Under Review By Staff is annoying
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Very nice post,Rachel, and very kindly with volunteers. Thank you.
True, with this new feature, the forum loses interest and becomes boring. Seems the staff want to finish it.
The tickets work great, it is also true.
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I posted long ago in this thread and was surprised to see such an active discussion here. Let’s hope Staff respect this, let it continue, and chime in as they have.
I think they key issue here is the disrespect WP has shown to the very dedicated Volunteers (yes, capital V) who devote countless hours to help others, without any pay from WP. I, for one, have had several topics answered by Volunteers. Those answers were spot-on, and wicked fast.
I have also had several issues that I’ve taken to WP support and those answers have been 50/50. Some issues were not solved, others had spot on answers. But all were answered in a day, or so. It’s impossible to compare that to a response time of MINUTES here in the forums. I can actually get a response _while I’m working on the problem_ here in the Forums.
I want to address the one suggestion to limit forum topic creation to 1 per 30 minutes. Please, no. I have had several different problems, and posted each of them separately within minutes of each other. Each was advised or solved in minutes by Volunteers. Making me (and others like me) wait hours to ask those issues is a very bad idea.
But foremost in bad ideas is treating Volunteers like crap.
That’s what WP has done here, but it’s no different than issues I’ve had with WP in the past. Specifically, when WP offered the space upgrade, it included video hosting. Then video hosting was broken out and, as a paying customer of this service, I was not notified that the service I was paying for had changed. The service I signed up for was never noted to be temporary, or a test. But when Matt casually mentioned in a blog post the dramatic change (to a $60 yearly charge for video) that went into effect without any prior notification, it demonstrated the lack of proper business procedures, and the lack of respect for existing paying customers that WP has. It’s like WP is their personal toy box that they can change and alter as they see fit without any need to let anyone know of any of the changes before they happen.Oddly enough, when it comes to beta testing new versions, there’s tons of communication. But not for those who pay for services, like me, and clearly not for those who Volunteer their time here.
Matt, et al, would be far better served to respect the efforts the Volunteers provide here to the betterment of WordPress (not themselves) and be more proactive in notification and involvement of the customers and Volunteers.
Matt, when you pop in and announce:
there _will_be_ a number of experiments over the next few months here, including but not limited to radical layout changes, posting rules, ratings, routing tickets here, time delays, reputation scores, banning, promotions, and cheese.
You have to realize that you have already singed the fingers of your most die-heard supporters and now you are telling them that more is coming. Maybe you don’t realize this, maybe you don’t care… at least that’s the impression I got with the video subscription issue… but if you plan on executing radical layout changes, etc., I strongly, but humbly, suggest you INVOLVE the Volunteers who spend a great part of their lives here. Don’t treat them like invisible, unpaid, worthless slaves that deserve zero respect.
Because that’s what you’ve already made them feel like.
One of the reasons I stayed on WP despite losing video service that I felt I had already paid for, is because of the fast and accurate work performed in these forums by these Volunteers. They deserve to be included in the process of improving the forums. They at least deserve notification of impending changes.
As a paying customer, I know that the law says that I should have been notified that the service I paid for, and the contract between us, was changing, but seeing that you didn’t care about respecting the law, helps me understand how WP has treated the Volunteers here.
Matt, your one comment ripped the Volunteers several times, seeing only to pat yourself (and paid WP Happiness Engineers) on the back for the good work done in the ticket system— an issue that was not even part of this discussion.
Hey, how about a simple compliment that the Volunteers here do indeed solve a lot of user problems. How about saying “Thank you.” Or how about the common decency that you APOLOGIZE for foisting this unexpected change on the unsuspecting Volunteers. Say you’ll do a better job at including them in future changes because you value the work they do here and know that any input they contribute to future changes would be for the best of everyone involved.
Well, that’s what _I_ would say if WP were my baby. But I’m not Matt. No, I’m clearly not. Not rich like him either. :) But not like him because I really valued the work done here by the Volunteers and hope they stay around through whatever other surprise stupidity WP decides to wreak here.
Oh, and that idea of letting Volunteers have first crack and then flag something they think Staff should handle, THAT was what should have happened in the outset. (and would have happened if WP asked the Volunteers first.)
Maybe this was more than 2¢.
But I care about the Volunteers and I hope that’s clear..
(Hey, maybe WordPress should hire me as liaison to help them avoid future boneheaded moves like this.)
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The truth is people get better help in tickets than they do in the forums right now. I personally would like to change that and there will be a number of experiments over the next few months here, including but not limited to radical layout changes, posting rules, ratings, routing tickets here, time delays, reputation scores, banning, promotions, and cheese.
Thanks Matt.
Improving the forum system here is a great idea. It surprised me initially that the support tickets gave more effective results than the support forum and it seems a good idea to change that a little to ensure previous support replies from staff are available for others to see (which potentially cuts down on future support questions).
I have noticed quite a few replies from volunteers around here have been incorrect. So is this 30 min delay perhaps to cut down on the number of incorrect answers? I can’t really think of any other reason for preventing volunteers from responding. Just wondering as I’m a little baffled as to what the benefit is here.
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The number of incorrect answers per hour seems to have increased, actually. That’s taking into account the incorrect answers from both staff and volunteers.
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Bonjour,
I developped my very first blog 2 months ago without knowing anything.
I absolutely want to thank these supermembers who spend a lot of their time answering all kinds of questions, and for some of them again and again, sometimes 5 times the same in a single day.
At my very begining I thought that I could find the appropriate answer in the support’s archives or the forum’s ones. But I could not find any answer to a lot of my stupid questions… Then, I started to request some help in the forums and was a little bit ashamed to disturb such experts with silly questions….
Soon, one of my first questions was : how to find the appropriate information to my basic questions because the search function of the support or the one of the forum never delivered appropriate up-to-date answers. Thanksfully I was given the advice to use Google search… and then I could discover answers to almost all my questions that had been given previously to others.I will not repeat all that has been written above. If there are volunteers to discharge the support team I actually do not understand that they decline the offer and do their best to even discourage them. I think that the best staff could do to support wordpress bloggers and to help themselves to get less requests, would be to enhance these search functions or to suppress them and advertise how to search with efficiency.
Support team should be requested only for sensitive questions.BTW, I thank both staff and volunteers for the help I got.
Merci et au revoir. -
If Google search is such a great tool, how about staff using their time to better implement Google search into the WP forum experience, thereby eliminating some percentage of questions from ever appearing because the searcher found the answers had already been given.
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Even if staff improved the search feature there will still be a high percentage of WP.com members that won’t search before they ask I have seen it time after time where the OP has replied back they we’re to lazy to look for the answer… So I really don’t see how improving the search feature will help with cutting down on the redundant threads…
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Stupid question:
But are there ever virtual meetings that bring volunteer support folks and some paid WordPress staff member(s).
After all, many other organizations, particularily non-profits have volunteer board meetings several times per year. Depending on the nature of the business, volunteers are grouped together for discussions/feedback.
Also are volunteers at all in any way recognized acknowledged by WPress for months/years of dedication? Not just a public thank you. But more. Sure the volunteers get side benefits for their paid, non-WP volunteer work, since it may appear on their resume.
If not, then…it sounds like a volunteer sweatshop….Oops did I say that?? But it IS many hours that the volunteer support staff are providing.
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Angry again.
I know a good example to answer this request:
https://en.forums.wordpress.com/topic/show-me-a-wordpresscom-site-not-blog-please?replies=1
I will not wait a half hour, I will return at night (in western Europe).
I don’t care, I’m sure that staff knows also good examples. -
Wow – did I miss the announcement of this change? I admit I have been away, but I don’t recall an email or twitter announcement. I’ve been on WP for less than a year. I have fussed and fussed with my blog and have asked questions without once being made to feel silly for asking.
Whilst I have no idea what a support ticket is, I do know precisely how much the volunteers have helped me. I have posted questions and have had 99% answered within 15 minutes – max, most times I’ve had answers in mere minutes. Had I had to wait with a “its being reviewed” sort of comment, would have made me feel like I asked something wrong.
For me, the volunteers are more than just experienced bloggers who have the ready answer. I have learned so much going to their blogs/sites. Timethief has been especially helpful to me both here in the forum and for what she posts on her site. The same can be said for The Sacred Path and a few others. I’ve learned so much from them.
I’m concerned that volunteers who have given so much of their time and expertise may decide that they no longer wish to assist those of us who might stumble on occasion. How could TPTB not include volunteers in a discussion as important as this?
JMHO.
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maidiebike, as you can see from slikbonez and others, some volunteers are offered the opportunity to become moderators with additional powers and responsibilities (though apparently not the power to answer Under Review threads). It was offered to me, and I declined it because with the situation as it is, I can contribute just as much as I want and no more. For me to contribute more than that, I’d have to be compensated for my time.
I think I am speaking for all of us when I say that we do this just because we enjoy doing it. Some accuse us of “feeding our egos” by being helpful, and I only wish that more people fed their egos by making themselves useful. We aren’t looking to pad our resumes, get physical rewards, or earn virtual gold stars.
I’ve been offered the opportunity to speak at numerous WordCamps and international conferences in part because of the reputation I’ve built up here over four years, but that’s not why I went into it.
The total swag I’ve gotten from WordPress (yes, I KNOW Matt wants it spelled WordPress, but I”m lazy) is: one navy blue hoodie for contributing at Northern Voice blogging conference WordPress talk, one domain mapping upgrade (the very first at WordPress.com), one ad-free upgrade that’s been on raincoaster.com for months that they didn’t even tell me about!
That’s it.
There isn’t any channel of communication between the volunteers and staff. The staff had an IRC room that they used, but it sort of fell off my radar. I don’t know if the other volunteers go there or not. We dont get emails announcing big changes; we used to joke that staff would launch the changes on Friday and then take the weekend off so WE would have to handle everything. We did it anyway. We just like doing it.
There are advantages to being a volunteer, including the right to look at yet another “CAN I PUT MY POSTS ON DIFFERENT PAGES” thread and go, “Fuckit, let someone else take this one.” Those are not options available to paid staff, and they are sweet.
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I will stipulate at the beginning that I am Not A Good WordPress blogger. I don’t pay a lick of attention to site changes until I bump into one, I don’t really care about the various upgrades and I think <i>Happiness Engineer</i> is one of the most terrifying phrases I’ve ever heard. I’ll spare you the philosophical discussion.
But I will say this. When I came to WordPress as a new blogger two years ago, I knew almost nothing. I struggled along as best I could but, when I really hit the wall, I’d come to the forums. And I would get help. Even better, I would get respectful, good-humored, supportive help. And I learned a lot, quickly.
The fact is that a dozen volunteers set me on the path to being a good blogger because they not only answered my questions, they helped me learn HOW to ask questions. They taught me the vocabulary I needed, in order to ask. And they eliminated my fear of sounding stupid.
I’ve had to submit a support ticket or two, and although my issues were resolved, the experience never was educational, enjoyable or fun. Working with the forum volunteers always was, and I’m glad I had that experience before WP runs them all off.
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Hope there will be better communication and brainstorming between support volunteers and full-time WP staff.
Maybe WP needs to have an internal, virtual town hall with volunteer support folks.
I’m trying to envision if Microsoft would have ever sustained user group support forums for so long, for any of their Microsoft Office software and support forums made up of volunteer support folks with full-time staff for advanced support.
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An update: We have implemented an adjustment similar to the suggestion by raincoaster. The “Under Review” posts are now simply hidden for 30 minutes before becoming open to all user response.
There have been some great observations and suggestions throughout this thread. We do highly value the contributions of the veterans of the WordPress.com community. Among other things, I think this thread (with all its difference in opinion) is an example of that.
To all our helpful users–thank you so much for what you do!
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@Staff
Thank you for the update… But this may make the OP confused when they don’t see their thread on the home page could cause them to create redundant threads about the same topic… So I suggest implementing a message that the OP, is redirected to when the OP. clicks the submit button this way the OP is alerted why their thread can’t be seen on the front page of the forum…-sk
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It’s configured so that the OP is able to see their topic even before the staff review period is over.
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Glad to hear it. That should reduce tensions and problems as well. I’ve noticed that I hadn’t been coming across locked threads.
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Then please inform users who post a question but no one has responded for over the last 16 hrs. or so.
I bumped my question up twice:
https://en.forums.wordpress.com/topic/several-slideshows-in-1-blog-affect-other-features
There has to be a clear agreement between volunteers & full time staff how such situations are handled.
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