Would you volunteer for being a member of the support staff?
Of course there are enough people that would want do to it, but probably 90% of them are some kids that just want to be in charge and can't offer any reliability or constant work, as they will realize quickly that this is a time consuming job.
Also I understand that there could be trust issues with hiring new support members. I agree that support is slow, the community is rotten sometimes and that it should be changed, but there are some reasonable barriers while trying to work on this problem, at least in my opinion.
I'm melting here, I probably don't make any sense.
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This is the problem. There are some members of the community who would make good support staff but for some of them the power will go to their heads.
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+1 Support should be very careful with who they let in. Personally I'm extremely rational so I would very strictly follow the rules. However, I don't wish to be in the staff.
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I wouldn't want to be in support as well, but from my experience on who they suspend and who they ban. What things they consider to be okay and what not I would probably go on a ban streak, so I would be the worst support or the best support, who knows.
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Well, the rules are clearly written, so I assume the biggest reason for non-suspended rulebreakers would be that they haven't been found or the tickets haven't been read. Assuming you wouldn't invent your own rules (suspend anyone who uses the word "kangaroo" for example), sounds like you would be a good and active support member.
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Of course I would follow the rules, but as I said. Often the outcome of tickets I created was very easy on the rule breakers so I suppose that I don't have the neutral mindset a support member needs, but thanks for the compliment, mate. :3
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Personally I don't see how emotion should play into it at all :( There's a set suspension length for each specific broken rule. I don't understand how the penalties can vary withing same offenses. Imo it obviously means that someone isn't doing their "job" right. We need robots like me in support.
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Nah, I'm pretty sure he would ban the shit out of everyone who would dare to say "kangaroo"
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I'm pretty sure your 10% is much too high.
It's still a relevant question though :)
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I wouldn't volunteer because there seems to be a community 'reputation requirement' and considering certain factors of this forum, assuming they actually choose moderators based off of that, it wouldn't go by so well. Seriously, think of a moderator that isn't well known or liked.
Also, yeah, lots of work, I guess.
EDIT: Not moderators but support. I think moderators would be chosen via support members.
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Well, it depends, i already do support at work.
So i wouldn't mind to do it, but not for hours :)
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I'd say I'm in a similar boat as yours: Already doing it professionally and wouldn't mind helping out here but not as an extra full-time job :p
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Edit: Whoops, wrong thread.
I think there would need to be a serious vetting process before new support members are added
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hmmm, this doesnt make any sense so i applaud you!
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If they make you a EDITED DUE TO MISINFORMATION FROM OP'S PART.
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More supports isn't necessary, they take care of what they can take care of pretty quickly.
The backlog of tickets consists of things that support cannot take care of, like user reports.
So what is needed is more mods, but of course you can't just take a regular user and make them a mod immediately. So it depends if some of the current members of support are experienced enough to become mods. Or maybe adding a new role, that would be somewhere between mods and support in terms of permissions.
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Yup, only 2 mods and 1 super mod.
I think support is doing pretty well on tickets. We keep the ticket queue in all categories that we can access (except "other") in the single digits usually. And we've gotten "other" down from like 2000 to less than 600 since we joined. Most of the ones left now are steamtrades tickets that we can't answer (partly because none of us have the patience or fortitude to deal with the "he said/she said" kind of tickets).
What really needs help is the User Report section - I believe there are more than 30,000 tickets backlogged there and only 3 people that actually can work on them.
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Out of curiosity if you are at liberty to share:
How does it currently go with mods...as in: do they "hire" from the support-people or have some plan in place to help make the backlog more manageable?
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Something that I think would help with the user reports is if they were divided in subcategories, and that support would be able to access the categories for what they are able to suspend for (especially since I guess reports for non activations are the biggest part of user reports). The only problem that I see with this is that you can't make custom suspensions (right ?), so you would not be able to give a longer/permanent suspension for a repeated offense.
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Yes, the only way to get answer from "user report" is by making a ticket in other category (I had tickets which were older than 4 months before I closed them).
Tho I got answer from one mod that making user reports in other category is bad habit. So it's useless to make them anyway, they won't be answered in "normal" time due to the fact that only 3 people can answer them xD
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No wonder my report is pending for a month.
I suppose I should expect my report to be addressed sometime in the next 10 years :p
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I guess that's what's going to happen - some of new support members will be promoted to moderators after getting expirience at current position and new supports will be recruited
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That definitely should happen. From the backlog numbers jatan11t mentioned...I'm thinking: as soon as possible.
With a few more people and better flow of 'promotions' it would become more manageable for everyone.
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Oh crap, I just wrote the same... I should have just posted here a simple:
+1
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Yeah... I have a lot of user reports piling up, mainly for regifters and not activating won gifts. I suppose cg and co. will promote people between here and december, by then they will ask for help of more users to fill in the blank spots in Support.
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The problem is, most of wanna-be mods have no idea what they would be dealing with on a daily basis - tickets aren't full of rainbows and unicorns and mod must withstand that. Then you have to be able to put away your biases/beliefs when serving judgement or at least recognize when they may influence the judgement and pass it to another staff member. Not that frequent combo.
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That's not...
The right character.
I'm pretty sure it's the hot one that said it.
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I'm pretty sure about 10% of the users would kindly offer themselves to do this job. Are there any necessary attributes?
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