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Talk:WordPress IRC Live Help

During the June 29th IRC Meetup there was much discussion of the place in the WP community that #wordpress fills. Several ideas for answering that question were proposed, and it boiled down to the question of "Is #wordpress a recognized support resource?" This page should reflect that decision once it has been made by the community at large.

Option 1 #wordpress is Not a Recommended Support Resource

Because of the informality and the general social atmosphere of IRC, as well as the lack of permanence of what is said on IRC:

PROS:

  • It is easy for questions to go completely ignored, or worse, for incorrect or intentionally malicious information to be given, and unless someone catches it immediately, it is likely to go unnoticed.
  • There is the issue of the potential offensiveness of conversation on IRC. While not common, it does happen that the channel can go in the direction of "locker room humor" and off-topic discussions can become quite heated, and as with any such thing, can potentially sink to the level of name-calling and other such stupidity.

CONS:

  • The downside to this option is that the hard work and great support that does happen in #wordpress goes completely unrecognized.
  • Those who spend hours and hours there, feel that their contribution to the community is somehow less significant than those who post to the forums. This strikes me as having the potential to adversely affect the quality of support in #wordpress.
  • People will go there looking for help even if it is not intended as such, and by the community as a whole treating it as if it were not a support resource, those seeking help are more likely to receive responses that will be surly and un-helpful. There are people, who if told that #wordpress is not a support channel, will respond to any request for help by saying so. While those people are in vast minority, it is enough to sour new people on the community.

Option 2 #wordpress Needs a More Formal Structure

Application of a more forum structure would establish ground rules of conduct and purpose.

PROS:

  • There are people who have spent hours each week for a year or more providing help and support in #wordpress. These people should be recognized for their contributions.
  • It should be made so that new visitors to #wordpress can discover what people are considered knowledgeable and experienced members of the community. Suggestions for this include:
    • Assigning "voiced" mode to those people, so that they are shifted to the top of the list of people in the channel in most IRC clients, and otherwise denoted in conversation. This would give people a ready method of determining who is more "reliable" within the channel.
    • Assigning sysop status or general status with symbols such as +.

CONS:

  • Establishing a hierarchy onto #wordpress could breed animosity, as well as discouraging newer members of the community from taking the first step from being simply a wordpress user to being a wordpress supporter.
  • It would also potentially destroy some of the very informality that makes IRC work as well as it does. No one wants to spend hours hanging out with their friends if they're not allowed to chat with them.
  • With this system in place, I feel that it could make someone feel that although they know the answer to a question, they don't have the "right" to answer, because they haven't been around long enough to "earn" their "voice".
  • It would also create an additional layer of administration that someone would have to devote time to, in determining who would be "voiced" and making sure that appropriate people were and were not given this status. It would also set up a scenario where we would have to deal with "begging" in the channel.

Option 3 #wordpress Self-guidance Agreement

This option would set "ground rules" agreed to by the "regulars" on #wordpress for behavior and treatment of visitors. My proposal is that in the Codex, or somewhere on wordpress.org, we could develop some sort of "code of ethics" for #wordpress. Those who wish to do so, could "sign" the agreement and self-police.

PROS:

  • There are people who treat #wordpess as another online base of operations. People who use it to socialize, but when someone comes in for support, they immediately switch to that mode, and offer great advice and information.
  • It would include "self-policing" for such things as watching for bad advice and correcting it at once, never engaging or participating in browser/platform/etc wars, and policing offensive behavior when necessary.
  • This suggestion is to make a place where those who wish to do so can formalize the commitment, and those who are new, and don't yet understand that #wordpress does work well can receive some reassurance that the commitment exists.

CONS:

  • The problem with this option is simply one of enforcement. Because it is strictly voluntary and self-governed, there is nothing to stop someone from "signing" the agreement and then not abiding by it. A few instances of this could, potentially, remove all value from the concept.

Summary

Each option has good and bad points, but it is an issue that needs resolving. The place of #wordpress in the community needs to be recognized one way or the other, and this is an opportunity to decide how we are going to do that.
(did not sign when originally posted) Morydd 22:29, 20 Jul 2005 (UTC)



Discussion

Re Option 2:

  • Is auto-voicing provided by ChanServ or is this something that we as a community will have to handle?
  • There is the option of project hostmasks instead of +v as well. Westi 13:18, 1 Jul 2005 (UTC)

I'm in favor of Option 3. The value of contributors and participants within the #wordpress channel needs to be respected, and I personally believe they have the....self control....necessary to stick with the business at hand. Lorelle 14:20, 1 Jul 2005 (UTC)


I vote for option #1 matt 22:26, 20 Jul 2005 (UTC)


Do you have reasons for choosing option #1? Morydd 22:30, 20 Jul 2005 (UTC)


Option #1 makes the most sense to me. skeltoac


I wrote some stuff about IRC voice on my user page. I think that officially, option #1 is good, but that unofficially, we should do something with bots instead. --Ringmaster 10:44, 21 Jul 2005 (UTC)


ringmaster's idea sounds like it could be a good, non-intrusive way of helping with this whole situation. I think what we're really looking for is a combination of all three options. Should I set up a new section so those of us who are interested can throw some ideas around, and try to find something that is acceptable to the community as a whole? Morydd 21:07, 23 Jul 2005 (UTC)


A rough proposal for ideas of how we can define the status of #wordpress in the community in such a way as to satisfy as many people as possible is up at User:Morydd/IRC_Status_Ideas. Please read it and contribute. I'd like to see this topic be resolved in a mature and satisfying way. Thanks. --Morydd 02:06, 24 Jul 2005 (UTC)