Improved Customer Service : )
Replies
I just wanted to say thank you to the Subeta staff for taking site issues more seriously and being more responsive.
I was thinking of quitting last month during the whole new shop fiasco, but since then, I've seen user suggestions being taken (like Food Day), site improvements (like the removal of the pusher.js system) and more questions being answered.
While there's still a ways to go in terms of improvements (wardrobe, I'm looking at you) and transparency, the staff is taking a huge step in the right direction.
sorta relevant quote from offsite
<ol>
<li>Downtime / 5xx Errors / Server Problems year 2543435: This is one of those things that Subeta is constantly plagued by. I think that one of our appeals is that we’re the scrappy site, the one that does what users want (usually ;)) and makes fast, sometimes breaking, changes based on our feedback. That isn’t an excuse, and we should and hopefully are moving in the right direction here. That means making tough decisions on things like limits, where before we wanted to do the best by users by giving everyone unlimited everything, now we have to understand that doing the best by the users means building scalable systems that <em>don’t</em> have everything.</li>
<li>Dropping balls: This is almost entirely my fault. You can look at a scattered battlefield of things that I’ve started and then had to move on to something else. Again, not an excuse, but something I hope that we’re getting better at. I’ve been primarily focusing on server stability and issues surrounding that (the pusher push today was a big part of that) as well as some stuff that we can start talking about in the future. I know that the wardrobe got dropped, and to be honest, it was the first time I was writing something in React, and I’ve learned a ton from that and other projects since then, which will allow me to circle back on the wardrobe with a lot more knowledge about how the system works. ALSO: We’ve got something else brewing.</li>
<li>People get old! I don’t think this is the average Subeta user, but some users just age out of what we’re doing. Subeta isn’t appealing to everyone through their life, and I think that the thing that we can do best is foster community that keep people around for 10+ years. Keeping that as our primary goal, with amazing content to back it up, is part of our renewed focus to keep the site going.</li>
</ol>
<p>On that note, we’ve got some plans to hopefully bring people <em>back</em> to Subeta, once we feel like we’ve resolved some of 1 & 2 and feel like it’s worth it to bring them back.
- Ooooh, thank you for sharing that quote. ^^
This is also another improvement: Keith taking responsibility for his mistakes. He's clearly matured and has become a capable owner. And now, things can be fixed and improved upon.
I'm looking forward to continue seeing the renewed focus of Subeta in action. :)
Thanks for posting that (and also all your hard work elsewhere keeping people up to date on little changes and stuff.) It's good to see that Keith is aware of why people aren't here.
I've been around but not playing since iirc January. I'm sure I'm not the only one who reached their frustration threshold in the past year or so. People come here to do a lot of things, and when so many major site systems (wardrobe, quests, shops, forums, pet spotlight, etc.) are partially broken and/or undergoing major changes it pushes people away. The shop recode restored a lot of faith for me personally, as it showed me that the staff actually IS capable of rolling out a big project and not fucking it up and then abandoning it partway through the process.
It definitely seems like staff is stepping up their game, owning up to past mistakes, and trying to fix things. :)
