Board Game Arena

This topic is an attempt to get a response from BGA admins. It is mostly related to the Changes to ELO topic, where players have been asking for a response and action many, many times, to no avail:
https://boardgamearena.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=33785

Providing feedback would be minimal effort, yet BGA admins have failed to provide ANY feedback for OVER A MONTH, even though many different players have been asking for it on a daily basis. Leaving that thread without a reply is utterly disrespectful towards the players.

So my question is this: How can you get a response to a site-wide issue that concerns a huge percentage of all players?

Part of the reason why I am starting a separate thread is that one of my bug reports have been replied to only after I started a thread: https://boardgamearena.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=34587 - maybe this works here as well.

Anyone is welcome to add their voice. The ultimate goal would be to improve the communication from BGA, but for starters, I would consider any reply from BGA staff an achievement.

Edit: * removed to avoid confusion *

h_illes wrote: ↑09 February 2024, 10:03 . After a few more e-mails from me seeking support, the second reply read 'An Admin has responded to the bug report directly' - even though no bug report was involved in the support request at any point, and once I asked for a link to whatever bug report she is referring to, there was no further response. This was more than a week ago.

So you harrassed BGA staff and they decided it wasn't worth communicating with you - complete shock

The forums are full of a minority of players believing they are entitled to BGA answering a non-stop stream of questions, who won't accept any answer. The site staff have clearly made a (very sensible) decision to largely ignore such people.

RobertBr wrote: ↑09 February 2024, 11:24 So you harrassed BGA staff and they decided it wasn't worth communicating with you - complete shock

The forums are full of a minority of players believing they are entitled to BGA answering a non-stop stream of questions, who won't accept any answer. The site staff have clearly made a (very sensible) decision to largely ignore such people.

Uhm... if this was indeed the leading attitude, why even bother having a 'support request' feature? And why respond nonsense instead of not responding at all? I'm guessing if you would get a cryptic answer like that, you would also want clarification.

Anyway, if it was just one player, maybe I could see your point. But what about the main thread, with hundreds of players presenting sensible arguments and asking for a response (which was promised by BGA staff earlier)?

I just don't think there's enough staff. Just over a year ago, they were planning for 9-10 employees in 2023 (https://www.reddit.com/r/boardgames/com ... ?rdt=49132). Given the size of BGA's userbase, this is tiny. How many of those people could possibly be manning these forums/responding to moderation/answering support requests?

BGA punches way above its weight through volunteer developers and translators, and user good will. Premium subscriptions are incredibly cheap if you compare them to other entertainment subscriptions and a large chunk of that money goes out in royalties.

I have a lot of sympathy for the BGA staff. There obviously aren't many of them, the site was built in 2010, so presumably carries a lot of legacy difficulties (as well as incredibly dated UI), and as soon as they attempt to improve anything, they get shouted at. They seem to still be running on a plucky, DIY attitude, and that's hard to maintain in the modern internet world.

Well, if their resources are so limited, they really need to use them better. If they can afford to dedicate the resources necessary to implement a bunch of changes to ELO calculation, they should be able to provide at least a bare minimum of communication when most of those changes turn out to be complete nonsense. Yet they haven't even given a brief response along the lines of 'please be patient, we are currently swamped'. Just nothing. IMO there is no excuse for the lack of communication.

(Not to mention it would be even better if bad ideas were identified and discarded before too much resources are wasted on them.)

And why respond nonsense instead of not responding at all?

h_illes wrote: ↑09 February 2024, 15:53 Just nothing. IMO there is no excuse for the lack of communication.

Which is it? You're upset if you get no response. You're upset if they respond with, effectively, "we aren't going to discuss every decision we make with you personally."

It sounds like you're not going to be happy with any response from BGA other than "You are exactly right and we will implement the changes exactly how you want." In which case I understand them not responding at all if it's not going to be the response you're looking for.

Cile wrote: ↑09 February 2024, 19:05

And why respond nonsense instead of not responding at all?

h_illes wrote: ↑09 February 2024, 15:53 Just nothing. IMO there is no excuse for the lack of communication.

Which is it? You're upset if you get no response. You're upset if they respond with, effectively, "we aren't going to discuss every decision we make with you personally."

It sounds like you're not going to be happy with any response from BGA other than "You are exactly right and we will implement the changes exactly how you want." In which case I understand them not responding at all if it's not going to be the response you're looking for.

It's two different issues. The OP is about no response to hundreds of users. Focus on that. Edit: I removed my other post in order to avoid confusion. It was the smaller issue anyway.