@ChrystieV I understand and appreciate your response. However, Adobe Forums meet a need by providing actionable definitive answers to software users. A contributor rarely needs to post a reply that diverts a user to Adobe Support. That is because the Forums remain highly populated with users who have in-depth knowledge of how to use Adobe Applications. We cannot meaningfully compare that to the Udemy Forum because members of this community, including the Community Managers and Champions, are, by their admission, often unable to substantively answer individual queries. Another comparison might be the Google Webmaster Forums. When I was a member of those Forums some years ago, experienced Webmasters who did not work for Google and had no access to their internal policies provided advice to those seeking to maximize their SEO. However, they also had some Google Staff who monitored the Forums and stepped in with definitive answers when non-employee contributors needed more inside knowledge to answer posts. By contrast, this Forum has absolutely no contribution from any Udemy representative knowledgeable about policies, protocols, guidelines, or technicalities. As with most life domains, the victims of this deficit are the poorest and most vulnerable. Novice instructors struggling hard to penetrate the Udemy Market come to the Forum hoping for clarity, often already frustrated by the template-based responses from Support. Community Managers often tell them this is not an escalation channel for Support. So far, I have not seen a Community Manager explain how an Instructor can escalate their inquiry. Sometimes, a Community Manager contradicts the claim by telling an Instructor they have forwarded their inquiry to the Udemy Support Team, offering to get back to the Instructor upon receiving a reply. Yet, it remains a mystery why sometimes Community Managers retort with the stock reminder that the Forum is not a channel for escalation and other times expedite a forwarding process. Furthermore, it seems equally dependent upon a pot of poorly defined luck whether or not an Instructor receives a reply following the forwarding process. Consequently, Instructors cannot come to the Forum and find threads containing a reliably definitive response on behalf of Udemy. You might argue that they can find the official line in the Support Articles. However, notwithstanding those who come here before mustering the effort to read them, the Support Articles often fail to provide answers which is why Instructors come here in the first place. I am not suggesting that this Forum or its Managers and Champions fail to meet some of the needs expressed by Instructors. I am not criticizing their work or their person. And I am grateful for the assistance I have received since joining the Forum. I am suggesting that the absence of contributions from Udemy Staff able to analyze and respond to issues of policies, protocols, guidelines, and technicalities, in the context of individual cases, including Udemy for Business, Personal Subscription, and the Marketplace renders the Forum of very little use for those seeking to make their way through the often intimidating maze of course publication and promotion. It would make little difference if the Community Managers resigned from Udemy and joined Community Champions to start a Forum offsite on a private domain, invited Instructors to join, and sent them back to Udemy Support for answers to questions beyond their knowledge. Furthermore, it may provide a better experience because they could redefine the permissible parameters of self-expression without corporate constraint. How does it benefit the user that this Forum is Udemy owned and hosted? What is its value proposition that any Champion could not swiftly and efficiently duplicate and exceed? The answer to that question ought to be that as a Udemy-owned and hosted community, it can provide definitive and authoritative official answers to queries that help Instructors move forward with confidence. I would like to know if anyone could proffer that answer in confidence. Therefore, if you start a new section, it should be an indexed, searchable group managed by representatives of Udemy, who can respond definitively to issues. Then, instead of sending Instructors back to the Support channel that has failed to answer their queries in the first place, Community Managers and Champions could escalate them here, flagging them for an official support response, which would be transparent and available to everyone. Over time this would also reduce the load on Support and limit the repetitious circuitry that bounces Instructors from Support to Forum to Support. Unless this happens, I see little longevity in the Forum.
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