Support FAQ

This page contains frequently identified issues, questions, and so forth with regards to support, relevant to you, the support volunteer.

What is Support?

Technical support for users of the Dreamwidth.org site is partially crowdsourced. This includes general questions, and some technical support and customer service. (Some technical support and customer service is done by Dreamwidth staff.) Any registered Dreamwidth user can contribute answers on the Support board. All answers are subject to the approval of a trained senior volunteer before they are sent to the user. You can read more about the full Support process.

Who can do Support?

Anyone who feels like it can volunteer their time and expertise to Support. See the Support guide and Support process.

Things needing special powers

A lot of requests are informational, and anyone who knows the answer can give an answer, but some support requests need special powers to actually carry out.

Feed rename requests

Example: "Could you rename the sample_feed feed to samples_feed?"

Typically, you can just ignore these requests. Someone with the appropriate privileges will handle it.

If the user is complaining about the feed not working, take a look and see if the feed URL is still valid. If it is not valid, please look up the new one and leave is as an IC to the request.

As an aside, please do not create a new feed.

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Feed source changes

Example: "The source feed's URL has changed. Could you change the DW feed's URL, too?"

You should treat these the same as rename requests.

If the user is complaining about the feed not working, take a look and see if the feed URL is still valid. If it is not valid, please look up the new one and leave is as an IC to the request.

Closing a support request

Requests are typically closed when someone with request-closing privs has the time to close them. (Currently, this is denise, Kat, Dom, and Chemla.)

Answered requests may remain open for a brief period of time for two reasons:

1. D, Kat, Dom or Chemla hasn't had the time to go 'round and close them.
2. We want to give the user ample time to respond, in case they're still having an issue.

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Spaaaaam! In the dungeon!

Thought you should know!

If you see spam on the board, just leave it. It will be handled by someone with the appropriate privs.

If you have the movetouch priv, you must move the "request" to Peterstein. If you're unsure as to whether the request is actually spam, just move it to Peterstein. Someone will suss it out.

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Answers that refer to a Bugzilla bug

If your answer refers to a bug, please add an internal comment that links to the bug in Bugzilla.

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Mass-deletion of entries

This is covered in the Dreamwidth FAQ, actually.

Dreamwidth does not support mass-entry deletion within itself. There are third-party tools that might be able to do this, but it's not recommended.

DW doesn't have or want the functionality for two main reasons:

1. It is way too easy to slip and delete more than one intended to.
2. Not having that is one more obstacle, in case one's journal is hijacked.

If you recommend that they seek out a third-party client, you must make sure to note that DW takes no responsibility for third-party clients.

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Deleted Users

Support requests from deleted accounts should still be answered as any other request. The user can still undelete their account; in fact, they may be waiting on the outcome of the request to decide whether or not they'd like to do so.