Community team to start accepting solutions for posts

[sheila@ebay]

I'm recapping some of my comments made in this post, to my original post:

• We want to make sure all Community members see a great solution and sometimes that solution can be buried in a thread. We want to help those who aren't going to read 40+ posts in one thread

• The Community team will not jump into every post and mark solutions, but they do spend a lot of time on the boards and when they come across a post that has a very clear answer and within policy, they'll accept solutions.

• The Community team will also not change solutions that was previously selected by the OP. 

• If the OP isn't happy with the solution, they're free to change it
• Only the Community team and the OP can accept solutions, though I am aware of the problems with the OP selecting solutions.

• Our current team. even though they have less than a year of experience on Community, have many years of eBay support support experience (10+ years) so they're very well versed on all things eBay. They'll be very thoughtful when it comes to selecting solid accepted solutions that follow eBay policy.

• Sometimes an OP might not realize there's an option to Accept a Solution

• A lot of our Community members come to Community through Google searches. For someone who's brand new to the platform and who wants to find an answer right away, having an accepted solution will be helpful.

• Here's a sample question: 

  Q: How do I reverse negative feedback I left?

  A: Use the contact link to ask your seller to send you a Feedback Revision Request.

• We're staying out of opinion based posts or posts seeking general advice. For example, if a member is asking for advice on the success sellers have had running promotions, there could be several helpful posts from sellers. In this case, we won't accept a solution.
• Lastly, we want to give credit to those who provide great answers

Update as of 05/04 - I've made note of all the feedback from this post and will make modifications to the process if needed.

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Starting today, the Community team will start accepting solutions for post that have a clear answer and within policy. This will apply to all boards except for the Ask a Mentor board.

Short and simple announcement so you're aware. 😊

[donsdetour]

Please post some of the topics you do this with here so we users can see what is going on.

[wastingtime101]

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@donsdetour wrote:

Please post some of the topics you do this with here so we users can see what is going on.

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I linked to one example in post 7 @donsdetour. I've had one other solution marked by eBay staff and it was a similar type of post/response. Not sure if that gives you the info you were looking for.

I'm in the minority here, but I don't think this is a big deal, especially since the OP retains the ability to unmark a solution.

I don't see staff doing this on discussion type posts and I don't see them doing this on posts where there are several correct answers that are a matter of opinion.

I see them doing this on straightforward responses, often with a link to a policy page.

Coming from a corporate background, I know that teams need to produce results and show progress reports. They have to set goals and are held accountable.

I've seen posts from the eBay team on this board that talked about archiving posts in an effort to hide old info and make sure correct responses come up. This is probably an extension of that - making sure people coming here looking for help see correct responses on straightforward questions.

So many threads are found through an internet search and those are people wanting a fast answer that many times aren't going to read past the OP and the first response.

I've seen countless old threads bumped up where the first two responses were wrong and the third response has the answer, but the person that found the thread from an internet search did not read that far and the OP ghosted without marking a solution. The newcomer adds to the thread looking for an answer which is right there in post 3. If post 3 was marked as the solution with a green border, that newcomer would have an easier time seeing it without feeling like they had to read a bunch of replies.

When I do an internet search for a question (usually about an OS or browser behaving oddly) and I click on a discussion forum link, I will often read the OP and the accepted solution then check to see if that works to solve my issue. I won't necessarily scroll down and keep reading other responses unless I'm really stuck with some obscure quirk in software I'm using. I can understand why the average eBay buyer/seller would do the same here. They're not invested and don't want to read the entire thread - they just want a fast answer to their problem.

I'm fine with letting eBay staff mark solutions on straightforward non-debatable responses.

We don't have visibility to the details behind this, but what if one of the reasons is that the eBay team needs to report results and justify keeping the Community active and having staff here to assist? This is complete conjecture on my part based on my experience with corporate structures, but what if it's the difference of the team getting another team member to fill Tyler's old position versus the team being too small to handle the workload?

How is this worse than the 10 posts a day where an OP replies "thank you" then marks "thank you" as the solution?

I do understand and respect most of the opposing views on this topic, and I don't necessarily disagree with several of them. The way I'm looking at it, the potential good outweighs the potential bad.

I don't have a problem giving this a chance, then if it looks like it's causing problems we can bring up what's not working and why it's not working. Sheila's been pretty responsive to feedback in my experience.

You can dismiss my opinions because you disagree, because you don't like me or because you know this isn't a hot-button topic for me. This past Fall someone told an OP they should have marked my post as a solution and I made my opinion clear:

"I don't care about or keep track of that stuff. I'm not in it for recognition or to play a stats game - just trying to help out other eBayers where I can."

Accepted solutions are really important to some posters here which is probably why this post is so worked up. Nothing wrong with that and several valid points have been made. I personally don't think it's the end-all, be-all that others do.

The potential good outweighs the potential bad and as long as the OP retains the ability to unmark a solution (which they will) then I'm fine with it.

How many of you are looking for a thumbs down button to push on this post? 😂

I've never been one to shy away from an opinion that's different from the crowd.

[soh.maryl]

One of my main concerns here is that CS fairly often gives misleading advice, some of which can cause the OP more trouble than he started with.  I agree that the CS reps need better training.

[itsjustasprain]

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sheila@ebay wrote:

• Our current team. even though they have less than a year of experience on Community, have many years of eBay support support experience (10+ years) so they're very well versed on all things eBay.

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How many people ARE there on the current team? Besides yourself I can only think of two: velvet@ebay and jasmen@ebay. I have a hard time picturing just those folks weeding through all the threads of all the groups and still having time left in the day for other job activities.

[sheila@ebay]

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@itsjustasprain wrote:

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sheila@ebay wrote:

• Our current team. even though they have less than a year of experience on Community, have many years of eBay support support experience (10+ years) so they're very well versed on all things eBay.

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How many people ARE there on the current team? Besides yourself I can only think of two: velvet@ebay and jasmen@ebay. I have a hard time picturing just those folks weeding through all the threads of all the groups and still having time left in the day for other job activities.

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See bullet #2 in my original post

[itsjustasprain]

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sheila@ebay wrote:

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@itsjustasprain wrote:

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sheila@ebay wrote:

• Our current team. even though they have less than a year of experience on Community, have many years of eBay support support experience (10+ years) so they're very well versed on all things eBay.

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How many people ARE there on the current team? Besides yourself I can only think of two: velvet@ebay and jasmen@ebay. I have a hard time picturing just those folks weeding through all the threads of all the groups and still having time left in the day for other job activities.

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See bullet #2 in my original post

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Thanks for your quick reply - but my question was how many people are on the current team and bullet #2 does not address that. Are there more folks on the current team? Im not asking for an org chart but just a number that would give us a better idea of the resources you have available for this. 🙂

[stephenmorgan]

See if this link answers your question.  Scroll towards the bottom.

https://community.ebay.com/t5/About-the-Community/About-Community/td-p/26164272

[itsjustasprain]

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@stephenmorgan wrote:

See if this link answers your question.  Scroll towards the bottom.

https://community.ebay.com/t5/About-the-Community/About-Community/td-p/26164272

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Thats perfect! Thank you. Now I just need to figure out how to mark your post as a solution. 🙂

[a_c_green]

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sheila@ebay wrote:
Our current team. even though they have less than a year's experience on Community, have many years of eBay support support experience (10+ years) so they're very well versed on all things eBay. They'll be very thoughtful when it comes to selecting solid accepted solutions that follow eBay policy.

Some posts go on for pages and pages and the answer gets buried in the post, and sometimes the OP might not realize the option to accept a solution. 

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Hey, this reminds me of an old enhancement request that I don't think ever got implemented, or else it did but was then lost in a later Khoros revision, but this might be more relevant now than before: 

Threads in which an eBay contact has responded, like this one, are marked with a small eBay logo at the end of the "Latest reply by" line on the main Topics page. It was suggested long ago (I can't say for sure if it was ever actually implemented) that clicking on the little eBay logo should jump you to that person's reply in the thread. In the case of multiple eBay responses within the thread, I don't know if going to the first or the latest should be the default, but that's a separate discussion. 

Has this been proposed and/or implemented in the past? Would this be worth pursuing?

[wastingtime101]

That feature is active @a_c_green. Scroll down any forum and you should see the eBay logo next to any thread that has an eBay staff reply.

[a_c_green]

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@wastingtime101 wrote:

That feature is active @a_c_green. Scroll down any forum and you should see the eBay logo next to any thread that has an eBay staff reply.

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Yes, the logo is there; what I'm talking about is the proposed hyperlink functionality that is not there (currently, anyway). 

Given this example of a thread topic that I screenshot just now from the main Shipping discussion page:

...that eBay logo at lower right indicates that an eBay contact has posted to that thread. What I'm referring to was the [proposed] functionality of defining that logo as a hyperlink, so that clicking on it would jump you to that person's reply.

As far as I can recall, it was suggested in a Weekly Chat a few years ago now, there seemed to be general agreement that it was a good enhancement, but I don't know if it was ever done. Given this new idea of having eBay people mark certain posts as a solution, maybe this would be a useful addition to that. (Granted, I'm talking about jumping to the eBay contact's post, not the reply that they marked as a solution, but this might still be helpful to guide readers to the eBay response(s) within the thread.)

[wastingtime101]

Oh yeah, sorry I missed the jumping to an eBay post part. I would vote it should jump to the first eBay staff reply. No, that feature request never went anywhere.

[pburn]

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@a_c_green wrote:

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Hey, this reminds me of an old enhancement request that I don't think ever got implemented, or else it did but was then lost in a later Khoros revision, but this might be more relevant now than before: 

It reminds me of the short-lived practice of the Khoros moderators posting some canned verbiage on all the gift-card scam threads--and if we saw a thread where they hadn't posted it, we were supposed to contact the moderator and ask that they post the blurb. Hopefully, this practice will last about as long as that one did. 🙄

[itscalledapostingid]

While you are cruising the boards to accept solutions maybe you should remove some of the patently false information that people are posting.

I believe the sheer volume of misinformation being posted lately is making the community practically unusable for someone trying to find accurate answers to their questions.

It's getting really bad!

[nobody*s_perfect]

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@itscalledapostingid wrote: .. maybe you should remove some of the patently false information that people are posting.

I believe the sheer volume of misinformation being posted lately is making the community practically unusable ...

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I've noticed this trend, too. Sometimes they even admit that they're guessing! And sometimes even even after accurate, complete answers have been posted!