I was head of customer service in past lives. I know the right answers. So look, we've been working on this off and on for over 2 years. All volunteer. If you come into this forum, saying you don't care about the mission and the goals of the project(!?), talking about money, customers, PR, the wrong attitude and telling me how it should be... Well, you might catch me on the wrong day and I get irritated. We've been busting our asses out of love for 2 years - driven specifically by that mission and those goals. We did the work and we're giving it away. If you come here polite, I'm polite. If you don't come polite, it's more hit or miss on my end. If you submit code or create a show, then you have my undivided attention. When MattK complains, I listen closely, because Matt is invested enough to do the work.

The FAQ answers all this and our wiki explains it. Check it out. And next time I need to remember to refer folks to those resources immediately.

i appreciate the responses guys. i see your point of view completely, and i did not understand how few of you there are to actually work on this plugin all the time.

if you are okay with running this as a public service, that is fantastic, and kudos to you for doing this out of the kindness of your heart. we do actually appreciate it, and obviously we care enough to bitch at you.

Reading my last post over again, i realize my tone is pretty harsh, and i apologize. you shouldn't have to take shit for something you provide for free.

however, if you want to keep your current subscribers, and keep building more, you certainly aren't going to get them by telling them

"We don't have to satisfy anyone. If you don't like it, turn it off. If you don't like it, make your own show and submit it."

this is probably very true. and that's fine. but THIS is what i was bitching about in the last post, not about the fact that i didnt like the art.

i was just giving you some marketing advice. what i failed to convey in my last post was that if there are tens of thousands of people using your software, you have an OPPORTUNITY.

maybe you are not making money now, but if you keep increasing your downloads, that gives you access to to more and more people's computer screens, which holds an AMAZING AMOUNT OF POWER from a marketing standpoint.

maybe you are not making money now, but as you get more "subscribers" you will have the ability to. don't tell me that if you increased your downloads to over 20 million, you would't try to make a buck off it. look at craigslist and all the people happy to pay $20 buck an ad in the jobs section.

i was just giving you some advice as a sales and marketing douche that "the attitude" of your company is out of sync with your subscribers. i understand that we are only "a handful of people" as steve pointed out. however, that "handful" of people all overwhelmingly have a problem with this one issue. that is a surefire indicator of how you can improve your product.

individual customers know that they are only one person, and far from a high priority to a company serving thousands. however, they love it when you bullshit them and tell them that their personal satisfaction is paramount to the company. that usually shuts them up, and makes you a hero.

it sounds like you are working on many different ways to solve the issue, and that is fantastic. that is all you had to say, and mark, you did a very good job of replying to my complaint.

however, Steve sounds like a great CEO and yet, an awful PR rep. that is usually the way it works out.

i really don't mean any offense guys, just some thoughtful feedback. if i had recieved mark's reply and i had never read steve's, i probably would have kept the plugin. but alas, i am a fickle customer, and i will delete it just because i have decided that i don't like steve, and his shitty company.

case in point. this has been an exercise.

1 - There's between 10 thousand and 25 thousand users. That's why I don't take a handful of complaints very seriously. With numbers like that, if people *weren't* complaining then I would worry. There are plenty of people that do like the art.

2 - "why dont you give your customers what they want?" Because no one is paying me. You have the wrong idea. We don't have to satisfy anyone. If you don't like it, turn it off. If you don't like it, make your own show and submit it. If you don't like it, write some code so we can take feeds of art from multiple sources.

We don't have to make money. I give curators and artists as much freedom as I can. Even I like some of the shows more than others. I want to be challenged. I want to be exposed to new things. I don't want to see 100% of art I have seen before, or that I find "not distracting."

We don't have to satisfy a board of directors, we don't have to satisfy ticket payers. Artists and curators can do whatever they want once they've been vetted by their peers here. And if you don't like it, you can tune out for 2 weeks. No harm done.

"if this plugin gets even more popular, you can get a lot more money from newer and better "featured artists" later! right now you could use public domain images that would be much more popular."

Again, it's not about making money. And we have done public domain image shows. Popularity isn't as a high a priority to me as using this venue - which is FREE from financial and other restrictions - to show artists work.

I'll just say, as I have said before; you might like the idea of seeing art, but not like the art you see. That's how art is.

Here's something from an interview in 2007:

Mr. Lambert recently got private financing to complete the AddArt software. He still is seeking "a few thousand dollars," he said, for stipends for both the curators to choose work and the "young, contemporary artists" who will be featured.

“If you hate the artwork, there is a way you could turn it off until the show was over,” Mr. Lambert said. “I don’t make money from this, so if it bothers some people, that’s O.K. Art should bother some people.”

The way we've been picking the art is by having past curators pick the next. I think. Steve isn't actually picking the artists by hand. He's got a sense of humor, and I guess it is rubbing you wrong because you are frustrated by the art that you don't find as cool as the idea.

We are all volunteers working on this and the next release we want to work on is to make the art selection more democratic. We want to make it so that you or your favorite gallery or museum can create their own feed of art. That way, you can just subscribe to the art you like from curators you trust.

Unfortunately, there are some hurdles, technical and otherwise. Add-art is definitely looking for any volunteers with the ability and time to help us get this feature out.

Alternatively, if someone wants to help make a tool that makes it easier to assemble a show, we could move to some sort of democratic voteup of art. I'm up for whatever will keep more muddy windows off of my screen, that show seemed like crap.

In the meantime, I'll keep plugging away with the rest of the team. BTW - that's usually 3 people around a table trying to figure out why firefox does what it does. If you know any FF gurus or smart folks who are willing to help out, we are all smiles.

there are very few posts in this forum from users that actually like this "product".

steve, it seems like you have the wrong attitude in this situation. I share the opinion of many other users that some of the art shows in recent weeks have not been aesthetically pleasing, or have been downright distracting. A common complaint is that such images also make us look weird at work or school as well.

The fact that so many people have come to the forum page to give you the negative feedback is a good sign that people like the concept of your plugin and downloaded it. it also shows that they like it enough to want to try to contact you to make it better.

however, all of the responses from steve have indicated that he does not want to make any changes to plugin. does that mean that we, the users or "customers" of your product are wrong?

your attitude should be more in line with trying to deliver what we, your customers, or users, want. the fact that there is a tag labeled "waah waah i dont like the art" is a perfect example of how you are missing the point. the point is that if we don't like the art, we are going to delete the plugin.

nobody here cares about your mission statement, because it makes us look at art we don't want to see. the vast majority of your customers want to see beautiful pictures instead of thought provoking, avant-garde images.

when i first downloaded the plugin, i was treated to cool bits of abstract art, strange photography, etc. personally, the muddy windows didnt bother me that much.

however, the weird pics of almost-exposed naked women from the 60s and some shitty photoshopping of some dude with glasses coming out of another larger head was pretty stupid and, im sure this word is being overused here, but distracting.

steve, why dont you give your customers what they want? if this plugin gets even more popular, you can get a lot more money from newer and better "featured artists" later! right now you could use public domain images that would be much more popular. The art from last week was basically a public service announcement against abuse...how is that any different from a banner ad from a non-profit organization? it seems to go against the very idea of the plugin in the first place.

you say that the idea of the plugin is to showcase new "art shows". However, most of the people that downloaded this plugin have a very different idea...they downloaded it because they don't like to look at ugly and distracting banner ads, and would like to replace them with art that is pleasing to the eye.

so if we just have the wrong idea, that is fine, but you are losing an opportunity. you already have good momentum with this plugin, do you want to change everyone's mind, or give them what they want?