Are the Community Managers here to stay?

We don’t have a cave, but it would be cool if we did. We’re in the process of updating comments on our blogs, which (when finished) will automatically create forum discussion threads for those posts for us. Until then, I’m here taking care of those manually. That said, as we did on blog comments on the front page, I’ll be around to try to answer questions and engage in our published content, which is what I handle these days. It isn’t a snub if I don’t appear as much after that transition.

I’m not offended, I’m just clarifying that my role (these days) isn’t regular engagement. I’ve been focused for quite a while on front page content (writing, scheduling, formatting etc. on a global scale) for the site. I’ve been here since pre-Burning Crusade and am coming up on 14 years here. Not seeing me just means I’m focused on getting my work done.

We engage where we can. I can’t promise more than that and the rate of engagement (how much is enough or too little) is subjective.

I know. They stole candle and now I’m sad.

The benefit of the change we’re going through though is that the community will be able to engage on our news articles and each other better. It also means that if we (those of us working on those articles) engage or answer a question, it will be seen versus buried in the comments. I’m sure those who used to comment on the front page articles can attest to the difficulty in following conversations there.

We’re not CS reps, and we work directly with the developers to provide answers. We won’t always have the answers to share (or that you want to hear) for myriad reasons. If we’re giving a specific answer, it’s because we’ve spoken with them to get those answers to share. We aren’t input/output robots, though. What you see from us is the tip of the iceberg of what we do.

Keep in mind, our CS reps are incredible people and do a lot of hard work behind the scenes with a lot of 1 on 1 interactions that I know many appreciate.