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By Kobus on
I was wondering something about Drupal support. I know it's a pest to support a product when the questions are dull or when the people who ask the questions don't read up on the site about the problem first, but, the current feeling I get (not sure of anyone else) is that people become sort-of intimidated by the thought of sending to the support list, because of the fact that they will either NOT get reaction, or the reaction would be something to make the submitter feel stupid. As I said, the visitor is however often at fault for not reading the documentation before submitting a fault/support request, and I myself have done it before.
While I understand that support is a best effort, I think we should really get a structure on support for Drupal. This was discussed briefly in the mailing lists a short while ago (I don't know exactly when, but I am sure the people interested in it will remember) - but it seems the discussion died out - while I think that it should actually become priority.
I am going to refer to a recent support request, but not going to use any names, as I do not want to step on any toes, but I can almost guarantee you that the person who asked for assistance is totally lost for Drupal. He's going back to MT or whatever else he was using, or if he was using nothing before this, he is going to research his alternatives.
He is also not going to recommend Drupal, and many newbies on the support/devel lists will see how this was handled and will also be skeptical about Drupal. People who have established their "relations" with Drupal, like your first members (like me and many others) and your experienced members (those active in developing - unlike me!) will not be affected as much, but for newbies this could be a crucial decision-making aspect on whether to use Drupal or not.
I don't know how important a huge userbase for Drupal is, but I suspect it's not as important in this case as it is for a person working with "real" customers, so people might get the attitude of "we don't care", but I believe if we nurture people with questions by at least handling each request professionally, we can actually build that userbase instead of harming Drupal's reputation among newbies, plus the added benefit of these users becoming really involved in Drupal after all their "growth pains" are sorted out. There are MANY areas in Drupal one can contribute to, and coding is just one of them.
This "structured support team", if it ever sees the light, is one of those areas where I can help, even though I will stick with basic questions I feel I can answer for now.
I am sure that you will agree that sometimes you feel comforted by a sincere attempt from someone to assist you, even though it doesn't solve your problem - it makes you less skeptical of the people or product and helps a lot to establish trust in them or their product.
Some ideas I have for a structured support system like this (and I have tried to arrange them in order of importance as I see it):
* FRIENDLINESS - E-mails also have their own "tone-of-voice", and many people don't realize that.
* TIMELINESS - Answer requests as soon as possible.
* ACCURACY - This is often not as important as the first two, because a friendly smile (yes, E-mails even portray those in your response to a request) can help you "win" that "customer". However, this is still important, because, ultimately the problem must be solved.
* FOLLOWUP - If an attempt was made to solve someone's problem, the person who helped him or her should attempt to follow up if that person doesn't let you know that the problem is solved.
* FAQ - Even though Drupal has a FAQ and quite extensive documentation, the culture must be breed into newbies to actually go and read it. Instead of feeding the person who asks for help with a spoon, you should give him a significant hint as well as the correct URL to the documentation, but ONLY if said documentation is ACCURATE and will solve his or her problem.
* ARCHIVES - As for archives, we could also maintain an archive with support requests. While the support-mailinglist archives are a good start, it's often difficult to find information in there, because you don't know what to search FOR. If you could, for example, maintain a page or section with moderated content - making sure only relevant information regarding the request is posted, users can often return to these pages and find a solution to their problem there. If this is implemented, I will vouch for maintaining it.
* FEEDBACK - Give the person who requested help an easy way of providing feedback. People usually like giving feedback on something whether it was done to their satisfaction or not - If the feedback was good, it could eventually be built into a testimonials section, if you want to go that far, and if the feedback was bad, it can be used for improvement purposes.
That's about all I can think of for now, and I hope this post will spark a discussion to lift out ideas about this concept that I haven't thought of yet.
Cheers,
Kobus
Comments
I experience drupal differently
But that is because I am not a novice open source cms user , i know how these things work.
If at first you don't succeed , read more documentation/consult google, if you still dont have any luck .. search the mailing list archives.. if you _still_ dont have any luck.. mail the support/devel lists (whichever is applicable). 99% of the time you dont need to go all the way to the lists.
If you have done your side of the job and made enough information available through your queries, it should all be archived for other people to stumble across.
I dont think there is a way you can ingrain this process on the total newbie. Procedure can be pointed out , but it needs to be learnt the hard way.
The only other suggestion i can offer up is to enable a source forge like support request functionality into the project module.. and notify people that they will be given access to it with a login.
You have a point
Adrian,
You have a point there, but I do believe that the masses of information (and sometimes lack thereof) and the way it is organised on the Drupal site can be really confusing to a newbie. Especially those who want to use Drupal as a basic site with basic features and who don't want to get involved in coding and the nitty gritty.
Some of these newbies will, should their support request be taken seriously, take on the role I am trying to play now, and that is to make suggestions, and help where they can in areas other than coding, like, for example, support.
It takes only 1 bad case of "support" to undo hundreds of successful support cases, and I have seen only one or two that were really bad, some were unprofessional, but not too bad, but I have seen several where the explanation is above the newbie's grasp, and I've seen even more where there were not even one reply (I always reply if I *can* help, though), some of which I reported myself.
If these newbies are treated like scum, they will end up not using Drupal, and mostly likely NEVER recommend it, in fact, they will actually demote it as far as they can! And if these newbies don't understand the solution, they will probably end up not using Drupal - no real harm done in that case, I believe, but I do think we should attempt to do support really professional, as if we're selling a product.
Regards,
Kobus
no replies
"I've seen even more where there were not even one reply (I always reply if I *can* help, though), some of which I reported myself."
If an answer has not been posted, an "I wish I could help but I don't know the answer" reply would even be beneficial. A newbie seeking support is more likely to have a better Drupal experience if it just seems that someone in the community is concerned about their problem, whether or not a solution is offered.
Exactly!
As I said in my original post - people are comforted in a sense when their request is seen. To them it means "Someone noticed my problem. Although they can not help, hopefully someone else will see it too!"
This reply could be redirected to people with better support skills instead.
I think that mostly the people capable of supporting simply skim the mails, and often ignore them, either because:
If these calls could be screened by a team of people who wish to be involved with the structured support team, then:
Not only is a support group beneficial for the newbies, it is also beneficial for the support group, especially of the members want to learn about Drupal.
Regards,
Kobus
Drupal Help?
One of the problems is that there is no clear how to for getting help at Drupal . The Contact link in the nav header has a little information. I added a little to the About page when I revised it. But there should be a support page, with a link in the navigation header labeled "Help" or "Support," which clearly lays out the support options, reminds newbies to review the administrator's guide and take a look through the forums and mailing list archives, and asks for support requests to include drupal version, os platform, and a detailed explanation.
The advantage to this is it
a) makes it easier for newbies to figure out how to request support, thus improving the Drupal experience by making things less frustrating
b) makes it less frustrating for those providing support since more-detailed requests will be posted
On another note, it would not be a bad idea to encourage those requesting support via the forums *not* to post anonymously. It could not hurt if those trying to help someone could see what/if the person requesting support had other problems. Previous support requests might provide more detail about the individual's installation.
Good point
Yes, it is indeed true that people don't really know where to go to get support. My focus on this topic, however, was on how support gets handled.
In the last few days I have tried to help people asking for help on the mailing list and forums, and I tried doing the things I mention in the above posting, as follows:
* Attempt to understand the problem completely
* Get into contact as soon as possible
* Answer in a friendly manner
* Try my best to solve the problem
I got some good feedback in some cases, and I believe more feedback would follow if newbies weren't treated like clueless idiots (even though support people sometimes feel like they are).
Charlie's response however touches an aspect I haven't thought about yet, and think it's worth taking up further. I will write up a summary of this forum topic as(if) it develops.
Regards,
Kobus
re: Good Point
I should have said in my original reply that I agree with your observations above :)
Harm caused by lack of support.
Another result of not providing much support is far more serious for drupal's future from the developers' point of view.
I'm an experienced developer and joined just over a week ago and am keen to get going tailoring and expanding drupal to my needs. I've posted several questions on the board and have received no replies. Fair enough.
I'm a good enough developer to work things out for myself - go googling etc as the comment before sugggests. What I can't do on my own is guarentee that my solution to problems will be in tune with the core developers' solutions. So my code gradually drifts away from the core and I can't return the fruits of my labour to the project (as I would like to).
From what I've seen so far Drupal is a great starting point for potentially very interesting sites. At the moment, it doesn't have many developers (relatively) working on it - which, given its modularity, it could do quite easily and it could get very powerful very quickly. Without some sort of structured support this can't happen.
Maybe
Only from this posting and its comments, I see a few people interested in this topic. Maybe if we can get an estimate of how many people would get involved in something like this, it would make more sense to continue this discussion, as it seems that some irritation is setting in.
Initial thoughts
I think people respond to support questions or bug reports when they are pleasant, interesting or somehow rewarding to investigate and answer. People help when they care about the problem or question being presented.
Putting emphasis on the value of support and creating awereness of the "problem" is one thing, but I think we should first try to explore some technical solutions -- rather than social solutions.
At the top of my head, here are some things that could be discussed and explored:
technical vs. social
While I agree that technical solutions are very important, social solutions are very much underrated. In my work situation for the past 6 or so years, I have learned this the hard way.
For powerful/knowledgable users social solutions are much less important than technical solutions, but for a newbie or a potential customer, the social solution is what makes the first impression.
The social solution is usually what makes or breaks the deal - the attitude of the helper and the speed and way that he REACTS to your problem is often much more important than how fast the problem is solved, as long as the problem is still solved in a timely fashion.
The issues Dries has mentioned with regards to the technical solutions are all valid and very important, but without people who are willing to "adopt" them, they are useless.
On the flip side, social support relies heavily on these technical solutions, and can not function alone. I feel however that there are *sufficient* technical solutions already available, even though they can be VASTLY improved, but the big lack of Drupal at this moment in time is the social support.
Regards,
Kobus
Support
Fact:
Users become more and more frustrated, not with Drupal, but how nobody will help them getting started.
Reason:
We are (mostly) volunteers of whom Drupal is a hobby. People commit to a hobby because the work is somehow satisfying (fun, interesting, educative) or because the outcome is somehow rewarding (knowledge, experience, respect, money).
Helping people getting started is both time-consuming and boring; it is a waste of precious and spare hobby time. Accept that as a fact. It is not going to change. Ever.
Solutions:
We can improve support by trying to create a win-win situation.
Some might be willing to offer support in exchange for respect (visual distinction and recognition within the community). Others might be willing to help someone for a small fee (a few dollars might be sufficient).
Neither of the above solutions are currently available. Apart from these we can streamline the support process to make things less of a hassle for both the reporter and the helper.
Myself, I enjoy helping "potential contributors" (eg. when he or she promises to update the documentation) or those with a problem that stands out because it is particularly interesting or thoughtful. I have a lengthy TODO list and only so much time so I tend to ignore questions that are poorly written, lack information or clearly indicate that the user didn't bother to check the documentation.
Reply to your statements
FACT:
Yes, you're correct, that is a fact.
REASON:
I disagree. That will change. That is what this whole post is about. Not EVERYONE will help. Not EVERYONE will get involved in such a system but *I* will, for example, although my help might be a little on the "softer issues" at first, as I gain more experience - I can help with basic coding issues and setup questions. I can help with documentation where required.
I can help with handling requests professionally. 4 years in the helpdesk situation has taught me those skills. 3 years of running my own business have extended those skills in me. Over 3 years of Internet activities (including Drupal - although very much the observer) had its infuence on the way I tackle problems.
Like me, there are several individuals who can do the things I do, and even better - many of them already in the Drupal team, and willing to take this on.
I didn't start this thread to bash Drupal, but to make it better. I wouldn't have started it and put all this thought into this if I wasn't going to get involved in it.
So, yes, it is going to change. Not for everyone, but for a few dedicated support individuals who take this on. Don't trash the idea - give it a chance ;)
SOLUTIONS:
You have missed one solution. The sheer satisfaction of knowing that you actually helped someone overcome a problem. Not everyone gets that satisfaction from helping someone, but many do - I for one do.
Recognition? Why is this not available? While you will not have recognition on the Drupal site as "expert helper" or "Drupal boffin" or something similar, you will get individual cases of recognition from those you have helped, and a decently structured support system will speak for itself in terms of feedback from your "customers".
Payment? Yes. Money is always the biggest factor. There is, however, MANY ways you can pay people for support. There is Paypal, ClickBank, Stormpay, e-Gold, BlueBeans and many more methods. Sure, people will not often be willing to pay, but you will get those who are, if given the assurance that their problem will get solved.
CONCLUSION:
Why do I get the idea you are opposing this idea? Or is it simply me perceiving your reply in the wrong way? While not all my ideas are easily implemented, not all of them are equally important. I refer back to the main post where I tried to order those things in the order of importance they hold for me. If I have to do a educated guess here, the first three will be sufficient to handle 90% of the issues there currently exist with the support system.
Give it a try - what have you got to loose?
Conclusion
Why do I get the idea you are opposing this idea?
I'm not opposed to the idea of people like you putting time and effort into helping out people on the forums. Such work is invaluable.
Give it a try - what have you got to loose?
Nothing. What exactly do you want me to try (or do)?
What to do
You made some suggestions for technical solutions which I can't implement. Since the experts in Drupal are the ones who can actually implement it, and you have already hit the nail on the head with your technical solutions that you suggested, I suggest we work on that, while those of us interested in helping continue as we are.
A suggestion I have is to add a new "project" called Support, where you can track support calls like you do with bugs and features. In this project you can ask the users to specify each required parameter needed to request help, i.e. Apache/MySQL/PHP/Drupal versions, which module/part of Drupal, what the problem is, etc. etc. ETCETERA.
After this is implemented, you can close the support list for public posting, and only allow the Support "project" to mail it to the list, for those who want to receive the request by mail. This helper then has the choice to update the support call via the web or via the e-mail like with every bug/feature/task report. The person seeking help will also be given this opportunity to update via e-mail to the web. By denying public posting you are providing a mechanism for making sure all reports get updated accordingly.
We can also consider having a "task force" of experts who will schedule regular "training sessions" for lesser experienced people who really want to help, so that they can actually deal with more complicated issues.
I understand that these experts can't really teach you how to code in PHP or form SQL statements but they can tell you more about the insides of Drupal, how to make modules, like Marco did before, and teach them the tricks of the trade of Drupal support, whenever they see something that needs training or whenever a support member can identify something that requires/justifies training.
Regards,
Kobus
technical solution.
Dries said:
[...]
Apart from these we can streamline the support process to make things less of a hassle for both the reporter and the helper.
[...]
In re: to this discussion I posted a feature request, providing a good solution. (IMHO)
Read it @ http://drupal.org/node/view/2426
Support project
Hi, Ber, yes, you are correct - good suggestion. I already mentioned it elsewhere in this thread - http://drupal.org/node/view/2369/3971#3971 and think this would be a good addition to any help system we can offer. I would LOVE to see this implemented! :)
Regards,
Kobus
About the support project
I was thinking that instead of having a "Project" support and under that have the headings Bugs, Features, Tasks, I believe it would be better to have a "Support" item under each of the existing projects.
How feasible is this?
Regards,
Kobus
"A few dollars might be sufficient"
Dries,
I like your candid and direct assesment of the problem. I also like the idea of asking users to "pay" for the service by contributing to documentation, helping others in return, and checking the existing documentation.
I was intrigued by your comment that people might be willing to offer support for a small payment. Moshe and I have a shared interest in facilitating 'payment for open-source development' and had briefly discussed a way for user's to offer payment for new development. I hadn't considered it for basic support and think this would be an interesting angle.
I wonder if there is a case for a micropayment module, using paypal or some other service to enable this scheme?
Here's a site Moshe found that offers a similar service, http://www.sourcesupport.org/
Joe Lombardo | joe@familytimes.com | My Blog
Payment
The idea is that someone could choose to attach a reward to a support question or feature request: "I have a problem getting my theme to work and offer $3 to the one that helps me out.".
In fact, it shouldn't even be necessary to communicate a price/reward. Simply adding a "pay this user"-link to each comment will encourage people to offer support -- and I'm sure some people would be happy to make a small payment in exchange for good service.
Indeed
Dries,
That is correct indeed. Even for $3. Usually the problems are pretty small, and can be fixed within seconds by someone who knows what's going on.
I believe if you can built this into the "support project" it could create some options for helpers...
Regards,
Kobus
Sounds effective and simple
I like it!
Joe Lombardo | joe@familytimes.com | My Blog
No problem
I'll whip up a 'pay me' module soon.
FEATURES
- adds field(s) to private user profile for entering in your PaypalID
- adds a link to nodes where the author indicates he is *willing to pay* for a good reply
- adds a link to all nodes authored by Paypal enabled users who indicate that they are accepting payment for this node. upon clicking this link, user goes to paypal.com and is guided through a 'Donation' style payment. He is then brought back to a local URL which records the fact that this user was paid. I don't know what to do with that information though. Suggestions? Add a payment counter just like a node access counter?
ISSUES
- it would be nice to change the look of nodes which are offerring payment but I can't do that cleanly without a nodeapi("view") hook.
- i'd liek to highlight comments which were paid for (thus are probably very valuable) but all i can do is add a link. we need hooks into the VIEW operation for nodes and comments!
Sweet!
You're observation that comments that were paid for are probably very valuable brings ranking to mind. Whether it is Intuitive Ranking or something simpler.
Another thought is that the majority of these comments should probably be added to the manual. Maybe they could be put in a book queue for people who want to contribute by updating the manual to 'process'.
Thanks Moshe!
- Joe
Joe Lombardo | joe@familytimes.com | My Blog
This sounds like Experts Exchange
I think some people would suddenly get *very* interested if this got implemented. Experts-Exchange does something similar.
Basically, someone posts a problem, then other users add comments/suggested solutions. The original poster can interact, ask for more clarification, etc., then finally "accepts" one user/solution as the correct answer. The correct answer gets points given to the owner. EE also has a clean up crew that automatically closes/awards/refunds points for stale/unanswered questions.
I think that involving PayPal would be a bit much. Developing this sort of system would be intense -- incredible if it was completed -- but might be a big task.
Anyway, more thoughts on how it would work:
- every user that signs up to Drupal.org gets a certain amount of points to start with
- if you run out of points, you can buy more by donating money to Drupal
- people with questions can post how many points they're willing to give for correct answers
- people that answer questions correctly get the points, and also increase an "expert" level --> Novice - Intermediate - Expert - Guru - Dries
(P.S. this comment is displaying incorrect filtering of line breaks -- I've hardcoded in line breaks for readability)
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Boris Mann
Excellent
Now this is a good idea, Moshe! I can't code well enough to make this work, but the idea sounds simple, yet effective, and I am sure that this would spark the experienced people to help out... :)
Regards,
Kobus
Support-List
Closing the support list would be bad, IMO. I can reply to questions on the list asap, but only read this forum occassionally.
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Drupal services
My Drupal services
Get rid of the support forums.
Here are a few support goals that I see surfacing in this discussion.
So here's my radical suggestion. Get rid of the support forums. Instead direct people with support questions to find the appropriate page in the drupal manual and post their questions as comments.
here are the benefits of this approach:
Downsides:
Joe Lombardo | joe@familytimes.com | My Blog
Professional Support Contract?
Why not have Drupal offer professional support contracts for six or twelve months etc?
And how about offering assistance Mozilla style - have Drupal (or approved contributors to Drupal) charge for each support incident by phone or email?
A Year Later, Still No Good
It's amazing that it's been a year since the original post was made and things don't seem to have gotten any better.
I have posted a number of items and have only gotten one response. One of my posts was later answered by myself as I figured out the problem.
This is a great piece of software but I am afraid that adoption might be hampered by the lack of support. I have managed to get a site up and running in spite of this problem, as many have. If it weren't for the fantastico script, I might not have gotten it installed. I say that because I haven't tried to install it from scratch.
The features that make this such a great package are also the ones that can cause the most angst. Taxonomy is hard for some to wrap their heads around. Heck, just the term is intimidating to some.
I have used, and currently use, other CMS packages. While the documentation here is about the same as the others (probably better), the support forums aren't. I agree that just posting a 'would like to help, but don't have an answer' would be very helpful to some folks who might feel a little intimidated.
I say all this without any animosity or frustration. I also don't really have any answers. It would seem to me that such a great product would have a deeper following composed of folks who are capable of supporting average users.
My Drupal site is being used in State government. For the most part it functions as needed. I would love to be able to recommend this to other state agencies but, until the support areas become a bit more active, I will have to wait.
Drupal is probably the best CMS package in the open source community, and I have tried them all. Keep up the great work!
Sure, we could spend night an
Sure, we could spend night and days doing support, but who would write the code, then? We try our best and if it isn't enough for your state agency, they should employ somebody to fix their problems for them. The code is free but my time isn't.
Your best bet to get support on a specific project is to open a support request and not posting in the forums, I think. Module developers get the stuff mailed and might care to respond.
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Drupal services
My Drupal services
Oh well...
As I said in my comment:
I was not implying that developers necessarily be the ones to support. I also said I didn't really have an answer. I was also very complimentary of the software.
This comment is not helpful:
Nor is this:
I wasn't in anyway trying to impune the effort of anyone.
I was trying to be helpful in giving a perspective of someone who is using the portal for more than just a personal blog or community site. If my agency had the money, we would hire someone to help.
So much for trying to contribute. I apologize if I upset you with my post.
what to do
Its clear that you aren't criticizing developers - just pointing out facts. But even more valuable than pointing out facts is proposing actions. What steps can various people in the project take to improve this situation?
Support requests
You can now post an issue to any Drupal project and mark it as a support request rather than a bug report. This facility was not available when the original discussion here happened, I think.
Support requests as issues are in my opinion buch better than forum posts, mainly because there can be a status attached to them so it is easy to see if the question is still outstanding, was a duplicate of an earlier question, or was resolved. It's also possible to reclassify a support request as a bug if that's in fact what it is.
When I scan the "active forum topics" on the front page, on the other hand, I can see the title of the original post, and that's it, so I waste time following links to questions that have already been answered. Often the topic is confusing or non-specific, as well.
I think we have a better mechanism in place already. It's just not being promoted.