Wikia:Problem Reports handling manual
Wikia - creating communities
This page is for Staff and Helpers working on Special:ProblemReports. For admins, please see Help:Problem Reports.
This page applies only to reports that are less than 1 month old. Older reports can be acted upon by anyone or closed if you feel that's best. There is no point in encouraging admins to start replying to these out of date tickets! For tickets less than 2 months old, use your best judgment and close/reply/act as below, according to the situation.
In general, the idea of the problem report feature is to allow local admins to have more direct contact with confused newbies. The best place for user-to-user contact is still via talk pages, but some new users don't know this. They look for an email link and use that instead. This means Wikia gets a lot of queries that would be better dealt with by local admins. Hopefully this feature will help with that issue.
However, many admins don't know about this feature and many wikis don't have active admins to use it. That's where the Global Wikia Team comes in.
[edit] Remember
- Reply templates are guides, they will often not fit the situation. If you find yourself always just cutting and pasting the replies below, then you are doing it wrong. Always consider the situation individually and try to make your reply personal.
- It probably doesn't need saying, but to say it anyway: always ensure your replies are courteous and friendly. The idea is to help people and to help them be happy with Wikia. If you feel you can't do this, ask someone else for help.
- The suggestions below are guidelines, if you feel a situation merits a different response then that's fine. Discuss the situation with others in the team if necessary.
[edit] Situations
1. Wiki is dead. Question is not global (e.g. "this page is wrong")
Send to the reporter:
Hi, thanks for reporting a problem on X wiki. Unfortunately there are no active admins on this wiki at the moment, and no editing community.
You would be very welcome to edit here and help revive the wiki. [You can correct the problem you found by just clicking edit and changing the text]/[other specific mention of their query].
To learn more about Wikia and all the wikis we host, see <link>
Thanks again for your message, see you on the Wiki!
-- name/nick
name team http://www.wikia.com
2. Wiki is dead. Question is global (e.g. I can't log in")
Send to the reporter:
Hi, thanks for reporting a problem on X wiki. Unfortunately there are no active admins on this wiki at the moment, and no editing community.
[Specific mention of their problem, solution etc.]
It's great to see interest in this wiki, perhaps you could be part of reviving it! You are very welcome to start editing, and improving the site in any way you like. All you need to do is click the edit button and start typing. There is help on editing at <link>
If you have any problems and need to reach the staff team, you can mail the at community@wikia.com
Thanks again for your message, see you on the Wiki!
-- name/nick
name team http://www.wikia.com
3. Wiki is active, but has no active admins.
Look at adding admins to the wiki, either by choosing the most active user(s) and inviting them to become admins, or encouraging them to discuss it among themselves. For example:
Hi, I noticed you have some problem reports at Special:Problemreports and no active admins to deal with them. Looks like you need some here! Perhaps you could decide among yourselves who the best people to be to be given these rights, and then I'll be happy to make them the new admins here. You can read more about what admins do (and don't do) at <link>. Hope to hear from you soon! -- ~~~~
4. Wiki has active admins, but they aren't using the feature.
Try to introduce them to the feature, either by going to a central talk area or via an individual admin's talk page.
Hi, I'm trying to re-introduce people to a feature we have, "report a problem". I don't know if you've seen it, the idea is to give people another route to contact admins... especially people who don't know what the edit button is for ;) You have a few reports at Special:ProblemReports. You can click on the problem ID number to take you to a page that shows just that report. You can click "i" to get the full text of the report, and you can click the icons to mark it as "fixed", "closed" or to flag it for Wikia staff. You can also send email to the person reporting the problem, maybe a good way to draw in new contributors! I hope you'll give it a go, we really hope this will be a useful feature in helping you get in touch with your confused users. Let me know if you need help! -- ~~~~
5. Wikia has active admins who are using the feature.
Clear problems marked for staff as quickly as possible. Link to the Community Team email if needed, or to any other sources of help. If you feel the problem is an admin one, then check the log to see who flagged it for staff and discuss this with them.
Use your judgment on whether to answer problems not flagged by staff, remembering that the feature is aimed at admins and the guidelines on local autonomy.
