I wanted to touch a little bit on the idea of VMP using somebody well-known in the community to disseminate information that could theoretically make VMP look better; a little while back, I had some phone conversations with Amy from VMP, and a couple of detailed email conversations with Matt, that seem to have essentially been in the same vein as
@Enoch 's correspondence with Lloyd - we talked about the general atmosphere and attitude of the subreddit VS the forums, what problems people were taking issue with, what people would give VMP credit for, how VMP could address issues, and how this information could be imparted onto the community. I'm not saying I'm anywhere NEAR as well known here (and previously on the VMP forum) as
@Enoch is, but at the time I was the only moderator of the VMP subreddit, so I was essentially single-handedly running that community. I did feel as if I was being looked at as a consultant for how exactly the VMP reddit community (and the forums to a lesser extent) were responding to certain changes and slip-ups, and I offered to Amy and Matt what people on the forum and the subreddit were offering as constructive criticism, much in the way that
@Enoch has been listening to our criticisms and bringing them up in his conversations with VMP (again, that shouldn't HAVE to be the only way to get our points across to VMP, but
@Enoch I really do appreciate you doing that). This went on for a couple months or so, and their responses were essentially exactly what you'd expect: A whole lot of "we're working on it"s and "We know this is an issue and we're looking for ways to solve it"s. They proposed a handful of ideas to me about what they might be doing in response to people's opinions and suggestions, and most of them were the exact ones listed in Enoch's post, ones that still evidently haven't moved past the "we're working on it" stage.
I guess my issue here, at least personally, is this seems like the exact same situation repeating itself: VMP privately communicating with individual community members who ostensibly have more pull than others in certain communities, using said individual community member as an intermediary and a way to make it seem to the community as if VMP is really committed to solving issues, while being able to separate themselves from the heat of the flames. Do I think that VMP totally ignored what I communicated to them, or are totally ignoring what Enoch is communicating to them? Absolutely not. But I do think this is less "reaching out to individual people because we like to listen to all our customers and really be in touch with our community", and more "We can use this person to get a temperature gauge on the community in response to certain controversies without reallyyy having to go to the community ourselves, and said person will tell the community all about how we're ready to fix things and listen, and since they have such a pull in the community it'll really make us look good". Or maybe I'm just reading too far into things and trying to make connections where there are none, idk
BTW, to go back to my personal experience from the first paragraph: long story short, but the way that that story ends is with me communicating with them for a little while about said issues, offering them advice and insight, inquiring about a career opportunity with them, being turned down, and never hearing from Matt, Amy, or any higher-up at VMP ever again.
