All aboard? (Feedback and General Suggestions for dooyoo)

Member Name: fruitcake

Product:	Feedback and General Suggestions for dooyoo
Date:	24/10/01 (111 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Taking the attitude that ‘we’re all in the same boat’ ought to be of help in assisting the site to ride out any perceived ‘storms’.

Disadvantages: Knocking great big holes in said boat is the quickest way to see it sink.

How would I like to see dooyoo improved? By all of us - whatever the reasons for our involvement with the site - realising that we’re in pursuit of a common goal and that we’re all in a position to help achieve it. While much of what follows might not seem to fit the ‘Feedback and general suggestions for dooyoo’ tag - it depends how you define ‘dooyoo’, and for me it’s always been the sum of the efforts of the people associated with it, management and members - in my view we *all* have a role to play.

It’s no secret that I don’t doo the yoo thing for the money, more for the satisfaction of letting the words out to play and discovering others far more gifted in these matters than I am, or having just as much fun. This is not to say that the money is of no consequence; it’s always been made very welcome as it passes through my bank account on a flying visit – ‘that money talks I can’t deny, I heard it once, it said ‘Goodbye’ etc – just that other attractions with more staying power are my main reasons for being here.

So why is the dooyoo payment rate of interest to me now? Quite frankly, it isn’t – no more so than usual, anyway. What *has* been bothering me is the reaction by a few other members to the recent cuts in payment – a reaction that (it seems to me) will prove counter-productive in the long run.

Opinions of frenzied panic have been written in order to give vent to the fury felt by those who feel their efforts are about to be undervalued, and comments of agreement posted on these Ops by other users – some of who openly admit they’re only doing so in an effort to get their names about and generate more reads in the hope of garnering as many 5p’s as possible before the cuts come into force. Up to a point, I can understand this (though not the antagonism and aggression that in many cases comes with it), b
ut see it instead as the best way to grab the dooyoo payment rate by the neck and strangle it.

Leaving aside for the moment the numbers who some have predicted will be tempted to take a look at dooyoo as Ciao gasps what could well be its dying breaths, new ‘net addicts are appearing on the scene all the time. Imagine the one who logs on one day to discover as the rest of us did that it’s possible to write for reward (money/ the opportunity to meet with like-minded people/ whatever). Imagine this person finding a site where the writers seethe with dissatisfaction. Imagine this person departing. That was a potential reader you’ve just said goodbye to, one of *your* potential readers, and there’ll be plenty more heading off in the same direction.

Imagine now that the same person remembers dooyoo as s/he encounters the almost universal ‘My ISP is about as much use as a boil-in-the-bag lettuce’ situation for the first time. Imagine that this person browses the categories from a consumer point of view in order to find another one, and discovers that because so many potential members have been deterred from joining for the same reasons s/he has, little of the information is current. It’s ‘goodbye’ again, and almost certainly for the very last time.

Now imagine the advertiser contemplating doing business with dooyoo at this point. No, best not. Around now, you may be thinking that even John Lennon never expected this much ‘imagining’ of you and he made a career of it, but the point I am trying to make at such laborious length (it’s a while since the words got let out to play and they all want in on the act now) is that this is your shop window, and displaying your grievances in it alongside your other offerings is not only unlikely to enhance your prospects of making a ‘sale’, but liable to see the entire shop go to the wall too.

Still imagining (it’
;s OK, I shan’t expect you to do it again), I am now suggesting that you put a lid on your moans and groans, smile sweetly and serve the public. I am also asking you to believe that I’d turn down free beer. That’s right – hell would freeze over before either of these things actually happened. We *can* make our thoughts known to the staff of dooyoo - by mailing them at the contact addresses readily available on the site - and we can make our thoughts known to each other by contributing (without animosity) to one of the dooyoo forums, currently the only viable one being OpCom (‘The Opinionated Community’), realistically speaking.

But it’s not just about the readers and writers, is it? As the title of this Op and the first paragraph imply, we’re all in this together, and we’re not going to be able to build on what we’ve got and improve it unless dooyoo can remember that ideally *everyone* should be informed of changes at the same time, and not just those of us who are participants on the forums. To do otherwise simply creates another division when we should all be pulling together, though I believe that for those whose interest in dooyoo extends beyond membership of the site, OpCom is a valuable vehicle for (civilized) discussion of such issues.

It should be clear by now that I think dooyoo could be improved most of all by the attitudes of some of the people that are a part of it (at its best that sounds contentious, boiled down to half a sentence - it’s not intended to, however it’s taken), but I also wouldn’t complain if I were one day to see a commentary page that could be read downwards and still make sense, a way of putting an emphasis on our words that means we don’t have to resort to *asterisks*, and an end to the peculiar quirk that leaves Opinions and commentaries cut and pasted from certain versions of Microsoft Word with all their apostrophes and quotes conv
erted to question marks. I?m not difficult to please, really…

If you’ve yet to hear about the new payment structure, or want to know more about the reasons behind it, there’s a thread entitled … wait for it … ‘New Payment Structure’ (surprising, eh..?) on the ‘Dooyoo Community’ forum at OpCom (http://dooyoo.community.everyone.net/community/sc ripts/directory.pl will take you directly to the forums). If you don’t, no sweat; dooyoo members, dooyoo staff, OpCommers, non-OpCommers – our interests in the site come in various degrees and that’s how it ought to be. However, if we want to be getting the same things or more from it a few months down the line, the way I see things, it wouldn’t hurt to realise that at the end of the day, we’re all aboard the same boat.

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