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)