One quick thought, what about some form of login to the website being required to participate via irc? We give social media logins as an option, so the bar isn't too high.
I also think that asking for email as a requirement so we can followup, if they are impatient, still allows us to help them in whatever capacity is feasible. I've got no problem troubleshooting if our schedules happen to not align.
Cheers,
Josh
It's come to my attention that our website IRC client, which provides a
convenient means for users to ask a quick question, is causing a lot of
frustration amongst our volunteers on the channel who are trying to
provide support and manage the channel.
There's three issues that I'm aware of:
* Drive by's:
Very often people will log in, shoot off a question that is easily
answered, then depart before anyone has a chance to answer it.
* Language:
Often people will express questions in their native language. As
our current support volunteers only include English speakers, this
just isn't going to work out.
* Anonyminity:
The nice thing about the IRC client is since it doesn't require
login credentials, it's quick and easy to use. The downside is we
have no idea who the person is. This means no way to contact them
out of band (e.g. shoot them an email with the answer to their
question, or post it to their inkscape.org account), and no way to
ban people who behave abusively (the channel op can kill the
session, but the troll could just re-login.)
There may well be other issues, but I think this is representative.
Compounding the problem, I think the IRC support crew feel a bit
disempowered: The web irc client is part of the website and thus
maintained by the website maintainers.
The easiest solution would be to switch off the irc client on the
website, or for the IRC support staff to set /ignore (or worse) on
"inkscaper*". But these don't really *solve* the problems, they just
brush them under the rug.
Are there other changes (maybe minor tweaks, maybe major re-thinks) that
would address these problems while still helping users get answers to
their questions, quickly and/or interactively?
Bryce
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