Neocolours

Luxe wrote:With the release of the Subetapedia drawing closer, and even a bit of lore behind an upcoming holiday, it came to our attention that the more casual mention of species and colors on site looked better lowercase. An entire article with species and color capitalized looked very awkward. There is also an upcoming NPC whose name is in the format of Adjective Species, and more than anything else, that in particular got the gears turning. What way was there to distinguish Adjective Species from other Adjective Species(es)? Why was that a proper noun?

Luxe, thank you so, so much. That is exactly what I, as well as other users, needed to hear - a clear, informative explanation. Reading that, I understand the reasoning behind this change. I still don't like it, but I'm a whole lot less confused and angry. And I respect Luxe for explaining things, rather than taking the "Because I so" tacit.

Is this so hard for Keith and other Staff to do? A news post such as this, explaining about the upcoming Subetapedia, would have been so much better than a random announcement in the comments.

Staff attacking users, belittling them, implying that they are "Baawwwwing," dismissing their opinions as unimportant, stupid, or just plain wrong - Subeta needs a PR person desperately. Every time something like this happens, I think "This will be the last time. Surely Keith is more mature than this." And yet it continues to happen. I know that my opinion isn't worth beans, and that my money is a drop in the bucket, but Subeta will not receive a cent more from me until Keith and Staff grow up. A little respect for your users goes a long way.

*blinks*....*blinks and repated blank stares*.....

....Wow. All this over a lowercase letter/species change? Someone take a breather people! No one is arguing over the significance of user-input. That's what makes Subeta feel so user-friendly. I just thought I'd put in my two cents about how it feels like people are getting on a high-horse disposition level considering we're talking about renaming pixels. I'm somewhat put off by both various Neocolours opinions in the fact that, Neocolours as a group does not collectively dictate what Subeta does/decides to do. In the same breath, the staff shouldn't feel the need to overexpress their discontent for negative feedback. I feel like everyone is jumping into a fire, and flailing about why it scalds the flesh.

All I can say is I'm more than taken aback by the sense of entitlement people are uproariously embracing. (LIke you're fighing for Civil Rights or something.) Naturally, I would be put off too if I was being dogged mercilissly by the name change offsite, but hell, to be objective, it is negative feedback. It's not anything like TNT, where there is unrealistic Totaltarian positive feedback given in the editorials, and nothing else. Feedback is usually negative because it's criticism with a different name.

The thing is, at this point, I don't even see the reason why people are being so hostile and getting their panties in a knot over it. In a way, I feel like I was missing the base of a core complaint, when in actuality there was nothing. Little to nothing in the way of substance for a what, 8 page thread about why we hate lowercase?

This is about as Devil's Advocate as I can get. The whole thread is so head-scratching. Carry on. Don't stop bickering on my account...*walks away and slinks back into the Subeta forum shadows*

Is this so hard for Keith and other Staff to do? A news post such as this, explaining about the upcoming Subetapedia, would have been so much better than a random announcement in the comments.

Staff attacking users, belittling them, implying that they are "Baawwwwing," dismissing their opinions as unimportant, stupid, or just plain wrong - Subeta needs a PR person desperately. Every time something like this happens, I think "This will be the last time. Surely Keith is more mature than this." And yet it continues to happen. I know that my opinion isn't worth beans, and that my money is a drop in the bucket, but Subeta will not receive a cent more from me until Keith and Staff grow up. A little respect for your users goes a long way.

[/quote]

I'm going to be a pretend PR person, and reply to this entire thread with non-answers and avoiding the entire topic. That's what PR people do. Take a look at any press release for the recent campaigns, or really... anything!

Subeta Users,

We have changes that have been recently rolled out on the site, that include the capitalization of pet names. While we are taking all user feedback under consideration, this is a choice that we have made and are going to stick with it for the moment.

I'd like to refer you to choices that we've made in the past, most recently the double blocking. After a two week period of testing and tweaking, we found that there was a split perception on the benefit of double blocking, and chose to poll it for the users. While most users would have preferred we'd polled it in the first day of it being active, we decided to give it a 'test run' to allow users to find out exactly what was going to happen with double blocking. After most users who frequented the social areas of the site had been affected by 'double blocking', we ran the poll. While I am still heavily in favor of double blocking, I chose to follow what the users wanted, and removed it from the site without any further tweaking or fighting.

As far as the reasoning behind the lower-case pet names, that is something that we've made an internal choice on. In the future we may release the reasoning behind those choices, however at the moment all I can tell you is that we are trying to move Subeta in a new direction which includes fixing various grammatical mistakes like species names being capitalized.

As always, we appreciate you sticking with us, we'd be nothing without the users who stick behind us even when they don't agree with the choices we make
Thanks,
SubetaTeam

Non-answers, avoiding the questions and allegations by bringing up the past, and generally speaking to everyone like they are 5 year olds. I could address you like that once a week via my journal if you'd like.

Or, I could take the neopets route.

TNT - I noticed that pet names around the site aren't capitalized anymore! Why is that?
Excellent question! While we were away this weekend, it seemed that the Scorchio team (equipped with dictionaries and thesaurus's!) assigned to grammar thought that this was something that made sense!

Hm.

Usul_Princess wrote:....Wow. All this over a lowercase letter/species change? Someone take a breather people! No one is arguing over the significance of user-input.

A lot of this thread is not just the surface arguments (whether the new name is dumb, whether lowercased species names are bad), but also a good deal of resentment from users who feel upset over the reaction of some staff members. See, I am arguing over the significance of user input. Certainly, Subeta offers more user-to-staff interaction than many other sites, but many of us have experienced rude staff replies, cliques, and brush-offs. I think that the reason emotions are so high about this is that this instance is not the first time we've gone through these problems, and it brings up all kinds of old memories.

Negative feedback can of course be very painful and difficult to deal with. But, at the same time, people are not going to react well to being told they have a "sense of entitlement," or that they've got their "panties in a knot." When someone is upset, the best route to take--if you actually want to reach an agreement with them--is to ask why and work on a compromise, or make efforts at extending a hand to the other side. Never tell someone that they're upset for no reason, because you're effectively invalidating very real emotions.

Keith, "public relations" does not mean non-answers and misdirection. Many companies do seem to take that route. However, the basis of PR is diplomacy and (more or less) free advertising. A PR department does things such as lay out rules of contact for other staff members when they talk to the public, as well as reading all public posts and editing them for content before anyone on the outside of the company sees them. That way, they weed out the parts that people are likely to find most insulting. That is what I think Subeta dearly needs.

Keith, "public relations" does not mean non-answers and misdirection. Many companies do seem to take that route. However, the basis of PR is diplomacy and (more or less) free advertising. A PR department does things such as lay out rules of contact for other staff members when they talk to the public, as well as reading all public posts and editing them for content before anyone on the outside of the company sees them. That way, they weed out the parts that people are likely to find most insulting. That is what I think Subeta dearly needs.

I completely understand where you're coming from, and what you expect from a PR department. I'll take the point you made that most companies go the route of being full of non-answers.

However, while we are a staff and make choices together, we all have our opinions. We are usually very much on the same page when we make choices, and reflect that. However, we are going to push our opinions, and we really aren't worried about people being insulted. I think that's part of what Subeta is. It's been that way for 4+ years, and I don't see a change in that respect coming.

I'm not necessarily talking about a PR department that controls content, but one that advises on text output--that would have no bearing at all on what the staff decide together (which I think is fantastic). It's the manner in which you push the opinion on your users. E.g., saying, "well, this is the way it is now," would be a correct statement (in some hypothetical case), but that's a very offensive statement to read, from the user point of view. That single phrase could be caught by someone working PR and changed to something more like, "I hope you all see this as the positive change we mean it for, but if you have any concerns, please post them at some-link-here."

Yes, there is a bit of avoiding the matter if you don't actually want to change your mind based on what your users say, but merely giving them a specific outlet--and the impression that their opinions matter--goes a long way to soothing feathers, possibly even before they get ruffled. And, after all, it'd be the PR person's job to read those comments at that-link-here, so a lot of staff would be spared--I kinda imagine Iggy saw plenty that she didn't want to see, that didn't benefit anyone at all--and hey, sometimes gold nuggets get mined out of sh--.... mud?

Oh, I agree. That's why my profile comments are always open, I read/check my mail, and I frequently post journal entries on important changes around the site (not this one, because I honestly didn't think it was a huge deal)

I went back on the double blocking, because the users asked us to. There are a million times that we've done that, and when we get in a situation like this it's like people forget those times ever happened. Like we haven't leveled a million times before to make as many people happy. Everyone won't always be happy, and we all have to accept that.

I think that, especially if something is surrounded by high emotion, it can actually be very difficult for people to realize that it's been changed back, much later. So the mental record of "stuff that changed because we asked" is shorter than it should be. Of course, you can't exactly make a list of the instances when that happened, and just link people to it when they complain... hehe, that'd be kinda nice, in a way, if weird... but making it public (e.g., the double blocking poll) makes users feel good, and helps us remember it. I don't exactly have a point of advice here, except to perhaps reference Men in Black--a person is smart; people are dumb, panicky, dangerous animals.

*sigh*

I don't know if this has been noticed and not mentioned, or if I just noticed it, but the minion Red Dragon, is now the Red Rreignling. So, are all the other minions that have the word 'dragon' in their name and/or description gonna get changed to this ridiculous looking name?

The ice dragon is still the same. I never saw the red dragon minion as being related to the dragon pet though, so I'm puzzled by the change.

I'm trying to come to terms with this name that I really, strongly dislike, but I think I'll keep my red rreignling in my vault instead of my gallery. *winces*

Just my tuppence to Subeta Staff who may or may not be reading this. You really shouldn't get too upset about the comments of people who are being vocal about your changes - if someone is concerned enough to complain then they still care about the site and want to go on playing. The people you *should* be concerned about are those that just get bored or pissed off and leave the site quietly. They're the ones that'll *really* affect your bottom line in the long term.

And, yeah, PR department that doesn't give snarky statements = a good idea. Going back to what someone said much earlier in the thread - you're correct, the customer isn't always right. But the customer should never be made to feel like they are wrong. A little humility goes a long way.

----

Back on topic, in all honesty the name 'rreign' just looks clumsy and typo-ish to me (and I don't seem to be the only one). You need a more diverse research panel if they okayed that. The capitalisation I could get used to, it's just unusual when compared to the norm that's been set by Neopets, Pokémon, etc - not that that's necessarily a bad thing.

One of staff (DNA perhaps, I don't recall) said that we would see why the Red Dragon's name was changed for a specific reason and we'd learn why in about a week and a half.

I'm curious to find out why, since it sounds like a plot of some sorts is brewing.

But I'm also curious as to why these name changes didn't like.. .wait until we were ready to find out why. It seems like that might have smoothed the way a bit.

In all honestly, it's not their first time in which name changes end as terrible as this, of course, that wouldn't be noticeable to English-only speakers, but Ontra is a letter away from Lontra (which means, exactly, Otter, in Portuguese.)

:/ rreign sounds so typo-ish to me, it's not even funny.