dave said:I'll be changing the banner soon. It is very big, primarily because I wanted original visitors to Garden.org to see the name that is familiar to them.
Keep in mind here that there are 3 times more people who go to NGA's site prior to this merge, then there were ATP members. They are also having to adjust to a completely different site than what they were used to. Seeing "National Gardening Association" in a huge font on the top of the page provides some comfort and continuity to them.
Eventually I think we'll remove that and just have the circle logo and maybe a smaller "Garden.org". But I want to leave it as it is for a few days at least.
Whether it was the intent or not, that single change says (straight up - to me at least), "we're much less interested in the crowd-sourcing that got us here than we are the corporatization of the direction."
Little things matter.
One of the first rules of just about anything is, "if it's free, you're the product - not the customer". Crowd-sourced things seem to occasionally be the exception to that. Decrementing even the sense of that leaves me skeptical. Am I wrong in feeling the pendulum moving toward the product-ization of ATP, its members, and the stuff that they've freely contributed (under a set of expectations that's perhaps different now...or will be more mercenary soon)?
Really? Really? That is all I can say, I guess as a "product"...someone is actually thinking about us.
I can't believe people who come to this site for free, and benefit so much from it are so fast to jump ship. I just can't imagine the hurt such a post would cause someone who has spent so much time and trouble trying to make this a great garding site, and as far as I can see is only going to make it better.
