November 12th Support Team meetup summary

Items discussed at today’s Support Team 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.:

WordPress 4.4 betaBeta A pre-release of software that is given out to a large group of users to trial under real conditions. Beta versions have gone through alpha testing in-house and are generally fairly close in look, feel and function to the final product; however, design changes often occur as part of the process. 4 testing

It’s up to beta 4, please test and test again.

Give Aaron Jorbin’s WordPress 4.4: Field Guide a read, it’s very good. Aaron also suggested in the Slack #forums channel to read up on the new responsive image features. The comments there can provide material for solutions that 4.4 users may need.

Community Summit Agenda 2015 for Support

Please consider commenting on the agenda post even if you are not attending. While the summit is 2 days, it’s important that agenda items get represented where there’s interest.

For those that can’t attend in person we’re hoping to sort out something. The summit is a unconference so what actually happens may not be what we intended. It will be fun and I’m sure a lot will be accomplished.

OMGWTFBBQ draft

The draft will get posted after RC1 is dropped. This will include the usual boiler plate material as well as (naturally) 4.4 specific items. If I miss it or am unable to then Mika will post the draft.

IRC moderation

Clarification that @clorith didn’t post on last week’s summary: moderation in IRC does not mean ban people. That’s an option of last resort. Before that happens or is even considered a polite talking to is the way to go. Most people will respond to being asked to be civil and anyone can do that step, moderator or not.

Commercial theme (or 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) support in the forums

How should moderators treat commercial support topics? A user who posts “I need help with ” usually does not know they’re postin in the wrong place. What they should be doing is contacting the author for support directly on the author’s own site.

After some reiteration (check the transcript, collaboration is cool) this was settled on as a stock reply.

Since that is a commercial theme or plugin, we ask that you please go to their official support channel, so you can get support from the people who know it best.

[support link]

Forum volunteers are also not given access to commercial products, so they would not know why it is not working properly. Other community members who may have faced your issue might be able to help you but your best bet is your product’s developer. Keep in mind we encourage you to use the official support venues, as it allows the developers to be aware of issues with their code and gives back to the community in a more robust way.

Which will work fine. If someone is asking for support for nulled product or abandoned theme then that’s a different matter. Also if an author routinely uses the volunteer support forums for the customers then a shoulder tap will happen to that author.

Use of the “user moderation” flag in the forums

The phrase “user moderation” being a euphemism for the bozo flag. The bozo word is problematic. 😉

Otto pointed out that the bozo flag isn’t meant to timeout users but more “this guy shouldn’t be causing this many people to get notification emails” flag. If someone is spamming the forums then blockBlock Block is the abstract term used to describe units of markup that, composed together, form the content or layout of a webpage using the WordPress editor. The idea combines concepts of what in the past may have achieved with shortcodes, custom HTML, and embed discovery into a single consistent API and user experience. their account. If someone is behaving like a jerk, then escalate to the #forums SlackSlack Slack is a Collaborative Group Chat Platform https://slack.com/. The WordPress community has its own Slack Channel at https://make.wordpress.org/chat/. channel or pingPing The act of sending a very small amount of data to an end point. Ping is used in computer science to illicit a response from a target server to test it’s connection. Ping is also a term used by Slack users to @ someone or send them a direct message (DM). Users might say something along the lines of “Ping me when the meeting starts.” Otto. The big hammer of doom can be used if necessary (and as a last resort).

If a moderator sees an account that’s been flagged and there isn’t anything in that account’s recent posts that shows why then unbozo the account.

Read the meetup transcript in the Slack archives. (A Slack account is required)

#weekly-chat