i dunno how woochat or whatever the platform is works, but i've always imagined the following ticketing system for monero

we create an IRC room, maybe our own IRC server. In the room, there are many idlers of the monero community that have been vetted

the user goes to the website, clicks on the chat thing. They get a ticket. The ticket number gets in cue. quue. whatever

if there are no other tickets in cue, they get directly dumped into the chatroom with all the idlers

the troubleshooting commences, which is probably "you should connect to a different remote node"

they leave the chat room. The next ticket comes in

maybe its more hectic that way and confusing for the user though

but it gets at the public nature of the support that'll keep us all on our toes without have some formal review process

"oh, well, i was doing my weekly reading of the logs and gingeropolous broke protocol by mentioning bananas 100x"

i second the sentiment of not wanting to bring up yet another channel for people to ask questions or hang. ticket systems are for companies. seems like we keep butting our heads between treating monero's ecosystem as a company vs. a community of volunteers.

in a general chatroom we could self moderate.

well thats the thing with the thing im proposing here. it introduces the user to that blatant reality

i mean, we all get the notion that cryptocurrencies have to exist like this

i'd support more strengthening the existing channels than fragmenting more and more...

most people dont

they think bitcoin is a company etc

we could even have the bot thats in #monero-pools that has answers to FAQs

99% of the noobs in there go "where are my payments, ive been mining for 10 minutes and its my money and I want it now!"

u used to be able to type ? payments and the bot would spit out a response

sgp was saying it could be hard for newcomers to find these mediums (mentioned above: reddit, stack exchange, irc channels,) i'd lean towards putting better announcements on getmonero, subreddits or social media to make them hop in here and those same mediums than creating a ticket system. the reasoning was explained previously too.

the bot is still there, to the best of my knowledge.

im saying fuse the two. i think ure missing that

.shrug

maybe i'm not in for fusing the two. it's certainly hard to tackle these issues, as we all seem to have different opinions.

well i basically agree. i think getting direct help via irc is the way to go. but in implementation, that usually means kiwi IRC, and the user gets dumped to a random room where they can get all sorts of experiences

and if theres a massive queue, a bot notifies the room and the current user and a helper break off to a private chat (if that ticket has moved to a waiting/confirmation phase, as opposed to initial troubleshooting)

IRC is super intimidating to newcomers

exactly

ports? PORTS?!?!?!

thats why u make it look like a ticketing systemj on the front end

and on the backend its just this

I really don't think recreating a support system in IRC makes sense

we already have a support system in IRC. it just has a shitty frontend

Better to shape out the other way imo

I can understand why IRC can be intimidating for some. How about taking the mattermost route? There's workarounds for this, perhaps.

The hilarious thing is mattermost is even more confusing because most content comes from IRC.

Mattermost has a bunch of limitations

There are Mattermost only rooms and IRC bridged rooms.

Is mattermost more user friendly than IRC clients? If IRC was not that ideal pools' administrators wouldn't put a KiwiIRC chat section on their sites, just saying.

And I put a pin post which explains which is which and nobody EVER reads the pinned posts.

Same take prevails: strengthen existing mediums. Don't keep fragmenting. I doubt there'll be much motivation from volunteers to address users' questions via ticketing systems.

rottensox: this is a bad argument (pools administrators). People adopt horrendous UX all the time.

.shrug

Anyone can delete channels in mattermost

Yeah, mattermost is pretty garbo

yeah and I don't think mattermost existed 6 years ago but i dunno

If they fixed that one flaw it would jump from a 3 to a 7

but id say ultimately give it a shot with the ticketing system as you're imagining it. the only to see if it works is to do it

and i can't code up my magical irc ticket thing so .......

IRC was on one of the "things you don't see anymore on the internet from the good old days" lists.

Yes

I never used IRC before Monero

There was a lot of "we're still here" comments and other "lol I haven't used that in thirty years" or whatever.

I think anyone who thinks that sending people to IRC for help automatically should be disqualified from the conversation about how to help people. :P

That said, if getmonero.org or volunteers won't work, perhaps I'll just make a non-profit or something.

FixXMR4free.biz

Looks about as legit as it gets.

:-)

I was distracted playing rocket league haha, sorry for the weird responses

I think many people are focused so much about where the community is that they aren't focused on how people get support in the "real world"

yes, most people are used to messaging a company through a cat tool and having responses. while we can't emulate every aspect, I think it's worth pursuing how we can get as many of these advantages with as few disadvantages as possible

we have monero virus.

*chat tool :)

yet to be seen if there'll be enough active and willing volunteers to take on that responsibility.

agreed, it's a very big potential issue to make sure we have volunteers

my hope is that some clear process on how to help will help drive volunteers

for example, take political text volunteer systems. Let me walk you through what I did to support a particular candidate. I, a random person

first, I found a Slack channel on their campaign website

I needed to sign up for an account that had required 2fa turned on

then I joined a "lobby channel." I needed to read a basic intro, and I needed to report one thing I learned from a linked document

then I was quickly interviewed 1 on 1 with someone and moved to another chat

and then if I wanted to be assigned a set of messages, I commented. the first few messages I sent were manually approved by other volunteers

the entire time, my responses were being logged, and they would restrict my responses to one of several options

point is, you CAN have a volunteer-based system with randos talking to randos. It's a lot easier said than done, but I'd like to find a way to get as good of a UX as possible, and find a way to make it work, rather than the other way around

don't know how to answer a question? assign it to someone else, escalate, etc

don;t trust a user to answer appropriately? restrict their responses to several options, or require manual approval before sending the messages, etc

but ultimately the quality of a vetted ticket chat system users WILL be higher than the quality in an IRC chat where anyone can join

worried about some transparency things? fine, find a way to export and have someone review

add options for users to "report" things they find suspicious

there are a million interesting ways to help solve these challenges, and I'd much rather try something radical than some annoying IRC-based solution that no one else is doing

if IRC-first was the way to provide support, Apple would be doing it lol

there are a lot of "what ifs", for example, "what if we have lots of support requests but no volunteers to help." that's valid

but I don't think it's a reason to pass. The large potential demand is all the more reason to do it lol

I'd like to sit people down and figure out what the concerns actually are and address them in a realistic way, noting the current system is very ad-hoc

anyway, that's a lot of text. enough from me

read all but that last wall :)

any support system without mooo will be deficient compared to what we have now

nioc: sure, but 90% of questions are "how to download a wallet"

moo shouldn't need to waste their time handling those

sounds like a FAQ can handle that

nioc: have you seen normal users? lol

ideally yes

but they won't

plus having the support tool will help us know what the FAQs are

FA

^oops, ignore

LA

FAQs help absolutely, but they're a mitigation not a comprehensive solution imo

ahem. lol. twitter.com/SallyMayweather/status/1231958946828693504

oh hey, it's mac dre

rottensox: what's that tweet doing here?

off-topic.

Definitely off-topic

@sgp_: does it have to be a realtime chat?

lza_menace: realtime is a goal, so whatever the best way to help get towards that goal

I would think a long-form style interface might be better from the aspect of vetting responses and ensuring quality

lza_menace: sorta like a FAQ then

that's already what stackexchange is for, no?

rehrar: you see how good the riotx android client is now?

eh, I guess, but no regular person is going to post there....I see the dilemma

basically we need a nice chat UI that has a bot that pulls possibly relevant stackexchange answers for their question haha

kinghat, no. Pretty good?

ya they are making really nice progress. with the web UI and android app.

switched to the desktop version of riot web as well

kinghat: thanks for the heads up! It was unusable 3 years ago

my impression now is, we dont need to or shouldnt be using irc anymore.

how dare.

kinghat[m]: does it still have rooms listed in a horizontal scroll? I can't stand that

theres not really a reason to anymore. matrix is decentralized/federated/encrypted. has all the new bells and whistles that the kids like.

iOS has horizontal scroll on channels

nah.

*still

sgp_: you can if you want i think. its not on by default.

thank god

at least i havent seen it.

I don’t like the idea of chat based support. Fosters a mentality that help must be provided ASAP and that someone should always be on the ball. Also, communicating with non-technical people via chat is awful.

I’d be willing to volunteer, but I’m out if it means chilling in a chat room

sgp_: are you on linux?

kinghat[m]: I joined on matrix on android

ya but for your desktop i mean?

kinghat[m]: typically I use Windows. I have a separate linux device since I hate dual-booting on Windows so much now

what happened with the forum idea? faded away?

rottensox: nope :)

but I'm not leading that initiative for Monero

ah i was going to suggest a couple things on nix.

need to ditch that yucky windows

I need to use certain apps that don't run well in Linux, so I use both

Luckily I have an education license so I can more aggressively tell Windows to do what I want (still no where near Linux ofc)

depending on the type of work, i woudl just spin windows up in a vm whenever needed but i understand that might not be practical.

This computer is effectively my Windows VM haha

Also the latest AoE2 doesn't work on Linux so

ah.

luckily i dont game

you like it on your android?

hopefully you got the riotx and not the regular version

kinghat[m]: yes I downloaded the beta

<xmr-romine> IRC has google captcha (?!)

<xmr-romine> IRC doesn't work well with torbrowser

<xmr-romine> (at least last time I had a look)

<nioc> sounds like a FAQ can handle that >>> so we make a help bot

for triage

ah yes, that was stated

and it seems my point is missed re: irc with a ticket frontend. oh well.

If someone made a good front-end for an IRC thing maybe, but I don't see how anything in a mixed channel (where users are getting responded to among other users) is a good UX

sgp_, yeah my point was missed. There wouldn't be multiple endusers in there. the system would queue up users, and dump them into the channel after the previous user was done. So it would be a room with like 20 of us monterians, and then max 1 user at all times

why not a tool that allows any enduser to join in, but after their first question all they get are DM'd responses?

hyc: like what?

I suppose it would be a special frontend to IRC. on the enduser side, it just DMs a support ID.

on the monerista end, it publishes those DMs to a channel

and likewise, any replies from moneristas must be addressed to a specific user, so they can be DM's back

hyc: thanks, I think I get what you're saying now. What are the benefits of something like that?

that would be neat. then, the moneroistas could talk amongst themselves, then when they reach a consensus for a response, they could address the enduser.

so the enduser doesn't really see all the morass and hooplah of the community. though thats kinda the point maybe

yeah that was what I was going for

discuss amongst ourselves, send proper answer back

there would perhaps be a point person, to engage the enduser during the back and forth so the enduser feels like the support is responsive

and then when consensus is reached, the point person delivers the main thing

i bet with enough coffee i could make this happen in bash

as far as I understand, that's how the support system can easily work. or at the minimum there could be an IRC chat or other chat for support discussion. am I missing something?

has anyone here worked in IT tech support or similar answering questions? I did that for 2.5 years

gingeropolous is going to design the world's first IT support distributed consensus algorithm

gingeropolous: you would also have to design a good front-end, right?

cant we just do everything in the CLI?

;D

CLI? yes, we can

Why don't we put the support system that we're all talking about........

......on the blockchain?

SupportCoin

hyc can innovate a brand new database and proof of support scheme.

gingeropolous can run supportcoinworld.com

sgp can lead the supportcoin community workgroup

nice

"miners" answer enduser questions, instead of solving math puzzles

hyc: you've solved the issue!

plus they're encouraged to increase adoption so more questions come in

On a more fun note, we should plan a gaming session tomorrow after the community meeting

rehrar needmonero90 luigi1111w

Why not today? :D sgp_

what are you thinking of playing?

needmonero90: I already committed to playing board games with real people, but of course everyone else should take the opportunity to do something

<midipoet> Real people are still pretty underrated. I was playing Pandemic a few weeks ago. Quite amusing, given recent events.

I've wanted to play pandemic for ages

Like OG pandemic?

Pandemic is a good cooperative game. I think I've only played with a selected malicious player once

pandemic legacy

Yeah that's the one I was thinking of

Actually just kidding, not that one :p

I've watched people play Legacy but I haven't personally

here are the game I have at my place at the moment usercontent.irccloud-cdn.com/file/oo80obWE/games.jpg

Wtf, no monopoly?

Haha nah

Moneropoly

I would need two versions, one to play (rarely) and another to keep as a collectible

Just contribute enough that the fact you used it is itself a piece of collectors status :D

Who got the edition that we (others, not you :p) played at Defcon?

<midipoet> Is it just me, or are some of those game boxes, massive?

sgp_: I think it was binary.

I liked playing moneropoly that night, though a certain someone seemed to be making up new rules.

/s

was that me? I can't recall except that I lost lol

If you guys really like Moneropoly, maybe I can get it to you guys mostly at cost.

As a thank you for good work.

sgp_:

rottensox needmonero90

Lol, 'good work'

Do you know me

:D

lol.

rehrar: i'd love that but i got no real friendos to play with outside of irc.

we should all relocate to the same town. but alas, centralization. :-D

I'll have a treat of extra content for you as soon as my internet/disk manages. I hope to upload about 100GB of content to the Monero Community Workgroup channel this weekend

o nice.

any hints?

nope :p

just that it's a lot of content

lil tease.

rottensox let's get someone to program the game.

Will legit pay someone some money to make an open source Moneropoly.

And then we can get all crazy and make a website deployment where you can play with friends and stuff.