obviousity's posterous

obviousity's posterous

Casse No-i  //  The unfiltered ramblings of a 20-something designer/dev with a bad case of the people-watchies... a girl who just needs to get it off her chest once in a while.

Filed under

user feedback

See all posts on posterous with this tag ยป
 
Oct 13 / 5:18pm

If You Don't Have Anything Nice to Say, Don't Be Stupid (Tuesday #3)

Fb-comments

 

*WARNING* If you don't care what your audience thinks of you, are not concerned over lost readership due to your unfiltered rants, or are otherwise feeling combative: stop reading this post.  Now.

Otherwise, I hope you'll humor me a minute while we discuss from this real life example how to lose subscribers quicker than you can say "brain-to-mouth filter."  This one is more subtle than some I've seen and also happens to be the most recent.  I just found it today, as a matter of fact.

Looking at the picture, tell me: Can you spot the problem?

Here's what I see:

  1. Reader Alex enjoys the article and wants to share an idea on how it may be easy for him and maybe the other 1,800+ RSS subscribers to enjoy site content without as much hassle regarding placement of the article thumbnail. 
  2. There's a little back and forth over the fact that the thumbnail exists, but not where the reader suggests it might be best for all.
  3. Design Guy gets catty with his "think of how long it takes to write the tutorial" remark, instead of just saying "Thanks" or not responding all together.
Maybe our "Alex" is the only one to ever point this out.  Maybe he isn't.  But its a valid point at the very least, considering formatting differences in different reading mediums. And, at the most it's extremely valuable feedback from what should be your most valuable asset: YOUR LOYAL SUBSCRIBER. 

But I digress.

My point is not whether this reader's idea should be implemented.  My point is the site owner may have made a mistake in talking back to the commenter in a way that can easily be construed as "Yeah, ok, nice idea - but I'm not changing what I do, and how dare you tell me to."  That can be especially problematic when you consider the reader in question is a loyal subscriber, not just some fool passing through like I was. Again, not an end-of-the-world tragedy but an example of how you may not realize you're undermining your own reach by not thinking before you speak.

And again, if you don't care about your readership, then by all means leave that filter off.  If you do care, just remember what you say can (and will) be used against you in the user's perception.


Filed under  //  brain to mouth filter   stupidtuesday   subscribers   tips   user feedback