I wasn’t sure if there was going to be a day two on my first day. But I decided to persevere in the spirit of altruism to help some people with problems. Like a kind of WordPress.com support forums monk.

My background in technical support means that I have around 10 years technical support experience. So I’m pretty much the ideal candidate, you’d think, for volunteering to help people with support problems on WordPress.com.

It seems that my co-volunteers don’t think very highly of me. Nevermind I’ve been an intern before, and really it ought be water off a ducks back. You have to earn respect, right ?

As a recap from day #1 – I had one of my comments censored by the staff moderator, it seems for not towing the company line and saying good things about the new WordPress editor. Basically I would have had to lie about it, and we all know lying is sinful. I posted about it – “Censorship In Action – The Awful New WordPress Editor” … Aside from that I learned how to add a weather widget to a WordPress.com blog (pretty cool actually) and helped a few people, including a couple of grateful ones.

DAY #2

Jeez I didn’t realise volunteers were so competitive. Not more than a few seconds after I post an answer to struggling user, than bang one of the other dominant volunteers has posted an in depth reply, pre-prepared and copied and pasted. Wow, really looks like I’ll have to get my act together ! It’s a war zone in there … (secretly felt it was a bit ‘try hard’ though – to try and impress the user like that, but that’s how competitive people come across, no ?)

Some shit I learnt :

If someone puts tags you want removing ( like the “C” word for instance) then you just need to tag the post yourself with the tag “inappropriate tagging”. I know this because I put the tag “Don Charisma” (not the “C” word, although some people probably call me that) on some of the posts, and someone got stroppy with me about it and called me a time waster … Well, shucks, don’t get stroppy, I’m a newbie, I didn’t know, thought I was being helpful !

Another useful tag to add is “modlook” – that means a staff member has to look at the post. Usually it’s because us volunteers don’t have a magic wand to fix that particular thing – like a refund for a premium upgrade … which is probably the most sensible thing to do with a premium upgrade, get it refunded before the payment clears … shit did I just say that out loud, naughty me !

My original reason for being in the support forum got answered by staff. YAY! … I posted about the question here. In summary, it’s not actually currently possible for WordPress to do what it implies it should be possible to do. The staff member said he’ll mention it to the developers. So who knows they might fix it, might not … we can live in hope I guess.

I helped one guy with “markdown” which is pretty cool way to do HTML formatting without ever writing any HTML … seems that the NEW editor lacks that functionality, which is why he couldn’t do it …

The NEW editor it seems has a ton of stuff missing, and many people asking questions related to it. It seems to be a thorn in WordPress.com’s side at the moment.

Another guy wanted to load .ttf font files into WordPress.com … no can do sir, it don’t work !

A nice lady thanked me for my help … doesn’t that just feel so great when you fix someone’s problem and they thank you for it … dancing around on cloud nine I was 😀

I’m not sure but I think I might have hurt someone’s feelings. I didn’t mean to was only trying to be helpful ! But like I said earlier seems to be very competitive in there, which is just asking for hurt feelings, and why I’m not that competitive … I’ll sniff around a bit more and see if I can figure out why it’s so competitive. Already apologised for their bruised ego, but you can’t make an omelet without breaking a few eggs, right ?

Summary

I’m having fun and learning loads in the support forums. It feels really great to be helping people, and using my skills for positive – support monk in action. A little competitive in there, but doesn’t phase me. Although egos seem to bruise easily, so I’ll have to tread bit more carefully on those eggshells, if I am to retain my monk like composure 😉

Signing off then, Don Charisma your friendly part time support volunteer … will post day #3 as and when it happens, hopefully there will be some more learnings and not too many egos rattled … I’ll do my best to keep everyone happy I promise, even if it means reigning my sense of humour a little 🙂

Happy Easter … maybe I’ll post some bunny wabbits …

Cheers

Don Charisma

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