Librarianon

Librarianon

@Librarianon

Your local Librarianon

  • He/Him

Writer, TF Finatic, Recohoster, and Game dev. Wasnt able to post here as much as I liked, but I'll miss it and all of yall. Till we meet again, friends!

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Librarianon
@Librarianon
8bitdemongirl
@8bitdemongirl
kaara
@kaara

clarifying giving feedback on and about cohost

There's been a lot of discussion over the last day about dark mode, but those discussions led to discussions about feedback in general and cohost's relationship to feedback. Given that this is my job, I figure now is a reasonable time to clarify a few things.

Where does feedback go?

The best place to give us feedback is on our forum, located here. We use it as a repository and it is the first place we look when we are looking for something new to work on. If you post here, we'll see it.

That being said, feedback, by it's nature, can come from anywhere. Feedback does not need to come from the feedback region of Italy, that's just a marketing scam and urban myth. I've seen (vagueposting! woah!) some people say that if you're not posting in the feedback forum, you're doing it wrong. This is not necessarily true. If you post a about a feature request or bug on Cohost there's a chance we won't see it, especially if it's untagged. Just because we might not see it doesn't mean you can't still post about the things you want to see on Cohost! We have a good shot of seeing it too (tag it!)

Your page is your own. Post as you wish, and yearn for whatever weird type of eggbug you desire.

How to give feedback, aka, tone and tone policing

Ultimately, discussion over the last day turned into discourse about feedback and tone and I feel the need to squarely address it here. We deeply appreciate feedback that is kind and thoughtful. Not all feedback will be and that's okay.

You do not need to defend us. We appreciate it, but you really don't. This job is frustrating, but we're not going to fall over dead just because some people delivered their feedback in a mean way. It sucks and is pretty unproductive, but we'll get over it.

I'm not going to "take a side" here. You're more than welcome to have a discussion about us, defend us, be miffed at us, whatever. Not my place to say much more. But, please be cool with us and we'll be cool with you. If someone isn't cool to us you can let us worry about it. (Unless it rises to a point of breaking our rules, in which case, report it)

A significant amount of discussion over the last day came from a few users getting upset at us1 and other people getting mad at said people getting upset at us. It's a doom loop and is frankly pointless. I'd much rather have a few people upset at us (regardless of the "validity" of said upsetness) over an all out doom loop of vaguemetaposting and bizarrely placed pity.2

Getting in contact

Ultimately, communication is the name of the game here. If we don't see something you think we should see or you need a status update on something, please reach out. You can write a ticket to us at help.antisoftware.club and get our take any time. We'd prefer that you not send feature requests directly there (that's what the forum is for), but you're welcome to simply ask us questions. If you want to know if something is planned or not planned we can tell you. Our answers might be brief ("No, this is not planned", "Yes, this is planned but there is currently no ETA"), but we will usually have an answer.

We're an open bunch, don't be afraid to talk to us.

edit - just in case it wasn't abundantly clear: don't be fuckin jerks to us!

  1. a totally reasonable thing to be, albeit at times a personally frustrating experience! No one likes when people are upset at them!

  2. if you think we're getting our ass handed to us in a shitty or bad way, feel free to be nice to us yourself, give us some more money, or post a picture of your cat. Be nice to us as opposed to picking fights or trying to win over hearts and minds

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in reply to @kaara's post:

bazelgeuse-apologist
@bazelgeuse-apologist

if you think we're getting our ass handed to us in a shitty or bad way, feel free to be nice to us yourself, give us some more money, or post a picture of your cat. Be nice to us as opposed to picking fights or trying to win over hearts and minds

TBH, this is a good policy in general. If you're upset about people tearing down, the best way to offset tearing down is building up.

For folks who are paying a yearly subscription and who therefore wouldn't be able to increase their donations except in increments of $50, is there anywhere that we can send a smaller tip, or are we waiting for tipping for that?

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jkap
@jkap

wait on tipping; we’ll be able to accept tips directly but there’s also an option to throw in a little extra for us when tipping another user (it doesn’t take away from them)

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ChocoSune
@ChocoSune

I really like you folks and I hope you'll be around to keep doing cool things for a long ass time. Never have I seen such mature and open discussion about this sort of thing and it's frankly super refreshing.

Keep up the fantastic work. When I get more disposable income I'ma throw some of it at you again.

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mvmtchmbr
@mvmtchmbr

This is allright and everything, but here's my feedback: this should have been a post from the staff account, not the personal account of one of the employees, and put in a more thoroughly professional tone. As it is, this reads (mostly) like a company statement, but it's from the (i assume) personal account of a staff member.

I get that the lines between what's personal and what's business is blurred here, and that the staff/company want to have a friendly tone with the users, but ultimately i think you are doing yourselves a discervice - both as a company and as private individuals - if you blur this too much. Making (semi?) official posts through personal accountrs makes it unclear where official statements will come from - consistently using the staff account makes it very clear and puts it all in one place, while sometimes using individual accounts does not make it clear. It also, i think, in the long run might make it more difficult than it should be for staff members to have personal accounts - you'll never be completely private inviduals not connected to the company running this site of course, but having a clearer delineation of where "official" business comes from vs non-official (personal) posts come from might make things easier, i think.

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