StanCo's Guildwork: Just Set It, and Forget It!

[Madeline]

Just thought I'd post here about the state of this website, the attitude of the site admin, and some of the spotty, questionable shit going on.

Today I guess Stanislav got a wild hair up his ass and decided to remove one of the most used features of the website. Even though he made the argument that "If you think this website is the feed you're wrong" Well all I can say is the website you created is defined by what the users make it. Just because it's not the most popular feature doesn't mean you can dismiss it. This is the second time I've heard this argument for him. I can't remember what we were discussing when he threw that at me the first time. Regardless, when I approached him about it, he blew me off and then proceeded to tell me and everyone on the aforementioned broadcast to unsubscribe to the website if we didn't like it.

Now.. Normally I'd just move on and not give a shit, but I've actively supported him since GW Beta. Even though he offers nigh no support for anything but XI. I'll admit, I did cancel my sub a while back cause there is really no use to have it if you're not playing FFXI.

Seeing him remove features and shit that I and other people who continue to pay for the site use, then telling us to basically fuck off if we didn't like it, thoroughly pissed me off. I approached him wherein I tagged him and he proceeded to tell me it's because people bitch to him about images, porn and the like. Ruining a feature most people use because a few people decided to QQ about it is nothing short of spotty moderation. He then deleted my post because he doesn't want to hear or read anything anyone has to say. This leads me to the part wherein he actively goes into people's private feeds and deletes anything that might get him kicked out of the Google ads program. Guildwork isn't a website for you, it's there to funnel shit into his pocket so he can pay for the servers until he can sell the website to someone who wants it. Now I'm not sure on that, but one can only assume from conversations I've had with him and the direction the website has taken.

Moving on to the "re-tooling" of the website wherein we saw a preview of a new Guildwork around 7 months ago with promised improved features that would alleviate some of the more pestering problems. People trolling others broadcasts when they shouldn't even have access to their private feeds, huge images with no resize or hide options, size 9000+ text spam, pornography and the like. Unfortunately that never came and today here we are still with the second incarnation of copypastework. I don't think "v3" is ever really coming around. It's going to continue to be spotty bullshit until the website is eventually pawned off. He also decided he would make the "I'll shut it all down, I don't care" argument. Are you 5, bro?

I'm writing this basically to say he told me he didn't want my, nor anyone else's money because it's his website and he doesn't give a fuck and will continue to do as he wants. Take it how you will but I can only take it as some immature "if I don't have to read it, it isn't there." and "I don't need you, I have plenty of others!" rubbish.

Stanislav Image tags are disabled on the dashboard and profile pages. They will remain to work on guild sites. If you don't like this decision feel free to cry in this post but the decision won't be reversed. #ffxi #ffxiv #wow

Things an ignorant fuck would say. I went from upset about something I used being gone to pissed off because you decided to be downright rude and uncaring about it.

Then there's this gem, which he decided to sneak in after I posted this.



Cute. Humility and a little understanding goes a long way. Should also be worth mentioning the only reason you've got that out of him is this. Normally you don't hear a peep until it's super happy moderation time.

[Kohan]

Seeing him remove features and shit that I and other people who continue to pay for the site use, then telling us to basically fuck off if we didn't like it, thoroughly pissed me off.

It should. That's terrible customer service. It's why developers often don't run their own companies without help—too many of them lack PR skills.

Also, fortunately for you, this is BG and not Guildwork, so no one is going to delete your post.

[Madeline]

There has since been compromise. I can live with the changes.

Delete the above if you so wish, or leave it. Up to you.

[Obsidian]

On one hand, his people (and moderation) skills leave a lot to be desired.

On the other hand, the img and size tags were being heavily abused (and they aren't the only ones that could have been), both in terms of site functionality(with 9000x9000 images or size 13000 text), and through content (porn gifs fucking everywhere). That stuff needed to stop, one way or another. I don't know how the site is coded, so I don't know what other solutions he had available to him, but I'm under the impression that people paying for Premium (at least, that why I used to) were paying for plugin functionality and extra guild site customization 9where BBC still works, anyway). The dashboard and character tracking stuff is all free as far as I'm aware. Saying you pay to use that stuff and that he should bend to your will because of that is slightly disingenuous,in my opinion.

The img and size tags (and BBC in general) were more harmful than useful. Whether or not their removal was the best solution available to him is something I cannot say, but I can say that I'm not sorry to see them go.

The micromanagement of personal broadcasts at the behest of others is far more alarming, to me.

[Madeline]

It's not so much that I'm demanding someone bend to my will because I pay. In fact, I don't pay and my apologies if I led on that I do, I wasn't clear enough in that aspect. But people do support him and his website because of it's entirety. Yanking features and being rude about things will get you nowhere. Especially when he was approached and asked why. Things escalated to here because he refused to listen and went on with the "no1curr" attitude and belittled me.

But yeah. It's more of a "We pay for and/or support this website, why are you doing this and why are you being so uncaring and rude about the things we use?" kind of thing. For me, at least.

While he's reverted his decision, doesn't change the fact that it happened. And it certainly doesn't fix or change the other problems. But they've forever existed.

It also goes to say not everyone is out to post gigantic images. Some of us just bullshit back and forth posting ones that sometimes don't even break the feed's tables. But in part, we feel that it's our private feed and we should be entitled to post what we want. It's why we friend one another so we don't have to go around spamming everyone else with shit they don't want to read. I do know it's a problem and it has been for a long time. But the way he went about it was wrong, imo. Even when he had people telling him no, we don't want this on the initial broadcast asking if people want the feature removed, he went and did it anyway.

Sure there are those who do want it gone. But it's been there entirely too long as a function of Guildwork to simply scrap it and say that's that. Maybe since some light has been shed on v3, soon everyone can be happy.

[Narbzilla]

I stopped paying for premium when he started deleting personal posts, shit is out of hand. Someone gets linked to my post and cries about it when we're not even friends on the site it's ridiculous.

[Kohan]

Delete the above if you so wish, or leave it. Up to you.

I like your avatar too much, so I want to ensure that it's on this page as many times as possible.

[Obsidian]

I stopped paying for premium when he started deleting personal posts, shit is out of hand. Someone gets linked to my post and cries about it when we're not even friends on the site it's ridiculous.

How about getting tagged while you're asleep, having the post explode into drama over nothing, and then having the guy who started all the drama ask Stan to delete a broadcast that originally had absolutely nothing to do with him? All while I was asleep.

Privacy settings are obviously needed but more important I think is Stan keeping his hands off everyone else's profile unless expressly asked by the owner of said profile.

[Eldelphia]

I don't know, as an admin of a pretty huge project you're going to get a lot of people contacting you with complaints and issues. Especially on a social media style site. When the volume of those gets above a certain point I'm sure you have to make difficult decisions. I don't give a crap about image tags and am glad they're gone from the hashtags. If peeps wanna spam their friends with random junk, whatever. I pay for premium and am glad to support the site. At least you get responses, rather than just sending support issues off into the ether and never hearing back. I'm not saying this is what's going on right here but a lot of people act like idiots and then seem to get surprised when there's a response to it. Never did get that...

We use guildwork, we don't own it. Sure Stan has to be responsive to his customers but I know a lot of people got sick of the inappropriate image spam.

[bechyni]

Whole bunch of drama over the stupidest shit.