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I knew what I posted would not be universally accepted. That's OK. I'll offer a few other observations, then, if I may. (I'll list a few things off the top of my head.)
First, Markus has posted a few times on the beta board since Eugene made his original post. I can't believe he didn't see the thread title, which begins "Markus: Please give . . ." It's not as if Eugene's post got pushed to the second page.
Second, I have seen Markus completely ignore other threads. I think I even started a couple of threads myself during beta testing last year, which began: "PING: Markus." To one, he never responded. To another, he responded, IIRC, only after we pleaded with him in another thread.
Third, he has initiated discussions only to drop completely out of the conversation after a post or two. It has the effect of making us think he's interested in our feedback. So, we eagerly respond. But then he does not interact with us again. Once, as I recall, he solicited feature requests for the first (or was it the second?) patch. The predictable frenzy ensued, each person grasping at the chance to make his requests known. The thread ran several pages. Never heard back from Markus again. Did he consider our requests? Who knows? I rather doubt it.
Fourth, he sometimes promises (or hints strongly) that he will address certain issues. Months later, nothing is done. I can remember Eugene, I, and others -- in the meantime -- pleaded with Markus to address some PbP issues. I think we tried every trick in the book to get his attention. Even groveling. It was like pulling teeth to get Markus to respond. Case in point: Markus promised on the General Discussion board (and more than once) that he would enhance the PbP in OOTP9. That was good news for the text team, or so we thought. We had design plans in place BEFORE beta testing even began. What happened? Nothing. Markus did nothing with the PbP before the OOTP9 release. He then promised to get to it for the first patch. Nope. Finally, when he hinted that the final patch (at the time) would soon be released, we had to beg him to do something about the PbP. It was as if his earlier promises -- made publicly -- meant nothing. Fortunately, Markus found a couple of hours to deal with the PbP issues.
Fifth, Markus -- from time to time -- will admit he does not communicate with us enough. He says he'll try to do better. For a little while, he will. Then it's back to the same old thing.
I have tried over the years to give Markus the benefit of the doubt. I have tried to empathize with his predicament. But after a while I can only conclude that, really, he doesn't give a d***, as much as we'd like to believe otherwise.
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