky for new WP releases. What I’m hoping is people will chime in with important factoids I’m missing. The ‘—-’ breaks indicate separate posts. I do them that way so each section is easier to edit and add content down the line.
Remember that the sticky is a LIVING post. While it will be closed, mods and admins can edit it and add more data as it comes to light. In fact, I totally encourage that. Don’t bother asking if you can, if you have the access and you know that something’s missed, just add it in!
For disabling plugins, can we say don’t forget the MU folder if you have one? Some seem to panic when they don’t have a MU folder.
Thanks,
Keith
Already in there “Also remember to deactivate any plugins in the mu-plugins folder. The easiest way is to rename that folder to mu-plugins-old”
I meant add “if you have one” or “if you are using the MU version” as some get confused when they don’t have a mu-plugins folder.
Do you mean like this (if not, just write it out and show me what you do mean, it’s way easier than me poking you to elaborate when you’re totally encouraged to be a part of the writing process):
“Also remember to deactivate any plugins in the mu-plugins folder, if you have one. The easiest way is to rename that folder to mu-plugins-old”
And no, we don’t want to say ‘if you’re using the MU version…’ for two reasons:
1) It’s not MU it’s Multisite
2) You can use mu-plugins on a single site
Yes, that is what I mean.
Super nitpicky editor hat on:
“we delete bumps on site” should be sight
“make your own topic unless your problem is 100% exactly the same as someone elses” add apostrophe in else’s.
Also I like Esmi’s language from the forum guidelines: “Unless you are using the same version of WordPress on the same physical server hosted by the same hosts with the same plugins, theme & configurations as the original poster, do not post in someone else’s thread.”
Gaaah! Thank you, Jess!
WordPress 3.6-Beta has landed for @andrea_r‘s birthday.
http://wordpress.org/news/2013/04/wordpress-3-6-beta-1/
PLEASE test I will send you cookies.
We’ll probably go over, but we’re moving BACK an hour thanks to DST in the US and the others who asked if we could
http://www.timeanddate.com/worldclock/fixedtime.html?hour=20&min=00&sec=0p1=0
See you tomorrow!
I’ve cleaned up the forum moderator/admin list.
Of the lof, 24 out of 25 were absent 12+ months, even a bunch of Automatticians, who are (yes) members now. Custom titles are applied where appropriate.
Everyone gets the 30-second thinf removed, since you were trusted once, we still trust ya a lot Ditto Akismet Always Trust.
Let me know…
IMO if you only post once a month, and you still help out, there’s no reason to dump you unless you go postal over people and need time out The next round of picking new admins and mods will start with the 3.6 release. How do you get picked? Be active, be helpful, don’t lose your blob. Showing some initiative is always good, knowing when someone’s trolling is great. Most of the time, we start with you as a mod, which is limited, but when you’re a super star, that lasts as long as how annoyed I get having to block users for you.
What? You thought this was an exact science?
If you think someone should be an awesome mod (or shouldn’t be one anymore), feel free to ping me publicly or privately, as you see fit. I trust your judgements!
What’s trolling?
Someone who posts inflammatory, extraneous, or off-topic messages in an online community, such as a forum, chat room, or blog, with the primary intent of provoking readers into an emotional response or of otherwise disrupting normal on-topic discussion.
tl;dr: Someone who posts to piss people off, rile them up, and not provide anything constructive. Ever.
You’ll hear me say “Don’t feed the trolls” when people get into arguments with them. You can’t win, just walk away
So one would say I was trolling and you just fed me. Got it
Yeah, I was really tempted to say “… You.” But in the event that you weren’t, I took a chance
I would be interested in becoming a Mod. I do a lot of support on my plugin forums but would be keen to do extend that to the general forums and help out a bit more.
We actually look for people who, without being mods, go help in the general forums. As a plugin or theme dev, helping in your threads is expected, to a degree. It’s the above and beyond that ends up with people being moderators
Ok cool, no worries – thanks for the info
I would love to be a moderator
A recent comment relating to using media in WordPress that you might find interesting.
Yeah, it’s on the to-do list. :/ If anyone wants to volunteer, you get magic cookies and unicorns!
Hi. We need a contact for the german support forum. it seems there is nobody responsible for the spam.
there is often spam and it will not be deleted. is there an official admin for this fourm?
People seemed to like the idea when I pitched it. Can we pick a weekend to do it? Having at least 2 weeks notice would be good so people can clear time in schedules, read up on docs if they want, etc. Maybe weekend of February 15?
Works for me!
Will be a happy Valentine’s weekend to WordPress users everywhere
Gotcha on the calendar…
Probably not open that weekend with it being my wife’s birthday and valentine’s day 
I’m down for that weekend.
+1
I have family from Scotland over that weekend. Wont’ be able to make it. 
Would the next weekend work?
The following one would work. However I might be able to pull away for a few hours. Looks like the boys might be going to Whistler. Whistler on Saturday? No thanks. They can go on their own.
15 works fo me after all. Brother in law just cancelled plans due to family emergency.
Sounds like fun Jen; count me in!
Why not every weekend? Why only weekend anyway?
All you really need is a way to allow helpers to indicate they just helped someone – A message containing only “yw” or “You’re welcome” is a good candidate.
Then you parse the logs periodically for those, and as people reach a number of those, you do a check on each of their “yw”s manually, and confirm they actually did help someone – and give them the “prize”.
A “drive” is a special event that happens infrequently, and gets a big publicity push. That’s what I’m talking about. There’s no reason there couldn’t be a “weekend project” based on this that is active every weekend, but you would need to always have enough people staffing it. The minute someone tries to participate and there’s no one to review work and mentor, that’s the minute the program has failed.
As for having an ongoing “yw” system, that is kind of the opposite of the guided mentorship for new contributors that I’m talking about. What you’re talking about is more just stats gathering, which we already gather without having people enter “yw” on responses.
I’m talking about IRC specifically.
Anyway, OK, I understand you want to have a different focus, and don’t think my idea is awesome. Thanks for considering it anyway.
I didn’t say your suggestion “isn’t awesome,” it’s just not in line with the project/goals we’re talking about in this thread, as I stated before.
Ongoing support contribution isn’t a numbers game, so tying a prize system to regular contribution would incentivize people to answer more easy questions and skip over the harder ones that take more time so they could get more “yw”s on the board. We do look at the numbers of responses already, as mentioned, and the team reps and current moderators just plain notice when people start stepping more. The prize there is more responsibility and moderator status.
The 15th-18th is tentatively good for me, ditto the next weekend. One or the other. I need to go see my Mom more often
Whatever we do – DO NOT pick March 10th, it’s US DST and you will mess everyone up
I vote every weekend after the initial one. But I will be in Japan that week and flying back to US at the start of the weekend so I will miss a good day’s worth if we start on 15th.
I could manage the weekend of 15th. The following weekend might be iffy as that’s around my birthday/
15th works for me
+1
Sounds like the wekend of the 15th is the best after all. Can we make planning for this the subject of the next irc chat?
As I helped people this weekend I was trying to take note of how many confirmed “helps” I racked up and this is going to be a challenge to track and get 20. I kind of feel those ones that are going to go through and verify count the “helps” are going to spend more time doing that than anything.
Not quite sure how it is all going to play out yet and I don’t really have any solid ideas on how to do the tracking but the only reasonable idea I can think of is when a “helper” thinks they are worthy of receiving a “help” point they tag the thread with their name or a special keyword that everyone will use. Then when reviewed the tag gets removed.
But if something like that isn’t in place then the work for the mentors is going to be a bunch. Just an idea.
Since we’ve done contest things with contributors before (like GCI) there’s a pretty simple way to handle this. Each contestant makes a list of their thread URLs and that’s what gets submitted at the end for review/tally. During the weekend, the mentors are all about helping people get the right answers. Then we take a day to tally results. Mentors can be keeping a list of thread IDs as well as they are helping, and then can check them off as yes/no easily when doing the final tally. Process for grading is not going to be the burden here, it will be making sure we have people around to help with questions 24/7 for the contest time period, getting the word out, and having documentation in place that helps people get started.
Not directly related, but the post got me thinking about this. Overall, there’s no way for a volunteer to “ask for backup” when they’ve started answering a thread and either they’re not sure or it ends up being outside their comfort zone.
For the weekend, the mentor would be the new volunteer’s fallback, but outside of that weekend, should there be a way to do that? Either a tag, or an established practice of pinging someone in IRC, or something?
I e-mailed the listserv and seems there’s no practice short of saying I don’t know and hoping someone else checks on the thread.
Yes, setting up a contributor buddies/mentors program is on our list over in the /community group. Once the welcome wagon IRC channel staffing is done (hopefully this week) I think that’s one of the next projects.
Realistically, yes, the right answer is that if you have started helping someone and then you hit a dead end, it’s time to tag someone else in. The problem with using actual tags for this is that people figure out the system quickly and suddenly everyone is tagging their posts with the special team-assist tag in the hope of getting more immediate senior attention. Leaving a comment that says, “I don’t know the answer and have run out of ideas for what to try next,” is the best thing. Pinging the list to ask for an assist or hopping into #wordpress to see if anyone there can help is an option, too.
I know you all were anxiously awaiting to see if I will be around that weekend and I am please to inform you that I will be. My trip to Japan got cancelled, so game on.
So, this is coming up? Discuss on IRC tomorrow?
Am I late?
If you have a space I would like to contribute, count me in too.
Jess, 
espiat and 
Aditya, 
Very yes.