Forums Activity and User Support

Dear folks, I was wondering. I peruse the tiki.org forums regularly, and
there seem to be many questions and issues with zero replies.

If a new user comes into tiki, and asks a question for trouble shooting or
how to do something, often times there is never an answer given. While I try
to do my best to get in there and help, my knowledge of tiki at this time is
still very small. But we have many knowledgeable folks here, that if they
visited the forums for a bit each day if possible, and lent some support to
the folks over there, I think it would be a really great step in user
retention.

I run an online community forum for woodworkers, we have been live on the
web since 2010, and one of the rules I have for my forum hosts, is, there
should never, ever be a forum topic posted by a user that is showing a zero
reply status for longer than 24 hours.

The reason is, folks hate being ignored, and I know nobody here is ignoring
the forum users, but that is how a potential user, or potential tiki fan
would take it.

I know sometimes we talk about user retention, somewhere I saw a comment
made about the thousands of downloads of tiki software, but converting those
downloads to users who come back, is a different animal all together, and I
think a step in the right direction would be to have some stellar support at
the tiki.org forums.

Since I started using and testing Tiki over a year ago, the forums have
gotten better, I remember when I first logged in at tiki.org, it was not
uncommon to view a forum category with over half the topics, with zero
replies. It has improved. 

Here is one of many examples of a topic that was posted almost a month ago,
with not even a single reply to it.
https://tiki.org/forumthread62818?topics_offset=34
This could be an easy answer, perhaps? It could be either yes or no, but I
am not sure myself, as I stated, I am pretty green at Tiki. But if I had to
venture an educated guess, I'd tell the user CMaster, my answer would be no.
Maybe? I think someone with more experience could give him a better answer
than my, "maybe".

If I were CMaster, and if I were a new user, I would move on, because you
cannot work with Tiki, without some sort of support.

Now that being said, I also understand that open source software forums
should be peer to peer support, but truthfully, the peer to peer is not that
robust if at all on the tiki.org forum. Why?

Whether or not what I just stated is true or not, it is the appearance of
the forums with zero replies that is not a good thing to have.
If a new user, or potential user happens upon a support forum where there
are many zero replies, they are likely to move on, and find another
software. 

The bottom line is this, Tiki is one of the biggest, baddest, greatest,
nicest, awesomest pieces of cms/wiki open source software applications on
the market today, but to a new user, without support, none of that matters. 

My solution:
Hosting assignments. We could assign a host(s) to a specific forum, and then
a topic or comment is posted to that forum, the host is notified, and the
host should reply or answer within 24 hours, at the most 48 hours. I think
beyond 24 hours you are pushing the patience of the new user, they are more
than likely ready to walk away at that point.

If we can retain new users, if we can have a user base that matches the
downloads rate, this community would be one of the most vibrant open source
user communities on the web.

There are many things that set Tiki apart from the other guys. I have one of
the most important items of all time that would really set Tiki apart from
the other guys, great customer service! None of the other open source wiki
software, has a customer support, or forum structure that is lively, and
engaging. We should be different.

If we had a robust and lively forum experience for our users, I guarantee
you the retention rate would skyrocket, engagement would skyrocket,
involvement would follow, and quite possibly some very happy users could be
converted to donors as well.

Customer support is the most important of all aspects of any organization or
company, that deals with the public. I don't care if the product allows the
user to teleport themselves across time-zones, without customer support, it
won't sell. 

I know we have user manuals, they are great, but they are often times
confusing and intimidating for a new user, or experienced user for that
matter.

Forums, we need them live and robust, and engaged, thanks for reading my
ramblings today.
John





-----
John M.
Just learning enough Tiki to be dangerous!
--
View this message in context: http://tikiwiki.1073613.n5.nabble.com/Forums-Activity-and-User-Support-tp37907.html
Sent from the TikiWiki - User mailing list archive at Nabble.com.

------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Check out the vibrant tech community on one of the world's most
engaging tech sites, SlashDot.org! http://sdm.link/slashdot