Under Review By Staff is annoying
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@justjennifer Correct. We’re going to do our utmost to respond to every thread that comes through quickly. After that first 30 minutes the thread is just like it used to be: open to anyone and everyone to reply to.
@everyone Thank you for the feedback all! Like I mentioned above we want to see how this goes for a while and we’ll take all this feedback into account.
For everyone here:
– Would having a shorter “block” time (say 10-15 minutes) or color-coding blocked topics be better for you?
– What about limiting the blocked threads to just the Support topic?We’ll keep this all in mind. Thanks!
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Andrew-I appreciate the questions, but quite frankly, IMHO it’s up to Staff how you want to run these forums.
Any “block” time is going to discourage volunteer answers and TT is absolutely correct that many of the questions asked are repetitive and the answer readily provided by researching the Support documentation.
Just to give you a “live” example, the thread about the malware redirects. Any of us could have redirected the OP to the ORG forums and I tagged that thread before your answer. Again, it’s how Staff choose to use the resources they have at hand, including the experienced forum volunteers.
Peer-to-peer or with Staff involvement, I think we all agree that the idea is to provide a friendly experience for people seeking help, *in a timely fashion*.
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Shorter block time and color coding would be useful for anyone wanting to answer questions.
Plus a sticky post at the top to let people looking for help know the wherefores of this policy.
I definitely agree with @justjennifer
https://en.forums.wordpress.com/topic/under-review-by-staff-is-annoying?replies=22#post-487807≥^!^≤
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How about reversing the times? Let any Posts go as they have been before and let the regular volunteers have first crack – then after say 20 min with no response (other than the bot) send it to staff for help.
Add a new tag “staff” to flag threads for staff help. I see threads sit for hours waiting for “modlook” – that response should be faster.
As @justjennifer pointed out, that thread would have been cleared in under 5 minutes with no need for any staff.
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If there isn’t colour coding, I’m frankly not going to bother taking off my mittens to count on my fingers the number of minutes the post has been up. That’s not a volunteer’s responsibility; to determine when they’re allowed to help. If staff are going to become the frontline personnel in the forum, it is going to have to be up to staff to find a way to indicate that, in fact, they need the input from the volunteers, and colour-coding is the most efficient way of showing them where they are needed.
Colour coding is like a bat-signal to the volunteers.
Also: if staff ARE the frontline personnel in the forums now, under what circumstances would they NOT answer a thread?
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A restaurant analogy: initially We reserve all tables for Us; you wait outside and watch; if We don’t show up, you can come in and take a seat. Marvellous.
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Well, for one thing it means Automattic is hiring. If they’re not now, they will be when the burnout hits.
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I don’t think that staff quite understand how frustrating it is for volunteers to see things like this:
https://en.forums.wordpress.com/topic/want-to-delete-a-rogue-page?replies=2
and be completely unable to do anything about it for a half hour when there are no staff around anyway. To call it a deterrent to contribution to the forums is to understate the case to a near-criminal extent.
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These threads are sitting for a half a hour with no replies from staff most of the time ? I wonder if this new feature is more of a way for automattic to give the appearance they’re on the front lines of the forum support when in actuality the volunteers are still answering most of the questions that could’ve been answered faster than they are if we weren’t blocked for 30 minutes…
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We sure would. Our average response time was well under fifteen minutes. At a guess, I’d say average five.
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This is really annoying.
It makes me feel quite unappreciated when I go to help someone and I’m not even able to.
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For everyone here:
– Would having a shorter “block” time (say 10-15 minutes) or color-coding blocked topics be better for you?
– What about limiting the blocked threads to just the Support topic?No and no. Ditch the concept altogether. Stopping us from assisting is a very bad idea IMO.
I’m new around here, but I probably won’t stick around long if I can’t even respond to questions when they pop up.
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I know I’m harping on this, but I cannot see any benefit to the users whatsoever here, particularly if not even moderators can get into those threads.
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Way to go staff! –
a spammer carpet bombed the Forum this morning – all 5 Posts were properly tagged – as of this writing 2 of the Posts have came out of the 30 minute “being reviewed by staff” with no action done – did anyone bother to really read and approve the spam?
This review process is working quite well
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That gave me an idea:
What if the posts DID NOT APPEAR ON THE FORUM for a half-hour after they were posted? I know the technology to restrict the number of posts a person can make in a given time period exists here, so have it say YOU MAY ASK ONE QUESTION PER HALF HOUR and then:
1) make the thread invisible to all but staff during that half hour
2) lock the person out of posting new threads only for that half hour. -
@raincoaster : brilliant idea. I think that way we’d have “best of both”. The poster could see something like “your question is awaiting moderation” type of message while the message is reviewed by staff….
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