[Not a Bug] Marine Aquarium being used to sell aquarium bulbs?

[jroseone]

https://www.topbulb.com/find/aquarium_bulbs.asp

[craig130170]

From what i can see that is not MA3

[cjmaddy]

Give that man a gold watch....

[patscarr]

MA2

[Marian Nichols]

Correct. It is a static image of an older version. I never did like the frozen sea anemone. so glad it no longer is.

[Time Crystal Pilot]

I wonder if those guys are aware that "aquarium4.jpg" is an invitation:

https://www.topbulb.com/images/aquarium.jpg
https://www.topbulb.com/images/aquarium2.jpg
https://www.topbulb.com/images/aquarium3.jpg
https://www.topbulb.com/images/aquarium4.jpg


Completely unrelated, but an interesting read:

http://jeff-vogel.blogspot.com/2011/...uld-never.html

(Why creators should never read their forums -- not exactly my opinion, but Jeff Vogel is speaking from experience.)

[Jim Sachs]

I'm sure glad that Morgan and Michael are around to act as a buffer between me and the REALLY nasty posts

[feldon34]

Originally posted by Time Crystal Pilot:

Completely unrelated, but an interesting read:

http://jeff-vogel.blogspot.com/2011/...uld-never.html

(Why creators should never read their forums -- not exactly my opinion, but Jeff Vogel is speaking from experience.)  

It's amazing to me how quickly and frequently that article is being posted. It's a thought-provoking piece. I've encountered it in 4 separate venues in the last 2 weeks.

I do believe in a Community Manager type position (like me and Michael) who address the community and collect any issues and present a report to the developers. When the developer directly engages the customer, it's easy for there to be miscommunications and it's also easy to end up in a tit-for-tat argument.

I also believe in an "inner" community which is a hand-picked group of people who have direct access to the developer. This is becoming more common on web forums. With such a special subforum, the developer can more openly communicate with and solicit input from the community because they know they will not be attacked or questioned by less helpful posters. In hindsight, it's probably something I should have done on day 1 here.

I've seen situations where the developer insists on communicating directly with the customers/users, even when those users are hostile and post demoralizing comments. And I've seen situations where a popular developer or company would benefit from more customer interaction but they don't go down that road.

I think web forums are here to stay (I still don't have a Facebook account), and I think Community Manager is going to become an important job in every business or organization going forward.

[feldon34]

Originally posted by findingnemo:

I'm sure that attacks (and attackers) quickly disappear. I hope you won't mind a couple of philosophical questions.

In terms of product development and maintenance (bug fixes, etc.), why would it be particularly useful to have a community of people who always agree with the developer?  

Obviously you don't just take people who agree with the developer.

Originally posted by findingnemo:

If you established such a community, how would you hand-pick the people? That is, what criteria would be used?  

Well, you'd start with people who are able to articulate themselves without ranting, trolling, hostility, or personal attacks against others who don't agree with their viewpoint. You weed out people who are manipulative, play people against each other, or belittle others. It's actually pretty easy to spot people who are capable of expressing themselves in a nondestructive way. The hard part is finding people who disagree, and can do so without it getting personal.

I should mention that I am part of one of these subgroups regarding a major MMORPG. There are about 30 of us in our group and we give focused feedback to the developers.