Support Team Update for October 23rd

Items discussed at today’s #wordpress-sfd 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.:

WCSF 2014

We are ready for WCSF 2014 and the following contributor events, so much excitement!

@macmanx will be the point person and will do the 20 to 30 minute (with questions) introductory speech thingy for the folks who are excited to join us or just get a little bit more acquainted with what we do day-to-day.

We’d like to ask that participants have a browser (obviously) and WordPress installed somewhere, either a test blog or their primary blog (it’s just for reference).

Our agenda as previously mentioned at https://make.wordpress.org/support/2014/10/wcsf-team-planning/#comment-164080 stands, for easy reference that’s:

1. Work on the Troubleshooting Handbook (update and maybe merge with the Support Handbook)
2. Discuss the sub-forums and ideas to improve them (the Meetup sub-forum conversation and Your WordPress.)
3. IRC presentation on make/support for i.e. getting that more prominently displayed.
4. What can we do to make support easier for end users to find/use/take advantage of?

IRC Volunteer Visibility

We briefly discussed maintaining a list of top IRC contributors. There are very good reasons to do this, and very good reasons to not do this.

IRC is a bit less visible than the forums (you can view profiles on the forums to “evaluate” who you’re talking to), so knowing who to reach out to in IRC is a good thing. On the other hand, a public list makes it easier to be “followed home.” For those who have never experienced being “followed home,” that’s when a (usually upset) user takes the conversation to your blog comments, email, and sometimes even phone or physical address (you all really should enable WHOIS protection via your registrar). Forum moderators know this comes with “the job,” and some have turned down the offer because of it, so we need to be sensitive to that.

We haven’t made any concrete decisions at the moment, and will likely continue to discuss this at WCSF since that’s on our agenda, but we’re leaning towards definitely making the list opt-in.

The transcript of today’s meetup can be read at this link.

#support