22nd February Support Team meeting

The support meeting will be held on Thursday, February 22 2024, 19:00 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) or at https://make.wordpress.org/support/chat/.

Commercial support quality in reviews

Following on from the recent change to guidelines around reviews of Commercial/Pro plugins we need to discuss and make a decision about whether quality of support received for Commercial/Pro plugins is a valid part of a review.

Support Team plans for 2024

Let’s discuss my proposal of some things to work on in 2024 to make the Support Team more sustainable for the long term, and better connect with our contributors who work in the Forums.

Firmer language around links in reviews

Even though it shouldn’t be possible for link – some folks do manage to do so. At the moment our wording around that guideline (in the form itself) is a little soft. Should we have a clear mention in the Guidelines themselves, and also update the wording in the form to be clearer?

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.

#forums

Some proposed improvements for 2024

Hi folks – over the New Year period I was reflecting a little on the Support Team and the legacy of work we have there supporting the community in the Forums. I’ve also detected (and outright been told as well) that there’s the potential of some burnout within the team – which is something that (from a personal point of view) I don’t want any folks to go through.

I also think that there’s lots to learn from the Plugins Team and their work over the last 12 months in building a new team, documenting the way they work, and ultimately setting the team up to be sustainable for the long term.

TLDR: I’d like to propose that in 2024 the Support Team looks to set ourselves up for long term success and sustainability by taking stock of where we are today, expanding the team in a scalable way, and fostering more of a community amongst contributors who volunteer in the forums.

I’ve expanded that thinking into a few different areas that I’d like to raise for consideration in upcoming Team Meetings:

Taking Stock of current state of the team and documenting our work
One of the massive ongoing successes of the team is that the ‘work’ is continuously getting done in a timely fashion. We have no backlog, few complaints, nor any pressure to improve ‘performance’ of any kind – because of the great work y’all do.

But at the same time there is much of the work that is done which is unknown or undocumented. There’s plenty of great (and important) work which is done to keep the forums clean and tidy – which isn’t documented in the handbook. Speaking from personal experience I can say this makes it tricky to know exactly what work I can help out with – beyond the basics in the handbook. It also makes it hard to know what size the team needs to be to handle that workload sustainably.

One thing I’d propose is that we properly document these kind of things – to make decisions about team size easier, and to aid onboarding of potential new team members.

Team Size and Members

  • Team size (including Rosetta Forum mods)
  • An estimation of the amount of time spent on moderator tasks

Team Tasks: What is it the team actually does (and how)

  • Responding in #Forums
  • Pending, Spam, and Modlook queues of Forums
  • Proactively looking for Spam? (how?)
  • Proactively looking for sock puppets? (how?)
  • Password Reset queue (We could definitely do with better documentation of this)

Team Mission and Goals

  • What does success look like? What are we aiming for?

Expanding the team in a sustainable and scalable way
Having a better understanding of the tasks needed, and the bandwidth of the team will allow us to know when adding new team members is needed. As a step to reduce burnout and have a sustainability plan for the team – I propose a need to add a number of new team members within the next 3 months as a starting point.

Some things we will need to consider in order to do that:

Hiring and Recruitment process

  • Take learnings from 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 Review Team and their recruitment
  • Design and implement recruitment and vetting (if needed) processes

Onboarding for new members

  • Review existing handbook and documentation.
  • Addition of Onboarding items to cover security, data management, and conflict resolution.

Introducing/participating in Mentoring opportunities

  • Have team members take part in the existing Mentor programs – providing a pathway for contributors towards joining the team.
  • Identify candidates amongst existing Forum contributors to invite to ‘officially’ join the team via a mentorship program.

Fostering a Community of Contributors in the Forums
At times the work of the Support Team could be considered to be in something of a ‘defensive’ stance – reacting to activity in order to keep bad actors away and maintain the integrity of the forums. This is important work – but I think we also have an opportunity to take a more proactive role in encouraging the contributors who give their time to answer questions in the general forums.

There’s even an opportunity to help them form something of a community around their work supporting users, and a potential funnel into Support Team membership if desired.

I don’t have any specific proposal for this – but I do have a few random ideas. And I’d love the team to consider if these kinds of initiatives could be helpful in taking an ‘offensive’ approach to improving the quality and usefulness of the forums.

  • We could look at having different ‘format’ meetings which encouraged contributors in the forums to be involved in a more social setting (the Learn Team is a great example of how they manage this whilst still having functional/practical meetings too).
  • We could produce a learn.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/ course which guides contributors through some learning about ‘soft’ support skills like empathy and tone.
  • We could utilise the mentorship program to encourage and equip those contributors to do better (and more) work answering questions in the forums.
  • Investigate reaching out to those who are listed with pledged time towards support in an effort to activate them.

Supporting the Support team for another 20 years
All these ideas are towards the idea of having systems in place which mean the team will outlive the tenure of any of us in the team – in a way where it will continue to flourish, grow, and make the forums a safe and useful space for those needing support with WordPress.

I’m really excited to hear from y’all on the overall idea, but also the specifics that are proposed.


I’ll leave this post open for Comment for us to discuss and make some decisions at the Team meeting on 22nd Feb.

7th December Support Team meeting

The weekly support meeting will be held on Thursday, December 7 2023, 10:00 UTC AND Thursday, December 7 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) or at https://make.wordpress.org/support/chat/.

2 meetings this week

Based on previous discussion, we are trialling an APAC-friendly meeting time to see if that is a valuable option. For now, this will be in addition to the existing meeting time – but depending on demand we can consider alternating the times each week.

Slack > Matrix Switchover

Checking in on the proposed switch from Slack to Matrix:

  • What are the things that could be challenging if we make the #forums channel on Slack read-only starting today?
  • What pain point or blockers have you noticed using Matrix and different clients?

Support Team Onboarding

With the new Support Guidelines approved and in place – it might be time to consider documenting some kind of onboarding for potential new members to the team. What do you think? What should be included?

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.

Summary for August 3rd Support Meeting

The weekly support meeting was 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/.. Read the transcript at your own pace (a Slack account is required)

Community headlines and updates

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

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. US 2023

With WordCamp US rapidly approaching, there’s been a call for table leads, and onboarding leads for 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/.. The latter being a newer concept.

The onboarding lead would be one, or more, individuals who are available throughout contributor day to help onboarding new contributors, streamlining that process and ensuring availability (which is often hard for a table lead to devote dedicated time to during the day).

We have a few seasoned contributors that will be participating, and will look to share the workload fairly between those who have the capacity.

New (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.) moderator anonymity tool

As some may be aware, and some may not, a new (beta!) feature rolled out for moderators on the forums this past week 🎉

When writing a reply, there is now a checkbox that will allow you to post anonymously (to the users), under a unified “Support Moderator” user. Other moderators may still see who made the post though.

This will ensure that the team is both able to have the backing of “one voice” in difficult decisions, but also ensure that moderators are not required to post as them selves, and becoming potential targets for retaliation or abuse.

Note that the feature is still in beta, so it may still disclose who posted it somehow, until it’s been properly triaged, but it’s there and you’re able to experiment with it.

If you post as an anonymous moderator, you will still receive notifications of replies to the thread, which is also good to be aware of.

New workflows for discussing forum account actions

A new inbox set up for handling disputes and questions concerning things like flagged accounts.

The purpose of having a common inbox is to bring potentially heated or controversial discussions out of the pubic #forums channel, and also to give the users the ability to discuss their flagged status without being put in a negative light. (We all make mistakes, we can learn from them, and then it’s always nice to be able to do so privately.) In addition, it allows moderators to handle sensitive situations while remaining anonymous, which can in turn reduce potential mod harassment, or uncomfortable situations where a specific moderator is being targeted directly.

In addition, it allows the team to discuss information which may be considered private with individuals, without needing to worry about disclosure of private information in public channels.

WordPress 6.3 is near/here

With the upcoming release of WordPress 6.3, the team had a quick brainstorming session about which topics they believe users may need help with. It is shaping up to be a great release at this time, and only one item was brought up as likely to cause confusion, that being the renaming of Reusable blocks to Patterns.

Checking in with international liaisons

None of the teams international liaisons had any concerns or special events/news to share at this time.


Annie – Heartbeat

#weekly-chat

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!.

Agenda for the January 27 Support Meeting

The weekly support meeting will be held on Thursday, January 26, 2022, 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 5.9

This week’s big topic!

The “master list” topic is https://wordpress.org/support/topic/read-this-first-wordpress-5-9/

The “known issues” post is https://wordpress.org/support/topic/read-this-first-wordpress-5-9/#post-15286500

As topics come up that might go on the known list, let’s wordsmith them in #forums and then post. And remember to cross-off those that are solved (when point releases occur).

Feedback for the Training folks: Courtney has asked if we see common topics that should/could be address by the #training team with content on LearnWP.

Similarly, we shoud work on a list to feed back to the #core team for their one-week review of the release.

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 (WCEU)

@josearcos is looking for volunteers from the Support Team for the 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/. Support Table. If you’re going to WCEU, why not volunteer?

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, ort 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.

Open floor

This part of the meeting only happens if there is time, the team aims to cover the pre-planned topics first in any given meeting.

When open floor starts, any topic posted either as a comment to this agenda post will be looked at, or as many as there is time for. If there is still time left after this, then meeting attendees may step forward with questions, comments, remarks, anything relating to the support team that they’d like to handle.

It is also important to note that not everyone is comfortable posting things publicly, there is complete understanding of this, and users are welcome to contact the team representative (@sterndata) via direct messages on Slack with whatever they wish the team to look at together.

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

Summary for November 18th Support Meeting

The weekly support meeting was held on Thursday, November 18th, 2021, 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/.. Read the transcript in at your own pace (a Slack account is required)

Community headlines and updates

WordPress 5.9-beta1 has been delayed, a new date for the 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., and consequently a new release schedule, is not yet announced, but will be posted once it is finalized by the coreCore Core is the set of software required to run WordPress. The Core Development Team builds WordPress. team.

Team representative nominations are over, and with only one nominee, we have no need to hold a vote. The nominee is @sterndata, and instead of the vote which would have ensured if there were multiple nominees, we will instead have a ~2 week period in which any concerns can be raised, this can also be done privately to @clorith. If no concerns are raised, or they’re all worked out, the final announcement of the new representative will be done after December 1st, and we will prepare a handover period with some onboarding and similar at that time.

Next weeks meeting (November 25th), will be a very informal office hours, due to major holidays being celebrated in parts of the world, and other social events elsewhere, there are not a lot of regular contributors available at the time, so this feels like a good approach.

Open floor

A note was made that often folks join the channel after an incident, quite often relating to something unfortunate happening on for example the forums, and that the users may not feel very well received.

This is in part by nature of guidelines helping us enforce directives, but we can probably also be better at providing a more welcoming surrounding in such cases.

We, as volunteers in the #forums channel, should avoid “piling on” when someone has concerns. Letting one individual handle the case, of course another person may be asked to chime in, but it should then ideally happen at the original attendees request, to avoid giving users a feeling of being outnumbered and of a lesser voice, or may lead to confusion and frustration.

That’s not to say things do not some times escalate, and we know that not everyone wants to accept the answers that are given. If things escalate, and users do not wish to listen, it becomes an unwelcome environment for other participants on Slack, so please escalate such cases to a Slack admin, and they can deal with it from there.

Vinni – Sommerfuggel i vinterland

#weekly-chat

October 24th Support Team Meeting Summary

General announcements

There’s been a few questions, and comments, about access to 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/ access being limited from the Chinese region of late, so we figured we’d give some information when possible.

There’s an ongoing issue with a lot of malicious traffic originating from the Chinese region. This is making the WordPress.org security systems limit connectivity from affected areas, and unfortunately also negatively affecting legitimate users.

We’re actively monitoring the situation, and are looking into ways to remedy this for real users, but due to how internet traffic is routed it’s not something that is likely solved quickly.


The initial post for the WordPress 5.3 Master List has also gone up at https://make.wordpress.org/support/2019/10/wordpress-5-3-master-list/.

The Master List is a forum thread created by the support team for every major releaseMajor Release A set of releases or versions having the same major version number may be collectively referred to as “X.Y” -- for example version 5.2.x to refer to versions 5.2, 5.2.1, and all other versions in the 5.2. (five dot two dot) branch of that software. Major Releases often are the introduction of new major features and functionality. of WordPress where we pre-emptively gather information on what users may face and be confused by, mistake for bugs or need ot be aware of. It’s a living document, and as the release lives on the thread is populated with information of broken plugins or themes that impact a larger amount of users, bugs that are discovered etc. This allows us to have one location to reference for information, and to link users towards for troubleshooting steps.


@bethannon1 will be leading the Support Desk (aka Happiness Bar) at 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. US, and is looking for potential volunteers to help staff it. If this sounds like you, feel free to reach out to her!

Checking in with international liaisons

Members from our international parts of the community in Italy, Sweden, India, Brazil, Portugal and Russia were part of this weeks meeting.

We also looked into if the Master List could be made more easily available for translations for our international crew. @tobifjellner has some good insights on utilizing HelpHub/SupportHub once it’s ready for synchronization between locales, and we will revisit this at that point as it becomes more viable when those systems are in place.

Open floor

A question about process with user management was brought forth, in relation to theme submissions on WordPress.org.

Unfortunately, there wasn’t enough information to make informed recommendations on the scenarios mentioned, but we invited those responsible to return to #forums with more details for a more thurough check.

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

For this weeks relaxation, we’re traveling east.

#weekly-chat

December 6th Support Team Meeting Summary

Starting with a quick reminder: It’s OK to take a break, everyone’s been a bit on edge with this release, remember that you are volunteers and have no obligations here, walk away and unwind instead if you feel like it, we’ve got this covered.

And as always with major releases, please keep general banter in 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/. room to a minimum to avoid us missing important shared information after a release.

We hope to have the revised support guidelines released this weekend if all goes well, input is still welcome via GitHubGitHub GitHub is a website that offers online implementation of git repositories that can easily be shared, copied and modified by other developers. Public repositories are free to host, private repositories require a paid subscription. GitHub introduced the concept of the ‘pull request’ where code changes done in branches by contributors can be reviewed and discussed before being merged be the repository owner. https://github.com/ though, and we’ll get it moved to a more appropriate location once the first iteration is out.

The Master List has been updated and is ready for the upcoming release, with the modifications proposed in the associated p2 post.

Checking in with international liaisons

Representatives from the Swedish, Italian, German, Spanish, Russian and Urdu communities took place in our preparational meeting this week!

Open floor

Some questions for the new editor may need various answers we don’t have a predefined reply for, in those cases you can also reference the plugin sticky topic we’ve used before the release.

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

#weekly-chat

New Volunteer Orientation for WP Support Contributors: Dec 9

WP Support Team is planning an orientation session for new Support Contributor volunteers on Sunday, December 9 at 10:30 am CST, in conjunction with 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 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. US.

We will “meet” in 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, and walk through the basics of helping out on 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 forums, and give some pointers for getting started. We anticipate that this orientation will last 15-20 minutes.

If you know someone who would like to start helping in the forums, please do encourage them to come and start contributing to WordPress!

To participate, new volunteers will need to create a wordpress.org user account if they don’t already have one, then create an account on Slack and join the #forums channel. If you already have a wordpress.org user account (perhaps you have posted a question in the forums before), then you can use that account.

Long-time volunteers are welcome to participate as a refresher, but we especially welcome any new volunteers who might be interested in helping answer topics in the wordpress.org support forums, whether you are present in Nashville for Contributor Day, or somewhere else in the world. Support is a great place to start helping with WP and give back to the community!