I'll have to step in here to say that I have to agree with Paul that there
are indeed better support forums available for free software . An excellent
example of this is the Mozillazine Forums which offer support for all of
Mozilla and Mozilla based software software plus forums for developers and
testers as well. And answers to questions very often come within 24 hours
and sometimes within the hour depending on the particular forum you're
posting to. Understanding of course that WordPress.org and Mozilla are two
very different entities and user base, the premise still stands.
I suppose the one thing I've never understood is why the WP forums *have* to
be run on bbPress rather than phpBB. It just seems to me that the best style
of forum for the users should come first before anything else and without
meaning any offense here, bbPress simply isn't it. While I love the
WordPress platform, bbPress IMHO has a way to go yet before it can be
considered a viable forum platform.
'Nuff said from me then ;)
--------------------------------------------------
From: "Paul Robinson" <[email protected]>
Sent: Tuesday, December 23, 2008 12:00 PM
To: <[email protected]>
Subject: Re: [wp-testers] Forum questions on testers lists ??
I agree completely with you. The flame wars are immature & should be
deleted
on sight. The search is rubbish, the forum should probably use something
like VBulletin & although people might get sick of the same question being
asked it is extremely immature on the part of anyone who answers to start
attacking the asker. Just leave the post empty if you don't want to point
the person in the right direction. That's what I do.
I Also agree with Mattias, the forums are said to be the major point of
support for WP & as such stupid questions or questions that have already
been asked get asked again, this is partly due to the poor search, but
theres no need to insult the person.
Anyway this is my last email on this subject because I think we've gone
extremely off topic. Oh and Otto I don't think you should get premium
support for free software, but I have seen better support forums for free,
for example the Ubuntu forums. That's not a dig at WP just a hint that
maybe
things could be done to make the wp.org forums a little better.
2008/12/23 mrmist <[email protected]>
In message <[email protected]>,
Otto <[email protected]> writes
Unfortunately, the questions asked on the wp.org forums are, 7 out of
10 times, the first result in a really obvious Google search. People
simply don't search for their answers. They just don't even try.
Also, the search function on the forums really sucks (a problem with
searching wp.org in general), so people can't search the forums
easily. Google gets better results.
Yep. Whilst I'm running fairly OT for this list, the main issues with the
forum are its poor (internal) search and the shear volume of posts
combined
with a relatively immature boards UI (compared to say vbulletin or
similar).
The poor search means that the same questions get asked over and over
[1]
The volume of posts means that people asking questions can get poor
quality
or no responses.
The UI just means that the forum is not quite as accessible as it should
be. For example, I find it really odd not having the "latest post"
details
on the front (forum index) page.
Plus then of course you get the odd flame-war, but that's inevitable on
the
internet. (Though in some cases it's fuelled by the above.)
Then you've got the whole thing where there's an expectation amongst the
wider community that people (core devs normally) should be there to
answer
their really important question RIGHT NOW.[2] That's a whole other
story,
and probably wouldn't be solved by a mailing list, as it's primarily an
attitude issue.
[1] And the same questions being asked over and over leads to abrupt
responses which hit nerves with some posters.
[2] And if they don't, then WordPress is rubbish, etc.
--
mrmist
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