Thread: Witchie's unofficial guide to trouble-tickets

Swiped from Witchiebunnie's recent journal, Dragoneer's considering adding this to the FA Wiki. Honestly I think it should be, and we should start referring 'bad' users to it when they submit a particularly unhelpful trouble-ticket. Given how finite our time is, it might not be a bad idea to use this against users that waste our time by closing tickets that don't provide us with information we need to effectively deal with a particular issue.

That.. and changing the ticket system to print tickets, oldest first.. so tickets are then dealt with on a first-in-first-out basis.

How to write a Trouble Ticket

I see so many Trouble Tickets come through that are lacking vital information or are written badly and all of these hamper our ability as admins to answer them.

Here, then, is the FA user's Guide to writing a Trouble Ticket.

When writing a Trouble Ticket, please assume several things:

1. that the admin answering the Trouble Ticket has no idea who you are and has never heard of you before

2. that the admin answering the Trouble Ticket has not read any other Trouble Tickets you may have submitted and is therefore completely unfamiliar with your issue.

3. that the admin answering the Trouble Ticket is, in fact, fully interested in helping you. (You would be surprised how many Trouble Tickets come through and the user who submitted it is fully convinced that the admin has no interest in actually helping.)

A good guideline when writing a Trouble Ticket is to be concise and respectful. Raging in a Trouble Ticket is not helpful, and more often than not puts off the admin trying to help. Ranting about "as I said in my other Trouble Ticket" doesn't help. If you must refer to a previous Trouble Ticket, summarize the information presented in that Trouble Ticket, as odds are we don't have immediate access to that ticket.

Ripped or Stolen Artwork

For a ripped or stolen artwork Trouble Ticket, there isn't too much that's needed for us to act, but what IS needed is important:

-A link to the submission that is the violation
-A link to the original artwork, proving that it's a violation
-A short explanation of the situation.

Without the link to the original artwork, there is no way we can act on one of these Trouble Tickets, and we will only ask for that information before we act.


Account Issue

This can encompass a wide variety of things, so what we need is pretty simple:

-A link, preferably, to the account or aspect of the account that needs addressing
-a detailed explanation of the situation


Wrong Section

This is for submissions that are categorized wrongly, in one way or another. Needed for these Trouble Tickets are:

-A link to the submission in question
-How it is wrongly categorized

PLEASE NOTE: These do tend to come in at a lower priority than, say, art theft or harassment. So please do not badger about these. Also, do NOT bother artists about their categorizations repeatedly, as it can be considered harassment. users have been banned for this for extensive amounts of time.


Inappropriate Thumbnail

'S what it says on the tin. Here is what we need:

-A link to the thumbnail, which you can get by selecting image properties/information/whatever when rightclicking on the thumbnail
-A link to the image proper


Harassment

A big'un.

Bear in mind, that we are NOT handling third party Harassment Trouble Tickets except in extreme cases. Typically, we will step in in a Harassment instance if the following conditions are met:

-The user involved has tried to resolve the issue with the person they are at odds with
-If there has been no resolution, the user has blocked the user in question
-If there were comments or shouts made, that the user has taken the steps to remove those offensive comments and shouts
-If the person the user is at odds with has then proceeded to ban evade OR
-If the user has a history of harassment against other users of the site in general.

If the above aren't met, odds are we will ask you to do one of the above before we will step in.

Please note, Harassment is NOT a disagreement, or a user expressing a negative opinion of you or your artwork. Harassment can include, but is not limited to, the following:

-Artwork calling out a user or targeting them for the negative attention of others, either in fursona, use of their icon, or both
-A journal calling out a user by name
-A journal posting chatlogs with another user without their permission
-comments on a submission, journal or a shout of an extremely insulting or derogatory nature towards the user personally.

Keep in mind, two users having a disagreement is NOT Harassment, as users are allowed to disagree and express their opinions.

A Harassment Trouble Ticket should include the following:

-A link to where the Harassment taking place
-A quick explanation of what the Harassment actually is


Website Bug

This is for website bugs, basically a bug report where a technical aspect of the website that should be working...well, isn't. These may, in fact, go unanswered for a bit because we tend to refer these to our tech admins.


Other

This is a catchall for any other type of issue not addressed above. What's needed here is:

-A link to the issue at hand
-An explanation of the situation.


Follow these easy steps and odds are your Trouble Ticket will be answered quickly and efficiently.

Also potentially add a note that trouble tickets are not sorted by user, nor on the page to browse trouble tickets is the user listed.

Originally Posted by Witchiebunny

Uh, to browse trouble tickets, the user IS listed though.

Oh, really? Huh. Well.

This shows what I know. XD I thought it wasn't - or something. I dunno.

Oooooooo
Awesome A+

I vote for integrating this to the Wiki as well.

Witchie's Guide to Writing Good Trouble Tickets

That should probably be in the wiki.

Also, it should be added as a link or on the page for submitting TT's. Not just us sending it to a user.

Maybe add a confirmation of "I have read the TT Guide" before submitting a ticket? Would that be too much?

I like that suggestion. (As a link before submitting a ticket).

Originally Posted by Ahkahna

Also, it should be added as a link or on the page for submitting TT's. Not just us sending it to a user.

Maybe add a confirmation of "I have read the TT Guide" before submitting a ticket? Would that be too much?

Something less like submitting to an agreement, I think. How about this?

Originally Posted by TT Page Header

Welcome to the help center

This is the trouble ticket management center, designed to help us communicate with you when an error occurs with your account or on the site.
An issue is only finished when YOU close it. PLEASE MAKE SURE YOU CLOSE THE ISSUE WHEN IT IS DONE!

Please help us to help you. See the Trouble Ticket Writing Guide to learn how to write trouble tickets we can answer well.

I reposted this to my journal and I suggest you guys do the same till it's added to the Wiki

Originally Posted by Ahkahna

Also, it should be added as a link or on the page for submitting TT's. Not just us sending it to a user.

Maybe add a confirmation of "I have read the TT Guide" before submitting a ticket? Would that be too much?

If we do that, I have an idea to make sure users have read it.

We could maybe have a check-box to the right of “I have read the TT Guide,” a “submit” button, and a link hidden in one of the words to the left of the check-box. Checking the box and clicking “submit” would bring the user to a “you didn’t read the guide” message, while clicking on the link in the text would submit the ticket. The correct way to submit the ticket could be explained in some random part of the guide.

I’ve seen other websites do things like that.

Originally Posted by Surgat

If we do that, I have an idea to make sure users have read it.

We could maybe have a check-box to the right of “I have read the TT Guide,” a “submit” button, and a link hidden in one of the words to the left of the check-box. Checking the box and clicking “submit” would bring the user to a “you didn’t read the guide” message, while clicking on the link in the text would submit the ticket. The correct way to submit the ticket could be explained in some random part of the guide.

I’ve seen other websites do things like that.

Yep! That's what I was trying to get at XD

Originally Posted by Surgat

If we do that, I have an idea to make sure users have read it.

We could maybe have a check-box to the right of “I have read the TT Guide,” a “submit” button, and a link hidden in one of the words to the left of the check-box. Checking the box and clicking “submit” would bring the user to a “you didn’t read the guide” message, while clicking on the link in the text would submit the ticket. The correct way to submit the ticket could be explained in some random part of the guide.

I’ve seen other websites do things like that.

Hihi, that reminds me of how I made people read the rules for my game server - specifically, in Unreal Tournament 2004, on a map where you had to construct things for once. The true entry to the main part of the map was hidden (the rules text said how to find it), the obvious one was a teleporter trap that brought them back to the starting point. The longest time someone needed to actually READ the rules and THEN yoin the map was 14 minutes. xD
From my experience I can definitely attest: Hiding the actual link and placing a red herring is VERY effective way to cut down unnecessary and especially flooding tickets. so yeah, something like that would be very useful to save us a lot of headaches.