[wp-forums] State of play

[Les Bessant]

Yup. There's a depressingly common attitude that support forums[1] should
provide support on anything and everything that's even vaguely connected
with their principal purpose. Even more depressing is the standard response
from those people when anyone suggests that their question isn't appropriate
- either general rudeness or "you don't have to read it"....

>From years of experience on mailing lists aimed at an allegedly professional
audience[2], I'd say that this kind of thing is unavoidable. You'll always
get the OT questions, and you'll always get the people defending them. Given
the current layout of the forum[4], which means that noise postings cause
unanswered posts to drop off the front page, this is more of a problem for
us than it is in some other places, all we can do is rely on moderators to
be firm.

Do the forums need more mods? It's obvious to anyone who's spent any time at
all on the forums that a disproportionate amount of work is being done by a
very small number of people, and nobody can keep that up all the time.



[1] And this is by no means unique to WP 
[2] Day job: network administrator[3]
[3] I wouldn't recommend it to anyone wanting to maintain any degree of
sanity[5]
[4] Which does need some work...[6]
[5] WordPress is such a relief after all that stuff
[6] The standard layout of PHPBB is a lot more user friendly than the
current layout of the WP forums. I know BBPress can be made to look a lot
better, and this really should be done. If I hadn't taken some time to look
at other sites, I'd probably be of the opinion that the forum software was
rubbish. Having done that, I know it's just the layout that's lacking...
________________________________

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: 06 November 2005 23:43
To: Forums
Subject: [wp-forums] State of play

In the forums, I am fed up with:
- the people wanting help who are OBVIOUS sploggers
- the people wanting gallery help
- the people who are expecting instant help
- the people who expect perfection, instantly, thereandthen
- the people who want support for NON-wp code in various guises
and yet if I posted "Sorry ever so much but that's not WP code" I'd be
screamed at.

The forums have changed hugely in the last 6 months haven't they ?
Expectations from posters has shot up, yet the number of forum helpers
has remained fairly static if not decreased in certain quarters.

So, given previous posts - and if you name names then you should reveal
your forum identity - what the hell do we do about it ?
And 1.6 is just around the corner (or is that support all sorted ?)

P.