“I'm basically giving myself a permanent vacation from being BDFL”

Re:“I'm basically giving myself a permanent vacation from be... by wild_preference on Thursday July 12, 2018 @02:28PM (#17517310)

I noticed this over the years on a forum I’ve run for over 10 years. Since ads are pretty much dead for small publishers like me, the forum costs me money. But I run it out of charity.

Nothing sucks the energy out of me more than lurking in my forum and seeing users complain about how little I’ve done for the forum. I don’t want to know how many weekend I’ve spent building features for the forum or arbitrating problems between users.

The thing is that these posts of entitlement are a relatively knew phenomenon on my forum mostly in crescendo over the last four years.

I’m pretty sensitive to it now and it’s easy to spot eveywhere. From people whining that free shit isn’t perfect on HN to gamers complaining that a modder charges for the mod instead of doing it for fun.

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:“I'm basically giving myself a permanent vacation from be... by mehrdadn on Thursday July 12, 2018 @03:00PM (#17517577)

I think part of the explanation might be the explosion of choice [1]. For better or for worse, the more choices there are, the better people expect them to be to stand out. If you make software that solves a critical problem nobody else's does, I doubt people will feel nearly as entitled about it as about a forum or a programming language or whatever.

[1] https://www.ted.com/talks/barry_schwartz_on_the_paradox_of_c...

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:“I'm basically giving myself a permanent vacation from be... by chias on Thursday July 12, 2018 @03:48PM (#17518025)

I'm in an almost identical situation with an online community that I've built and have continued to work on. Back in the day I could hang out there to relax -- these days it's incredibly draining for me to be around.

[ Parent | on HN ]