Common… 
No. It’s a brand new thing. Much better than Top Gear or The Grand Tour.
Is that common or come on? 
I see, I actually think that his attitude worked with TG/GT as it was complimented by t’others. If it had been a show with just him and his attitude, I don’t think it would have worked. Clarkson’s Farm eh?
I agree. Still don’t like bullying. Here he starts with his usual schtick and then runs straight into some brick walls that show he might know about cars, but he has a lot to learn about life. For a change he starts to come across as genuine, he starts to care about whether he succeeds or not - something that didn’t matter in Top Gear or the Grand Tour. Car is a total write-off? So what? Doesn’t really matter. This time things matter, and they start to matter for him.
Glad to hear season 2 has already started filming …
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The latter 
INN is the forum for the Xojo misfits, the rebels, the pros & citizen users who (by force) will not be heard on TOF, the ones who do not agree with the MVPolicing policy Xojo maintains. And an ever growing group of Xojo users this appears to be. Xojo is feeding this fire (and this group of users) themselves e.g. by posting that stupid blog post on Trolling . What were they thinking? That such a thing would have a positive effect on disappointed users and silence them? THAT is fueling the fire! Many of their replies and actions seem to be done in sheer panic, without thinking about the consequences twice.
The simple fact that INN needs to exist is mind blowing. I don’t know of any tool that has such a divided user base like Xojo: on one hand it shows a passion for them, on the other hand great frustrations on its execution. I would panic too if suddenly a big percentage of my user base splits off and goes away, talking about alternatives, giving answers to questions about my tool that are (can) not be given on my own forum and are venting their frustrations completely out of my control. But they have created this demon themselves!
Xojo Inc. looks like they are going through some of the steps of grief:
- denial: nothing is wrong, we are doing great! We just ignore the facts and struggle on.
- anger: YOU are all wrong! We will ignore (ban/delete) everything that goes against our own thought pattern.
If so, maybe the next steps (bargaining, depression, acceptance) will get them out of this now seemingly bottomless pit of complains and they finally will start LISTING to their users and take POSITIVE ACTIONS to counter this continuously growing group of dissatisfied users.
I’m pretty sure users like Hal, Norman, Thorsten, Bob… (and maybe even Dave? 
) are still willing to get into an open and honest (no marketing BS!, no lies!) discussion to help leading Xojo back on the track they were a decade ago. But maybe for that to happen, they will first have to get to the acceptance step and that may be to late to stop the avalanche…
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What alternatives do they have if they want to express their view on the situation, without giving “Trolls” a chance to destroy every explanation they give or the views they share?
How can we be so sure it’s like this?
Nobody knows. But is it really important? If I see that the vendor if not speaking truths and the vendor is not following a quality strategy I can live with I have to change my dev environment. For me it is not interesting whether Xojo is alive or not from this point of view.
Interesting for me it is while Xojo has a nice concept, great potential and possibilities. So it would be sad if it would die. But for memory: it is the Company of Mr. Perlman and the other shareholders. So they could change something if it would be their opinion. It is obviously not
MVPolicing policy Xojo maintains
This MVP shit makes me furious, more so than even Xojo Inc. rug sweeping of bugs and censorship. The problems with Xojo Inc. leadership and its growing “technical debt” are not on track to improve in any meaningful way. This means that more Xojo customers will be eventually joining us here by virtue of the piss-poor quality control. MVPs that are touting and maintaining the party line are not only doing the product a monumental disservice, but also working directly against their own business interests on behalf of Geoff.
Any new customers who ultimately use Xojo for professional use will inevitably need to rely on plugin vendors (hobbyists and citizen devs will not easily justify plugin purchases) and will also eventually run directly into Xojo’s showstoppers and all the frustration that entails. This will also eventually lead them to also question the quality of Xojo in the official forum, and this will lead them right here.
The number of paying customers for plugins may be sufficient now, but as this situation plays out long term, their numbers will dwindle as people can see the MVP vendors actively, blindly and willfully supporting the ridiculousness direction that the CEO has chosen, simply to guard their immediate sales and reputation with the boss.
It would have been appropriate for those vendors to simply remain silent, if they did not have the ability or courage to advocate on behalf of their professional customers.
They choose to not only gulp down the official state kool-aid, but also to loudly and publicly proclaim that the emperor’s clothes are magnificent and that we are indeed a bunch of whiny babies with no legitimate concerns. I cant personally see this as anything other than a sell-out and a gigantic stab in the back taken when no action was needed, i.e. and intentional chosen betrayal for those professional customers who are not being properly served by Xojo Inc. For what? Why? Money will eventually disappear as more people discover the true state of the product. For the CEO? Pathetic. One can only speculate as to motive, but the position is clear. They choose to be weaponized by Geoff, and willingly went along (some even eagerly and with great zeal) He has them to do all his dirty work and take all the fire for him (smart move, and diabolical)
This will not end well for them (the so called MVPs) and makes Xojo even more of a lost cause in my opinion. It is only important now to bring this to light so that we can avoid those vendors when they inevitably begin offering services to whatever takes over for Xojo after it has collapsed. When you choose to burn your reputation with the customer over asskissing a company CEO who is clearly in the wrong, there will be no smoothing over that I think.
First of all by not calling some users trolls, simply because they do not agree with Xojos policies. Almost everyone here WANTS solutions, but if NONE are given and dialogue is cut of (or very restricted), of course people can get frustrated. Some of Xojos MVPs also act like in the article: ‘A troll is combative and their intentions are not constructive.’ So should we consider them also as (homegrown) trolls? No. A heated discussion is still a discussion and can be very healthy, especially if BOTH parties do some water in the wine. Such an article does not do that, but wants to provoke.
Open up to your users, let them feel involved in how their tool will evolve (don’t throw killer surprises upon them). Be realistic in what you promise: if something is going to take a very long time to do, let them know and lower expectations. Imagine the big smiles if, on release, you are able to give them something surpassing that expectation and not like now, receive disappointing grins.
I practice that last one on almost every release. The client/boss gets exactly what they ASKED, and then this too! Customer satisfaction guaranteed and self feeling a happy programmer enjoying his work.
One can never be sure as Xojo does not provide us with reliable numbers (400.000 active users, where are they?). But many indicators point into that split off direction: the growing of this forum, the little activity on TOF and lack of general talk about Xojo on the internet, disappearing of major Xojo oriented blogs and abandonment of external Xojo frameworks, the non-engagement of users on social media, …
One can not dismiss this forum is getting more and more traction, mainly because of its open character. There are heated discussions here too: every programmer has his favorite tool, language, OS. None here gets the stamp ‘troll’ because of a disagreement.
If TOF is a marketing tool, that is their good right. But maybe put up a big warning banner ‘This is an ad’ so people can expect typical marketing talk and don’t trust their own companies upon promises.
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It is not only a marketing tool but also their only support channel. I never got E Mail based support (best was: when the Feedback was not working on Linux at all they wrote to the E Mail that feedback is not working on Linux that I shall write a feedback, that’s what I call Troll) and I never really got informations from feedback system. It costs days, weeks, month or is never happened. That is no Support at all. The Forum, correctly signed as their Support Forum, is not a user Forum. It is their Support Home where users are doing the Job of the vendor.
For example: there are hundreds if not thousands of Java Forum Sited. But if I write to the Support of my Java vendor they are answering me to my Mails. Not like Xojo. And there is the problem. Even while it is so that it is their Support base and while the users are providing help if something is burning they need to clean up that environment. Because it is an official Support Forum.
They try to declare it to a users helping users forum. That is not helping if there is no users helping users but the official Support channel. And with the users doing their Support Job they are happy not to pay ten engineers more for Supporting their product.
If they would have done they would not have that amount of problems. That’s not guessing. While the Support can test out and replicate the engineers can write Software. I mean: why are there no engineers of Xojo? Not a real question.
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Depressed ?
not at all
Dismayed or disappointed might be a better description
has hope, a little, that it could change
whats required for it to change is something I dont think will occur
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The Apple developer community is like this. A survey carried out for the Apple v.s. Epic battle said that 40% of the Apple Developer Community is dissatisfied with Apple.
Reputational damage IS a thing
In this kind of survey research there’s frequency and intensity. One wonders whether there’s a difference in intensity?
I got depressed over all this, but I’m better now. 
Xojo rocks at first but then when you start to dig deep it falls apart. So you dig in and deploy a workaround. You skip features due to bugs.
I gotta say Brock saved my sanity with his work around to embed container in listbox cells: What can I embed within a WebListBox? - #18 by Brock_Nash - Web - Xojo Programming Forum
Anyway I feel better using PHP. It just works. I don’t have to wait for a list of show stopping bug fixes. And the language is very stable.
I wonder how many companies like Epic fund such tests and maybe get desired answers by preselecting who they ask.
Please don’t confuse moderators with MVP. I am not a moderator, but MVP.
I think Xojo Inc. listened and changes course in a favorable direction. 2021r2 will be a bug fix release. And be sure I will remind them to prioritize bug fixes.
Christian,
You have long history of relentlessly promoting your products and advocating for them … and IIRC over the years I have seen you more than once suggest if they do other things besides add features that would complete with your plugins… even if not said with those exact words…
To me that is one of the potential issues/conflict of interests that having the “community” be represented by a major plugin developer potentially brings (besides trying to increase sales of Xojo no matter what, to increase sales of their products)…
As i said before there should be a mutually beneficial relationship between major plugins vendors and Xojo, but it should be a different one from what my understanding of what an MVP is supposed to be.
That is just my option of course.
-Karen
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I believe that you think in a wrong way Christian. Yes, you are not a moderator but MVP. and on the same side you where then one to ask to close the thread and make it unlisted. That people can see, was the beginning of the end of that thread: they closed immediately. There is no difference between MVP and Moderator in the eyes of the people. You are one of the “club of Rome” which is taking care that stuffs getting closed and so on. It is a normal reaction of thinking that people also think that there I also an influence of the MVP to the company. And on the other Side: you are the most important Plugin Vendor. And the people believe that, as MVP and vendor, your word has a higher weight. And so maybe they are not realizing that you have not the position they believe. They still believe.