Suggestion for the community

[maratsade]

I don't know if this can be done, but I thought it might be a good idea to have a generic tag for the mods -- something like @help, or @mods , or something like that, and it would tag everyone who currently has the Mod tag by their name.  I find the tagging system on this community slow -- it takes me (and it may just be me) a long time to tag someone who's not involved in the conversation, and sometimes I have to try the tag a few times before the system recognises they exist (funnily, the system always points me to someone named Lamar when I want to tag Amanda).  It's even harder with short handles like Liz and Jay. I would totally welcome a single handle that would reach all mods. 

[GabeU]

@maratsade

Great idea!  

In lieu of that, something that may help is permalinking a previous reply that already has the full list of linked names, then bookmarking, or saving in your favorites, the permalinked page.  What I mean by permalinking is clicking on the dots to the upper right of a reply, clicking permalink, then after the page refreshes, bookmark it or save it in your favorites.  Then, when you click on that bookmark or favorite it will go right to that post in the thread.

Then, you can copy the list and paste it into your new replies when you need to tag all of the mods.  You wouldn't think tags would copy and paste properly, but they do.  

I tend to save a lot of pages that have good info or things that are easier to copy and paste than to type out again.  

Just a possible, temporary solution to your linking issue.  

[maratsade]

@GabeU, hats off to you, sir. You're a genius!  Cheers.

I had tried macros, but I can't tag in macros.  I'll try your workaround. 

I still think a global tag would be much  more practical, since the mods seem to rotate often. 

[GabeU]

---

@maratsade wrote:

@GabeU, hats off to you, sir. You're a genius!  Cheers.  

---

I don't know about all that, but they do say that I should listen to my peers.  😛  

[Reggie]

Suggestion: Could they use the Hughesnet Logo. This way if someone needs to tag the Mods.if they are online they will get the notice.

[maratsade]

I was hoping for something like that, something global and recognisable that would send an email to a global address all mods have access to. 

[Amanda]

Great Idea 🙂 I have some tools at my disposal to make this easier w/o you having to use the built-in tagging feature (like using trigger words from our team's response software).

• User/Abuse reports come into a separate queue already, so if it is something that needs to be taken down, censored or what have you, just submit the report. There is no need to tag anyone in the actual thread because everyone on the team will see the report.
• If it is a customer who slipped through the cracks, just a simple 'bump' post will pop it back into our queue.
• If it is someone who is already being handled by a mod, tag that mod. The actual hyperlinked tag doesn't need to show up for us to see it so don't worry about that. 

If there is a particular situation I missed, let me know and we can discuss 🙂

-Amanda

[maratsade]

Not sure I get what this means:  The actual hyperlinked tag doesn't need to show up for us to see it so don't worry about that. 

Thanks, "Lamar"!  😉

[Amanda]

Me llama Lamar XD

When you tag someone in the community it does a little @Amanda that you can click, for example when Gabe tagged you above. That doesn't actually have to happen and you don't need to click a name from the auto-populated list for it to get to us. 

[maratsade]

OK, so it seems I don't really even need to tag you all.  I'll try bumping. 🙂

You rock, Lamar! LOL

[GabeU]

Amanda,

1.  So, just to be clear, if one of us has been trying to help someone, and it's subsequently determined that they will need help from you or one of the other mods, we don't need to tag you at all?  You'll see the thread regardless?    

2.  Regarding this...

• If it is someone who is already being handled by a mod, tag that mod. The actual hyperlinked tag doesn't need to show up for us to see it so don't worry about that.  

---

... how do we tag the mod without the hyperlink?  And, actually, I thought that this was the one situation where the mod would NOT need to be tagged, as I thought that, because the mod is already subscribed to the thread, any reply that one of us might give will automatically show up in that mod's notifications.  

Because we aren't able to see what you can, I always thought that tagging you and/or other mods helped to "direct" you to the new topics that needed your help instead of you having to read through each and every new topic that was created since you left the prior day.  This is why I would always do the "I'll tag the mods so that they will see this and help you" thing when I wasn't able to help or I knew that it was a situation where only a mod could.

I can't imagine how nuts I must have been driving you and Liz over these past many months with all of the unnecessary tags.  😞

[Amanda]

Gabe,

1. We see you talking to each other in threads. If it looks like the community is working together to solve something - like how to run speed tests or change email settings, we'll leave you to it. If it becomes apparent we need to intervene, something simple like "looks like the mods will need to solve this one" ought to catch our attention. 

2. Just put @Amanda, @Liz, etc  - our system will match it to a tag in our moderation app and we'll see it. Hard to explain, but in essence we an equivalent of a social media IVR and some of it is based on custom coded queries I've set up to make our lives a bit simpler. 

Your tags and mentions do help us, though we don't get a special alert, we read 99% of what comes in community, Facebook and Twitter. Since we do that, the things that pop up in general discussion, vague venting and such get a quick glance to see if it needs immediate attention so we might sometimes miss something. If we do one of those speed reads and see "ill tag the mods", we'll slow down and check it out. You may notice I made a little change to General Discussion's post creation process, so hopefully that helps in the future...

I want to take this opportunity to thank all of you for your help. We'd probably have ripped our hair (completely) out if it was not for our champs. Though they don't come in here, a number of EVPs and VPs know you guys by name - that's really tremendous. 🙂

Amanda

[GabeU]

Amanda,

Thank you for the clarifications, and certainly for the compliments.  I can only speak for myself, but I really do appreciate it.  🙂 🙂 🙂  

And I really like what you did with the General Section.  There will be no missing it now.  😛  

[Amanda]

How about #Name?

[maratsade]

Does the # sign work as a tag too?  My problem is it takes what seems a long time to get the system to respond to the @ tag, if the person I want to tag is not involved in the conversation, plus I get a lot of "not found" messages when trying to tag people with short handles (Liz, Hal, Jay).  I don't know if changing the symbol will change this issue. 

It's not a big deal at all -- just a minor inconvenience. 🙂

[Amanda]

I can change our query to pick up the # on our end (the mods), but technically won't change anything in the community itself. It will just look like plaintext to users in the website. 

[maratsade]

Worth a try. 🙂

---

@Amanda wrote:

I can change our query to pick up the # on our end (the mods), but technically won't change anything in the community itself. It will just look like plaintext to users in the website. 

---

[maratsade]

"Just put @Amanda, @Liz, etc  - our system will match it to a tag in our moderation app and we'll see it. Hard to explain, but in essence we an equivalent of a social media IVR and some of it is based on custom coded queries I've set up to make our lives a bit simpler. "

But using the @ tag is where things get slow because the system is very weird and slow about this tagging.