Relative Something

I have been using WordPress.com to host my blog from the time I started it in 2009, publishing one post per day from the beginning. Long-time readers will note that I make very few changes to the appearance of my blog. I chose a theme I liked, and I have stayed with it. I have been focusing my energy on content, not the vessel, which is/was supposed to be the advantage of WordPress.com. Now it appears that a change has been forced upon me.

Yesterday was an interesting day for me, as I monitored the forum activity on the topic of the recent WordPress update to the image editing option. I am not alone in my grief and frustration over the loss of control. Plenty of other people were struck with the same brutal discovery, a fair number of them trying to maintain multiple blogs and/or business blogs. All of us bewailing the unexpected and unwelcome loss of features.

At this point, the limited response from WordPress representatives has been distant, somewhat evasive, and pretty unsympathetic. It doesn’t make any sense to me.

It is like someone turning off a light while you are working, and you holler, “Excuse me, I was using that!”

Would you be satisfied with this response? “Well, we made some improvements in the way you can open and close the curtains. It is much easier now. You don’t have to walk over to the end of the window any more. Now you can just grab the curtains anywhere and move them. Many people have worked long and hard on this change. It may take some time to get used to this new way of doing things, but we’re confident you will enjoy it after you become used to it. We welcome constructive feedback, but we will not be going back to the old way of doing things, so if you have something constructive to offer, we will seriously consider it for future versions.”

“Um, what about the light I was using? Could you please turn it back on?”

From WordPress “Happiness Engineers” [yes, that is how some of the staff responders are labeled in the forums], the response we are getting to the equivalent question we are asking has been mostly silence.

Hmmm. What is up with that?