Thunderbird/Support/ContributorPlan2012April

Thunderbird support – Contributor Plan

identify WHERE contributors could help us:

• Direct Support
  • Answer Questions in Get Satisfaction (GS)
  • Merge Duplicate Topics in Get Satisfaction
  • Flag breaking and "hot" support topics to tb-support-crew
• Meta Support aka Indirect Support (most meta support requires moderation privileges)
  • Set Topics to Answered or Solved or Not a Problem or Doesn't need an answer as appropriate
  • Close topics when appropriate
  • Archive topics when appropriate
  • Create Boilerplate for Answers in GS
  • Tag Articles in GS appropriately
  • Remove bad tags
  • Fix uninformative titles
  • Remove rants/ad hominem/bad tone replies and topics
  • Flag spam to GS staff
  • file bugs for GS topics and then tag relevant GS topics with "bug xxxxx"
  • manually close GS topics after people have been asked for followup troubleshooting details but don't bother replying i.e. "stale" topics
  • write software i.e. scripts - to automatically find spam, rants, stale topics, etc and do the appropriate automatic or semi-automatic action e.g.: auto-close stale topics
  • create SuMoMo articles for FAQs and frequent GS support topics and add links to these articles to the relevant GS topics

how to get MORE and/or LONGER term and/or more ENGAGED contributors:

• emailing people who have had good GS Support experience (find people with getSolvedAnsweredLastNDays ruby script, plan is to do 1 email / work day starting in mid April) - record of emails sent is on this private intranet wiki page (not public for privacy reasons since it has email adddresses)
• Thunderbird Community day with Jen and other TB contributors in Vancouver in June or July (and then replicate in Europe or elsewhere at events like meetups MozCamps)
• Thunderbird Support Clinic like Firefox Support Clinic in August or September

what programs have been done in the past (with or without success)

• support days (ineffective in getting contributors but worthwhile to do with existing contributors)
• emailing people who have had good GS Support experience (haven't done this consistently enough and measured enough to see if this is effective)

Suggest KPIs (key performance indicators) (list in spreadsheet)

will update spreadsheet but prelim KPIs are:

1. number of GS active contributors per month (where active contributor means 1 reply was starred, promoted or company promoted in that month). Would like to increase this by 1 per month.
2. number of new GS active contributors per month - would like 1 new active contributor per month