• the

this is not a real account do not interact with webark

╔═╦╗╔╦═╦═╦╗╔╗Put This On .......
║═╣║║║╔╣╔╣╚╝║Your Channel If
║╔╣╚╝║║║║╚╗╔╝You Are Or .........
╚╝╚══╩╝╚╝👎╚╝Support Furries..

name-color: #fef9f3


ImplausiblyJosh
@ImplausiblyJosh

Being upset that people are like "why aren't the financial updates on time, why aren't you explaining the downtime" is baffling to me. They built this site on transparency! Their funding comes with the expectation of financial transparency! Regardless of if people should put faith in the four randoms running the website, people have and it's definitely worrying when the "here's the forecast on how long the lights stay on" post isn't on time.

Additionally, it's totally fine to worry about adding on a ton of extra workload to the site. Remember when the bug report page was overrun with viagra and gambling spam for weeks because no one kept up with it? Or when the site was down with no communication. Apparently paid Artist Alley posts got backlogged. It took someone making two posts on here about horribly bigoted comments on a staff post before moderation happened because the official moderation channels were not working (and the one moderator of the site was a bit of a self-admitted coward in handling moderation of a bigoted comment!). And now you're telling me you're adding tag wrangling, a feature that AO3 seemingly needs a volunteer army for, to your site with no plans of making it sustainable? Y'all seemingly couldn't get one of the other three people of the four person team on the ball with the financial transparency posts that are part of your funding agreement, why should we be excited or hopeful for this new feature?

I get people really want this site to work for them. I'd love for any new social media site to work for me! But unless something drastically changes, the writing is clearly on the wall that this is not that site.


ImplausiblyJosh
@ImplausiblyJosh

The other part of this that is always so baffling is when the owners of this site are equated to a "Starbucks barista who misspelled your name". They're the owners of the website! They work for themselves! They're not on the lowest rung of the company structure, they're not someone who is struggling against awful managers and management, they are the managers!

I talked about this several months ago, but the same person saying you're an "unfuckable cretin" for pointing out cohost doesn't have a reliable system to post the financial updates that are core to their current funding requirements was saying people should be bullied for saying the accessibility features on cohost weren't good. So they're owners that have to do it all by themselves, which is why you should bully people who criticize the site, but also they're just little cashiers with no say on how the site is run and it's rude to tell at cashiers and you're just displaying Karen behavior. Which is it?

It's frustrating. The goalposts feel like they're constantly shifting, where there's no right way to criticize this specific business or the culture being fostered. If you bring your criticisms up in staff posts youre an "unfuckable cretin". If you tell people to go to the official feature requests forum for accessibility features toure bullied relentlessly. If you criticize the site at all you're basically saying the cohost staff "are worse than some theoretical construct of Elon Musk & Mark Zuckerburg where their bodies have been grafted together in a permanent sixty-nine sexual position". It's silly!

I've said it before, and I'll say it again: Just because your friends run an LLC doesn’t mean your friend’s LLC shouldn’t be criticized as a business. I guess I'll just add that just because you want this business to succeed doesn't mean the business shouldn't be criticized as a business.


You must log in to comment.

in reply to @ImplausiblyJosh's post:

I'm just worried about the site blinking out one day, because this site can't dip into the infinite venture capital money bucket or ad dollars that social media sites usually lean on if they don't make money

That's my worry, too. I mean, it's been down a handful of time in the past couple of weeks or so, with no real communication as to why, and the financial reports make it very clear there hasn't been a move to a sustainable revenue stream.

I want this place to work, just like i want any social media site to work and Be Good! But it definitely feels more like a hobby than a business at the moment, which is not good when you're running a business.

For financials, they could have that responsibility rest on the team instead of one person. In fact, I say that in this post! Just in case you missed it:

"Y'all seemingly couldn't get one of the other three people of the four person team on the ball with the financial transparency posts that are part of your funding agreement"

But, clearly, the "what would help things" part of that criticism is easy and clear in my post. You get it done in a timely, monthly manner. There are four people in total, so that's four people who can make the posts happen. If one person cannot do it with regularity, then obviously someone else needs to take up the task or more people need to be on this task.

I also mention some paths forward with tag wranging! In case you missed it:

"And now you're telling me you're adding tag wrangling, a feature that AO3 seemingly needs a volunteer army for, to your site with no plans of making it sustainable?"

The "what would help things" part of that criticism is easy and clear in my post. A path to sustainability would be volunteer work, the thing I mention AO3 does. I don't think it's a perfect solution, but it's one of many paths that could be taken to make that feature sustainable. Maybe they could hire someone! Or maybe this isn't a feature that brings in money, so focus should not be put on it.

But also, the writing is on the wall. What good does it do anyone to not talk about this in clear terms about what's going on? I know the go-to is to say "don't like it, leave" when someone points out the negatives, but what does that accomplish outside of not thinking about the negatives?