This is one of those things that I might have seen the advantages of, but I question if the window of opportunity may have already closed. I feel that there is already this huge wall, and no trust on either side. I feel that Pinpics staff doesn't trust that our opinions and concerns are genuine, and all the noise is just because we're being egged on by people who wish Pinpics ill will. Or that we expect too much, or we're just haters. Meanwhile, I feel like users keep being told to "just wait" or "we don't understand" but we're never given the opportunity to understand because we're told so very little, or until it's too late. And so patience and loyalty got used up months ago.
For instance, the recent uproar over grading could have been mostly mitigated if users had first been given what we can find on other grading sites; everything is spelled out in detail. It would have been easier to weed out the people that are just looking for trouble, if people could have read for themselves why things get graded the way they do. Sure, there may be people who just want to cause trouble, but most people are legitimately confused and therefore concerned. But they are just lumped in with the troublemakers, and their concerns aren't really answered, because "we're still working on getting the grading details ready." It's backwards, so of course there is going to be friction. Expect that, own that, don't go blaming users because you failed to give them what all the other grading companies do. Pinpics always wants the benefit of the doubt, but no business website gets that (if you don't want to be a business website, don't charge for premium services, don't offer grading services, etc.)
I've started to see more of the "if you knew them" but the reality is most of us don't know them, and will never know them. We can only go by what they tell us and post on their websites/forums. We can't read their minds or intentions. And if it's incomplete, people's imaginations will go crazy. Incompleteness, in itself, gives the appearance of not really caring, or not really thinking about something in the first place, or not being prepared or yes, there being something to hide. If you don't want to give those impressions, then you have to do more than offer "just wait."
Also, many of the website issues could have been avoided if users were more involved in the process. They eliminated so many of the things that I personally used a lot, or things that don't scale well if you have a collection as large as mine, that even if the basics get sorted out, I'm not sure how useful this new interface is going to be for me. An extended beta process, and regular updates on what things would look like could have gone a long way to revealing differences between what users expect, and what the people in charge thought were unnecessarily. Then things could have taken as long as it needed, users would have seen there is progress, had time to become comfortable with the differences and felt valued, and it wouldn't be this crisis situation that it is. But because they weren't interested or didn't think user input was needed, how can I even start to believe that NOW it is? I feel like someone decided that "they know best," so that's how things will be, everyone else be damned. And that there aren't enough people involved with the technical know-how to have noticed things in the first place and to fix things now. And I feel like decorators tried to do the work of architects and engineers (and it worked as well as if a room decorator was responsible for making sure a building didn't fall down), and so they weren't able to give the programmers the right instructions.
So I think any Q&A would just result in both sides just talking past each other again. We might think it will help us feel better, but it will mostly just provide another example to illuminate the gap between where users are and where Pinpics ownership is.
