What's your guiding question?
Posted on Jun 6th, 2008
by 
Gemstar
Gemstar
This is in Response to the Questions and Reflections for June 06, 2008:
If it ain't broke - don't try to friggin' fix it!!!
Like Zaadz - nothing was broke - it worked great - it was beautiful, friendly and growing nicely, and the people pictured in the icons on the "promo page" actually showed up once in a while, at least, not 400 to 600 days ago!!! So Brian went and sold it, and the "new" owners couldn't wait to make renovations. And, IMHO, things have gone downhill from there! :(
And so we have yet another (as my friend, Sol put it) "SNAFU" with the "Pro" pages now gone. Back in February, I took my own ZPro page down, and saved the icons of the people who had signed up to Gemstars Dynamic World on my hard drive, and I suppose that was my way of avoiding the disaster I felt was coming. Once I am settled with my recent move, I will be contacting each of those individuals to gauge interest in joining me on my own forum - off Gaia - where we are not subject to so much dang "fixing things up" all the time. Instead of creating "community", I think this one move alone has come pretty close to destroying any concept of "conscious capitalism" that was originally enshrined in Zaadz. We now get plenty of "capitalism" with the large (and most of the time, flickeringly annoying) banner of adverts at the top and more at the bottom (I get a FULL computer screen of ONLY adverts at the bottom of every "group" page!). And if you're Canadian, or perhaps non-American, you cannot even buy into the non-advert version if you don't have an American credit card! Someone must have had a "PH&d of BS" in figuring out that one!!! No "world-view" there!
In the meantime, there ARE many things here that could be working a whole heck of a lot better, at least for some people (I seem to be OK at the moment, but then again, I'm hardly here due to my attempts now at getting unpacked and finding things in the rubble pile that will eventually be my living/dining room). ;) So why not concentrate on those things instead of trying to add every stupid widget conceivable to clutter up the profile page. Speaking of which, that seems to be the biggest headache for many now - with all those extra little flag thingys! And I still don't see much, if anything, by way of notice to members about the roll-out (or destruction of, in the case of the Pro pages) features.
By the way, I think $20.00 per month is a rip-off for the "new" Gaia Pro pages. Five dollars would have been reasonable, for the features here. I am currently hosted on another site for $65.00 for 18 months - with a monthly click-in rate on the network (and good click-in, with a counter, on my "page") of over 85,000. Bonus is I can have a newsletter, I can submit to several of the sites ongoing by-weekly newsletters for advertising, and I will have a place to feature my music, once I get that aspect rolled out. There are other features as well - those are the highlights! If you want to know where, contact me.
I'm still wondering why I even bother to show up here!!! Must like banging my head against a brick wall or something that silly. :)
Like Zaadz - nothing was broke - it worked great - it was beautiful, friendly and growing nicely, and the people pictured in the icons on the "promo page" actually showed up once in a while, at least, not 400 to 600 days ago!!! So Brian went and sold it, and the "new" owners couldn't wait to make renovations. And, IMHO, things have gone downhill from there! :(
And so we have yet another (as my friend, Sol put it) "SNAFU" with the "Pro" pages now gone. Back in February, I took my own ZPro page down, and saved the icons of the people who had signed up to Gemstars Dynamic World on my hard drive, and I suppose that was my way of avoiding the disaster I felt was coming. Once I am settled with my recent move, I will be contacting each of those individuals to gauge interest in joining me on my own forum - off Gaia - where we are not subject to so much dang "fixing things up" all the time. Instead of creating "community", I think this one move alone has come pretty close to destroying any concept of "conscious capitalism" that was originally enshrined in Zaadz. We now get plenty of "capitalism" with the large (and most of the time, flickeringly annoying) banner of adverts at the top and more at the bottom (I get a FULL computer screen of ONLY adverts at the bottom of every "group" page!). And if you're Canadian, or perhaps non-American, you cannot even buy into the non-advert version if you don't have an American credit card! Someone must have had a "PH&d of BS" in figuring out that one!!! No "world-view" there!
In the meantime, there ARE many things here that could be working a whole heck of a lot better, at least for some people (I seem to be OK at the moment, but then again, I'm hardly here due to my attempts now at getting unpacked and finding things in the rubble pile that will eventually be my living/dining room). ;) So why not concentrate on those things instead of trying to add every stupid widget conceivable to clutter up the profile page. Speaking of which, that seems to be the biggest headache for many now - with all those extra little flag thingys! And I still don't see much, if anything, by way of notice to members about the roll-out (or destruction of, in the case of the Pro pages) features.
By the way, I think $20.00 per month is a rip-off for the "new" Gaia Pro pages. Five dollars would have been reasonable, for the features here. I am currently hosted on another site for $65.00 for 18 months - with a monthly click-in rate on the network (and good click-in, with a counter, on my "page") of over 85,000. Bonus is I can have a newsletter, I can submit to several of the sites ongoing by-weekly newsletters for advertising, and I will have a place to feature my music, once I get that aspect rolled out. There are other features as well - those are the highlights! If you want to know where, contact me.
I'm still wondering why I even bother to show up here!!! Must like banging my head against a brick wall or something that silly. :)
~~^v^~~
Access: Public
fixing
August 2008 