User talk:Jenburton

Welcome
Welcome to Community Central, Jenburton!

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Enjoy! 18:28, July 26, 2011 (UTC)


 * Thanks! These are great tips. Jenburton 23:54, July 26, 2011 (UTC)

Welcome
Welcome Jen,Hope to see you round central often Tama 63  15:23, July 27, 2011 (UTC)
 * Thanks, Tama63! If I'm not in chat, feel free to contact me here. Jenburton 16:23, July 27, 2011 (UTC)

Your Dog's Name
Never in my life have a heard a better one. Shotrocket6 (T/C/E) 22:30, August 16, 2011 (UTC)
 * I wish I could take credit for it, but he's a rescue and that's the name he came with. Though! It is a perfect name. Jen Burton (help forum | blog) 15:59, August 17, 2011 (UTC)

Blog comment
Hi Jen, I noticed in your blog post and comments you made a few pointed remarks about users on community central leaving "unhelpful comments", and how you, as staff, define such things (when there are no written policies on this wiki). I notice it led to Dopp threatening a block on Archduk3, which I thought was rather excessive, but each to their own. But mainly I made a comment which I feel may have got lost amongst the welcomes on that post, so I thought I'd post it here just to be doubly extra sure you see it. Many thanks.

"I often agree with what Archduk3 says, even if I don't agree in the way it is said. If necessary I can "translate" points I agree with into nicer respectful language, and I would hope they would be listened to just as much as had someone not put it forward "disrespectfully" in the first place.

On the point about people repeating themselves - often arguments are ignored or not answered satisfactorily, so it becomes necessary to restate things. It seems that with big changes, staff respond a lot at the start, but then after a while stop even though sensible arguments continue to be made by users. Case in point - the category redlinks blog, or just recently the admin dashboard post seems to have stopped getting staff responses. I realise you have a lot to do and responding to everything is impossible, but it is disheartening to see staff answering comments about walruses, time travel and dopp's hair when there are so many outstanding comments about software changes."--Acer4666 23:32, August 16, 2011 (UTC)

Hey Acer, thanks for reaching out. I did see your comment and you do have valid concerns. One of the issues we (and any community support organization) has is trying not to get too involved in back and forth heated discussions - my personal opinion is that those end up devolving and aren't valuable at the end of the day.

Users do continue to make valuable comments and give valuable feedback after the initial rush has died down - and we see every single one. I'm open to hearing from you (and others) about ways we can do a better job letting you know we're reading and seeing your comments while still being able to help move conversations forward. (Seriously, I wish I could track the number of times Wikia staff hit refresh on a blog post - the number would be huge.) We're not perfect (because we're human), and one of my goals is to help both the community team and our active community members become more effective communicators. This is going to be an ongoing process with some bumps, some successes and some outright bombs.

I hope we'll all take this as an adventure as we (Wikia and the community) keep working to make Wikia a success both for the business and for the committed community members who want to build and maintain community sites. Jen Burton (help forum | blog) 17:43, August 17, 2011 (UTC)


 * Many thanks for replying; I just wanted to make sure you had seen it. I agree about involving in heated arguments, and forum style debates often do get nowhere. But what is always galling is when you make a reasonable blog comment and then a heated debate arises from other editors "replying" to it, then you know that staff will never respond to your original comment. A downfall of the blog feedback system, perhaps?
 * I understand a lack of staff response at times - the thinking being, "let's not be hasty in deciding anything until time passes and we know that the editor's concerns still persist". However, when the editor receives no response initially, even if the problem persists they will not feel like leaving anymore feedback, having been snubbed first time around! It seems to be a bit of a vicious circle. Perhaps if when you read, and "hear" (as the buzzword seems to be ;)) our comments, you could leave feedback along the lines of "this is great, come back in a week if this problem is still valid, then we'll continue the discussion". Atm it feels as if wikia wants to leave issues alone in the hope we will forget about them and tire ourselves out complaining.
 * Finally, I understand that staff are human. I want to make it clear that all of my irritation and anger at things are always directed at the company and never the people, and my intention is not to get personal with any staff. But you know how tempers can flare in debates nd stuff--Acer4666 00:11, August 18, 2011 (UTC)