Per ![[info]](https://www.insanejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif){kind=small}
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.
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Page Summary
blktauna :: (no subject) [+6]
March 2024
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While I can understand your desire, you can't possibly imagine that the pittance we are paying is allowing more than keeping the site running and catch as catch can fixes. You want more perks, faster work, start paying. Get you friends to pay, get people you don't know to pay. There has to be a better ratio of paid to freeloaders before any sort of paid staff is even a possibility. Then forget the paid staff, for a moment. Forget the sitewide bugs, if you like, though I certainly won't. What excuse is there for a paying customer being unable to use a paid or permanent account for three weeks without a SHRED of communication? Because that's what's happened to three of my friends. They can't use the service they're paying for. "Understaffed" is not an excuse for not being able to use a journal AT ALL. Period. My other points are up for debate, but you cannot seriously suggest that it's okay for a paid customer to have their journal rendered unusuable for three weeks without so much as an acknowledgment or an assurance that their journals will be worked on. There is NO excuse for that, however understaffed, however underpaid. NONE. They are being denied the service they paid for and that is unacceptable. I'm sorry they're having trouble. Whether some people tolerate it or not doesn't make it acceptable. My complaining about features is on a different level than being denied service. If you looked at the support requests a few days ago, you'd see pages of unanswered requests, some from weeks ago, because the main volunteer was on an announced hiatus. In their absence, people were unable to use the site at ALL for weeks. I don't care what Squeaky has to do business-wise; there's no excuse for not taking 15 seconds to tell a few people he's going to work as on fixing their journals ASAP. The fact that he didn't do that, that he let it sit them sit there unanswered despite saying "submit a support ticket" countless times in the same period of time, really bothers me. I don't expect him to fix everything ASAP, but I do expect communication. We're paying for that much. You're avoiding my question. I'm asking whether you'd be satisfied if you couldn't use your journal at all and no one replied to your plea for help. I get that your journal's working fine, but what about the people who can't use theirs at all? Are they just dismissed because it's working for you? Read up. There was a two week or so stretch where it didn't work for me. It sometimes goes missing, but I wait for it and it's back. |