[wp-forums] 'Common Sense' Mod Rules when reviewing forum post that says 'me too'

[Mika A Epstein]

Mike, if you could use two line breaks between paragraphs, it would 
really help readability.

You don't have to like the guidelines of the forums, but respecting them 
is appreciated. We try to phrase that in the most productive way, but we 
know it's not 'normal' for everyone: 
http://codex.wordpress.org/Forum_Welcome#Where_To_Post

The 'me too' without -any- additional information is not a beneficial 
reply to anyone but the person who posted it, which is fine, except it 
does a couple things that make it harder for anyone to help the original 
poster:

1) It removes the post from the 'no replies' list that many people check 
on to see who needs the most help (the person with no replies to their 
post).

2) We don't actually know it's a me-too. A high number of posts are 
actually this: "Me too, except I'm using IIS and a different theme and 
plugin!" That, as you can tell, is not a me-too, but a 
similar-but-not-the-same

3) By arguing you managed to derail the whole post to the point where 
anyone who replies has little hope of actually helping the original 
poster. This is not to say you're right or wrong, just ... look at it 
now :) Or not. Because I just wiped that argument part thread back to 
the original issue, which no one seems to have been able to answer.

4) Multiple posts by different people are a great warning sign. If I, as 
a user, see fifteen people posting "This doesn't work with Oauth!" that 
aren't resolved, then I'm probably NOT going to use this plugin, which 
is a great heads-up! Right now I see 3 that seem to indicate this is 
broken ( http://wordpress.org/support/plugin/nextend-google-connect ) so 
hey, maybe I won't try this plugin.

5) The fact is, WordPress develops so darn fast, the problem someone had 
a month ago may NOT be the same as the one you have today :/ So while 
you think "its me too!" unless it's the say of a release and you all 
just upgraded to get the same error, it's really unlikely.

FWIW, better than "me too!" would be something beneficial like "I can't 
make this work either, here's what I tried..." Even if you don't have 
the answer, you may have more information that will carry things forward 
and make it useful for someone who has an idea.

(though I think we do need a 'follow this by email' option so people 
DON'T have to reply to follow, which IMO is possibly the only valid 
reason to leave a me-too post.)

> Mike Turner <mailto:miketurnermk at hotmail.com>
> 20 January, 2014 at 9:37:03AM
> So I use the forums quite a lot for plugin support and if I have an 
> issue the first thing I will always do is do a quick search through 
> existing posts to make sure it hasn't been raised before.
> If I find an issue that has been raised already and is in the process 
> of being investigating then I see no issue with just adding a simple 
> 'Me Too' message to the post, for 3 reasons:
> 1. To Let the person who submitted the issue know that they aren't alone.
> 2. To help prioritize the issue log for the author so they know what 
> are / aren't important.3. So I can get email notifications of
> To me, if I just raise another post with the exact same error report 
> then I would consider this as a duplicate (Most forums work this way 
> right?)
> So here is my experience today - see 
> http://wordpress.org/support/topic/please-update-oauth?replies=8#post-5132511
> Now I will rarely argue with a moderator, but in this case, for me it 
> just felt like she was taking the 'Forum Guide' a little bit too 
> literal and not applying some common sense. The issue itself was 
> basically that the install guide for a plugin was completely out of 
> date since Google had changed its API (OAUTH) functionality so no-one 
> could use the plugin. Now someone had already posted the issue, so I 
> just added 'Me Too' in order to be notified by email if the author 
> makes a reply. Yes I know I could have subscribed to an RSS feed 
> instead, but frankly I don't use RSS and if I was to check every 
> support feed that I want to read about through RSS I'd be checking it 
> almost constantly at the moment, rather than waiting for an update.
> Surely by making everyone that found this issue report it seperately, 
> it would be a complete waste of time, and results in duplication!
> Just in case my comments have already been moderated on the post the 
> conversation is below.
> Does any one agree? - It would also be great if their was the ability 
> to 'Follow this post' so you could be notified of any updates (without 
> then needing to post)
> [snipped copy of the WHOLE THREAD]
> Moderators need to simply apply some common sense. Funny how you also 
> picked on me only when 5 days ago someone else had done exactly the 
> same but no mention of that here. One rule for 1 and then another for 
> someone else I guess.
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-- 
Mika A Epstein (aka Ipstenu)
http://ipstenu.org | http://halfelf.org