How much time does Site Staff spend on the forum?
 

Lately, for whatever reason, a number of members have taken to private messaging the Site Staff (lordsmurf, kpmedia, admin, JMP) to have a look at their posts. Many of them are new members, having just joined in Q4 2011 or sometime in 2012. I have a feeling that some of them think we're not active, or have ignored their questions. That's not the case, however.

Excluding the Client Helpdesk, answering posts and administrating the forum takes Site Staff anywhere from 1 to 3 hours per day.

That's a lot of time spend helping others! [8~2]

Answering individual posts usually takes anywhere from 5 to 15 minutes to give a quality answer. Unlike the unstaffed video hobby sites online, we do not give minimally-useful one-liner answers. It's often custom advice, too, not generic advice. That takes time.

Priority always goes to our Premium Members, who are supporting the site financially. It is, after all, costly to run in man-hours alone, not to mention the technical costs of hosting and software upkeep. (Hint: If you have lots of questions, or a even single advanced question that requires lot of back-and-forth discussion, upgrade to Premium Member status. Please support what we're trying to do here.)

There's also no need to private message (PM) the Site Staff to answer posts. If you want help from a certain person, ask it in the body of the message. Site Staff is all hooked into a special custom back-end queuing and alerts system. When a new post is made, it's in the queue almost immediately. The alerts are left in the inbox until answered, at which point the alert is deleted. This was added at least 3-4 years ago, when the site was first upgraded to vBulletin, and has been maintained through the vB updates and upgrades.

I'll often answer posts from an iPad, if not at my computer. Yes, digitalFAQ.com works perfectly on an iPad. This is done between other tasks, or simply as an escape from staring at a timeline in a video editor, or from code in a text editor. It's a semi-break, because it's still work of sorts. While it's more relaxing than the tedious day-to-day computer/studio work, it's not like I'm watching TV or reading a book.

Just wanted to mention this. :2cents: