I remember a time where people would participate in concept development, actively discussing things they like or don’t like in my plugins. And most of all; It happened in a friendly manner with a certain flair. In a way that made me feel appreciated and valued. Some of you may be old enough to remember that time. You know, way way way back in 2008-ish.
Times changed
Now? I rarely get feedback on new features, questions, services or anything at all. Posts such as this one or this one.
But also;
- Support tickets where I have to ask the client if they’re helped and their problem has been solved because otherwise the ticket would linger open and unanswered by them for days. Because – why thank the guy who spends time to help you. That’s so 1999.
- Angry emails when something doesn’t work as they would expect. Often because the user doesn’t read a manual or misinterprets a feature.
- People buying something from me and then jump through all the hoops in the world to extort that money back from me (Yes, among some others, that’s you Aaron!)
- Or just nothing. No response or input at all. Until they have something to complain… Then I have to work overtime.
It takes the fun out of my work. It really does and it’s this attitude that killed a few plugins I used to develop.
Realization – Rationalization
I didn’t quite realize this until earlier today. For the past 2 years I have said to myself; “I don’t use wp-events (plugin) anymore so I stopped developing it.” But that’s not so true. I stopped actively developing wp-events because of the community – Or lack thereof. Going my direction apparently wasn’t good enough. And asking users (you) for direction went unanswered.
I don’t really use AdRotate either. And the vocal part of the users are (generally) not very friendly but it’s still an interesting project for me. I like to make the plugin. I have a certain image of how internet advertising should be (in my opinion) and the ultimate goal for AdRotate is to make that a reality. But we’re still a long ways off. Where most other advertising plugins suck at their core functionality and only focus on making it as hard and inconvenient as possible to use the plugin.
And now, with AdRotate Pro it became even more interesting to maintain the product and build on it’s success and see where we end up.
Me
I’m pulling out. Me and my Mac against the world or something along those lines. Madness you say!
I realized a while ago I don’t care enough about the personal side of any community to really fit in. All this social awkwardness, pretending to care and feelings of not belonging makes me want to disconnect sometimes. And that is reflected in the development of my products. I have a vision for all of my products. What others say or think about it is not really my concern unless it makes sense. But more often than not it doesn’t or it doesn’t suit the product as I want it to be. And as mentioned above; If I ask for input it’s often ignored anyway.
So I’ll go my own way. And that suits me just fine.