There’s been a recent trend I’ve noticed of bloggers posting about new WordPress.com features or updated features who ask their site visitors to leave feedback about that feature in the comments on their blog. While at first this might seem sensible, it unfortunately has the effect of keeping that feedback from getting to the people who need to see it most, i.e. WordPress.com itself.
For example, the recent introduction of the experimental AI Paragraph and AI Image blocks. After inserting one of these blocks in your Editor, a link to leave feedback is displayed in the right sidebar when the Block tab is open.
That feedback link disappears if you transform the AI Paragraph block to a regular Paragraph block, or after you’ve selected and inserted the AI generated image, which is automatically transformed to a regular Image block.
WordPress.com doesn’t always announce new features, especially when they’re being tested and, in case you didn’t know, we do test here many new features of the WordPress software before it’s shrink-wrapped and rolled out to the larger WordPress community.
When WordPress.com announces a new feature on the News Blog, you can be sure that they are actively seeking user feedback directly in the comments on the announcement post or in the Community Forums. (If you aren’t already subscribed to the News Blog, join 97,243,654 subscribers today.)
Writing about new features is a top priority for all of us who actively use and write about the blogging experience on WordPress.com. At the same time we do our commenters a disservice by detaching their feedback from the larger WordPress.com support community. We should encourage our commenters to leave their feedback where it will have the most impact, so include a link to the announcement or the related thread in the community forums as a part of your post.
Giving good feedback is an art. Here are some things you’ll want to consider:
- Be honest about your experience. Feedback should be genuine and not intended to boost or undermine any particular feature.
- Be constructive. Instead of simply telling WordPress.com what’s wrong, offer ideas or suggestions on how to improve the feature.
- Provide context. Any initial confusion you may have had while using the feature should be shared, so WordPress.com can better understand user pain points.
- Offer personal examples. Explain how the feature would benefit you or would help your process. Alternatively, explain how it would have a negative effect.
If you’ve stumbled on a bug or problem using your WordPress.com site and you are unsure where you should report it or leave feedback, check out this refresher on how you can get the most out of WordPress.com support:
As always, the information in this post is correct as of publication date. Changes are inevitable.
(Extra points if you spot the content that started life as an AI Paragraph block.)
WPcomMaven 
Eh, after years of making suggestions and giving feedback, I’ve come to understand little of what they do meshes with my needs . . . I think it’s intentional; I don’t think 70-year-old guys are a big part of their demographics.
Getting feedback in front of the right eyes is really important, even if it seems it doesn’t mesh with what you need. Expressing what you need is also important. About being 70, TBH I think we third-agers (Dang! How’d that happen?) are a good chunk of the wpcom demographic. And if I missed a birthday in there somewhere, hope it was a good one! 🥳
Yes and no . . . it’s like going to a sushi restaurant that used to serve Italian and saying I’d rather they’d switch back to serving Italian; they might take note, but it’s still only ever going to be a sushi restaurant going forward, and I have no suggestions for how to serve sushi.
As for the birthday . . . this is my 70th year of life, so 69 and months . . . but I also don’t advertise my actual birthday (there are a few different floating around on the Interweb).
Thank you for this, Jen! We try to mind the sentiment feedback as well, but specifics are incredibly useful: “I’m frustrated that my usual steps A, B, and C no longer produce outcome X. I’m getting Y instead.”
Thank you for adding that! Feedback, being subjective, is incredibly difficult to separate from sentiment and Forum staff do an amazing job of getting to the heart of the issue behind user frustration. I also sort of remember that when Horizon was still active, there was an entire page on giving good feedback which was really helpful. I should go look that up.
Better late than never… Horizon was a voluntary user testing environment set up back in the day when the Block Editor (AKA Gutenberg-not the Site Editor) was still in development. Do be forewarned that I’m providing this link as “read only” and caution you not to click on links that may open the Horizon testing dashboard in your own website. If you do so, you can exit it by simply logging out and logging back in to WordPress.com. Alternatively, read it while logged out.
For those interested in reading, you can find it here https://horizonfeedback.wordpress.com/tips-on-giving-feedback/
The AI has a bit of a problem with drawing hands, it seems…
It does! And it’s the first thing that most people notice. This image only has one visible hand and yet… ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
I had no idea we could leave links to blog posts containing lots of feedback in the comments section. Is it something that WordPress promotes? If so, I’ll certainly drop them links to my posts.
However, sometimes the HP Engineers don’t always help the situation. When the recent pingback problem occurred, I was told it only affected my blog, but I knew that was not the case. It was the best part of an afternoon trying to convince the engineer it was a problem before they finally agreed I was right.
But on the otherside of the coin, many bloggers do nothing but complain, often because they’re not doing things correctly, and blame it all on WordPress. I have witnessed so many negative comments about WordPress, yet 99% of the time, they’ve always been very helpful to me. It does beg the question of why those that complain the most stick around.
Hey Hugh,
I had no idea we could leave links to blog posts containing lots of feedback in the comments section. Is it something that WordPress promotes? If so, I’ll certainly drop them links to my posts.
What I meant is it’s important to also provide a link *to* the official channels so that our site commenters can take their feedback forward to WordPress.com if they wish to. Sorry if that was not clear.
However, sometimes the HP Engineers don’t always help the situation. When the recent pingback problem occurred, I was told it only affected my blog, but I knew that was not the case. It was the best part of an afternoon trying to convince the engineer it was a problem before they finally agreed I was right.
It’s worthwhile searching the forums to see if others are reporting the same issue. The more people who let WordPress.com know they are encountering an issue, the better. And if we do this before contacting the Happiness Engineers via Live Chat or email, we can give them a link to the relevant forum thread.
But on the otherside of the coin, many bloggers do nothing but complain, often because they’re not doing things correctly, and blame it all on WordPress. I have witnessed so many negative comments about WordPress, yet 99% of the time, they’ve always been very helpful to me. It does beg the question of why those that complain the most stick around.
I’ve also wondered about that. The only thing I can think of is if someone’s invested a lot of time and effort and possibly money to learn the software and create a site, they’re less likely to abandon ship, because then they’d have to start over and invest even more time and effort and possibly money.
(Edited by author)
Thanks for the replies, Jen.
I’m pleased that I recently reported a problem (via the forums) with the previewing of the FSE themes not loading. There was a bit of ‘try this’ and ‘try that’ but I eventually got this reply –
‘Hi,
Thank you for all the information you provided. I was able to replicate it on my end and found that there’s a bug when previewing FSE themes. I’ve reported it to our dev team, and we’ll let you know once it’s been fixed.’
Job done. Now it’s waiting for the fix so I can see what my blog looks like when trying the FSE themes.
That’s great news, Hugh. Thanks for sharing it.