So You Want to be a Support Volunteer

Welcome to the Support Newbie Guide!

Support is a volunteer organization that exists to help fellow LiveJournal users to get the most out of their LiveJournal experience. There are a few staff people affiliated with it, but for the most part all the answers to your LiveJournal technical support questions are supplied by other LiveJournal users just like you! If you're interested in doing Support, this guide will tell you how to get started and where you can find more information.

This document last edited by coffeechica on 27-Apr-09. Please contact support@livejournal.com to report any inaccuracies.

Why should you do Support?

There are lots of reasons!

• You want to give back to the LiveJournal community.
• You want to find out how to use LiveJournal better.
• You want to solve puzzles, and get enjoyment from doing so.
• You want to hang out with the cool kids. (Where "cool" is "as nerdy as can be imagined".)
• You're up for a bit of healthy competition with your peers.
• You want to gain technical support or volunteer organization experience that you can put on your resume.

Really, everyone has their own reasons for doing Support. Try it out for yourself and see if it's for you; you can stop at any time. Really. Would we lie?

Answering your first request

Getting started with Support is easy! There are no applications you need to send, and no official steps to take in order to get started. All you need to do is to start answering requests on the support board. Below, you can find an outline of how to answer your first support request:

1. Visit the support board - that will show you the requests that are currently open.
2. Pick one with a summary line that appeals to you and click on the ID number. Requests without an approved answer on them will be colored green on the board.
3. If you don't know the answer to the question, go back to step 1 and try again.
4. Write an answer to the user's question, using your own words. Try to use proper grammar and spelling.
5. Click the Submit button.

It really is that easy. Keep this in mind: as a newbie, there is absolutely nothing you can do to mess up. Your answers will not be visible to the user who made the request until a senior volunteer comes around to approve an answer that is then sent to the user. You don't have to worry about not getting it right the first time, since this screening process exists to make sure that users receive answers that are correct and up to Support's standards.

The Wikipedians have a saying: be bold! Don't worry about getting the answer wrong and having everyone hate you forever. We expect new people to need help and training, and we'll be happy to help you learn more about Support in any way we can. That's what we're here for!

My answer wasn't approved, what do I do now?

First of all, don't give up! If your answer wasn't approved, there's generally a reason for it - if you're wondering why your answer wasn't approved, you can always ask why. A good place for getting feedback on single requests is the learn_support community - if you have a question about how a request you answered was handled, feel free to post to the community and ask! The learn_support community is meant to be used as an arena where you can get an answer to any support-related questions you might have. Learning to do support is a gradual process, and this community exists to help you at all stages of that process, whether you're a newbie or whether you've been doing this for years.

What to do next

Add the lj_support community to your friends list. You can't get membership yet (only senior volunteers are added as members of the community), but official information about Support is posted there frequently.

Join the learn_support community. This isn't required, but as mentioned above, it can be very helpful!

Familiarize yourself with the LiveJournal FAQs. It's our main toolkit in answering requests. It's also a good idea to check the FAQ section every once in a while, since the contents of FAQs tend to change. Nobody expects you to memorize everything in all the FAQs, of course; just look through them as you have time, and make sure you check the ones you're specifically referencing in your answers to make sure they're relevant.

Go back to the board, and answer more requests. A good goal is to try and put answers on at least 3 requests each time you poke at Support. Don't expect anything to be approved right away; it could happen, but the first couple of days are mostly for your own benefit, not for the users. You'll get a feeling for how things work, and you'll get some experience in using the tools.

Once you've been doing that for a few days, visit the recent touches tool and see if you've submitted enough answers to get a review. Reviews are designed to give you feedback on how you're doing, and tips on what to do in order to improve. Around 10 answers in a single category is ideal; individual categories may allow more or fewer, but don't worry about that for your first. If you've got enough, send an e-mail to support@livejournal.com with a subject line of "[category name] support review" and links to your requests in the body. Someone will be in touch with you shortly to give you feedback. Don't feel embarrassed to request a review. Many of our volunteers enjoy taking reviews and teaching others how to improve their answers, and all of us are excited to see new people requesting reviews!

As you have time, read through the information provided in the "Further Reading" section below. It's a lot to swallow all at once; much easier to go through it in chunks as and when you have time. Don't worry about not knowing something right away; as we said above, there's no way you can hurt the users right now, and there's no way you can embarrass yourself as a new person.

If you want a little more interactivity in your support experience, consider dropping by our IRC channel. There are people there at almost every time of day, and they'd be happy to help you with any questions or concerns you have. The connection information for IRC may be found in the profile of supportlounge.

Further Reading

• The full Support Guide contains almost everything you could want to know about Support's structure, privileges, and policies, as well as a wealth of links to further information. Once you're feeling comfortable with Support, this is the first resource you should consult.
• The Category Information Page will tell you what categories exist, which volunteers run them, and how many links they want on reviews. It will also link you to further information on each category.
• See more information on reviews -- remember, review early and review often!
• The lj_support community's tag page at http://community.livejournal.com/lj_support/tag/ and the memories at http://www.livejournal.com/tools/memories.bml?user=lj_support contain a number of useful policy posts and other information for new volunteers.