[wp-forums] "official" policy should be made

[Podz]

Michael B wrote:
> It appears to me that an "official" posted policy should be made, by this
> list in a consensus, or by Matt.  

I would favour a 'Services' forum and for everything in that forum to
never make the front page at all. That would mean no tags.

That would add to clutter in some way though but I have not the
slightest doubt that it would be used.
It would require a sticky about the T&C we write and we would have to
police that firmly.
We would need to have rules like "The thread title must say the nature
of the help offered:
"Themes: Custom designs"
"Code: Plugins written for $$$"
"Installation: $10 fee"
or similar. Makes that part of the forums much easier to search as
people can just scan.

I'm not sure how a fee could work and I'm going to assume that WP as a
entity has enough $ behind it without the few pennies that this would
maybe bring.

The advantages of the forum for users is that this could drive prices
down. That of course is a disadvantage for those providing such services.

And while creating the forum is not a problem, I am not able to keep it
off the front page. That needs Matt to flick some buttons somewhere.

Alternatively, we change the 'Requests and Feedback' forum. It is
relatively underused. But then where does that go - I would imagine Matt
and Co. take a particular interest in all things posted there so from
that point of view it's a resource.

Before we ask Matt though I think we need to find holes in this if
indeed this is considered to be a solution. We must find holes - here is
one for instance:
Person A posts to Howto forum asking for help.
Person B says "Hey, look at my post here in the Services forum"
Legit?

How would we stop people bumping their posts to the front page of the
forum because it would certainly happen?

Open threads = negative feedback too. People will ask us to remove it.
(WPbay!)

If we can't manage how it would be exploited then we don't do it?

P.