Just a regular old forum member here, not an employee, not a stockholder, not a moderator, and not in any way speaking for the company itself.
But from my perspective, this forum is the public face of CoG as well as its fans.
And yet I consistently get the impression that all of us, from full-time staff on down to level 1 forum members, are being held hostage to the whims of a single individual, @jasonstevanhill who consistently and vocally complains about his job.
I’ve seen him complain about people talking about movies, complain about how forum messages are too long (and thus require “skimming”, which might potentially offend someone who can’t properly read a long message on a forum dedicated to people who read long passages of text for fun), complain about people discussing things that were also discussed years ago (even though folks might still want to add their own two cents today), complain about having to do work like answering emails before drinking a cup of coffee, answer perfectly legitimate questions in a rude manner, complain about having to manage multiple Reddit threads, complain about having had to write an entire book (Choice of Vampires), and endless, endless, endless complaints about what a horribly expensive, time-consuming chore it is to “manage” this forum.
First of all, the forum software used (Discourse) is free. I don’t know what the hosting costs, but aside from the rare image, the postings here are almost entirely text, and I’ve got literally thousands of images hosted on my own personal blog which costs me less than $20 per year in hosting fees. If the company has got ten grand to give to Marxists, I imagine it can afford to host a niche forum using free, open-source software.
As for the moderating side of things, I usually log in to this forum once per day while I eat my breakfast, and it rarely takes me more than 30 minutes to read everything posted over the past 24 hours. Admittedly, I’m not doing any moderating work, but it can’t be that difficult to remove the odd post that violates the rules, can it? Moderators are volunteering to do this, after all.
Aside from the random spammer/troll, a lot of which can be auto-blocked with the software, why is it, exactly, that JSH thinks that these forums are so troublesome?
Is it because of a fanatical need to exert granular control over absolutely everything, including banning people from asking a published author when new material might potentially be forthcoming (something most authors would kill for), locking away the Hobby thread from the internet (including Google) to avoid authors being “bombarded” with feedback, or banning folks “for a thousand years” solely for the crime of “questioning the rules”?
Or maybe it’s deciding ex-cathedra that anyone who violates one rule will never learn and thus needs permanent banning?
Is it perhaps from the Herculean labors constantly being performed to merge and close threads, supposedly so some theoretical user in the future can more easily find answers?
Because, aside from some technical CS coding stuff, there is never going to be a “permanent answer” to things like whether saves/checkpoints should be implemented, whether or not to add a “back button,” implementing more features, etc.
Delete or ban this post, if you like (or use your admin powers to rewrite it under my name, as I saw JSH did just two weeks ago to someone else), but the overall impression going out from the so-called “head” of this company (honestly, even that topic is needlessly shrouded in mystery) is that he friggin’ hates his job, and it’s all because of all the troublesome peasants on this and other fora (Discord, CYS, Reddit, and Tumblr).
In other words, we are to blame for Daddy’s bad mood.
If I’m wrong, feel free to show me a single example of positive affirmation or participation by JSH, even something as simple as “Wow, I love this game” or “Great comment,” because I sure as heck cannot find it. All I see are complaints, announcements, non-answers, and rude comments.
The moderators, employees, fans, paying customers of CoG books, and authors (including WIP authors) love this place a lot, and that includes chatting about non-CS games, sharing memes, and posting funny animal pictures. That’s because we see this place as a community, not a workplace where we must produce profit for the CoG Company AT ALL TIMES.
If the person at top of the food chain no longer gets a thrill out of reading, playing, and discussing interactive fiction, maybe it’s time to find another career path and let someone happier take over, eh?
Just a thought, from me, a nobody, with love.
