Tom Insam

Get Satisfaction free account changes

Going forward, our free plans will no longer provide basic moderator tools such as the ability to set official responses and topic status. These will be available as part of our entry-level package and up.

This change by Get Satisfaction seems to suddenly make it much more pointless for me to engage with my own support community. Given that my answers will no longer be considered more important than others, and I can't indicate good answers by other people, doesn't this just turn them in to a forum?

Update

From a conversation elsewhere, "[this] makes sense for GS as a profit-making company, less so as a fluffy happy site".

My point here is, their model was always having lots of free users and some will/might pay. Standard Web 2.0. Probably doesn't work well, I'll admit. But specifically, their model was for your community to organise without you, then you can step in and make it better, then you can pay if it works out and you need better tools. Whereas now your community can organise without you, then if you want to usefully engage you have to pay to sustain/curate this thing that other people have chosen for you.

Maybe your customers should be choosing your support forum for you. But I prefer marco's take on customers..