Support changes

[markf]

Hi everyone! After careful consideration, support staff have decided that a few changes are needed to the support system in order to keep everything running as smoothly as possible given the current staffing & activity levels we have. Most of the changes are centered around the concept of removing barriers for support volunteers to help others,

Comments

[slinkslowdown]

Ooh, shiny! :D I'm so excited for the changes~

A few comments:

1. I've wanted to say this, but have never gotten around to it: I love the humor in some of the stock titles. Cache money makes me giggle every time I use it. XD

2. On a related note, I love that Support in general is okay with being light-hearted like that at times. It makes helping out here that much more fun.

3. Speaking as someone who wanted more privs forever after getting I1, I'm happy to see it'll be easier for new volunteers to get more privs! I feel like I'm so much more useful now with the new tools I can use, and I spend more time on Support because I have new tools.

4. I'm happy to see things more-or-less centralized to one community now! I was often unsure of where to post questions or concerns because there were so many comms to choose between.

[alexia_drake]

That's great :D

About the stock answers of the categories that are removed, will they be added to one of the 6 remaining categories they fits best, or should we get them on the main stock answers page here http://www.livejournal.com/support/stock_answers.bml to answer the requests related to Communities, Entries, Userpics, etc?

[slinkslowdown]

OH MY GOD I HAD NO IDEA ABOUT THAT PAGE

[alexia_drake]

[slinkslowdown]

/facepalm

Why did I never notice that?!

[scolaro]

I'm a bit surprised that Communities is gone as a category, but wth, awesome overhaul all around!
I'll try to come back and be more active again, but my current work situation will probably not allow it before May or so. /o\

[markf]

Yeah, with Communities and Entries it basically came down to them being features that are so central to the core of what LiveJournal is that it doesn't really make sense right now to have separate categories for them. Basically we sort of expect anyone doing support to have some general knowledge of the friends page, update page, and comment pages, as well as some understanding of how personal account & communities work. It made more sense to split issues related to those into the categories of "helping someone figure out how to use those things" and "helping people fix problems they're having with those things".

[scolaro]

Oh, don't get me wrong, it's totally fine for me, I was just a bit surprised by it. Having less categories is definitely a good thing, IMO!

[pmpe]

We need to update FAQ 150 if we don't use category Syndication (RSS) anymore? What category should be used for such requests?
And what about schools? vadim-i-z was admin in Schools Directory, so what to do with his privs now and where to handle such request?

P.S. What priv allow to mass move requests between categories? I still moving it manually one by one.

[markf]

We can actually probably just keep the Schools category and move any requests about it there manually. I just don't think we need to keep it as a category option for users opening requests since it is incredibly low volume at this point.

And yes, we will need to update that FAQ about Syn. Requests about Syndication should go to either Troubleshooting (for syn edits & problems with synfeeds not working) or G/Unk for general questions about them.

The ability to mass move requests is tied to the supportclose priv.

[fiddlingfrog]

This brings up an idea I had a couple months back - if Documentation is closed to new requests, can we use it as a place to collect requests that touch on documentation problems? So in addition to user requests about a particular FAQ getting moved there, any request where the answer-er thinks the FAQ needs amendment can be moved to Docs so that we can make appropriate adjustments.

Good idea / bad idea?

[markf]

Yes! Like Schools, I mostly just think it needs to not be an option for people to open new requests in, but as an archive/collector/to-do list for documentation related things it should be fine.

[satyresque]

Awesome stuff!!