How can we improve the support process?

[lilgoldfish]

what i mean is, if there was a faster response time, people would look at the topic instead of posting a new one. Btw, you could just make a sticky with like all the general problems.

[metallica48423]

that was what my idea was... for an index of extremely common issues.   See my lengthy post a few posts up

I think for maximum exposure adding ONE sticky to General English Support board for the index would be the best way to do it.  As mentioned, very few check the documentation.  So i feel that steps need to be taken to enhance the exposure to the online manual, as well.   

I think that'd be most effective in stopping the majority of duplicate topics is such a topic -- again, my opinion.

[lilgoldfish]

I so agree with BlackMage, since right now I would GLADLY look at one of those lengthly posts to try and get my answer to fix my problem. ARG, response time is slow.

[Joshua Dickerson]

Why would there be less topics? You mean people double posting or bumping? I don't think that is our biggest problem.

[lilgoldfish]

because, people would look at it and see if the answer is solved already. Now if the answer is PLAINLY there already, and they still post, then you should actually ban them

[Joshua Dickerson]

The problem is that people are asking the same questions repeatedly. It is easier to deal with those rude people that bump posts without giving people a chance to reply. We can a.) lock your post b.) post ban you c.) perma-ban you.

[lilgoldfish]

well, if you already know what you want and your stubborn about it then why not just use your ideas? Why have this? HMM?

[Sarge]

Have a look at the sticky topics (some of them are locked too) in Mambo/Joomla Bridge Support. See how the Combined Readme and Bridge FAQ are written.

[metallica48423]

(to groundup) yes but i think thats a little extreme.  They're just looking for help and not seeing a plain resource, i feel.  WE know of the online manual.  They may not, thats what i'm saying.

There is no one answer to the subject, as I see it.  There are multiple issues at hand and likewise would require multiple solutions.

My idea is, someone comes to General English Support.  They see a post "Common issues and how to solve them".  The general user might say "oh, well lets take a look"

They open the topic, they are presented with an index of what we would see as commonly asked topics... many of these commonly asked topics are generally easy to solve... so say joe user sees, "How to move SMF from one host to another".  They click that link -- it takes them to the online manual section for that.  Or, they see, 'how to add tabs to the navigation menu', the click, and it takes them to the online manual entry for that.  Or a case where, for example, someone is looking for how to make mods work with their custom theme.  Someone clicks that topic, it takes them to a topic, which is locked (so you dont get 70 bazillion replies of 'do this for me' or similar, but remains STRICTLY informational.) with one link to the online manual for manual installation of mods, and one link to one of the mod parsers, and some general relevant information for people looking to do so.

Basically what i'm saying is, Frequently Asked & Answered Support Topics (FAST? )  Its basically an extension of the online manual into the boards perhaps to make relevance of some of the links.  Thats what i was suggesting.  Its basically another face of the Online Manual with commonly used references and such.  And in some cases, links to topics which have relevance to what they might be looking for.

I think in that alone would reduce the number of duplicate topics by reducing how often people need ask the SAME GENERAL QUESTION

Fact is, this issue is never going to be completely solved, but i think this might be a solution that may offer some padding?

[lilgoldfish]

Now, if there was a reputation button, Id go mad in adding BlackMages reputation.

[Joshua Dickerson]

BlackMage: I think your idea is a good idea. Although, I think it would be better as a link to the FAQs on the doc site. It makes sense to consolidate documentation.

lilgoldfish: am I being stubborn? I have given all suggestions an equal amount of respect. I take quite a bit of offense to you calling me stubborn. IMO, your suggestion doesn't address the problem. In fact, it adds to it. I was more or less tongue in cheek when I was writing about bumping topics because you bumped your topic twice in the span of two or so hours. I think that is quite rude and you need to understand that we have lives and have other matters that need to be addressed. Your post is a coding question and I refuse to address questions from people that don't have the decency to consider other people.

Once again, the problem is that the Support team can only answer so many questions and there are too many for them to answer. With more people using SMF, the problem grows. There are people making 1000s of posts a month constantly repeating themselves. What is the cause of this? The possible causes that we have come up with in a brain storm are in the poll. If you have other causes to the problem, please bring them up. If you have solutions to the problem or solutions to fix the causes, please bring them up.

Please, do not bring up that support is not fast enough. That isn't part of this problem or a cause to this problem. That is a totally separate issue. If support is way too slow for you, trying searching. Then feel free to buy a Charter Membership. Charter Members receive priority support.

Sorry for my curtness, but I cannot stand being called names. Same goes for calling names to anyone here that spends an infinite amount of time answering the same questions over and over and over.

[metallica48423]

I can agree as well, the documentation should be consolidated.  But how could we do something similar while still making it VISIBLE?  that was my main thing... i don't think people are getting the impression that many of these topics are very very common, answers are easily found by searching, and are answered on a nearly daily basis. 

Id like a section of the FAQ for such 'common problems' questions though, i think that would benefit most, in my opinion. 

But how to bring it to be more easily visible... i see suggestions about some sort of context checking, but what about the overhead of such an option?  Its a good idea in theory, but execution is important too... hmm...

I'll do some brainstorming and see what i can come up with

[lilgoldfish]

whoa, dude, once i saw that your can only bump thread every 24hours I stopped AND i deleted my post buddy. and no i didnt bump it twice, can you not count? Actually no, if you had faster support, people wouldnt be bumping their thread trying to get people on the support team to answer...and you know its true. If it was faster, i wouldnt have bumped. BUT, when i realized i couldnt bump i stoped and deleted, and yes im trying to help solve the problem even though you dont think i am. maybe because you block peoples suggestions, just because I registered today.


btw, i just finished reading you post >.< i was answering while i was reading. If you dont like being called names then I think you should either:
TELL THEM NOT TO.
SUCK IT UP.
JUST DONT POST AND YOU WONT BE CALLED NAMES.

I get called names, i suck it up or i piss them off.

So, anways, my bad if i "hurt" your feelings, I wont call you stubbon, alrite?

[destalk]

I think what would also be really helpful is one of those "related topics" features at the bottom of a thread. vBulletin has this option and on forums that I visit with that feature enabled, if I don't find what I am looking for in one topic, I often find the answer from one of those links and it stops me from starting a duplicate post.

I know there is a mod that does this, but lots of people have had problems getting it to work and it's always better if the feature is built into SMF. SMF forums with heldesk/ tech support themes would really benefit from this IMHO.

[lilgoldfish]

Yea that would be good too.

[KGIII]

Hmm... There is a tagging system in the mods... I am not sure if this has been raised prior in this thread but I'd say that too is a good idea.

[Dannii]

I wonder if a public tagging system might make it easier to find topics and answers to problems.

I think tags would be great

[metallica48423]

I agree.  That was part of my brainstorming just now

[vbgamer45]

I think it boils down to these two for most people
"Human laziness.  - They don't even attempt to look for answers or search. I think its about 90% of most people they want someone else to do the work for them.

"Don't know what to search for". - Some people do not know what to search for. Generally most topics can be found with a couple keywords.

[lilgoldfish]

I agree, also the search button is to vague. I search broken links and I got all this stuff I dont need appearing first...