[wp-hackers] Forum Usefulness (was Data recovery)

[Andy Skelton]

On 2/12/06, Scott Merrill <skippy at skippy.net> wrote:
> Yeah, it's a darn shame that so few people participating in this list
> see any kind of overview of common support / feature requests submitted
> directly to the wordpress.com power structure.  Maybe a lot of these
> arguments would be averted if this information were made (more) public,
> or summarized in some meaningful way (a la the Google zietgeists, or
> Sifry's quarterly summaries).

I read just about every feedback from wordpress.com users and I'd be
happy to summarize them for you. In order of frequency:

1.a. Thanks for the great blogging platform
1.b. You guys rock
2.a. Please add ________ (feature available in existing themes)
2.b. Please add ________ (feature available in existing plugins)
3. Please help me ________ (something they couldn't figure out)

For item 1, the credit (and blame) belongs with everyone who helps
develop WordPress, which includes many of you on wp-hackers. We can't
forward all the kudos to wp-hackers but trust me, you'd switch to
digest mode within a couple of hours and unsubscribe within a week.
It's really a lot of good feedback.

Item 2 does not need to be seen or addressed by this list. It boils
down to requests to edit templates and upload plugins, which of course
they can do if they host their own.

Item 3 is addressed in personal emails and posts in faq.wordpress.com.
The most common items here deal with WPMU-specific issues: managing
multiple blogs, stuff like that.

A small subset of 3 deals with WordPress core issues, almost all of
which are complaints that can be or have been resolved by streamlining
the management interface.

You want to know the specifics? The common complaints and suggestions
are seen even more frequently at wordpress.com/forums than they are in
the feedback form. All you have to do to get the specifics is spend a
little time in there. It's rather like .org/forums in that respect.

Andy