[wp-docs] Moderating the forums

[Dougal Campbell]

Scott Merrill wrote:

> In the vein of teaching people to fish instead of giving them a fish
> dinner, people who provide support on the forums ought to do two things:
> 1) Search the forums for a previous answer _for the person who is asking
> for help_
> 2) Explain to the person why they chose the search terms they did.
> 
> "Your problem is with a blank install page.  I used 'blank install' as my
> search terms, and found these three discussions.  Could you please try the
> instructions in there, and report success or failure?"

That's a very good suggestion, I like that approach.

My thought is that we should appoint a few "official moderators" who 
have the power to edit posts, close threads, or whatever. These 
moderators should be publicly credited on the site. Recognition is a 
reward, after all. However, we should try (as hard as it will be) to 
create some base guidelines for what kinds of messages require 
moderation. E.g. cursing, aggressive beligerence, etc.

In addition to the moderators, we could have additional "support team" 
members (also publicly recognized) who would endeavor to answer 
questions as Scott suggested above.

I know that there was an effort at one point to gather some data about 
the most common types of questions, in an effort to build a FAQ based on 
actual real-life FAQs. Was that ever done to any degree of completeness? 
(if it was, forgive my ignorance, it was probably during the time that I 
was changing jobs and moving).

Also, I'm afraid that I'm one of those who agrees that the layout/style 
of the forums isn't very inviting. Moving the author's name over into 
the sidebar is kind of a neat way to use that otherwise empty space, but 
I think that it throws people off because it gets disconnected from the 
content it's supposed to be associated with.

Another improvement, I think, would be to add the timestamp of the most 
recent posting for each forum in the Forum listing. The FAQ needs to be 
completed, and we need a prominent link from the forum pages to the FAQ. 
In fact, several of the links in the Docs section would be good 
additions to the sidebar in the Support section.

In addition, the "grayness" of the entire site kind of makes me go 
"bleah" sometimes. As long as we're talking about an overhaul of the 
default template, could we consider a redesign of wordpress.org? Does 
someone have the time for that? I'm no designer (just look at my site), 
but I do feel like I have a pretty decent eye for what looks good. And 
the WP site just doesn't have the "pop" that I think people are 
attracted do. People *do* judge books (and websites) by their cover.

-- 
Ernest MacDougal Campbell III, MCP+I, MCSE <dougal at gunters.org>
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