[wp-forums] R: Re: Closing down threads regarding old versions of WP

[andrew nevins]

How do you moderate this on the forums when you ask people to create a new
thread and they don't? Say for example if the thread wasn't particularly
old and you didn't want to close it? Delete comments again? Keep asking
that people make new threads & have people complain we're overmoderating
again?
I do want to moderate this, but I don't want to be in that position again
when I'm over-moderating.


On Tue, Jul 15, 2014 at 2:00 AM, Otto <otto at ottodestruct.com> wrote:

> Hi!
>
> You may be unaware of this, but a very large number of people, especially
> new users posting support topics, use the "Notify me of follow-up posts via
> email" option. Somebody replying to a topic with an unrelated problem of
> their own is (totally unintentionally, mind you) sending emails about that
> fact to almost everybody who has replied to that thread.
>
> It does not make sense for us to be sending assorted random
> unrelated emails to people who have posted in our forums, no matter
> how accidentally or totally understandable the occurrence is.
> The likelihood of some larger percentage of users marking the
> forum's emails as "spam" and getting thus gmail on our case is simply
> too great. We already have problems with people who say that our emails
> go into their spam folders, and though we've fixed it to some degree, it's
> not like it can't happen again.
>
> As long as the response is nice and to the point (a "please start your own
> thread" message), then I have to agree with the others here.
>
> See, the driven4excellence person found a thread about the Jetpack widget
> in a theme named "Customizr", and because they were trying to figure out
> what the "Customizer" was in WordPress using Twenty Eleven, they posted
> there. Somehow this person found this thread (google, I expect) and thought
> it was the appropriate place, for whatever reason.
> Now, while the mistake may be understandable, the fact that an email could
> have been sent to at least 8 other people isn't.
>
> Closing down the thread prevents anybody else from posting to that topic
> and potentially emailing all those people again. If this thread is coming
> up in a search for unrelated things, and it's potentially confusing, then
> it needs to be closed in order to stop future problems with the same
> thread.
>
> Could the message to post-your-own-thread be somewhat nicer? Probably. But
> the need to close the thread when this sort of thing happens is real. It's
> not a punishment. It's not abandoning the user. It is preventing us from
> spamming the crap out of our users.
>
> -Otto
>
>
>
>
> On Mon, Jul 14, 2014 at 7:27 PM, electricfeet at libero.it
> <electricfeet at libero.it> wrote:
> >
> > Education, yes. But it's education on forum usage, rather than education
> on
> > WordPress. (Surely we/you want the latter, not only the former.)
> >
> > And what about welcome? Or community-building? Making people feel they
> can get
> > help here?
> >
> > I think you guys are perhaps being too logical for your user base. I get
> it, I
> > really do. In my career I've been responsible for user support in quite a
> big
> > way (many years ago now). Enforcing rules places a nice order on things
> (as
> > well as sometimes being fun and empowering at times). But you also have
> to
> > consider how people FEEL in order to build a community.
> >
> > If people aren't being disruptive--and no, this case WASN'T spam by any
> > stretch of the term--then let it be. If someone wants to answer, to help,
> leave
> > them the opportunity to do so.
> >
> > And after all what's the downside? They'll write again when they don't
> get an
> > answer? So?
> >
> > N.B. I'm not attacking anyone here: I admire you all and your work (read
> your
> > archives over several evenings recently Mika;  thanks!). But I'm
> genuinely
> > shocked every time I see people given a welcome like this.
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