Support Team Update for July 3rd

Items discussed at today’s #wordpress-sfd meetupMeetup All local/regional gatherings that are officially a part of the WordPress world but are not WordCamps are organized through https://www.meetup.com/. A meetup is typically a chance for local WordPress users to get together and share new ideas and seek help from one another. Searching for ‘WordPress’ on meetup.com will help you find options in your area.:

Domain trademark violations

This comes up from time to time in the forums. Someone (well meaning I am sure) uses WordPress in their domain name and posts that link in the forums or in their forum profile. When that happens they usually get a reply such as “Hey, could you please stop using that domain name? Here’s some links explaining it better.”

Volunteer support is not trademark police and I’ve not seen a case where someone didn’t correct that when pointed out. Support volunteers are there to help people and not really get into topics like that. But if necessary this link can be used to report that to the WordPress foundation.

Contact

Again it’s not that support is to tell people right and wrong but if an instance needs to be escalated then that link should work.

Troubleshooting Handbook status

The new Troubleshooting Handbook is making progress and both @jerrysarcastic and @podz (Markr) have been working on it. It still needs contributors so please take some time to look it over and contribute where you can.

Troubleshooting Handbook

Section 3 can use some attention and would really benefit from some content.

For examples of good (and not so good) support it was discussed to possibly take topics from the forum and modify/anonymize the text so that the examples remain just examples. It’s important that the handbook doesn’t seem to call out people for their behaviour. It’s a handbook after all and everyone should benefit from the verbiage.

Expiring topics earlier than 1 year?

When a topic is a year old it gets expired meaning no one can reply to those topics anymore. Moderators can still edit the posts in the topic but not reply either. This morning on the wp-forums list the idea came up about the possibility of reducing that time.

Expiring topics around 3 months was well recieved in IRC and that became 6 months after some talking it out. I suggested sending an email to the list asking Otto about it. His reply on the list touched on something important: what is the best experience for the users?

Topics are expired because after a time they’re no longer useful. That time is currently 1 year but more or less could be a tough thing to nail down. It’s something that will continue to be discussed on the wp-forums list.

This really isn’t a critical item (it only really came up today) and I think the 1 year age out will stay. Moderators can still close topics that have gone off the rails and are no longer productive.

The transcript of today’s #wordpress-sfd meetup can be read at this link

#support