Time mystery (hourglass) wrote in blurty_hs, @ 2003-07-09 01:34:00

Some pointers to improve your answers
1) Validation
There are several ways to refer to this, validation, confirmation email. Users even use verification. Although technically verification would be entering something twice, such as when you change your password. This is not what validation emails do, hence the word validation :P

Use temporarily disable or adjust your mail filters to allow mails from blurty.com. Don't use it on the wrong one. There is no point in telling users to disable or temporarily adjust their filters, because now you're telling them to disable their mail filters, and only adjust their mail filters for now. We might then have angry users telling us that we told them to disable their spam/junk mail filters to receive Blurty validation emails, and they will not receive it again in the future if they re-adjusted these filters.

Another wording issue. Resent has a completely different meaning to re-sent, so use re-sent. Other people may resent me for writing such a long entry, but at least none of you would re-sent me.

Don't blame all problems on validation. A user's journal will not be deleted if they don't validate, it will continue to exist, and display. Validating their email address allows users to obtain the full functionality of their account, such as the ability to post comments, and it will allow them to retrieve their password. (Users can post entries even if they're not validated!) It isn't exactly necessary for a user to validate their account. Explain validation to them if they have these misconceptions and dispel them, because it just makes more people open requests (unless of course, you're racking up those points :)

Something that's popping up as well. While it may take the validation mail a while to get sent to users, most of these are being filtered out by spam/junk mail filters. (Especially AOL users I believe). I'm just not sure why some people are telling users it may take a few hours, and others are telling them to allow up to 24 hours. Where do you get these estimates from? :P

2) Deleting journals
Most of you like to use the 30 days disclaimer. However, there are several things to note here. A journal can be deleted, and then it can be purged. If a journal is only deleted, a user can undelete it anytime they like by logging in and activating their journal again (even after the 30 day limit). If a journal is purged, the user will not be able to undelete this account, nor sign up with this account name again. Purging runs are done infrequently, so it would not be wise to say to users that after the 30 day period, their journals will be permanently deleted. One method to use is to say that users will have "at least 30 days" to undelete their journals again.

3) News link
Some of you are using this link: http://www.blurty.com/community/news/
But for simplicity's sake, you might want to use: (http://www.blurty.com/news.bml), because this is what is linked to at the top of the Blurty site. And supposedly this page will be translatable in future. It's pretty?

4) Suggestions of external sites
A lot of users ask us for useful websites to do foo and bar. It's best not to link to an external website, because we do not have any control over their contents, and they may disappear without notice. Then we're left with more angry users saying we're providing them with bad links/bad websites. If you do have to link to another site, include a disclaimer that we're not responsible for its contents.

5) Backdating
Some of you are telling users they can backdate their entries if they are trying to transfer their entries from one journal to another. Actually, there is no need for this to be used if the user is going to post their entries in the correct date/time order. The backdate error only appears if a user is trying to post an entry earlier than their latest entry. One reason to use this would be to stop flooding/spamming the friends view of any users who decides to add them as a friend as backdated entries do not show up on friends view. I probably wouldn't want to see the 2 years worth of someone's past entries displacing my other friends' entries.

Misc
While you're explaining the error the user is getting, try to offer them a solution! If a user's overrides/custom style is broken, tell them how to fix it! If they want an Early Adopter account to create styles, tell them paid accounts will be available in the future, and how to customise their journals with overrides in the meantime! In short, if something can't be done, offer an alternative!

You might want to keep an eye on userdoc for any changes to FAQ. You never know, an FAQ may suddenly be changed in such a way which will make your life that much easier. If you haven't done so, go familiarise yourself with the FAQs!

*Please hit me if I wrote something awfully wrong. It's kinda early :)

bertho 2003-07-08 20:53 (link)

I'm just not sure why some people are telling users it may take a few hours, and others are telling them to allow up to 24 hours. Where do you get these estimates from? :P Things seem to be much better now, but for a while the e-mail servers were experiencing severe delays. Comment e-mails (and validation e-mails) were often not showing up for hours. I was getting comment e-mails well after 8 hours. 24 hours is a bit of a stretch, but I'd rather people wait a few extra hours than bitch about not getting it when it's on the way. At the worst of the e-mail lag, we had probably ten validation requests per day that ended up being validated because it finally arrived. Thanks for the post, though. :) (Reply to this) (Thread)

	anthony 2003-07-08 20:58 (link)
	Yes, very insightful post. Thank you for still approving my lame answers that can now be improved by your tips! :) (Reply to this) (Parent) (Thread)

	hourglass 2003-07-09 06:24 (link)
	Your answers are great actually! A lot better than some :) You don't have that many misconceptions, which is great for privs because it makes your answer that much more accurate! (Reply to this) (Parent) (Thread)

	Re: anthony 2003-07-09 06:49 (link)
	Awww, thank you so much! (Reply to this) (Parent) (Thread)

	hourglass 2003-07-09 06:22 (link)
	We still have the remaining 70 requests that didn't validate, unfortunately. Welcome :) It'll make our lives a lot easier, and great topic for ranting. (Reply to this) (Parent) (Thread)