Penguin Watch Talk

Helping volunteers

  • gardenmaeve by gardenmaeve moderator

    The new FAQ listings are very helpful and clear, and the forthcoming photos, etc will be even better. The current FAQ links in various forms and places work well, too.

    Here's a problem. We're seeing many new volunteers asking questions in the comment form, but there is a problem getting information to them,
    no matter how often we reply with answers and FAQ links.

    1. There is no FAQ link on the comment pages (the page that appears when one selects "Yes" to talk about an image) and
      2.They DON'T KNOW they are being answered.

    How can we fix these two issues, please?

    Posted

  • AvastMH by AvastMH moderator

    Hi gardenmaeve. Zuzi is the expert on this, but I'll start it off by saying that we've been planning the FAQs for a few months with the very definite view of them being on that comments page. As we welcomed so many users the other weekend we thought to put up our most recent draft in FAQs to help somewhat.

    However getting folks to follow up is a really good question! I'll have a chat with the other mods. I've had to message a few users to help them with FAQ questions where there was clearly no follow up from them, in fact no understanding that we might have a return comment to make for their benefit. It might help us to temporarily add a comment to the screen when comments are being written. I'm very enthusiastic to sort this out!

    Thanks so much for raising the point gardenmaeve 😃

    Posted

  • gardenmaeve by gardenmaeve moderator

    Hi, AvastMH. Thanks for your encouragement. I can remember Zuzi helping me on one early on, but it was some time before I even knew to look for a reply OR a message... and I have been active online for years. We expect users who come here to be very adept with a computer and all common practices on a site of this kind, but I have observed that is most often not the case.

    Posted

  • yshish by yshish moderator, translator in response to gardenmaeve's comment.

    Hey,

    It really is a problem but the Talk isn't very intuitive and lots of users simply don't know where to look for the information they need. Actually, most of the users have never come back after they try the classification (telling by the stats) and will never read the answers even if there were a notification feature for that! 😦 (which would be a very useful feature for the new Talk btw, hope @DZM reads this!😃

    But yes, we could ask Darren whether it would be possible to put a note about 'follow' possibility to the 'talk about the image' question (which would take a long time to make it happen since the developers are extremely busy at this time.) We could, at least, mention the possibility to check your last post on your Profile page and recent classifications to the FAQs. We had it in the full version of FAQs but I think it should be included in the short one too.

    Will edit them tonight since Joan made some useful changes and shortened them a bit.

    Thank you for your awesome help on the board!! You're awesome 😃

    Z.

    Posted

  • mkmcguir by mkmcguir

    Maybe you could add a note in the tutorial... at least do a screen shot of the talk page and show the different parts?

    Posted

  • Nickypeng by Nickypeng moderator

    mkmcguir - Thats a great idea

    DZM how hard would it be to include another page or two in the tutorial.

    N&P

    Posted

  • gardenmaeve by gardenmaeve moderator

    Yes, a great suggestion, @mkmsguir... (and thanks for lending a hand with new visitors' questions.)

    Thinking along those lines, I've wished for a screen shot of a marked image to be part of the tutorial and/or FAQs. Perfection would be to have several with references to the FAQs, but one would give a good start.

    Posted

  • gardenmaeve by gardenmaeve moderator

    Incidentally, the best training I had when I first came to this project occurred once I found out what the "Recent" tab was about. That's where I could see the image along with the various comments from moderators and the kinds of questions volunteer counters were asking. So my advice for new counters is

    1. Study as many of those images in "Recent" as possible to learn the process and get many good answers to questions before you even start marking.
    2. Take time to explore the site to learn where information, FAQs, and replies and messages will be found.

    Posted

  • mkmcguir by mkmcguir

    Once I figured out the recent tab (which is the best place to start), it helped me the most also.

    Posted

  • yshish by yshish moderator, translator

    Hey guys,

    As for the Tutorial changes, it isn't that easy. It has to be a very brief and easy. But it would be great to have at least a link to /a mention about the FAQs where we could have such extra information.. Maybe, there is a chance to have it mentioned in the Tutorial in future? Let's wait for Darren's reply..

    As for the FAQs, we're going to use some screenshots and animal images but not for the short 'Talk' version we're using now. This one has to be as brief as it can with a minimum of images (however links are possible) since there is no accordian lines possibility :].

    Any suggestions for the FAQ changes are very welcome, though. Please, post them into this Discussion thread: http://talk.penguinwatch.org/#/boards/BPZ0000006/discussions/DPZ0000ato to keep them all in one place.

    Many thanks!! 😃

    Z.

    Posted

  • gardenmaeve by gardenmaeve moderator

    @yshish- Should we re-post our suggestions there, now or do you want to shift them over?

    Posted

  • yshish by yshish moderator, translator in response to gardenmaeve's comment.

    Yes, please. Re-post all suggestions you know about there so I won't forget any.

    Thank you very much! 😃 It would be very helpful.

    Z.

    Posted

  • gardenmaeve by gardenmaeve moderator

    OK. I'll send mine over there now. 😃

    yshish and all- I went ahead and copy/pasted all those suggestions I thought yshish was wanting to have in the other thread. If I missed yours, of course go ahead and glue it in to the thread yshish linked.

    Hope this helps!

    Posted

  • DZM by DZM admin

    Notifications are a critical element of the next Talk. Our back-end developer is, I believe, currently finalizing the basic structure for them.

    He's also the builder of this Talk, so I can ask if he can put a link to the FAQs below the comment box on the object page (where it seems most of the redundant questions come from), but I'm not sure if that's possible to do for just one project, given that Talk is sort of a template. I'll ask, though!

    Posted

  • yshish by yshish moderator, translator in response to DZM's comment.

    Good to know!

    Have you noticed this thread on the Chimps? It's about notifications too!

    Posted

  • Nickypeng by Nickypeng moderator

    Hi Yshish

    I think the FAQs are doing a great job - we are getting a lot less of the same questions over and over. So great work doing them in such a hurry.

    N&P

    Posted

  • yshish by yshish moderator, translator in response to Nickypeng's comment.

    Glad to hear that however it can be caused by dicreasing of the number of users participating in the project. Anyway, it definitely is much easier for us to reply 😉

    Thanks!

    Posted

  • gardenmaeve by gardenmaeve moderator

    DZM- Thank you!

    Posted