What Goes Where

A rough guide to categories for support on Dreamwidth, brought to you by zarhooie, domtheknight and chemicallace.

There are two types of categories: public and private. Public categories can be seen by anyone visiting the site, and any logged-in user is able to post a screened answer to the questions. Private categories are restricted to certain users with the applicable privs; only very specific people can see the requests at all, since they often contain sensitive information which might not be suitable for the public.

Confused about some of the Support jargon? See Common Jargon. For more on Support, including the lifecycle of a request, see the Support process page.

Public categories

In general, you should pick the cat which best fits the majority of the request, if there's more than one issue. If necessary, it's fine to switch cats midway through interacting with the user; maybe an answer you give for the Importer will bring up more questions which are really Entries related. There are people with privs in just one or two cats so moving requests does have an effect on who can approve answers or see discussion.

General/Unknown (g/unk)

catch-all for stuff which just doesn't fit anywhere else. You'd want to use this if it's something which doesn't fit any of the more specialized options.

• creating an account help
• things of which you are unsure of their proper location
• If you are not sure if something is a bug or suggestion, put in in G/unk for more in-depth investigation and sorting.
• If you do know something is a bug, you can also dump it here for filing by Support members.

Communities (comms)

things specific to community use

• moderation queue
• managing members
• Can overlap with styles and entries; try to determine if the issue is caused by a community or if it's a more general issue which just happens to apply to the community in this case. Example: if someone can't post an entry to a community but can post personal entries, that's a community issue. However, if the problem is more with html in the entry, which would happen in any entry, then it's an entries problem and not a comms problem.

Entries (entries)

entries-related problems

• html encoding problems
• the RTE
• posting privately or to filters (although the basic creation of the filters is more G/unk).

Styles (styles)

styles-related problems

• anything to do with selecting a new style
• modifying that style
• using custom CSS.

In-depth help may be redirected to style_system for ease of communication.

Site Interface (web)

things for site display. If you are able to change the summary of a request that falls in this cat, mark it [docs].

• problems with the site scheme
• site copy and FAQ updates

Importer (import)

importer-related problems, issues and questions.

• Some importer questions do require knowledge of the function of other sites to be answered.

Crossposting (crossposting)

crossposter-related problems, issues and questions.

Feeds

• For anything feed-related.

OpenID

• For anything OpenID-related.

Tagged Items [tag]

Requests may be tagged to help track an issue, or to flag it for further research. The tag will be in the following format: [tag]. These requests do not usually need to be moved, as they've already been handled by a senior Support volunteer or staff member.

Private categories

Requests in private categories either contain information personal enough that it should not be on the publicly viewable support board, or require an answer from a member of a specific high-level team, or both.

For all the private cats, it's not necessary to tell the user anything before you move it; just move it and let the specialized staff investigate and answer.

Account Payments (accounts)

accounts@dreamwidth.org to open a new request

This category is answered by staff.

• anything about payments goes here
• requests for invite codes of any size, from large numbers of invite codes for things like moving an RP to Dreamwidth to "can I have a few more invites for my friends". (This is less relevant during open account creation.)
• Non-spam business propositions. ("Would you like to buy some V1@gr@?" is spam; "Are you in the market for new hosting? If so, would you like to use our fine establishment?" is probably not.)
• Typos in usernames.
• Wrong birthday on account, or underage user.
• Anything needing the specific attention of Denise.

Anti-Spam

This category is answered by Anti-Spam leads, or a Terms of Service team member/staff member if they have time.

• Reports of a registered user spamming (usually SEO spam)
• Reports of an OpenID user spamming (if not deleted by journal owner)
• Someone saying that their journal was suspended for spam, but they are not a spammer

Most questions about general Dreamwidth anti-spam policies can be answered on the public boards.

Feedback (feedback)

feedback@dreamwidth.org to open a new request

This category is answered by staff.

• Feedback!
• Things Dreamwidth is doing right
• Things Dreamwidth is doing wrong
• Requests for changes that would not benefit from public discussion

Peterstein (private support)

support@dreamwidth.org to open a new request

This category is answered by staff or a Support lead.

• anything which involves personal information but does not fall under the purview of any of the other private categories.
• Password issues can go here if needed.
• Dead people (reports of the death of a Dreamwidth user).
• Spam, or anything that looks like spam. Do NOT dequeue.

Terms of Service (abuse, ToS)

abuse@dreamwidth.org to open a new request

This category is answered by staff or a Terms of Service team member.

• anything which will require Terms of Service Team investigation should get moved here
• reports of a user who is possibly in danger (suicide or similar). Also get in touch with a staff/ToS member in IRC as soon as possible (saying the category of problem, like "report of suicidal user", rather than/in addition to the staff member's name, can be helpful).
• reports of violations of the Terms of Service
  • Except for spam, which is anti-spam
• user-to-user interaction
• people registering complaints about each other
• any request that explicitly names another user in a negative light
  • Except for complaints about spam that names another user as the spammer -- those are anti-spam.
• Comm admin switchovers

Webmaster (webmaster)

webmaster@dreamwidth.org to open a new request

Items in this category typically need no answer.

Non-Support-Board

dw-suggestions

• Requests for a new feature which does not already exist
• Requests for site changes that would benefit from public discussion
  • If the change absolutely should be made, but there is a question of how it should best be done, this can often benefit from public discussion.
  • Exceptions:
    • If the feature exists, G/unk
    • If the feature does not exist, but a bug exists, G/unk and tell the user we're working on it.
  • If the feature does not exist, but a suggestion exists, ideally point to the specific suggestion.
  • If the feature does not exist, and neither a bug or a suggestion exists, suggestions time.

dw_codesharing

This is only applicable when invite codes are required.

• Non-users wanting small amounts of codes in comments elsewhere on the site
• Non-users wanting small amounts of codes offsite

Users who would like additional codes, people who would like larger amounts of codes to move a group, or someone opening a request, send to Accounts.

style_system

• Detailed advanced customization things.

Bugzilla

• Bugs as reported to Support. (Level of detail and duplication desired for filing?)
  • Staff tracking of which outstanding filed bugs have multiple support requests
• Bugs as reported elsewhere on the site.
• Usability things (broken as designed) that would not benefit from user-level discussion on how to implement the fix.
• Staff/volunteer-facing features and enhancements that do not require user-level discussion on implementation

Offsite

• If the request is primarily about another site that does not integrate with Dreamwidth, direct the user to that site's technical support (after answering any Dreamwidth-related component).
• If by some lucky happenstance you can answer a non-Dreamwidth question and choose to do so, be sure to set expectations that this is not part of the standard knowledge package of Dreamwidth support.
• Reports of a LiveJournal user in danger were last known to go to LiveJournal's Abuse category with an appropriately urgent subject line; if there are any current LiveJournal volunteers present in Dreamwidth IRC, flagging one of them to alert LJ Abuse Prevention Team might be a good plan.