Handful of dedicated users

[behzad]

I was reading on another thread that this forum is not run by xara admin (people assigned from xara/paid by xara). That this forum is run by dedicated hardworking individuals who have a life of their own but yet they contribute to new users and pretty much keep xara alive.

Is this correct? If so I am totally shocked!!! Had it not been for people like Gary, Egg, Acorn and few others, the product itself would not have a chance of surviving. This community is the living life blood of Xara. Please correct me if I am wrong.

Not a happy day for me, if this is true, or have I been living in a cave for the past few decades?

[Acorn]

I was reading on another thread that this forum is not run by xara admin (people assigned from xara/paid by xara). That this forum is run by dedicated hardworking individuals who have a life of their own but yet they contribute to new users and pretty much keep xara alive.
Is this correct? If so I am totally shocked!!! Had it not been for people like Gary, Egg, Acorn and few others, the product itself would not have a chance of surviving. This community is the living life blood of Xara. Please correct me if I am wrong.
Not a happy day for me, if this is true, or have I been living in a cave for the past few decades?

Talkgraphics is owned by Xara and hosted by Xara. So Xara has a person keeping the machines on-line. Moderators and "dedicated" contributors are not Xara staff, as far as I know. There are a few members who are Xara staff and a couple who have total control over the Threads and Post content but rarely intervene. I think we have one controller who is on a retainer.

We have no insights other than experience. My full time work happens to be IT business analyst with a Masters in design of information systems from 1990 but for 16 years before that mending anything, large, small and invisible.

Acorn

[ss-kalm]

As far as I understand it, except for the personnel who's tag says "Xara Staff Member" or "Administrator" EVERYONE else is a forum member/user. Some like Acorn etc. have taken on responsible roles to keep the forum running smoothly, but have NO affiliation with Xara.

[wizard509]

As far as I understand it, except for the personnel who's tag says "Xara Staff Member" or "Administrator" EVERYONE else is a forum member/user. Some like Acorn etc. have taken on responsible roles to keep the forum running smoothly, but have NO affiliation with Xara.

Quite right!

[behzad]

So xara should be grateful to you guys. They should also listen more attentively to you all when you make recommendations and report bugs etc... But from hanging around here for the past decade, I do not see much backup and support from the mother ship.

[webmaster]

So xara should be grateful to you guys. They should also listen more attentively to you all when you make recommendations and report bugs etc... But from hanging around here for the past decade, I do not see much backup and support from the mother ship.

We are extremely grateful to all the volunteer moderators and contributors who have stepped up over the years to give encouragement and support to other members of the TG community, please don’t think otherwise.

As for listening to recommendations and bug reports, that is more complicated! Moderators are often beta testers as well, and we wouldn’t run a beta program if we didn’t intend to take the feedback seriously. We also pay attention to anything suggested in Dear Xara, even though we don’t discuss those suggestions in thread. But what you have to bear in mind is that there are many owners of Xara products and I bet if you asked every one of them to nominate their Top 10 feature requests you wouldn’t get 2 complete matches. And that means many individuals are going to be disappointed because at least some and possibly all of their personal top requests aren’t implemented.

Interestingly the last time that Frances organized a TG poll on the top 10 feature requests from Dear Xara, the top 3 choices were Open Type, Table support and text in shapes – all of which have been delivered in the last year or so, and all are under further development. This might surprise you, since you’ve read the feedback on recent updates in TalkGraphics and clearly come away with the impression that we’re not listening. But the fact is it’s human nature to notice and mention the disappointments, especially if the features delivered are of no interest to you personally and it's not humanly possible for us to deliver everything to everyone! Finally I have to mention that of course we also have to take account of industry developments, our own strategic goals and hopefully add in some of our own innovations (that maybe no-one has asked for) too. If we didn’t we wouldn’t still be here after all these years.

Kate Moir (@ Xara!)