[wp-forums] Building a Team

[Les Bessant]

I don't know if it's possible to do all that much to encourage people to
assist more. There will always be the people who only visit the forum when
they have a problem, post their question and run (sometimes not even hanging
around long enough to read the responses, I suspect). The people who are
going to be inclined to assist are pretty much the ones who are doing it now
- and it does appear that a very small number of people are shouldering the
majority of the work. Then there are those of us who contribute a few
answers when we can - I see this as giving something back to WordPress. For
me, the quality of genuinely helpful responses on the forums was a major
factor in my decision to move to WP, and I've learned a lot from other
people's questions. But perhaps some kind of "status mark" might encourage
people to help more - I don't think it would do any harm to try it.

One thing that occurred to me is that perhaps, while looking at the
structure of the forums, there could be designated experts for different
sections. We'd need several in each area, but it would mean that volunteers
with limited time available could concentrate their efforts in the areas
they know best, relying on their colleagues to deal with other questions.
There could also be a couple of people mopping up any missed posts. Not sure
how well that would work in practice.


________________________________

Les Bessant les at lcb.me.uk
Losing it[1] - http://lcb.me.uk/

-----Original Message-----
From: wp-forums-bounces at lists.automattic.com
[mailto:wp-forums-bounces at lists.automattic.com] On Behalf Of Podz
Sent: 01 July 2005 17:16
To: wp-forums at lists.automattic.com
Subject: [wp-forums] Building a Team

Another target of this list was to try and build a larger team of people 
to help on the forums. While we have a core group who keep returning, we 
could do with more people.

- How do we encourage people to assist ?
- How do we acknowledge the continued contributions that someone gives ?
- How can we try to make people stick around ?

There may be many new people wanting to answer a post but do not do so 
for some reason - and this is without any 'titles'. can we halp that 
situation ?

We NEED more help - more and more people are using WP every day and on a 
release, the forums get very very busy. We seem to be answering a very 
wide range of questions on all things Internet - because we have a 
reputation of fast accurate responses.

And we need people who won't click away when they see yet another 
"Headers already sent" error - sure, we've seen it a zillion times but 
for that person it's an obstacle. (Let's not get into searching...)

Would a title - a formal acknowledgement - help this process ?
If you write a plugin, your name is in lots of code. If you contribute 
to the wp core, you get to go on a Codex page. If you answer questions 
in the forum ........ ? (This is another thread I know but it's 
important to this discussion too).

So.......ideas ?

P.
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