You didn't offend that much, Ibwebb. I'm sorry we got off on the wrong foot. Look, I'm making the following points, generally, not directed at you personally. And, everybody please understand that I think GOTD is great, but I also think that GOTD sometimes makes it hard on themselves.
1. If e-mail doesn't work, fix or dump it. Then there's no concerns about it. It's unrealistic to expect new visitors to assume that the e-mail service is going to be erratic. It's more than logical to assume that if GOTD offers an e-mail notification service then it's going to be timely. I for one, have no ambitions to shoot myself in the foot. By the same token, if you're going to have a blog to notify patrons of important matters, you ought to use it. Don't wait till one week after you failed to post a game to post you're not going to have a game for awhile. And why start a forum (or, to a lesser extent, a comment section) with a principal purpose of getting feedback and then make it a big mystery whether you're engaged with it at all? The most feedback we get here is if Bubby or Whiterabbit enlightens us, and that's often after they've had to zip off a feedback message to the staff to find out what's going on.
2. Giving away free software doesn't answer all complaints. Whether anyone likes saying it or not, GOTD does get paid, is a professional endeavor, and therefore asking for professional competency just isn't a sign that you're ungrateful. No I'm not entitled to anything free, nor are developers entitled to exposure to me just because they want it. They need to do something to make themselves stand out from the crowd, and THAT, not charity is the real reason we get free software. I'm fine with the system myself, but I completely understand those newbies who get frustrated and telling them they should be quiet and be thankful just isn't going to, as the Dale Carnegie motto goes, "make friends and influence people".
3. I sometimes think GOTD are the ungrateful ones, at least regarding this forum, though I'm not personally offended. We forget that we in this forum often run interference for GOTD and if we weren't here to help a lot of folks they're would be a lot more deserting the project. After all, our solutions, like using the RSS feed, aren't solutions, they're workarounds. In other words, ways to make due with something that isn't working the way it should, often the way it was promised to work. To exaggerate, why should I have to make lemons with lemonade when I was promised filet mignon? I would CERTAINLY not include myself, but there are a few members of the forum that more than earn their free software, no matter how you look at it.
Finally, my point about GOTD can be summed up this way: it doesn't matter whether I b**tch or somebody else b**thces about me b**thching. These kind of inconsistencies don't hurt me or my critics, they hurt GOTD. And I think they might even hurt it just as much or more than the idiotic, negative feedback we get over in comments from that handful of trolls that DO need to be told to "sit down and shut up, you ingrates", though it wouldn't do any good. I think these glitches can drive away downloaders, just like all that "noise" can drive away developers.
My point on legitimate new visitors asking questions is: telling them that they should be grateful with free software or wondering why they haven't thought of using a workaround, like downloading from the a foreign language site when the server's overloaded, JUST ISN'T FAIR.
Again, no offense intended, Ibwebb. You're right, not being a big gamer, I've been insulated from wasting money on a game that doesn't live up to it's hype. But my disagreement with certain things that are kind of par for the course here are the kind of things I mean when I say there are certain things we don't like to talk about here. Sorry for the lecture, but the good news is: that's the whole laundry list, so you probably won't here much more from me on this. Every cloud has a silver lining.
