Upgrade to Pro
— share decks privately, control downloads, hide ads and more …
Speaker Deck
Features
Speaker Deck
PRO
Sign in
Sign up for free
Search
Search
Supporting The Masses (without losing your mind)
Search
Ipstenu (Mika Epstein)
August 26, 2012
Technology
0
76
Supporting The Masses (without losing your mind)
WordCamp Chicago, 2012
Ipstenu (Mika Epstein)
August 26, 2012
Tweet
Share
More Decks by Ipstenu (Mika Epstein)
See All by Ipstenu (Mika Epstein)
WordCamp Boston - 2013
ipstenu
1
320
Rolling Your WordPress Support Character
ipstenu
0
550
Choosing the Right Plugin
ipstenu
0
190
Get Out Of The Monkey House
ipstenu
0
210
Don't Use WordPress Multisite
ipstenu
0
2.9k
Why WordPress Is not "Set it and Forget It"
ipstenu
2
530
Other Decks in Technology
See All in Technology
研究開発部メンバーの働き⽅ / Sansan R&D Profile
sansan33
PRO
3
20k
PLaMo2シリーズのvLLM実装 / PFN LLM セミナー
pfn
PRO
2
990
KMP の Swift export
kokihirokawa
0
330
データエンジニアがこの先生きのこるには...?
10xinc
0
450
関係性が駆動するアジャイル──GPTに人格を与えたら、対話を通してふりかえりを習慣化できた話
mhlyc
0
130
多野優介
tanoyusuke
1
440
Large Vision Language Modelを用いた 文書画像データ化作業自動化の検証、運用 / shibuya_AI
sansan_randd
0
110
社内お問い合わせBotの仕組みと学び
nish01
0
390
o11yで育てる、強い内製開発組織
_awache
3
120
【Oracle Cloud ウェビナー】クラウド導入に「専用クラウド」という選択肢、Oracle AlloyとOCI Dedicated Region とは
oracle4engineer
PRO
3
110
SREとソフトウェア開発者の合同チームはどのようにS3のコストを削減したか?
muziyoshiz
1
100
pprof vs runtime/trace (FlightRecorder)
task4233
0
170
Featured
See All Featured
The World Runs on Bad Software
bkeepers
PRO
71
11k
The Myth of the Modular Monolith - Day 2 Keynote - Rails World 2024
eileencodes
26
3.1k
JavaScript: Past, Present, and Future - NDC Porto 2020
reverentgeek
52
5.6k
Raft: Consensus for Rubyists
vanstee
139
7.1k
No one is an island. Learnings from fostering a developers community.
thoeni
21
3.5k
Practical Orchestrator
shlominoach
190
11k
Docker and Python
trallard
46
3.6k
Fantastic passwords and where to find them - at NoRuKo
philnash
52
3.4k
Into the Great Unknown - MozCon
thekraken
40
2.1k
Optimizing for Happiness
mojombo
379
70k
Learning to Love Humans: Emotional Interface Design
aarron
274
40k
Chrome DevTools: State of the Union 2024 - Debugging React & Beyond
addyosmani
7
890
Transcript
How to Support The Masses
Without losing your mind Tips and tricks to keeping it
all in perspective, while still giving people the best experience possible when it comes to support.
Who Am I? Mika A. Epstein (a.k.a. Ipstenu) Over a
decade of supporting technologists, programmers ... and grandmothers
I have the BEST IDEA! It starts with you and
your dream (or desire).
I assemble my code
And it’s awesome!
YAY! Version 1.0.0!!!!!
Wow! People are using my plugin!!!
Not everyone likes it...
http://wordpress.org/support/ view/plugin-committer/YOURHANDLE
Do I want to help them? Do I want to
spend my time doing support? You don’t have to! But....
What’s in your README? • Are there alternate support methods?
• Email, other forums, UserVoice? • Is there no support? • Is there only paid support?
Unless you clearly state otherwise on your plugin page, users
have a reasonable expectation that you will provide free support in the WordPress.org Forums.
Is it really my problem? Valid complaints? Reasonable requests? Not
RTFMing?
Okay, I’m going to help! • Can I reproduce it?
• Have they tried turning off other plugins? • Have they tried using the default theme?
Oh! It’s a conflict!
Should I fix it? • Is it a security hole?
• Is it in the scope of your plugin? • Is the other plugin/ theme behaving badly?
•Be honest •Be direct •Consider patches from users •Ask for
help If you can’t fix it...
What about requests? My users want special features. Well ...
Okay.
It totally needs a unicorn! Yeah, I know it’s an
RSS plugin, man, but think about it! UNICORNS!
JUST SAY NO!
Keep sight of your scope • What problem did I
want to solve with this plugin? • What logical extensions can be added? • What can be easily added? • What can I add and still support?
But I want the unicorn!
You can still say no.
It’s okay to ... • walk away • say no
• get mad • give up • ask for help
It’s not okay to... • blame them (even if it’s
their fault) • be mean • accept abuse • ignore them*
Tips So what should I do?
Document It What it does What it doesn’t How it
works Support options Known/common errors
If you make a BIG change ... DOCUMENT IT!! REMEMBER!
Take Time Think before you answer Study the error reports
Test possibilities Take time for yourself
Be this guy! Walk away from the computer once in
a while
I have a life! It’s ...
Don’t Attack! They’re not attacking you Don’t bite the users
Passion makes people seem aggressive Strong opinions can be misread easily in text!
Don’t be this guy http://xkcd.com/386/ What do you want me
to do? LEAVE? Then they'll keep being wrong!
EOL What if I’m just done with this plugin?
Warn them! “This is no longer supported.” Push a final
version to notify users. Alerts in the admin screen
Hand off? Give it to someone else. Ask someone to
take it over. Email wp-hackers. Post in the forums.
The End