Posted By Scath on February 17, 2009

There’s this site I’ve been a member of since Sept. 2007.  It’s a creative community, mostly geared towards visual artists, but has space for writers as well.

I love this site. The clean, elegant design of the pages that made the art the center of attention was the first thing to attract me to it. The second was the community; I’ve made several very good friends with similar interests and goals there, so an emotional attachment to this site is in place and quite strong.

Silly, I suppose, but in today’s age, not so very uncommon.

During my time as a member there, the staff that runs the site has impressed me enormously because they actually listen to their members. They either haven’t reached that point of growth and success that they don’t feel the need to – which is a HUGE mistake many community based sites do make, to stop listening to their membership – or they’ve resisted the urge to.

That appears to be coming to an end, and it makes me very sad.

In my seventeen plus months of membership there, they’ve made changes to the site here and there that have greatly improved what was already very, very good. Every change was pretty much greeted with eager approval from the members.

Well, not anymore. Recently, they made some rather drastic changes to the private messaging system that have taken it from easy to use to something confusing and even intimidating to attempt to mess with for some. When the change was announced, there was the usual rush of those to be the first to congratulate them on another excellent step forward.

My first reaction was ‘what the fuck did they do to it?’. I swallowed that, thinking I just needed to get used to it. But after messing with it a bit, and their first little tweak (you could initially only delete entire ‘conversations’ between yourself and another member, instead of single messages), I messed with it a bit more, and frankly, I hate it.

All the intuitive ease of use has been stripped out of it now. The initial page I’m supposed to see doesn’t exist. This yells bug to me, and I found out that a lot of members who’ve been praising this mess made of the PM system also don’t see that page. Which means ‘bug’, and there’s something that needs to be fixed.

Several of us turned the ability to PM us off in disgust. Others won’t even mess with it, because it’s become too intimidating to even attempt to figure out for them.

Well, we’re stuck with it. They think it’s simpler to use, and despite the number of complaints, the number of ‘well dones’, ‘fantastic’ and ‘I love its’ has their attention. I did point out that if it was so much simpler to use, people would be used to it by now. But they’re not. They’re still finding it confusing, and some are still flat refusing to use it. Others won’t even go back to have another look at it.

Today, they’ve given a sneak peek at some changes they’re going to make to our ‘overview’ pages…the page we see when we log in that currently gives a list of what we want to see. It’s a customisable list…each member can select what they want showing. For example, I have it so that I see comments to my work, new submissions from those on my watchlist, and replies to my comments on others’ work.

That’s what I want to see when I log in. I don’t want to see sales, or who on my watchlist has added a new favorite, etc. The way the overview page now works was a change made during the time I’ve been a member, and it’s been one I’ve absolutely adored, as have many others.

This new overview page is a MESS. There’s a whole slew of information shoved into your face, including large images, that I just flat have no interest in seeing. They are adding a ‘subscription’ bit to it, which is a good thing, but they could add that to what’s already there to just improve the existing overview page.

But that’s not what they’re doing. They’re taking something that is nice, clean and customisable and turning it into a messy overload of information I (and others) have absolutely no interest in having shoved in our faces. And the ability to customise that page won’t happen until sometime after they’ve implemented the change.

I hate to say it, but I’m beginning to think that their pursuit of change is going to end with them changing themselves right out of business.

Community/membership based sites should never, ever stop listening to their members, even when their members are saying things they don’t want to hear.

Right now, I’m counting 12 who hate it, 7 who seem to be on the fence about it, and 8 who ‘love it!’ from the comments received on the sneak peek entry.

Yes, there are those who resist change just to resist it. But there are also those who have very valid complaints and concerns when some changes don’t work properly or appear to be ten steps back instead of one or two forward.

I was not very happy to see many other members blithely dismissing the concerns of those of us over the PM system change. We have concerns about security and what certainly appear to be bugs, with us not seeing pages someone from the staff stated we should. They’re valid, and we’re getting remarks like ‘can’t please everyone’, ‘some people just don’t like change’ or ‘some people just aren’t willing to learn’.

I like change. I love to learn new things and I know you can’t please 100% of the people 100% of the time, if ever.

But I also think there’s a point in time when you should listen to what those concerns and complaints are from members who help draw in your traffic and make you money, and not just to those who are more than ready to kiss your ass and say everything you do is great.

I host/co-host some groups at this site, and it’s been stated that after this horror of a new overview page has been completed and is in place, they’re going to turn their attention to a ‘complete overhaul of the groups system’.

I’m dreading what that means.

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