[wp-forums] Long Time Lurker, Few Observations

[Jackson Whelan]

Howdy,

I've actively been trying to help in the forums whenever possible. 
Nothing makes me sadder than an unhappy WordPress user.

Kudos to all who have been doing this all along. It's a great way to 
teach yourself to be patient with people.

My few observations;

- Code often gets scrubbed from the forum post after the fact, and the 
OP is unaware. If there was some way of alerting users to this so that 
they could use pastebin like they should, it would certainly help 
resolve things for them faster.

- Posts about specific plugins are often missing the [Plugin: Plugin 
Name] from the title of the post, despite being tagged correctly. So you 
end up with generic post titles like 'Not Working', which upon closer 
inspection is about a specific plugin I know nothing about. Perhaps this 
is user error but it seems inconsistent.

- People don't read instructions. This document is well written - 
http://codex.wordpress.org/Forum_Welcome - but I'd be willing to bet 
that maybe 2 out of 10 new visitors to the forum actually read it. I 
think more painfully obvious instructions on the new topic form would 
help. Something to the effect of 'Help us help you. Make sure to read 
the Forum Welcome before posting. State your problem clearly and the 
steps to replicate it (ie: "It doesn't work" will not cut it). Include a 
link to your site. Use wordpress.pastebin.com to share code.' You get 
the idea...

Anyway that's about it for now, thought I'd share.

Thanks! Jackson
-- 

*Jackson Whelan*
WordPress Web Design & Development

Pittsford, Vermont | 802.483.4050
jw at jacksonwhelan.com <mailto:jw at jacksonwhelan.com> | jacksonwhelan.com 
<http://jacksonwhelan.com?s=e>