[wp-forums] Using the forums for contacting people outside of the forums

[Otto]

Thanks Mark, I received your forward.

I think, in the long run, that it is better for us to direct users to
official support channels (when they exist), and to take every effort
to avoid the appearance of possibly illegitimate people asking for
direct contact info, even if they are legit *and* even if we know that
in advance.

It is obviously a bad idea for a user to give out any form of
credentials directly. But, this is also necessary to solve one-on-one
problems, from time to time. Our job should not be to make a
"whitelist" of legit users, but to rely on the information submitted
by plugin and theme developers. If the plugin or theme author tag
appears on a reply, then it definitively comes from the original code
submissions to our system, and then I'm perfectly okay with giving
those developers some leeway by providing an official email or forum
address for direct help.

Outside of that, we should indeed be careful and err on the side of
users who might not know better.

*In no case should any official developer or support person ever ask a
user to post their own email address to the world.*

I'll email the parties involved (in the morning) and sort it all out.
But, the bottom line is we do indeed want official support people on
our forums, but we want them to be upfront "official" and recognized
as such. When I ask somebody to email me, I use my own wordpress.org
address for exactly that reason. I don't ask people to give their
email address and leave them open to random claims of official-ness
from anybody who might reply to them.

This was handled correctly, as far as it I can see that it was done.
I'll deal with the rest. :)

-Otto



On Sun, Jan 26, 2014 at 10:47 PM, Mark Ratledge <mark at markratledge.com> wrote:
> Otto, Thanks, the email was from a bogus address, but I'll forward it so you see the IP. I'm drafting a firm (but not angry) email to Woo management. Right after the email, it appeared that he was trying to penny ante DDOS me, so I blocked his IP range. -- Mark
>
>
> On Jan 26, 2014, at 9:26 PM, Otto wrote:
>
>> Sorry, I misunderstood the email that was posted. I see it now. I'll handle it.
>
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