Ideas for InsaneJournal
ideas
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March 2024
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Per [info]sakura's suggestion, I'm going to repost my comment here with a small prelude. I love IJ. When GJ died and LJ started censoring, I was firmly on the IJ bandwagon. I think Squeaky is a good administrator in general and was impressed with his attentiveness. As the site has expanded, however, I feel that communication has diminished. I feel that this is in part because Squeaky is trying to run this site on the basis of a) what time he has to work on it and b) what time the volunteers have. I think he's doing the best he can with what time he has. While this is the sort of approach I would understand from a free website, I feel that offering paid accounts holds a website to a higher standard of quality and customer service. For that reason, as detailed below, I feel there needs to be a reliable support staff paid to deal with bugs and issues much more quickly:

It isn't the responsibility of volunteers to keep the site running. This is a site that I have personally spent hundreds of dollars on, between permanent accounts, rename tokens, and userpics. If an administrator is going to charge those prices, they need to hire a support staff. Period. I moved here from LJ, but the one thing I will say in LJ's favor is that my technical issues were addressed more quickly than three weeks. A lot of people are saying "it's better than GJ." It is, but GJ didn't have the responsibility to its users that a pay site does. I feel that Squeaky has been trying to get by on his free time, with the aid of volunteers, and issues and bugs have gone unresolved because of it. The service needs to be better, period. This isn't any volunteer's fault - they're doing what you can. Volunteers shouldn't have to bear the brunt of it.

Somebody might say "Well, if you don't like the service, leave. " The problem is that I've already bought permanent accounts here. Even if you take the $70 at face value, that means I've paid for at least two more years of service. For that kind of money, I deserve to have my issues and bugs corrected in a timely manner. It bothers me that we haven't even had recent communication about WHEN they're going to be fixed. They should be in the process of BEING fixed. This shouldn't fall on volunteers to fix.

Edit: I understand that business has been priority, but this "business now, bugs later" system does not work if people have paid $70+ for permanent accounts. There needs to be progress on bugs even if business is Squeaky's focus. Even if you only hire a technician to consult and fix bugs a few hours a week, that's something. Some of these bugs haven't been touched for weeks. That's unacceptable IMO for how much is being paid.

Comments

I don't think there's a wild profit either, but I find it difficult to believe that there's no money at all. Even if he has $200 to spare for tech support, that's something. My main problem is that a lot of us bought those accounts when the site was a lot more stable, under the impression that it would continue to be. Now after the code change, using the console clears filters and there's no quickreply. I don't know that I'd have bought an account without quickreply. There are unanswered support requests from three weeks back, some people who haven't been able to post to their journal for weeks. Squeaky was offering to "compensate" people for downtime at one point, why not put that money into hiring part-time tech support? Why not have another account sale or sell more userpics and put that money toward tech support? I don't think anything evil or sneaky is going on here, but there has to be some accountability here if you're going to sell a service. It feels like some of what was paid for at a more stable time is now missing.