GPOY, bitch please edition

I can’t take credit for the title: that was all the doing of Gabriel, of Vankleek Hill fame. He thought the original title of my profile as a WordPress.com tech support forum volunteer was completely inappropriate: Meet a Forum Volunteer: Lorraine Murphy does lack a certain zing, does it not?

I’ve apparently answered 60,000 questions in the forums, and if I had to guess I’d say about 5% of those snippily (scroll through this blog for examples like this one). I didn’t include this in the interview, but once I got an email from a senior support staffer w/r/t a snarky reply I’d made some rando who insisted on being given instructions for something basic but NOT, god forbid, either a copy/paste of the info in the support docs or a link to the appropriate page: nooooo, he wanted someone to put the exact same thing into words in a completely unique way, just for him/her/it, because he/she/it was a very busy person/thing and couldn’t be bothered to read prefab answers but wanted bespoke, immediately, and for free.

My reply began, “Listen Princess…” and continued from there. The staffer emailed to say he probably SHOULD have deleted the thread, but it was just too damn funny, so it’s out there still somewhere in the archives. Happy Hunting.

But back to the glorious interview with ME ME ME! Here’s a taste of the wonders that lie within!

You’ve posted over 60,000 replies in the WordPress.com forums since 2006. Thank you for your support! What types of questions do you like helping users with, and what do you find the most rewarding about contributing?

I like answering someone’s first question the most. People are often shocked by how fast they get an answer, how clear it is, and how they can put the solution to work right away; they’re very grateful, and it’s wonderful to see. The next best thing is when people who’ve asked questions in the past come to the forums and start answering questions themselves.

What’s the most important thing you’ve learned from your volunteer experience in the forums?

Meaningful, strong relationships can be forged over mundane, repetitive questions about domain mapping. Really, my forum experience at WordPress.com shows that humans are, even in the midst of technology, fundamentally human.

One of my friends reported that his (positive) comment on the post had been first held in moderation, then deleted. And he didn’t even swear! They’re awfully careful at Corporate WordPress Global HQ, and very, very polite. As you can imagine, there was a titch of editing to my responses, but I’d tried hard not to swear so they didn’t change much except to cut for length.

One of the commenters called my situation a “rags to riches blogger story” which shows you how low people set the bar for riches nowadays, although it was very nice of her.

Anyhoodle, it’s very good for hits. Why, between this with it’s two hundred plus social shares, and the Mummified Fairy Post, now enjoying a renaissance thanks to some random OTHER mummified fairy trying to steal its thunder, looking at the stats graph is like travelling back in time to the glory days of Follow links on the Global Tag Pages. Sigh. It seems so, so long ago now.

We had to blog in black and white back then, kids. Uphill in the snow.