This is an official LiveJournal community where volunteers and staff members work together to coordinate technical support for LJ users. This journal is partially public, but is intended only for volunteers who are doing Technical Support. Anyone who needs help using LiveJournal should ask their questions in the Support center, not here.

Additionally, membership is restricted to staff members and volunteers who are holding the "supporthelp" privilege; all other membership requests will be rejected. However, you don't have to have membership here in order to participate in Technical Support -- just a few screened or approved answers each week counts you as an active volunteer for our purposes.

We ask that your comments to the entries remain respectful and on-topic. We reserve the right to screen or delete comments, or to ban users who repeatedly show disregard for this community's members.

That said, I hope you enjoy volunteering while you're here, and if you need links to further information on how to get started, please see our profile page.

Cheers,
Carrie S. (coffeechica)
Technical Support Manager

Here's another Changes of Support. This edition covers until the end of June.

• FAQ 233 on OpenID was rewritten. (link)
• The chain of escalation was updated. ( link)

News posts:

• An announcement was made that nominations for the Advisory Board election would occur soon. (link)
• The nomination period started. (link)
• Voting started, new green themes and the Green by Design Contest were announced. (link)

FAQ 233, previously in the Troubleshooting category as "Why do I receive an error message when using my LiveJournal URL as my OpenID identity?", has been rewritten. The new question is "How do I use my LiveJournal account to log in to another website with OpenID?" and it's now in the Working with Other Sites category.

All of the information from the original FAQ is still there, so it's still appropriate to use for the same requests it was previously, but it can now also be used as a user-education FAQ on how LiveJournal is supposed to work as an OpenID provider. It also links to /openid/options.bml for users who want to review or delete sites from their OpenID authorization list.

The information about general OpenID usage and the link to /openid/options.bml have been removed from FAQ 231.

In order to ferret out any issues with Pingbacks, we need some data. Therefore, I declare this post a pingback-free-for-all.

Here's all you need:
- A Paid or Perm account (comment if you have a test account that needs paid time for this)
- Set your account to either "Open" or "LiveJournal.com only" under the Pingback setting
- Make sure your account can receive comments from pingback_bot (comments allowed and CAPTCHA off for "registered users" or more)

Here's all you need to do:
- Comment here with the name of your test account
- Make a post containing a link to a post in another person's test account
- Wait 15 minutes
- Check to see if it went through (so let the person know you linked and see if they got the screened comment from pingback_bot - it will help if you unscreen your pingback comments right away)
- Comment here with the results - both successful and unsuccessful results will help greatly!

Love and cookies to all who can help out this weekend!

Here's another Changes of Support. This edition covers until the end of May.

• The Independent category was created. Requests about The Independent go there to be answered by staff. (link)
• A reminder was made about passwords and third party sites. (link)
• coffeechica said some words on the state of Support. (link)
• Webmaster and Issues Investigation become staff-only categories. Requests about dead people should go to support@. (link)
• Some notes about approvability policies were posted. (link)

News posts:

• The Advisory Board elections were announced. (link)
• A header celebrating the 10th anniversary and a new mood theme were added. (link)

Hey guys! We have screened answers once again! Many of them! This is a delight, and why I'm engaging in many exclamation points. Welcome to all you new folk. I'm so glad to see you, and hope to get to know you better in the coming months. :-)

Since we've gone so long without multiple screened answers on requests, I've noticed that we need a refresher course on what's approvable and what screened answers ought to be passed over. This part is intended for supporthelps but posted public so that all of you who are newer can see what we're looking for when we're approving answers.

All of the following are approvable, folks:

• Answers that aren't written the way you write but still gets the point across clearly


• Answers that contain all of the information a user needs


• Answers with grammatically correct contractions (srsly you guys, srsly.)


• Answers with "floating FAQs" (FAQ referenced in dropdown but not mentioned in answer)


• Answers with one or two typos that don't change the meaning of the answer


• Answers that use the word "we" to mean "support volunteers"


• YES. "WE" IS APPROVABLE under those circumstances. Yes, I needed to say that twice.


• Answers from newbies that are close enough. Encourage a nub. Think of it this way: if this request came up in learn_support, would others know why you passed it over? (And would the newbie be correct if they thought you were being a wanker and then not bother leaving any more screened answers? If so, get another opinion before approving.)

If you're unsure if you're being too picky, ask around. Two other opinions are generally sufficient to help you get close enough to make the choice.

On the flip side: For those of you out there who are working on writing answers, here are some things we like to approve!

• Talk like a human being. "Support style" does not have to be ultra-formal! We used to have WWRD when Rah was in charge, but these days it's WWCCD? (What Would Coffeechica Do?): I aim to talk to our users the way I'd talk to someone I don't know who left a comment about LJ on one of my friend's entries -- write with authority and confidence, non-patronizing, with the gracious respect you'd grant a friend of a friend. (Just leave off the smilies and the "hope this helps", because we don't use those in Support answers.)


• Users often ask multiple questions. Make sure you answer everything -- don't just skim the request, latch onto a keyword, and slap on an answer.


• TAILOR YOUR STOCK ANSWERS OR DON'T USE THEM AT ALL. THIS MEANS YOU. It just makes us look ignorant, because it's an ignorant thing to do. Example: If a user mentions they've read the FAQ, don't tell them to go read the FAQ unless you have a really good reason for doing so.


• Spellcheck. Please! Proofread your answer before you click Submit. Read it aloud if you can -- if it sounds weird or it's hard for you to read out loud, it'll probably be unclear to the user.


• Have an appropriate displayed name. It's fun to put song lyrics & inside jokes in your displayed name and I encourage this! Though make sure it's nothing that a user will read and think is aimed at them. Because they do that more often than you'd think.


• Userpics: no nudity, no "you're stupid" messages, and as you'd do at a party with strangers: avoid charged statements about religion & politics. (Okay: a simple cross, pentacle, rainbow triangle, donkey/elephant, whatever. Not okay: SARAH PALIN IS A SMELLY POOTYHEAD or almost anything written on a poster being waved by a yelling person at a protest rally. We're a tech support center; this isn't the appropriate venue to campaign for your political/religious views.) If you want to keep your default userpic but use a different one for support, add "_support" as a keyword to your userpic of choice and that's what will appear next to your touches on the board.

More tips on approvability are in the Support Wiki, which is down today but might be back tomorrow, so stay tuned. And once again, welcome!

Forwarding this important info from dwell:

The main LiveJournal office is moving this week, so office servers and the connected services will be down starting Thursday May 28, unavailable until AT LEAST Monday June 1st, possibly the 2nd as well.

This outage will not affect the main site, just office services. The Volunteer Wiki (wiki.livejournal.org) will be offline during this time. If you anticipate needing anything on the wiki, save or otherwise copy it now. IRC is mirrored elsewhere, so if there's any interruption in IRC service we're hoping it'll just be a brief blip. [Update: Crow T. Infobot, however, will not be available during this time.]

Thanks!

We're making a couple of categories staff-only for two reasons: 1) I need to be making better use of my time by focusing my efforts on tasks that only staff can do, and 2) same as with the Indy -- volunteers shouldn't have to feel any responsibility (implied or otherwise) for promoting LJ partnerships.

Joining the Indy as a staff-only support category: Webmaster. Issues will now also [*insert Carrie-sobbing here*] become staff-only. I'll still allow internal viewing to anyone who's interested in watching investigations unfold, as requests in Issues can affect problems in other tech support categories and for this reason it's remaining a public category, but answers will only be given by staff unless I move them back "home". Example: you need me to check somebody's userprops to make sure they've got the right boxes tickied, but once you have that information you can proceed with saying "yeah, um, check this box and you'll be fine".

(Dead folks will now go to support@, unless for some reason it needs staff intervention. Peas will need to adjust his song.)

This also means that I'm not going to be able to lead the charge on public category smackdowns anymore, as my first prerogative needs to be dealing with the staff-only stuff that you guys can't handle. However, I will still gladly answer any questions you have about public requests, approvals, support policy, and the like. I just can't do the front-lines anymore, unless I'm on "volunteer" time. (As a user of the site, I still reserve the ability to volunteer my time for it.) ;-)

I'm sure you have questions. Please ask!

My dear burned out friends,

This has been a difficult year for LiveJournal Support. I'm sure most of you don't need me to enumerate why, but I will do so anyway, for the sake of documenting history.

In 2007 a series of events occurred that deeply shook the faith of the LiveJournal community in its management. When Strikethrough happened, we saw a sharp decline in new users volunteering for LiveJournal. And it was understandable, because Strikethrough never should have happened. We've been down a bumpy road in LiveJournal management. And with each debacle, our incoming volunteer pool became ever more shallow. We saw a brief rise in volunteer counts after the sale of LiveJournal to SUP, but during the rocky transition of management over the next year, even more mistakes were made that should not have been made. This tumultuous time culminated in the layoffs of several of our close friends in January 2009.

Since the layoffs, both LiveJournal Support and Abuse have had a cloud hanging over them. New people are not coming in at the rate we need in order to replace those who are leaving. Existing volunteers have become burned out, depressed, overwhelmed, and stressed to the point that they can no longer continue. And especially since the ramping-up and opening of Dreamwidth, the pervading atmosphere around here has been sullen and defeatist. I have been succumbing to it myself, especially when I reviewed our statistics for the past week and saw only 36 volunteers listed.

36. Two years ago it was double that, and we were feeling overwhelmed. And our volume has not changed since then. No wonder everyone feels cut to the bone. No wonder we have reached the point where I'm getting two emails (or filtered entries) a week from people who just can't take it anymore.

Please let me underline that I am not intending for anyone to read this and feel guilty about anything. Support ought to be something that you do for the joy of participating, and for giving back to the greater LiveJournal community. Support shouldn't be just another thing to get done in a day, but something that makes you feel the way these commenters felt when writing their testimonials.

There is still a community right here that is worth investing in. I still believe in LiveJournal. I still believe in the positive life-changing efforts of our users. Also, in the past few months, many changes have been made at the management level that leave me more optimistic than I've been in a long time about LiveJournal's ability to make effective corporate-level policy in the future. At the same time, I'm also a realist and I know that 36 is absolutely not a sufficient number of people to handle the incoming tech support and Abuse volume. To that end, I'm going to conclude with a few requests:

1. If you have ever wanted to get started in LiveJournal Support or Abuse but have been dragging your feet about doing so, now is the time. We need your help. We want to meet you, we want to bring you into our community and welcome you as one of our team. Are you the one on your friends list who always knows what's going on with LJ (or would you like to be)? Are you the sort who sees a puzzle and can't not solve it? There is room here for you.



2. We need to strengthen LiveJournal's Support/Abuse communities so that they are once again positive places to be. Build each other up. Practice kindness and compassion, practice patience, practice letting go of what you cannot control. Don't hesitate to catch each other in IRC or PM with a "hey, I loved your answer here" or to send an email or vgift to thank someone for their help. With positive momentum rolling again, this becomes a much more pleasant place to be.



3. You don't need to zero-green the board every time you touch it. If you're new, try leaving just three answers. If you've been around for awhile, strive for the five touches a week that gets you counted on my report. If you're in Abuse, don't fall into the trap of saying "I'm not going to make quota anyway, so why bother doing anything." Don't give up because your goal is high. Every little bit counts. Many hands make light the work. Everything you do in a good faith effort to help other LiveJournal users makes a difference to me, to Ferrell, to that user you helped, and to the larger volunteer community as a whole.

I want to keep our doors open. I'm not just going to give up on what we've been building together since 2001. I love this place and the people who've poured their spirit into it. Volunteering for LiveJournal Support changed my life for the better, and I'm not the only one -- the story repeats year after year from people who've found great friends, technical skills they didn't know they had, and a sense of their own competence and self-worth, just by helping other people on this site. With unemployment rates and uncertainty about the future rising, I want to do whatever I can to keep LiveJournal's volunteer areas a constant, something you can depend on, whether you're an ordinary user needing help with the site, or whether you're a volunteer looking for something constructive and helpful to do with your time.

If you're so inclined to help me with this goal, I welcome you. Come on in, have some virtual coffee and some good company.

Third-party sites can do nifty groovy things when they have access to your journal. Auto-post, collect stats, archive, cross-post, you name it, it's cool.

I'm not going to stand here and say you can't give your password to third-party sites, because there's no way I can enforce that. I will, however, remind all that those of you who have support privs, especially those of you with access to private categories and Abuse tools, should be the most careful of all LJ users about which applications you allow to access your journal.

So, a few tips:

* When it's a one-time thing, change your password (before and) after using a third-party tool.

* If you're using an auto-poster or a cross-poster, we strongly prefer that you use methods that don't involve storing your password on a third-party site, methods such as using a multi-site-compatible client or an email post.

* Use common sense. Every time you give out your password, there's a risk of it being intercepted. But a large site like Flickr is probably more likely to keep your data secure than a small-time operation run by somebody whose background you don't know. We're not going to maintain a list of which sites we trust and which sites you shouldn't use; just use your common sense.

It's time for another Changes of Support. This edition covers until the end of April.

• nulz became the new Schools Directory co-administrator. (link)
• The on-site Support guide was updated. (link)

News posts:

• The ability to delete all comments from a user on an entry, Find Your Friends, and more were announced. (link)
• LiveJournal turned 10. (link)

Move requests about The Independent there, starting now.

Staff members will answer them.

Love and Bunnies,
The Indy's New Slave Carrie

12:26 <bethany>: goat, green nonru
12:26 <Anna>: 249 green (excluding issues, russian) (218 unanswered, 31 SNH) :: (******) 100 in web-ui (87+13) :: (***) 78 in general (72+6) :: (**) 50 in entries (43+7) :: 9 in styles (8+1) :: (*) 5 in userpics (5+0) :: 4 in mobile (2+2) :: 2 in scrapbook (0+2) :: 1 in communities (1+0) :: 0 in syn (0+0) || EXCLUDED: (***) 189 in russian (173+16) :: 38 in issues (19+19)

The green count is jaw-droppingly high today, and I think we should do something about it.

So, I give you a today-only-one-time-special-offer!*

* wherein today = through Saturday

Interims and Screenies: 1) Go to the board, 2) open up a request, 3) leave a screened, and 4) comment back here with a link to it. Repeat steps 1-3 as time and energy allows. Feel free to edit/reply to your comment with additional links as you see fit.

Supporthelps: Go to the board, or the comments here, and approve away!


I'll go through the comments as well at the end of the week, and will handsomely reward* anyone who leaves me a touch!

* wherein handsomely reward = send a vgift to

Welcome to SPRING CLEANING SEASON! \o/

The on-site Support Guide has been updated to a shorter version that should be less intimidating to new folks, we hope.

The full version is still available on the wiki, of course. I'll be working a lot over the coming months on tidying up our support policies & guidelines on the wiki, since I haven't really scrubbed them in about 4 years (ack). Admins are also working on getting updated versions of "Getting Started in ____" guides posted there. Watch learn_support for updates when those are done.


Newbies, we want to focus on you for awhile. Please don't be shy about speaking up in learn_support if you can't find the answer to something, or if you're not sure why you didn't get approved somewhere. I want to make sure everything that's commonly asked is addressed somewhere in our documentation, so this is very useful to us! Come on in and say hello, if you've been wanting to, because we like seeing new faces and have missed that lately.

Everyone please join me in welcoming nulz as the new Schools Administrator. nulz has been a member of the LJ Schools team since October of 2007, and has very graciously agreed to join in adminning the Schools team.

Congratulations nulz!!


(crosposted to lj_schools)

It's time for another edition of Changes of Support.

• Bots should be reported using the new tool. (link)
• Various reminders were made. (link)
• The Rich Text Editor is now provided for Internet Explorer 6 on an "as is" basis. (link)

News posts:

• Account security is highlighted. (link)
• A Friends page redesign is announced just before April 1 as a joke. (link)

With permission from tupshin and coffeechica:

The Rich Text Editor will now be provided for Internet Explorer 6 on an "as is" basis. We will continue to provide support for user education questions and for bugs that impact the RTE in other browsers as well, but we will no longer be reporting (and developers will no longer be fixing) bugs that are specific to IE6 and the RTE.

Note that this does NOT apply to: other versions of Internet Explorer, other older browsers unless you are explicitly told it does for a browser and version number, problems in IE6 outside of the Rich Text Editor.

• If you find yourself wanting to disclaim your advice with IANASH (I Am Not A Supporthelp), chances are that you should probably hold off on clicking the "Post Comment" button. When you're done with training, we welcome and encourage you to help us train others! If you're still in training yourself, though, we ask that you leave approval advice to those who've completed the training process.



• Snarkiness & off-topic comments in ICs are up again. Let's bring this back down. That goes for everyone from newbie to staff; there's reasons why we have this rule. (It creates clutter on the request, it's unprofessional behavior, and it's too easy to slip up and send your comment through to the user by mistake (yes, even after 6 years of doing this). And the user you think is on crack might become an admin one day; stranger things have happened...)



• It's fine and encouraged to study other people's answers when you're in training, as this can be a good way to learn support style, what's important to include in your answers, and the like. However, do remember to "close the book" before you actually write the answer so that this doesn't cross into plagiarism, which we don't want.



• TAILOR YOUR STOCK ANSWERS. PLEASE. It's really annoying to have to approve a slapped-on answer just because it was first. Be helpful. There are enough robots on this site as it is. ;-)



• Five touches. Do you have yours for this week?

(also I forgot that this was Monday was bug-report-Monday, mea culpa! Look for it next Monday.)

While I prepare for my next exam, I will not be doing support with any regularity. Go to the_cynic for all your gunkly needs, and I will resume dominion over the Unknown on May 16th.

This edition covers up to the end of February. All changes so far this month will be in the next edition.

• Many FAQs were updated. (link)
• elyssa became the ScrapBook category co-administrator; intrepia stepped down as ScrapBook category co-administrator. (link)
• Some new stock answers related to suggestions were added. ( link)
• You should set the request to tier 2 for using any admin tool including tools that supporthelps can get. ( link)
• Requests left at no language are counted as English. ( link)

News posts:

• LiveJournal prepares to turn ten and unveils lj_turns10. (link)
• The new settings page was made official, a new question for lj_turns10 was asked, and some new v-gifts were unveiled. (link)
• Information about the LJ birthday book (link)
• Find Your Friends and pingbacks went live. An interview with brad for the tenth anniversary book and the existence of russiamagazine were announced. New v-gifts were unveiled. (link)