What (tools, resources, support, incentives, etc.) would make it easier for you to volunteer for LiveJournal?

Many thanks to androshd for collaborating with me on this post.

If you've stumbled across this community, you might be wondering what LiveJournal Support has to do with volunteers, and why you should care.

Technical support for LiveJournal is provided by volunteers. Volunteers fill almost every function, from answering questions about how to create a journal to helping figure out why you can't log in to telling the developers that the journal update page isn't working. Volunteers even supervise the other volunteers; normally, only one staff member (our manager) is involved in Support at all!

Some of you may be thinking that already sounds pretty interesting. The rest of you are probably thinking that we are completely insane. For the second group, I'd like to explain a bit about why we do this, but if you're already intrigued feel free to skip down to where I talk about
how we do it.

( Why do we volunteer in support? )

Alright, so let's talk about how to get involved. It's actually very simple: all you really have to do is go to the Support board, which shows questions other users have asked, pick one you think you can answer, and try to answer it. The answer will get stored until someone with a little more training can come by to check and see if it's right. That's all there is to it! That's the most important part of Support. Everything else is just there to make answering those questions easier or more effective.

You may notice that the board lets you pick something called a category while searching through it, and if you've ever sent in a question to support you probably saw categories there, too. Looking at the entire board can be a bit overwhelming sometimes, so you might want to focus on a particular area that you are (or think you could be) particularly good at. That's what a category is - a way of dividing up the board into smaller chunks that all deal with the same kind of question.

( And here are the support categories... )

So, those are the basics, but if you want to learn more about Support, please go have a look at the official support guide or the Support wiki. And if there isn't enough information in either of those places, feel free to comment on this post with your questions; someone would be happy to point you in the right direction.

If you want to jump right in, though, go ahead and visit the Support board and see if there's a question there you can answer. Somewhere, there is someone you can help. Why keep them waiting?

What do you wish you had known back when you started volunteering for LiveJournal? What tips, hints, or advice would you give to a new LiveJournal volunteer?

One of the areas of LiveJournal Support that needs some love is the Abuse Prevention Team. I'd like to dedicate this post to explaining a little bit about what role the APT plays for the site, why it's fun and cool, and how to apply to the team if you find yourself thinking "hey, that sounds like something I'd enjoy!"

What exactly does the APT do to help the LiveJournal community? The answer is: a lot! Abuse is the part of LiveJournal Support that users contact when they see something that is against the Terms of Service, or when they want an interpretation of the rules. Members of the APT handle a large variety of requests, and are responsible for figuring out if a report contains a real violation of LiveJournal's ToS and policies and taking the appropriate action if necessary.

I'm not going to lie: this type of volunteering isn't for everyone. If you apply and are accepted onto the team, you'll have to sign a non-disclosure agreement promising not to leak any private information. You'll have to slog through some of the darker parts of the LiveJournal community. You'll stumble upon shock pictures (ever seen goatse or tubgirl?) and read terrible things all in the name of deciding whether or not something is a violation of the site's policies. And as much as we wish we could protect the innocent and force everyone to be nice to one another, it's not our place to make that happen if reported content is not against the Terms of Service. Being a member of the APT is also a pretty big time commitment. You'll have a weekly level of activity that you'll be expected to meet most weeks. It's not terrible, but it does amount to 5-10 hours a week for most of us.

I'm sure that at this point you must be asking yourself "how is this fun again?" Well, members of the APT enjoy all of the same perks that public Support volunteers get! There's a fantastic community of volunteers who give an awful lot of time not only to answering requests, but also to being friends with each other. Volunteers also learn tons of fun facts about LiveJournal as a site, and they can use that knowledge to help other users out. You can include your volunteer service on a resume (or CV) -- believe me, it's an interesting and memorable talking point at an interview. There's also the chance of being visited by the Paid Account Fairy if you volunteer for a few months...

One of the neatest parts of being on the Abuse Prevention Team, though, is the part where you go through a pretty intensive training process. New volunteers spend a lot of time getting to know some of the existing volunteers and getting walked through all of the rules and policies. Being trained as an Abuse volunteer and training new volunteers myself introduced me to some of the kindest, most amazing people I have ever met. I've made lifelong friends volunteering with LiveJournal.

Still interested after reading all of this? Awesome! If you'd like to apply you can do so by going to the lj_abuse profile and following the instructions there. All of us on the APT are looking forward to bringing new volunteers into the group!

Since lj_volunteers is going to be a community we use to try to recruit new LiveJournal volunteers, I thought it would be nice, both for current and past volunteers and for new and potential volunteers, to have some discussion about why we volunteer for LiveJournal.

So, anyone who volunteers or has volunteered for Support, Abuse, Schools, Translation, or Documentation, or in any other capacity on LiveJournal, please comment here and share your reasons: why do or did you volunteer for LiveJournal? What made you start volunteering? What made you continue?

Hello current and potential volunteers! I'm Bethany, one of the Schools team Admins.

The Schools team is currently looking for volunteers to help approve new schools into the Schools Directory, as well as manage the schools currently listed and answer requests in the Schools Directory Support category. (Support requests are few and far between - most of the work is done in the Directory) Because the Schools Directory is worldwide, we need volunteers from everywhere.

Right now we are most in need of volunteers who speak English and just about any other language, to help clean up countries in Asia, Europe, South America, and the Middle East. However, even if you just speak English, please feel free to apply! (The USA, Canada, the UK, and Australia all need some help too!)

If you're interested, and can devote between 5 and 10 hours a week to approving and scrubbing the Directory, please send an email to support@livejournal.com, with the following information:

Username:

Country and/or region you're interested in working in:

Any languages you read and/or speak:

How much time per week you are able to dedicate to the team:

Any other information and or skills you have that you feel we should know about:

Briefly explain why you want to join the Schools team:

Hey look, our first "help wanted" post.

Anybody want to make us a userpic?

(I'm finishing tidying up this community today, including "getting started in ___" links in the links list. Tra la.)

After reading your comments on Monday, you guys have convinced me of two things:

1) The old entries aren't going to be deleted unless you choose to delete your own.

2) The community is going to go to open membership -- Maura & Azz are right that I don't want to waste time determining who's active and who isn't. The entries will be moderated, and moderation will be limited to staff and volunteer team leaders: docadmins, supportadmins, translation leaders, and the like.

So go ahead and share this community with your friends! After I finish some style tweaks (we <3 you grrliz!) and change the community options, I'll be adding this community to FAQ 57 and getting us in the queue for an upcoming edition of lj_spotlight.

Oh, and I guess we gotta come up with community guidelines, too. As this is also your community, let me know! What are your thoughts on common community issues such as:

* Socialization & intro posts vs. being "help wanted opportunities only" (see also: signal to noise ratio)
* What kind of behavior gets you kicked out/banned
* Stuff I can't remember because my brain is a bit fuzzy today

Hi guys!

I have been assigned the task of converting lj_volunteers into a place where staff members can post "help wanted" notices for volunteers of any particular skills, for tasks of any sort.

I would like to have this done by Thursday so that it can be announced in the News post, and get a bunch of new people watching. Also, this will have the effect of bringing together all the volunteers across the site: translation, userdoc, schools, support, abuse, suggestions, spotlight, whatever.

Since the original purpose of this community was to introduce ourselves to Six Apart folks, and the community pretty much exists solely for bios that would be posted to a small group of people, I am planning to delete all of the existing entries before the new community is announced. (Unless somebody gives me a really good reason why not in the next 48 hours.)

Also, I'm thinking forward here: I am thinking about keeping membership to "trusted" volunteers in case there's a task for which we'd only like to consider applicants that we know are reliable folk, and allowing anyone to watch the public entries. This is easy for teams like support and abuse, where there's a well-defined level of "trusted" as a reflection of one's privs, but not so easily defined in areas like translation. What are your suggestions about what makes a trusted volunteer? Where would you suggest drawing the line in various departments?

What other questions do you have? What haven't I considered?

(Hi, pauamma!)

Ahem.

Random tidbits about me, LJ-related or not.

- I believe I'm the oldest volunteer, or one of the oldest few. (mid-40s).
- I'm bilingual.
- Politics-wise, I have a strong libertarian bend.
- I volunteer in LJ support, in nearly all cats. I started about 1 year ago.
- I'm a returning student.
- Because my nearly full-time job, my classes, support, and what passes for a personal life with me didn't take enough of my time, I somehow got involved in LJ translation late last year.
- I'm an incorrigible punster and smartass.
- I'm not good at describing myself.
- My tastes in music cover most of Europe between years 1300-1940 (roughly), with a few gaps.