Helping the Forum Helpers

  • Unknown's avatar
    pm2057 · Member ·

    I wanted to start a thread on Volunteering in the Support Forums. For people who would like to help but are new to volunteering here (like me) I thought some General Guidance, Tips, and Tricks might be useful and could be gathered here (or somewhere). If something like this already exists, please point the way!

    Below are some thoughts I have gathered from reading other Volunteers’ answers. Hopefully the info is all correct, though there may need be discussion around some. This is just a strawman to give folks an idea of what I was thinking about. I’m sure there are lots of other categories and info that could be added.

    Who is this Member asking the question?:
    When answering threads always click the “Member” link under the username of the poster to see if there are duplicate threads. This will save you time and effort so you don’t have to answer a question that has already been dealt with. It may tell you the name of their site (as they often forget to put that in their question). It will tell you their join date. But even if the date is recent, they may not truly be a newbie as they could have other accounts.

    How to tell if the question is about a non-Wordpress.com blog
    tbd

    Tags:
    Volunteer helpers (and staff?) sometimes add tags to posts. Perhaps a list of preferred tags and any needed information to help Volunteers know when to add them would be good.

    Use the sidebar tag to indicate for others
    already answered! – if question has already been answered
    Resolved here – seems similar to “already answered!” standardization needed?
    Resolved in a Duplicate Thread
    mature
    account recovery
    delete domain
    expired domain
    import
    not a wp.com blog
    trailing email
    Duplicate – if the member has already posted this question in another thread. If this question is tagged Duplicate, then you can ignore it and move on.
    modlook (don’t use modlock)

    A nice beginning:
    A welcome if this appears to be their first question, a friendly reminder to be sure to include the name of their blog,…?

    A nice ending:
    Some volunteers end with encouraging words like “Happy Blogging”, etc. This is a nice touch and each volunteer should develop their own signature(s).

    When they could have looked the information up themselves:
    There are so many folks who post questions that could have been easily answered by a quick Support search. There was a recent article in the reader that might be useful to add at the end of an answer: https://dailypost.wordpress.com/2016/01/14/help-with-wordpress-com/
    It doesn’t guarantee that the Member will make the effort to be self-sufficient, but if you let them know they can get their answer much quicker using the support documents some might try.

    Deportment and Administrative:
    Something about the Forum Code of Conduct
    Maybe something on how to deal with an unruly/irate Member.
    When/how to get Staff involved

    Standard Answers:
    Most of the more experienced Volunteers seem to have a few cut-n-paste answers ready to go for the questions that come up over and over and over again. It might be useful to have something similar available to all the helpers. The canned answers could be customized a bit for each response if needed. Now’s the time to vent about the questions you are sick of seeing! With some canned answers, newbie volunteers could cover more ground and leave the harder questions to others until the newbies feel more comfortable branching out.

    Here is an example of something I know the experienced Volunteers must be tired of repeating:

    A sample Standard Answer for: not a wp.com blog (modified from a Timethief posting)

    [show the DNS posting from GODADDY or another domain provider]

    Your site is not hosted by WordPress.COM. Our support documents do not apply to your site, and we are unable to provide support for it. You are posting to the wrong support forum and instead need to post to WordPress.ORG

    WordPress.COM and WordPress.ORG are completely separate and have different username accounts, logins, features, run different versions of some themes with the same names, and have separate support documentation and separate support forums. Read the differences at http://en.support.wordpress.com/com-vs-org/

    As you are referring to a WordPress.ORG software install on paid hosting, you can find support documents at https://codex.wordpress.org/Main_Page
    If you can’t find an answer to your question in their support documents and need to post to their forum, then click http://wordpress.org/support/ . On the top right-hand corner of the page you will see where you may register at the site or reset your password if you already have an existing account and have forgotten how to logon. Once properly registered at WordPress.Org, you may post to the support forums there.
    WordPress.org support docs are at https://codex.wordpress.org/Main_Page

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