Support Team meetup summary for February 26th

Topics discussed at today’s 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.:

Please try to avoid closing topics if possible

When a user posts to the forums for support of a commercial product or a .COM issue please refer them to the correct place. If you can also reply with some help too. But try to avoid closing the topic. That could lead to an unhappy user and someone else may be able to help them. It’s important that user’s looking for help are not frustrated and sometimes someone can or will assist them.

That doesn’t mean don’t close topics when they go off the rails. If someone is using their topic to attack others then caution them and put their account in the time out room. If they persist then close the topic as no longer being productive.

Making “no-replies” a more useful view into the forums

James proposed some modifications for the no-replies view in the forums in this week’s posted agenda.

The first idea is to limit how far the no replies go back to something that is useful. For example, replying to a topic more than 3 weeks later doesn’t necessarily help anyone. The second part is to mark older no replies so that they are not indexed via search engines or at least index differently.

Everyone likes the idea though there was a lot of discussion. 😉 The no-replies view is just a way to look at data (topics). Modifying that view won’t delete the topics but hopefully will put focus on user problems in a timely manner.

James (@macmanx) has raised two tracTrac Trac is the place where contributors create issues for bugs or feature requests much like GitHub.https://core.trac.wordpress.org/. tickets per this discussion.

#887: Limit No Replies Queue to 3 Weeks
#888: Prepend [Unresolved] to Title Tag of No Reply Threads

The reviews have been reset and rebuilt

Previously when someone left a review and it was deleted the count stayed with the pluginPlugin A plugin is a piece of software containing a group of functions that can be added to a WordPress website. They can extend functionality or add new features to your WordPress websites. WordPress plugins are written in the PHP programming language and integrate seamlessly with WordPress. These can be free in the WordPress.org Plugin Directory https://wordpress.org/plugins/ or can be cost-based plugin from a third-party or theme. So if a popular plugin was inundated with 10 spam reviews (it happens) those stars remained after the reviews were deleted.

That’s no longer the case and the stars now reflect the normal reviews. You can read about it in Otto’s forum post. When a moderator deletes a review it will be reflected in the review rollup (stars). It may not happen immediately (caching is always a thing) but it will happen.

Support LearnUps

Tim (@tnash) had a Google Hangout today and it went well. Other topics will be considered and more LearnUps will be scheduled. The “when” is and interesting point and perhaps one can be scheduled for a weekend session.

Read today’s meetup transcript (Slack account required to view).