Now the not so good. This site and user support model is really aimed at the VBox user demand of a few years ago and just isn't matched to its current success. The forum is based on phpBBV2 which is now pretty obsolete, and its configuration has some odd user-hostile aspects (no memberlist, unnecessary minimum times between posts and searches, no effective access patch for users to contact administrators for help). 31% of topics (650/2,115) posted in the last three months have gone unanswered. The Wiki is thin and there seems to be no mechanism to allow non-Sun employees to add valid material. The User Documentation is really written for IT literate / proficient users rather than typical end-users.
I suspect that the real reason here is the the VB team are victims of their own success, and they just aren't really resourced to respond to this demand. My suggestion is that they consider sharing the support burden with some of the non-Sun members of there community.
- You need to upgrade your website H/W and S/W. The upgrade path to phpBB3 is straight forward. The H/W ... aren't you owned by Sun?
- You need to appoint some extra forum admins / moderators. Why not invite some of you longer standing frequent posters such as Sasquatch?
- You need to think about how you resource active administration of this site. (No more mail outages; active account management). You need to develop a support community to improve answer %ages and quality.
- You need to open your Wiki to 3rd party (possibly moderated ) contributions.
- You need a mechanism for converting this body of forum knowledge into simple user-friendly guides and FAQs for the problems that keep coming up on the forum. (I could list off a couple of dozen old favourites for a start.)
Edit: This now a shared VBox team / community goal so I though it useful to change the topic title from "Guys, is it time to take a new look at your support model?". What this space over the next few months