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)

Contact
Hi Jen, I did actually fill out a contact form some days ago now, and by personal I assume you mean between just me and the other admin? It actually involved several users who were quickly silenced when they attempted a complaint, and as you probably know by now the adoption is no longer the issue. --Cartman!Talk!
 * Hi Cartman! We'll consider the matter closed, then, considering you've written to Special:Contact. Thanks, Jen Burton (help forum | blog) 16:05, September 6, 2011 (UTC)

Hello, Jen Burton. I'm here leaving you a message about one of the staff members, Sannse. Does she earn money every time she bans someone or something? She has banned over 10 people on our wiki, multiple times, for absolutely ridiculous reasons. The wiki is http://degrassi.wikia.com/wiki/Main_page. Please take this into consideration. She is sucking all the fun out of Degrassi Wiki. She even bans people for swearing! This is ridiculous. But anyways, thank you for reading this, I hope you are able to do something about it.Nisoja 17:23, September 17, 2011 (UTC)Nisoja


 * Hi Nisoja,


 * Sannse is our Director of Community Support and she has my full support; she's been spending time on Degrassi because the community there has been spiraling into habitual bad behavior. While I am not directly involved in her decision to ban certain people, I trust her implicitly. She's been working here at Wikia from the very beginning and has one of the best understandings of social issues on wikis that I've ever seen. Jen Burton (help forum | blog) 16:41, September 19, 2011 (UTC)

If you could just please globally unblock me, and my bot, SpideyBot, it would be great. I promise never to harrass staff/vstf again. Also globally disable the accounts Spidey-sock1 and Spidey-sock2. Thank you. http://i242.photobucket.com/albums/ff258/truckthis/emoticons/themoticon-0159-music.gif Mystery  Uk  ul  ele Man |  Talk  | 00:14, October 1, 2011 (UTC)

Hi Mystery, you'll need to contact us via Special:Contact. Jen Burton (help forum | blog) 22:48, October 3, 2011 (UTC)

Message Wall testing
Hi, its Sunday, the week that Message wall was gonna be enabled on test wikis. When is this gonna happen? Thanks! TheBen10Mazter ( Talk - Blogs -Contribs)  14:45, October 2, 2011 (UTC)

New Feature Pushing
What I would like to know is why you and the other staff members constantly push new, redundant, unnecessary new "improvements", while the vast majority of users are saying that they can't stand it. The new editor, the profiles, the Message Wall. All are getting massive opposition, and all are getting ignored massive opposition. This is why many wikis left Wikia when the Oasis/Wikia/whatever-it's-really-called skin was rolled out.

You are also turning away potential contributors. Let's pretend I'm a new user who stumbles upon Community Central. I see the staff blogs, new features, etc. being announced on the Main Page. I go into their blogs, and see that, in reality, almost no users actually like it, and that the staff are entirely ignoring them. Now, think. Would I want to stay with a web site whose staff ignore its users almost entirely, only listening to the small minority who like it? And faster than anyone can blink, I close my window, and I'm gone.

You (referring to all the staff) just can't push things on people and expect them to just leave. Look at an example in politics (that liberals seem to just not understand). If you raise taxes on anything, people will not stay as they are, giving the government more money. Rather, people will change their behavior, and either stop buying/using the thing or move out of the area, giving the government less money. The same will happen here if you don't just change. You will get fewer users, fewer people viewing your ads, and in turn, less money yourselves. Plain and simple.

Now, this I just don't get. You say it is technically possible to make the Message Wall optional. So... why isn't it? Extreme lack of logic. And you don't even answer anyone's questions about it.

I hope this does not seem like a long, boring message, and I hope you read and consider it. And this message comes with a failsafe. If you read and cosider it, that's that. If you ignore it, and reply to others' messages, than you will just prove that you are ignoring me as well, which leaves an even worse impression on everybody. It's no wonder that the only new feature that I initially approved of since the new skin (the first new feature I ever saw) was the navigation improvements, something that actually improved the function of the site, and actually helped new users.

ROADS! Roads! (Don't forget it!) 15:56, October 5, 2011 (UTC)

Hi Roads,

As I stated in the blog post, we have not come to a final decision on whether Message Wall will go in to Labs or not at this time; we will let the community know once we have a decision. You've made your point very clear and it's been registered. At this time, unless you are a member of one of the test wikis, Message Wall will have no effect on your experience on Wikia. If you are a member of one of the test wikis, please take this up with your local admin as they are the people who made the decision to participate in the test.

Regarding your questions about why we make the business and product decisions we do I will simply state that we do so in the best interest of our community and the company. I realize that a portion of the community disagree with our decisions - we make no claims otherwise.

Jen Burton (help forum | blog) 17:37, October 5, 2011 (UTC)


 * I've never seen a staff member say that. :/ Then again, I don't go around spying on staff talk pages. I don't want to sound mean or rude with that message, so sorry if you got that impression.


 * ROADS! Roads! (Don't forget it!) 17:57, October 5, 2011 (UTC)

Screenshot
Could you please give me a screenshot of the Special Page that you and the other staff members use to send messages across all Wikia? I need it for a mock-up, but I clearly can't get in. Thanks in advance!

Roads (The Techical Update we've all been waiting for: category redlinks are back! *sigh*) 18:04, October 5, 2011 (UTC)

Hey Roads -

the Sitewide Message is a MediaWiki extension (that we wrote) and is available here: http://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Extension:SiteWideMessages.

Jen Burton (help forum | blog) 22:48, October 5, 2011 (UTC)


 * Thanks. I was inspired to go into the mock-up business for my suggestions. :)


 * Roads (The Techical Update we've all been waiting for: category redlinks are back! *sigh*) 17:33, October 6, 2011 (UTC)

Staff-community relations
Hi Jen. I know you said in your intro post you're concerned with raising the level of discourse and keeping a friendly environment here on community central. I thought you maybe interesed in this thread about a specific issue I have, as well a broader issue with relations between the community and staff. I should point out I am not having a problem with any specific staff members, more a general problem with the way certain things are handled by staff as a whole. -- Category:Acer4666 09:00, October 7, 2011 (UTC)

Hey Acer -

Thanks for your message. I understand these frustrations as I have many of them myself. I know there are pain points for both our community and the community support team regarding feature changes and releases - we (the community support team) want nothing more than to have a community that feels supported and like their needs are being met. I agree that this isn't happening all the time right now and it's something that Wikia as a whole is working on. Unfortunately, there will be times when the company makes decisions that some people disagree with (and "some" may be "many" of course), but the community support team does our best to represent the community's needs internally. We advocate for you (the royal you) sometimes to a fault in meetings here in the office.

The support team all want to have answers for the community. The company wants to be delivering news to you that you're excited about.

Specific to your frustrations about lack of iterations and bug fixes on some features - we share them. The development staff shares them. I am comfortable saying that the entire company shares them. Wikia has the luxury problem of having more ideas and plans for the product than is humanly possible to achieve, and that includes iterations and bug fixes on existing products. For example, the development staff has closed over 1,300 bug tickets in the past 3 months - some of these are bugs we caught during feature development and others are reports that came in post feature release. I've asked one of our technical staff to write a blog post giving a little insight into our development process - we should have that post up either today or early next week.

My question for you: How can we improve our support of the community while at the same time not having things like exact dates for when a bug will be fixed or when a feature iteration will be released (because most of the time we simply don't have those dates)? Is there a better way?

<p style="margin-left: 40px; ">Jen Burton (help forum | blog) 15:44, October 7, 2011 (UTC)


 * Thanks for the response. I look forward to the technical insight blog, it may help us understand things from wikia's end more - although I have to say the number "1300 bugs" is meaningless if you include bugs during development, as that is how the process works. I am singularly concerned with how you are dealing with bugs post release.
 * Here's what gets me. After a few conversations with staff around the time of admin dashboard coming out, I got the feeling that the reason wikia would not revert the feature was so that you would get lots of feedback about it. It seems (and I may be wrong) that the development team is only prioritised to fix something when there are many users commenting, posting and complaining about the fact they can't use their wikis properly because of a new, prematurely-released feature. An example - you let us test the new editor before making it live. I made a comment about how much notice we gave about bugs, and yet it still went live and it was as if we had never given that feedback (ie, the reaction from staff was "oh dear, we'll get that looked at soon"). It seems to take it being live and hindering people in order that it gets the quick fix treatment. When really, it should not have been made mandatory until these bugs we reported were dealt with.
 * I made another suggestion somewhere which I'd quite like to suggest again - That there is an "intermediary" stage between something being optional to turn on, and it being impossible to turn off. I suggested that you make it the default for all wikis (in order to jerk people into giving feedback on the blogs), but still keep the option to get rid of it if we really can't stand it. I'd even settle for "a week to give it a chance", and if you can't get stuff fixed by then, then let us revert to the old version. I totally accept how hard it is to get things fixed and that you can't give timeframes, but I suggest that you accept your shortcomings in that department and have the good grace to not force a flawed feature on people trying to work on wikis. It's the "involuntary product testing" feeling that causes the aggro between community and staff. I hate editors self-aggrandising, but we are the people producing the content that makes this site popular, and if the new features are actively hindering us, then I think it is not unreasonable to ask for more options with features in their infancy.
 * I think I should also bring up the subject of "consistency". Things work differently on different wikis, and often we need a certain piece of functionality that may not suit the bigger picture. I honestly think customisation is a good thing - and I'm sure wikia agrees in many places, I mean wikifeatures has just been released which is great. But that only applies to certain things, and certain things you won't budge on. Ironically, your consistency policy seems inconsistent. And as well as site-wide consistency, I'd also think about temporal consistency - the last year has seen so much change, I think anyone returning to the site after having a few months off would be so put off they could easily be driven away. But, I suppose two new users are worth twice as much as one veteran editor to the advertisers and your statistics - but unfortunately not for the quality of content.
 * Whether any of this resonates with you or if it's just another tl;dr rant from a disenfranchised user, I don't know. However, these thoughts are all aimed at general policies on features, and I still think that Wikia is dead wrong on the admin dashboard stance (ie, it not being optional). I will continue that specific debate on the thread on Meighan's talk page, which seems the more appropriate place.
 * To sum up an answer to your question to me: if you can't provide deadlines for bug fixes, don't give us deadlines for features going live and becoming mandatory-- Category:Acer4666 12:43, October 10, 2011 (UTC)


 * Sorry for butting in; I just wanted to mention that the point of contention here is symptomatic for an issue which (in my experience) a lot of the more experienced editors have: When new features are released, there's usually a flurry of quick bug fixes for a limited time and then nothing for a long time. Wikia is effectively shooting itself in the foot with that approach, as the features are often left at a stage where they work "well enough" but are still causing an increased workload and/or annoyance for experienced users/local admins. This in turn leads to those people gradually disliking the feature more and more, and since they have a certain influence on the average editor (whether they want it or not), this dislike spreads and festers. In the end, it leads to potentially beneficial features being used less and when/if the bug fix comes, it is often too late to undo the damage to the feature's "reputation". Even worse, when this happens over and over, it results in editors meeting new Wikia features with scepticism ("oh no, wonder what issues this feature is going to cause") which contributes to the disproportionally negative and emotional feedback you often receive for new features. Hope my train of thought is somewhat understandable.
 * A few examples for when features were left at "increased workload/annoyance" stages:
 * Admin Dashboard theming
 * Chat ban mechanic: It causes additional workload for admins because chat bans do not expire automatically. It was promised that this would be addressed more than 2 months ago but still hasn't happened.
 * Old Rich Text Editor: It had issues with reformatting pages when it shouldn't have, which meant editors often had to manually fix the edits of people using the RTE. The feature was basically abandoned at that stage, which in turn lead to quite a number of wikis having the RTE disabled once the experienced users got tired of cleaning up after it.
 * Just to illustrate what I mean. -- Porter21 (talk) 13:40, October 10, 2011 (UTC)