Today in IRC we discussed what tools might may supporting in the forums better. For those
We started with this scenario: You’ve written a theme or plugin 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.
- How do you handle the forum posts today?
- What do you wish was there that isn’t?
- What annoys you about the forums the most?
The goal of this is to get an understanding of how you, as a person who supports your own work, uses the forums, and what pitfalls do you see.
From IRC:
Reply-by-email: You can already get emails of any new post in your plugin threads (Go to https://wordpress.org/support/plugin/PLUGINNAME and here’s a link for “Subscribe to Emails for this Plugin”), so what if plugin authors could email back?
More obvious subscription tools: Speaking of the “Subscribe to Emails for this Plugin”, it would be nice if that was on the https://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/PLUGIN/developer page, as a list for the Subscribe links like this:
- Development Logs (commits) [RSS|Email]
- Support Posts [RSS|Email]
“Warnings” – so if someone’s being bad, moderators (and plugin/theme devs in their support forums) can click +1 or -1 on their name and set a ‘mood.’ or warning level.
Plugin Version: A way to list plugin version (can be auto-populated from the broken form?)
Throttle: A button to ask for the 30-second block 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. to be lifted. Or automatically do it based on time served/products released/general coolness.
More ‘Support Type’ options: This is a feature request, this is a support request, this is a you-suck.
Flag POST as spam: We can do topics, but not posts (or Flag Topic vs Modlook). Imagine emails to wp-forums “JerrySarcastic has flagged the following post as probably spam… {link}” This would have to be limited in usage though. I would say plugin/theme authors in their threads only.
For moderators in general we came up with these:
Better Profiles: If you click on the IP, you go to the backend of bbPress Free, open source software built on top of WordPress for easily creating forums on sites. https://bbpress.org. and see all posts by IP. It would be nice if we could do that with usernames too.
TacNuke: One click to delete all posts and ban the account (for spammers)
#irc, #questions