dw_support_training | Weekly Update Thingy (Reply)

Hello dwenizens! It's time for another exciting installment of "Kat Talks Too Darn Much!" theater with me, Kat, with bonus Dom and Chemla. Together we are your handy DW Support Triumvirate, here to help you be the best you can be.

First I want to say hi to everyone who is reading this, and send an especially big shout-out to everyone who answered their first support request this week! Thank you so much for stopping by and helping out. We really appreciate your enthusiasm and stuff. :) I'd also like to send a shout out to our fabulous

denise, who broke 1000 support points this week! This surprised exactly no one, but it's still really cool.

Let's get right to the meat of this, shall we? Contained below: new procedure things, some interesting/important facts and what's coming up soon!

Q: How do you all approve answers? Is there a procedure?
A:The Triumvirate (formerly known as the Hivemind) talked over our approval procedures a couple days ago and we think we've got it mostly hacked out. It's pretty simple from our end, but if you've got any questions, PLEASE ask!
When we are approving things, it's important for us to find the balance between a good support experience for the user (quick, accurate answers presented in the standard Dreamwidth style) and a good support experience for the spr0tling [that's you]. To this end, we have decided on some guidelines:

If there is only one answer to any given query and there's something wrong with it, we will attempt to track down the answer submitter and get them to correct it. If we can't get in touch with them in a timely manner (as determined by the SH), then we will take the next correct answer.
If the person who wrote the first answer is online (usually IRC, but also AIM and PM, depending) AND what needs to be fixed is small (typo, wrong FAQ, style problem), we will contact that person and get them to correct their answer in a timely manner.
If there are multiple answers and the first answer is incorrect, we will take the next correct answer that meets guidelines.
Basically, we want to make sure you as a spr0tling have a chance to submit your best answer, but we also want to make sure that the customer still gets helped in a timely fashion.

Speaking of timely fashion, we are doing *marvelously* on our response times! I can count on one hand the number of queries that hadn't been touched (answered, questioned, IC'd) within a couple hours of posting. This is so so so good, I don't even have words!

Q:What is a correct answer?
A: A correct answer has the right content to answer the query and follows the Dreamwidth style guidelines. It will reference a FAQ when appropriate. If there's a bug, you drop it in an IC with a link to Bugzilla.

Q: What is this IC you keep talking about?
A: IC is shorthand for Internal Comment. If you have makeinternal you should be able to do this. If you have no idea what I'm on about, there's more info at the bottom of the post.

Q: If someone else has submitted an answer, but I think they're wrong, can I submit another answer?
A: To put it simply, YES. The more answers we have to choose from, the better the service is for the end customer.

Q: You keep mentioning the Dreamwidth style guidelines. What are you talking about?
A: The long version can be found here. I'll break it down real simple-like for you here though. You need to GREET the user (Dear $USER), give them their answer politely, then sign off (Best, Kat). Be polite. Be informative. Don't use emoticons (^_^ and so forth) and try to be somewhat professional.
Thanks to the fabulous

invisionary and

wyntarvox, I was able to orchestrate this handy support request theater for you. Note how Wyn's response is first, but it is impolite, doesn't follow style guidelines, and is flat-out wrong. I approved John's answer because it was correct stylistically, and referenced an appropriate FAQ. It was also much more polite than Wyn's response. It was an extreme example by design, but I hope that helps make clear what is appropriate in an answer and what isn't.

If you could only see one response on that request, please scroll to the bottom of this entry and follow the instructions there.

Now is the part of the show where Kat states a few things because she's sick of Q&A format:

dw_support_training

I am showing prejudice towards approving answers with FAQrefs in them. If there are two correct answers and one of them has a FAQ reference, I'm finding myself generally going with the FAQref'd one. It is generally a more complete answer. I'm not saying that you should put in random FAQs, but if there is an appropriate one, use it! They're there for a reason.
If you don't know the answer, but have a theory, write it up and submit it. If you're wrong, no harm no foul. If you're right, you helped someone out! Along those same lines, if you submit an answer and realize you made a mistake, don't worry. Just resubmit. There is no way to edit answers at this time, so that's the best way. Don't be embarassed! I've resubmitted things a three or four times before I got it all right.
Asking questions of the user is ok if you want to clarify something.
If I, or someone else, is using a term you're not familiar with, such as the pillowfort or The Triumvirate, you might want to check the Jargon page. There are stories behind most of those, so feel free to ask if you're still confused.
To set an icon as your support icon, just add _support as a keyword. If you're happy using your default, then you don't have to do that, but it's kind of neat if you want to. I know that Chemla is using her All-Purpose Boa icon a lot right now.
I've added some helpful links to the sidebar of dw_support_training. Let me know if there's something more useful you'd like to see there.

Coming soon!

I hold support training sessions in #dw_support on IRC a few times a week. I'd like to hold them somewhere else too, but I haven't figured out the best way to make that happen yet. Keep an ear tuned for more news on that. Info on IRC can be found here.
Dom will be rolling out her recruitment plan for bug squashers. If you are an inquisitive person who likes tracking down random and strange bugs on DW, you may want to be looking for that annoucement.
We've got some other stuff in the works right now that we can't talk about... yet. Trust me when I say that it's exciting! Three things for outside the cut:
- Anti-LiveJournal icons will *not* be tolerated as your _support icon. We are not LiveJournal, but a lot of our members used to be very active members. More to the point, a not-small number of our volunteers, department heads, and others (including our Fearless Leaders denise and mark ) used to work at LiveJournal. Most of us still have friends who work at LiveJournal or are active volunteers on their support team or elsewhere. When answering request on the board, your icon represents Dreamwidth as a whole, and, as a whole, Dreamwidth is NOT anti-LJ. You can spew anti-LJ rhetoric all over your own journal if you'd like, but please keep it off of the support boards.
- If you couldn't see Wyn's response here at handy support request theater, you do NOT have viewscreened and/or makeinternal, two privs which come in really handy. To get these privs, go to this handy post by Rah and leave a comment. If you still don't have them after a few days, ping one of the Triumvirate and we'll get 'em for ya.
- All information contained in the previous weekly thingy and the one before that is still accurate for the most part. Read the comments for bonus material!
Thanks for reading, and see you next week! Feel free to contact one of us if something goes sideways. Contact info is in last week's update.

We remain
your humble & ob'd't srv'ts,
The Triumvirate + Pony
(zarhooie, domtheknight, chemicallace + ysobel)