Please Provide Details
Volunteers answering forum questions can quickly help bloggers, when they provide relevant information at the time they make their first post. Here are some tips about preparing to post to the support forum.
(1) What is url for the wordpress.com blog that you are asking questions about?
It’s important to state the url for the blog you are experiencing difficulty with because wordpress.com and wordpress.org are completely separate and run on different software. All self – hosting wordpress bloggers ought to post to http://wordpress.org/support and all free hosted
wordpress.com bloggers ought to post to the appropriate WordPress.com * International Forum (see below). Unless or until you state what your blog’s url is, you will be increasing the time it will take to make sure you have posted to the correct forum.
(2) What is url for the page or post on your wordpress.com blog that you are asking
questions about?
When volunteers can see your blog they can frequently help you solve your problems very quickly. If you have failed to provide the url to the specific Post(s) and/or Page(s) that you are asking a question about then you will be increasing the time it will take to get an answer to your question.
(3) What is the nature of theproblem? What are the details?
A vague question will invite volunteers to ask you even more questions, increasing the time until you get an answer. For the bestresults provide a very detailed description of the exact nature of the problem in your original post.
(4) Which browser and version of it are you using? Have you cleared your cache and cookies?
Before posting to the forum step 1. log out step 2. clear your browser cookie step 3.
clear your browser cache/temporary internet files step 4. close your browser step 5. go
back and test
(5) Volunteers can point bloggers to resources, provide basic instructions and practical advice. They do not have back end access to blogs and cannot apply technical “fixes”. When they cannot help staff assistance is required.
References: [sticky post at the head of the
forums] 7things to know before posting to the WordPress.com support forum
the head of the forums] WordPress.com and wordpress.org: the differences [FAQs entry] [sticky post atWordPress.com versus WordPress.org
How to Link your WordPress.com blog to your WordPress.com username
*WordPress.com International Forums
- English: http://en.forums.wordpress.com
- Español: http://es.forums.wordpress.com
- Deutsch: http://de.forums.wordpress.com
- Français: http://fr.forums.wordpress.com
- Bahasa Indonesia: http://id.forums.wordpress.com
- Italiano: http://it.forums.wordpress.com
- Nederlands: http://nl.forums.wordpress.com
- Português: http://pt.forums.wordpress.com
- Português do Brasil: http://pt-br.forums.wordpress.com
- Svenska: http://sv.forums.wordpress.com
- Türkçe: http://tr.forums.wordpress.com
Richard
February 23, 2008
Thank you for having this information available. I am a newbie not only to blogging but the general internet as well. This has helped me to at least know where to begin. Appreciate it. Rich
timethief
February 23, 2008
You ‘re welcome.
Dave
February 23, 2008
In your Tumblr blog, you wonder why the new hires are “rarely seen answering forum questions.” I think the likely answer is that they’re only on duty for a short time. The Jobs page you link to states, “In fact everyone who joins Automattic, regardless of position, does support for 3 weeks.” It’s a form of hazing, perhaps.
timethief
February 24, 2008
Well, Dave,
It is possible that this corporation that just got a $29.5 investment injection still intends to rely on volunteers to answer forum questions for them. It’s even possible that current volunteers may feel they are immune to the periodic whack-a-mole purging that Matt admits too in the comment on Adam’s post Desparecidos:Wordpress.com Sucks.
The bottom line is: You may be correct but given the prevailing veil of secrecy, how can we tell if you are, or not? :-D
raincoaster
February 25, 2008
Oh, I don’t think anyone answering questions in the forum is of the impression that they are considered indispensable by WordPress.
I wonder why it is that so many people just point-blank ignore requests to put their url in the forum. The average quality of response is so low that simply asking them to read the WP.org vs WP.com thread does no good; they appear not to understand it. I find that the URL is the only way to know what they are talking about, and I try not to bother dealing with people who don’t at least put that out for me. If it’s private, I can handle it. But you’d think I was trying to get their credit card number.
timethief
February 25, 2008
It’s mind boggling.If the same people were dealing with for example a telephone company or an electric company they would readily provide details or, they would get no service at all. But the hidden card here is that bloggers posting to the forum frequently assume they are dealing with staff, when they are actually dealing with volunteers.
I’ve been around long enough to know when I have a “technical” problem that my fellow bloggers cannot help me. There’s no way that I would post a matter that needs staff intervention to the forum, even if I could. Yet, there are times when I see posts go up and down the forum for a couple of days and I shake my head because the contents indicate that the bloggers who posted them should be directly dealing with staff from the get-go. That means that for those bloggers with technical issues, who posted to the forum instead of going to staff, the forum functions as a holding pen to mill about in like feed lot cattle.
Worse still, when I see a staff member like tellyworth or Mark give a blogger a correct answer it blows my mind to see volunteers tailgating them and posting what amounts to nothing into the thread. I have seen up to 8 additional tailgating posts that had no substance whatsoever to them posted into a thread after staff has given the answer.
Re: fourms as holding pens
Mark pointed out in the wordpress.com support blog: