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Scope of Communty and Support overlapping

A topic by redonihunter created 50 days ago Views: 99 Replies: 2
Viewing posts 1 to 2

This might actually be for general section, but since it mostly is about threads appearing here, I try posting it here for starters.

The heading of the community section here reads: 

Get help from the itch.io community. Have a quick question or issue, other members of the community can assist you in finding an answer. If you need to specifically contact itch.io staff you can message our support team. Although staff may monitor this forum, we request that any account related matters be submitted through our support system.

Also this in the rules:

When you post here you are asking the community to help you, this is not a direct line of communication to site admins (that is support).

But many threads here are not created and treated like this. It is people looking for individual (staff) support with their issue (usually the daily new thread about not being indexed or suddenly being quarantined). Other community members cannot help there. Except by sharing their experiences and giving emotional support like saying the have the same issue.

And if they do, they often get told to make their own thread, which actually is contrary to the idea of community threads. It would be more fitting for an actual technical support message board, where actual staff would answer. But this board here is a community board.

That is why my post is about. The scope of the message board and the need for support are overlapping. There obviously is a need for support and many people wrote to official support mail first, but when they did not get an answer within a few days (hours for some impatient people) they turn to communty. But all we can tell them is to wait. It is rare to actually have any tipps or discussions about such topics.

So is this just me misunderstanding what a community message board is for? Or this particular board. Is anyone else seeing some issues here too?

That some cases take weeks to sometimes over a month to get resolved is of course a source of many a thread in community. But that is outside of community.

Redirecting people asking the same over and over to the sticky faq about indexing problems is a good start. But maybe there should be threads to discuss indexing problems as well. As in: actually discuss it with other community members, as the heading of the community implies.

Moderator (1 edit)

Our admins have set this rule for two reasons: one is technical, and has to do with how the watching of topics and categories works here. The other is because when a mod is trying to help someone, you don't want other people coming in to flood the topic with marginally related posts. I'd rather keep things orderly myself instead of berating people, but we have no ability to split off topics yet (it's on the roadmap). Until then, we have to make do.

The practical usage of the board is not really matching it's stated purpose. That you do effectifly help people sometimes, despite what the section says, is also blurring the scope. It is rather clearly stated, that people should contact support with such account specific things and the only help they would get here is by other community members - which cannot help by definition in most of those cases. All they could do is tell op to wait - or say they have the same issues, as is common in such message boards. It might be only little help, but knowing that your account is not the only one affected, can help. The shared problem would be a waiting time measured in weeks.

It does not help, that the real faq says this about indexing:

Please contact us only after you've waited at least one day

Judging by the daily indexing problem thread, that should realistically read two weeks, instead of one day. It only encourages swamping support with yet more requests. People do wait a day or five and then contact support and get no answer for days and weeks and probably never at all. Their game just suddenly is indexed after a few weeks. Or it gets "overlooked" - which should never ever happen. If that really happens, that system has a design flaw. So I always assumed and hoped that was a figure of speech.

Not knowing is bothersome. People do not know the status of their game. Or the reason why the status is what it is. Is it intentionally not indexed, did they do something wrong? Is it a bug? No one is talking to them. The faq says a day is a reasonable waiting time and they contact support and support does not answer either. They are hanging there in limbo, not knowing left or right.

That paragraph just now was a summary of my impression of all those threads.

And I sense an increase in quarantines, likely due to an increase in sensitivity of the automated systems. Which I approve, since I still see hacked accounts with malware. A lot less than months before, but still the occasional bunch that flew under the radar. It is not some abstract threat of abuse, the abuse is happening and that crap is indexed, since the scammers just try it hundreds of times. Itch is fighting those bad actors, and games not being indexed immediatly or getting quarantined is a symptom of that fight.

This topic has been auto-archived and can no longer be posted in because there haven't been any posts in a while.