Marius L. J. 2:03 pm on August 25, 2023  

Proposal for updated support guidelines

The support guidelines serve as the guidestones for support moderators (and 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 reviewers) in setting expectations around what is and what isn’t acceptable behavior.

The guidelines were last fully reviewed during WordCampWordCamp WordCamps are casual, locally-organized conferences covering everything related to WordPress. They're one of the places where the WordPress community comes together to teach one another what they’ve learned throughout the year and share the joy. Learn more. San Francisco in 2013, and a lot has happened in those 10 years. Some guidelines were added ad-hoc to account for timely situations, while others have just become dated, and may not necessarily reflect the current state of the WordPress user base, it’s surrounding ecosystem, or the outward facing opinion we wish to nurture.

The following is a collaborative effort in refining, simplifying, and clarifying the guidelines as they are today, into something that is both easier to understand for users, but also makes the job of those moderating much easier in the long term.

The proposal is available in a separate document, to make it easier to reading in an isolated (and easily comparable to the current iteration) manner.

Note that some changes would initially impact existing forum content. As these are new guidelines; once implemented, they will only relate to new content moving forward. The reasoning being that existing content were a product of the guidelines of their time, and moderating this existing content every time a guideline changes is just not something that can be done..

Read the new guideline proposal
(the doc is ready only, please leave your comments in this post)

As these are a result of work during WordCamp Us 2023, if you are at the venue and wish to discuss something, please feel free to reach out and a summary of it will be posted as a comment here. Otherwise, please use the comment section below for feedback, or questions, if there are uncertainties as to why some guidelines may have been removed, amended, or added to, this helps ensure everyone that wants to can have their opinion voiced, and that the same response does not have to be repeated in private channels.

The feedback period ended on 2023-10-01 00:00 UTC

Marius L. J. 7:17 am on September 28, 2023  

Agenda for September 28th Support Meeting

The weekly support meeting will be held on Thursday, September 28th 2023, 17:00 UTC in #forums on 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/.. (a Slack account is required)

Headlines / Community updates

This is where news that are relevant or good to know for the team from across the community are brought up and shared.

WordPress 6.4 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. 1

The first beta for WordPress 6.4 is now available for testing, so if you’re able to, please help test it so we can ensure yet another smooth release!

Analytics dashboards: Revisited

We’ve already had some talks about this, but a revival of the discussion around analytic dashboards is here, and a request for input on what information would be beneficial has been put out.

Let’s discuss what information the support team would view as valuable and try to provide a collective response to simplify the task of looking through all that comes up!

Two-Factor on WordPress.orgWordPress.org The community site where WordPress code is created and shared by the users. This is where you can download the source code for WordPress core, plugins and themes as well as the central location for community conversations and organization. https://wordpress.org/

The MetaMeta Meta is a term that refers to the inside workings of a group. For us, this is the team that works on internal WordPress sites like WordCamp Central and Make WordPress. team has made strides to improve the two-factor on WordPress.org, in addition to the existing support for TOTP codes.

Let’s look at what is now available, and also the potential to require all moderators or above to use this feature.

Checking in with international liaisons

This is the section where we reach out to the non-English speaking parts of our community, to see how they are doing, if there’s anything we can help each other with, or just interesting things going on that it would be nice to share with others.

There’s no requirements for previous participation or “fame” to share here, anyone is welcome, and we encourage newcomers to participate!

Unable to make the meeting, or maybe meetings just aren’t your thing? We would still love to hear how things are going in other non-English speaking parts of our community. Please feel free to let us know via the comment section below, in your own time, if there is anything you’d like to share, any questions or concerns you have, or just to let us know you’re doing OK!

We will make a habit of putting this callout with every agenda post going forward, so that everyone has a chance to join in.

For any other items to discuss, please add them to the comments below, or bring them up in the meeting.

Felipe Santos 3:31 pm on July 27, 2023  

WP Contributor Mentorship Program: Support Team Onboarding Meeting

Hi everyone!

Are you passionate about WordPress and eager to contribute to its forums? Do you enjoy helping others and solving challenges? If so, we have exciting news for you!

We are thrilled to announce that we will be hosting an exclusive onboarding call to introduce enthusiastic individuals like you to our Make Support team and its rewarding contributions to WordPress. Whether you’re a seasoned developer, a support expert, or a WordPress enthusiast with a desire to learn and grow, we welcome everyone to join our team.

The onboarding meeting will be held on Friday, July 28th 2023, 14:00 UTC.

Meeting link: https://meet.google.com/uqz-ohjg-nwd

You can also join using your phone: https://tel.meet/uqz-ohjg-nwd?pin=5284923163766

Anyone can join, and you can participate using video, audio, or text (using the meeting chat) — whatever makes you more comfortable.

During this onboarding call, you’ll get the chance to:

  • Introduce yourself to the team (optional) and create connections.
  • Ask any questions you may have about the program and the contribution process.
  • Get familiar with how you can contribute, regardless of your experience level.
  • Have some real examples of support topics and how we approached each of these.
  • Steps to follow when finding bugs and how to create a bug report.
  • Get to know some great tools to speed up your contribution and improve its quality.
  • Review some basic guidelines to keep in mind while contributing to the forums.
Marius L. J. 11:17 am on July 26, 2023  

Agenda for July 27th Support Meeting

The weekly support meeting will be held on Thursday, July 27th 2023, 17:00 UTC in #forums on 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/.. (a Slack account is required)

Headlines / Community updates

This is where news that are relevant or good to know for the team from across the community are brought up and shared.

WordPress 6.3

At the time of writing, we are just 2 weeks away from the planned release date of WordPress 6.3.

The field guide has been published, are there items we should be extra aware of from a support perspective (or things you’ve tested and found that may not be obvious within the field guide)?

Extended capabilities for international moderators

The moderators on the international forums (the ones found on the base WordPress.orgWordPress.org The community site where WordPress code is created and shared by the users. This is where you can download the source code for WordPress core, plugins and themes as well as the central location for community conversations and organization. https://wordpress.org/ domain) have been given the ability to more actively deal with spam accounts, giving them the ability to now also 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. the accounts to prevent further spam. This is particularly handy when any of the administrators may not be available due to time zones, or other engagements.

To account for the larger pool of users now able to perform more elevated moderator actions, improved audit logging has also been implemented.

Checking in with international liaisons

This is the section where we reach out to the non-English speaking parts of our community, to see how they are doing, if there’s anything we can help each other with, or just interesting things going on that it would be nice to share with others.

There’s no requirements for previous participation or “fame” to share here, anyone is welcome, and we encourage newcomers to participate!

Unable to make the meeting, or maybe meetings just aren’t your thing? We would still love to hear how things are going in other non-English speaking parts of our community. Please feel free to let us know via the comment section below, in your own time, if there is anything you’d like to share, any questions or concerns you have, or just to let us know you’re doing OK!

We will make a habit of putting this callout with every agenda post going forward, so that everyone has a chance to join in.

For any other items to discuss, please add them to the comments below, or bring them up in the meeting.

Alvaro Gómez 9:09 am on June 28, 2023
Tags:   

WP Contributor Mentorship Program: Support team edition

I would like to discuss how we could implement the WP Contributor Mentorship Program in the Support team.

Mentees

Anyone can apply to join the program via this form. If you know anyone who would be a good candidate, please encourage them to take part. In my case, I have reached out to all the people I met during Contributor dayContributor Day Contributor Days are standalone days, frequently held before or after WordCamps but they can also happen at any time. They are events where people get together to work on various areas of https://make.wordpress.org/ There are many teams that people can participate in, each with a different focus. https://2017.us.wordcamp.org/contributor-day/ https://make.wordpress.org/support/handbook/getting-started/getting-started-at-a-contributor-day/. at WCEU and let them know about the program.

Materials

We will need a set of materials for mentees to go over as part of their onboarding. We can of course point them to get Getting Started section of the Handbook and we also have a Support Table for Contributor Day doc we can share but I would like to know what other existing resources you can think of.

While drafting this post, I took a look at learn.wordpress.org and noticed how we do not seem to have any videotutorials specifically for support. We should explore the possibility of creating a simple “Getting Started with Support” video tutorial to facilitate the process.

If you have some experience recording these type of videos (and even if you do not!) please consider recording one. Please share you thoughts and suggestions in the comments.

Mentors

One of the most powerful ideas in this plan is to connect mentees to seasoned mentors who can reply to their questions and guide them through their onboarding. This should not require a lot of time but we do need to know who is available and would feel confortable doing that.

We are considering the possibility of holding “welcome” video calls as part of the onboarding. Aside from replying to practical questions, the goal of these calls would be to create personal connections between mentors and their mentees. Ideally, we should try and hold at least two different calls at different times in order to accommodate for mentees across time-zones.

Please note how there are several ways you can contribute to this initiative, but you do not need to commit to all of them:

  • Encourage mentees to take part
  • Recommend existing materials
  • Create or record new materials.
  • Volunteer to act as mentor
  • Host one of these “welcome” calls.

If you are an experienced contributor and would like to volunteer as a mentor, please leave a comment or swing by the #forums channel in 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/..

Timeline & Next Steps

The first cohort is schedule to take place between July 12th and August 9th. We have two weeks to put together some basic curriculum and designate mentees, let’s make this happen!.

Marius L. J. 6:46 pm on May 30, 2023  

Suggested stance on the use of AI-tooling

This post does not constitute a final decision, but is a proposal on wording, and call for input on, a suggested stance from the WordPress.orgWordPress.org The community site where WordPress code is created and shared by the users. This is where you can download the source code for WordPress core, plugins and themes as well as the central location for community conversations and organization. https://wordpress.org/ support community on how AI-generated resources or replies can and should be used across the WordPress.org support platform.

During the support team meeting on May 11th, the topic on using generative AI in replies was chosen as the meetings discussion topic.

Based on the pros and cons brought forth, and after observing how AI tools are currently being used – not only within the WordPress.org support forums, but also in support-focused scenarios in general – it’s clear that these kind of tools are both quite popular, but also at times misleading.

Some of the concerns raised were that generative replies may not always be accurate, leaving users with an incorrect path forward and more confused than helped, or used to rapidly increase a user’s post count for whatever reason fits their scenario. Another concern is that the replies may be too generalized or outdated. This counts true as tools such as, for example; ChatGPT, are based on older content (in the example of ChatGPT this is 2+ years old) at this time, and its answers may therefore no longer be entirely correct or relevant.

Taking all those elements into account, the following is a short, but applicable suggestion on what our stance may be:

The use of AI-tools to improve replies in support workflows is allowed, but it is on the user to verify that their replies are accurate, and correct. In addition, it is also a requirement that the use of such tools be declared within the response, to provide transparency, and set expectations. Abuse of such tools to provide multiple inaccurate replies, intentional or not, for the sake of activity will be considered spam, and the users will be warned, and subsequent misuse will be treated as any other account producing spam-focused content.

Thank you to @zoonini and @mrfoxtalbot for reviewing and helping with this post.

Marius L. J. 10:09 pm on May 5, 2023  

Agenda for May 11th Support Meeting

The weekly support meeting will be held on Thursday, May 11th, 2023, 17:00 UTC in #forums on 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/.. (a Slack account is required)

Support and AI-provided replies or resources

AI is all the rage these days, it’s the latest hip thing to mix into anything and everything, and one of the areas where it’s likely to be a noteworthy gamechanger is support (remember those support robots we’ve had for a few years?).

Of course, it is only natural for this to also affect the WordPress.orgWordPress.org The community site where WordPress code is created and shared by the users. This is where you can download the source code for WordPress core, plugins and themes as well as the central location for community conversations and organization. https://wordpress.org/ side of support as well, which is why the topic should be discussed, to ensure that the support team has a unified view on how these tools are used in a support-context on our platforms.

There are both positives, and negatives to using AI to help with formulating replies, let’s discuss things from both sides of it, what are your opinions? What is acceptable use, what is not, where should the line be drawn?

We’d like to hear opinions not only from those who moderate, but also those who use the forums, either by seeking help, providing help, or anything in between; this is a great opportunity to help shape the direction of some potential new guidelines.

thelmachido a11n 10:54 am on May 3, 2023
Tags:   

Support ticket triage session – May 4th, 2023 at 08:00 UTC 

🪲 It’s time for another bug scrub.

In our last 6 bug scrubs in 2023, we had a look at <a href="https://meta.trac.wordpress.org/query?status=!closed&component=Support+Forums&order=priority. A huge thank you to everyone that contributed to the previous bug scrubs. In this session, we will be looking at the next 10 tickets from the component with normal priority.

Tickets we will be looking at in this meeting

This aims to be part of a series of bug scrubs in order to scan the entire support forums ticket component. If you want to help to host a bug scrub, feel free to reach out.

This ticket triage session will be held on Thursday, May 4th, 2023, 08:00 UTC in #forums on 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/. (a Slack account is required).

We all love Support Forums – It’s where we learn and help at the same time. In order to make this a better place, we constantly come up with new enhancements, requested via tickets. Some of these need a push forward.

We are putting aside some time to triage tickets, trying to gather some helpful input about what we think about them and how we can help to move them forward. Please keep in mind that our work actually helps metaMeta Meta is a term that refers to the inside workings of a group. For us, this is the team that works on internal WordPress sites like WordCamp Central and Make WordPress. contributors to pick the most needed tickets and work on them.

🌎 As a long-term plan, we will be alternating the time slots for these meetings:

The chosen hour is not friendly with your time zone, unable to make the session, or maybe meetings just aren’t your thing. If the latter, you should still come and meet us – you’ll change your mind about boring meetings. 😊 We would still love to know your opinion on the issues mentioned in the tickets. Please feel free to let us know via a comment on the respective tickets.

View the Support Forums ticket component

#bug-scrub
Marius L. J. 4:02 pm on April 15, 2023  

Request for input: Support Stats

A few years back, the metaMeta Meta is a term that refers to the inside workings of a group. For us, this is the team that works on internal WordPress sites like WordCamp Central and Make WordPress. team posted asking if the various teams would like to have a stats dashboard.
One of the requirements for such a dashboard would of course be to actually collect analytics.

The support team does not currently collect anything explicitly, there are some numbers readily available from the bbPressbbPress Free, open source software built on top of WordPress for easily creating forums on sites. https://bbpress.org. dashboard widgetWidget A WordPress Widget is a small block that performs a specific function. You can add these widgets in sidebars also known as widget-ready areas on your web page. WordPress widgets were originally created to provide a simple and easy-to-use way of giving design and structure control of the WordPress theme to the user. (such as topics created, replies created), but these do not give a good insight without associative information such as dates or times.

During a recent team meeting, the prospect of including some statistics with our weekly updates was brought up, which would be the baseline for any such dashboard.

By introducing some numbers in our updates, we can improve transparency around the teams interactions, and also start to make the call on what information would be good to have in an analytics dashboard.

Some of the ideas that were shared to get the ball rolling were:

  • Amount of posts comparison between themes, plugins, and general global forums in the given time frame
  • Amount of users blocked in the given time frame
  • Amount of reported topics handled in the given time frame
  • Amount of resolved thread within the given time frame

What information would be good to have, and in what way should it be presented to give the most value, both to the team, but also to anyone looking in and wanting to learn more?

Marius L. J. 2:33 pm on April 19, 2023  

Agenda for April 20th Support Meeting

The weekly support meeting will be held on Thursday, April 20th, 2023, 17:00 UTC in #forums on 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/.. (a Slack account is required)

Headlines / Community updates

This is where news that are relevant or good to know for the team from across the community are brought up and shared.

Private Forum Moderators Channel

In the spirit of transparency, the team announced the creation of a private room for moderators to discuss topics that have a sensitive nature, and should not be discussed in public.

Request for input: Support Stats

Some time back, the topic of stats in weekly updates was mentioned. A post for collecting input on what information may be valuable has now been set up and seeking input from community participants.

WordCampWordCamp WordCamps are casual, locally-organized conferences covering everything related to WordPress. They're one of the places where the WordPress community comes together to teach one another what they’ve learned throughout the year and share the joy. Learn more. Europe Contributor DayContributor Day Contributor Days are standalone days, frequently held before or after WordCamps but they can also happen at any time. They are events where people get together to work on various areas of https://make.wordpress.org/ There are many teams that people can participate in, each with a different focus. https://2017.us.wordcamp.org/contributor-day/ https://make.wordpress.org/support/handbook/getting-started/getting-started-at-a-contributor-day/.

Contributor Day at WordCamp Europe is getting closer by the minute. As usual, there will be a Contributor Day.

As is customary on these days, we’re looking for someone who would like to help lead the Support Team table at the event. This generally includes giving a short introduction about the team at the start of the day, helping onboard new contributors through the day, and giving a summary at the end of the day. It is a great way to get more involved in the team and community.

If this sounds exciting, please throw your hand up, we’d love to have you!

Checking in with international liaisons

This is the section where we reach out to the non-English speaking parts of our community, to see how they are doing, if there’s anything we can help each other with, or just interesting things going on that it would be nice to share with others.

There’s no requirements for previous participation or “fame” to share here, anyone is welcome, and we encourage newcomers to participate!

Unable to make the meeting, or maybe meetings just aren’t your thing? We would still love to hear how things are going in other non-English speaking parts of our community. Please feel free to let us know via the comment section below, in your own time, if there is anything you’d like to share, any questions or concerns you have, or just to let us know you’re doing OK!

We will make a habit of putting this callout with every agenda post going forward, so that everyone has a chance to join in.

For any other items to discuss, please add them to the comments below, or bring them up in the meeting.