The Daring Fireball Non-Experience

This post is kind of a personal customer-service gripe, so feel free to skip it.

_Update_: Within an hour of posting this, I got an email renewing my DF membership and a note from John. Apparently the t-shirt gnomes are in the process of being re-engineered (I’m paraphrasing) and improved models will soon be managing his t-shirt delivery needs. Thanks to John for his quick response.

John Gruber writes “Daring Fireball”:http://www.daringfireball.net, a blog focused on Apple Computer — sorry, Apple, Inc — in particular and internet stuff and the computing industry in general. He’s pretty good. I mean that, in comparison to the competition, he’s well-informed, he can write, and he has an intelligent point of view. You can “become a member”:http://daringfireball.net/members/ by donating some money or buying a t-shirt. Since April or May of 2006 writing for Daring Fireball has been Gruber’s main job.

Gruber often writes about the relationship between software developers (or “content providers” like himself) and their users (or readers). He “makes”:http://daringfireball.net/2006/05/goal a “big”:http://daringfireball.net/2004/06/membership_faq “deal”:http://daringfireball.net/2004/06/something_daring “about”:http://daringfireball.net/2006/05/goal this, and he usually makes sense. So as a long-time reader, just before the New Year I ponied up the $29 to buy a membership and t-shirt. Result: nada.

At first there wasn’t even any email confirmation of the sale or the membership key (to his full RSS feeds) that comes with it. So after waiting a while I emailed him. Members are encouraged to contact support@daringfireball.net if there are any problems. No response was forthcoming. Then I waited a bit more and sent a second email. Still nothing. After Googling around a bit I found a “post of his”:http://daringfireball.net/2005/10/membership_notes from October of 2005 saying that membership confirmation emails often end up in Gmails spam folder. I looked and there it was.

So that was the first bit sorted out. A note on DF’s “membership sign-up page”:http://daringfireball.net/members/join would have pre-empted this problem. Instead, in the great fuck-you tradition of bad user experience that Gruber himself tirelessly critiques, people who sign up are apparently expected to find this out for themselves.

Then it was just a question of waiting for the t-shirt to arrive. Seeing as DF is Gruber’s main gig, I figured it wouldn’t take too long — a couple of weeks, maybe. Presumably he has a closet full of them and just needs to put them in the mail. I thought maybe he’d do it once a fortnight or something. As you’ll have guessed by now, I’m still waiting. It’s getting on for two months, which worse than the “Please allow six weeks for shipping and handling” clause I remember accompanied anything I signed up for by post when I was a kid. I suppose I could keep emailing him once a week until he responded one way or the other, but I don’t think Gruber himself would see that as a reasonable course of action if he were on the same end of a similar transaction.

I’m wasting your time with this post because, to be honest, I’m disappointed in Gruber. (And secondarily because he might read this and send me the goddamn shirt.) He seems like a good guy. He has lots of credibility on the topic of mac nerdery. And the one of the major components of his identity as a commentator is stuff at the intersection of user experience, good design, not screwing your customers, and generally not taking people for granted. As he “says himself”:http://daringfireball.net/2003/07/independent_days

My goal for Daring Fireball is not to attract the largest possible audience. Rather, I’m trying to attract the smartest possible audience.

When you create anything for public consumption, you must make assumptions regarding the audience. Regarding you, courteous reader of Daring Fireball, I assume the following. You are intelligent. You appreciate good design and careful writing. You use a modern web browser that supports reasonably established web standards. Your time is valuable. …

And so the question as to why I want to make money from Daring Fireball is backward. I say, why not? If I printed a book, you’d expect me to sell copies. Same if I were in a band and made my own CD, or if I produced a movie on DVD. But so why do so many people assume that with web sites, “independent” need be synonymous with “volunteer”?

On the one hand, it’s only a t-shirt. On the other, the main reason I signed up was that I was convinced by an argument Gruber himself was making about why membership was a good idea, and I thought he’d be the kind of guy who’d live up to his own standards. Oh well. Now I’m wondering whether a three or four month delay is par for the course for anyone who signs up as a member. Anyone?