Keith Skinner wrote:
Helping other user's is what I understand the user group is for.
This is a user group for Legacy Users. Not all items discussed are going to be simply a matter of helping each other use the product. Part of any healthy discussion is the open ability to be critical of items one of the users has a concern about and then the freedom to openly discuss that issue as long as it doesn't get out of hand and devolve into a personal argument.
The value of a resource declines heavily when the only welcome discussion is the mundane or positive. Several things have been discussed here in the short time I've been on the list that could have been viewed as negative and outside what you suggest above and yet some of those resulted in, ultimately, positive spirited debate that resulted in changes in thinking for the users and/or the developers.
One thing I am not a personal fan of is paying for a product and feeling compelled to blow praise up the backside of the company I chose to invest in. Investors in any other area do not work that way. They make an investment and, if they're savvy, speak out when they see something that concerns them. A users group is about users concerns, positive, negative, silly, creative or mundane in nature. Limit the discussion down to the above and you heavily limit the effectiveness of the entire concept.
I'm glad that Legacy is here and I'm glad that the company decided to take the time to create it and I hope they stick around doing it for some time. However, I highly suspect that they're in this business to make it work financially. It's not just a labor of love. It's about making a working business out of it. Thus, if the product fails to work financially I have little doubt that the developers would stop producing it and move onto something else. Guess what. I work very much the same way. I made an investment in this product but tomorrow, if something comes along that is, in my view, better and I don't see Legacy matching it soon enough, I will be moving to that product because this is about having the most effective tool for dealing with genealogy. I didn't spend the money to find new friends or join a fan club. I spent the money to have the best, most effective tool in the market and the total effectiveness of the user group is just one of many features that determines my continued interest in the product.
If this comes off as harsh or insulting, that is not my intention. Legacy User Group Etiquette guidelines can be found at: http://www.LegacyFamilyTree.com/Etiquette.asp
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