Stardock's relationship with Neowin and its criticizers

[Berserk87]

(Y) awesome, lotta stuff i didnt know before.

what was this 03' incident? :huh:

[metallithrax]

I knew that Stardock owned part of Neowin, but it never bothered me (why should it?), and only had 1 minor run in with Frogboy.

I don't have a problem with their products (or involvement with Neowin), but only use Object Dock at the moment. I have used Windowblinds for a few years but currently don't.

A lot of companies need help from others, and Neowin is obviously no different.

Keep up the good work I say.

[tomwarren Veteran]

The 03 incident was http://www.news.com/2100-1025-991624.html

As for Stardock, I was very wary of this at the beginning before the discussions etc as I was worried that Stardock would want to push their products and force un-necessary advertising. I was dead against this along with some other senior staff members. However to my surprise they absolutely have not. We have the same amount of Stardock related news now as we used to before the investment. Brads involvement and investment has allowed us to grow the site and keep it stable and always online (Y)

[AgEnTsMiTh]

The only time you will see Brad ever get upset at a member on neowin is when said member attacks stardock products with nothing to back up there bitching or they set out to bash stardock at every chance they get. This would **** you off as well if you took something you made at home back in the day and turned it into something that it is today. The guy is talented business man as well as developer. The bitchers only wish they were even 1% as good at business as this man is. He has helped neowin in more ways then any of you know and I am thankful for his support.

[Guest]

I'm surprised that pretty much nobody knows about this.. :s. I've been aware of the affiliation as long as I can remember.

[markwolfe Veteran]

...

As for Stardock, I was very wary of this at the beginning before the discussions etc as I was worried that Stardock would want to push their products and force un-necessary advertising. I was dead against this along with some other senior staff members. However to my surprise they absolutely have not.

...

Agreed. I have noticed no change in Stardock items in the news and what-not. Their products are very much at the core of what a significant group of Neowin members enjoy doing: customizing their Windows installs. Of course there will be a lot of interest (and news) about their product. It does seem that a small but vociferous portion of the community here has some sort of hatred, and the feel compelled to spread that crap when ever an opportunity arises. (N) I guess there are Apple-haters, Linux-haters, Sony-haters and such. This is just another sub-group of negative members: Stardock haters. None of them promote a positive community.

[SMELTN]

wow I never knew, and probably wouldn't have if it wasn't for this post.

[Rudy]

I personally don't care who is backing the site as long as it stays as good as it is. From what I can see the investment was very good for Neowin, it gave the community the stability it needed (it was annoying to be bouncing from different hosting service)

[kl33per]

I have to say, having been a reader of Neowin long before I signed up, the quality of the website, it's infrastructure (i.e. servers), and it's user base is far better than when I started reading news here. It's disappointing that people give Brad Wardell and/or Stardock a hard time for no good reason. I can't say I'm a huge fan of Stardock's products, but I don't giving them grief about it, and I certainly recognize the vast number of people who are interested in Windows customization, of which Stardock is a (the) leading developer of software in that category.

I think it's safe to say that without Stardock lending a helping hand when they did, Neowin would not exist as it does today.

[Corris Veteran]

The only problem I have with brad/stardock is the loss of the Poweruser.tv Podcast. :p

I loved it so, and even got a mentioned a few times. :(

But alas, it died, and seems the Neowin Newscast has gone the same way, why do the Podcasts I love die! :cry:

But besides that, what is the problem with Stardock?

If it helps, and has helped the community since 2005 then I'm all for it.

Its not like they have put their advertising everywhere or are constantly spamming there own products on Neowin.

[Glowstick]

I havent had any dealings with the guy personally, but if what you say is true, then i can understand people being upset by him :s

I don't have any problems with someone getting a little hot. If said person however wields a ban stick, things might however get uneasy. If it already has or not, who knows. Administration always pretends happy sunshine time when approached about topics like this. Maybe someone else had to take a fall tho, the day markjensen got told to shut up and get lost, we'll never know.

No, no, no... My story is just one single incident. I haven't had any other problems at all, so I don't see a pattern of one.

I haven't said that it was more than some bad words once in a lifetime. But I've kept running into his antics in the comment sections of the frontpage (apparently the subforums he and I use don't intersect, I guess that's better for the status of my account) more often than I'd expect for someone with a ban hammer and this site's rather strict set of rules. Regular members would catch warnings like a car insects on the highway in the middle of a hot summer for spreading vitriol in the same way. Trust me, I know.

It does seem that a small but vociferous portion of the community here has some sort of hatred, and the feel compelled to spread that crap when ever an opportunity arises.

You call it hate, others call it "calling someone out". I don't know what sort of PMs have been flying around to cause the creation of this thread, but now that it's there, people may as well be allowed to air some grievances.

[Steve Gosselin]

But besides that, what is the problem with Stardock?

Hateful posts in many topics of WindowBlinds forum + troll/bash in all related news (Main news + Softwares news). :pinch:

[Frogboy Administrators]

Hi guys!

Here's a brief history of how things came to be.

I've been part of Neowin since about the beginning (2001). Within a few months of being active, Steve asked me if I'd like to be part of the staff as a moderator. Eventually, I became a news moderator for the site.

When I became part of the staff, I became familiar with the challenges and issues that Neowin faced. Neowin's popularity continued to grow and grow but the site wasn't really in a position to support its own success. One lawsuit or a few months of non-payment from advertisers or any number of other things and that would have been the end. Steve and Marcel were volunteering their spare time on the site which obviously took away from their free time.

After talking about it at length, we came up with a solution. Neowin LLC. So in 2005, we created Neowin LLC with Stardock being a minority owner of it. Stardock would provide investment capital and access to its infrastructure so that Steve could work full time on the site, have its own servers, control its own hosting destiny, have access to legal and accounting help, and be able to host events and pay for staff to attend various events.

In the 3+ years since we've done this, Neowin's popularity has continued to grow and overall it's been a great success.

Now, some people on the site don't like me. There are many different reasons for this. Probably the biggest reason is that I don't like like a CEO is expected to. If you took the content of my posts and made them by someone else, they wouldn't likely be a big deal. But because they're from me, they tend to get more scrutiny.

For instance, I'll get into discussions on cars, politics, OS wars, gadgets, skinning, gaming, you name it. I give opinions on those topics. Some people, naturally, don't agree with those opinions. And a few of them come to not like me for those opinions. And they project those opinions onto Stardock as a whole.

Thus, when a news item is made or whatever, those people will start trolling the topics.

Check out: https://www.neowin.net/news/software/08/05/...pes-20#comments for a typical example.

Moreover, there will be a tendancy for some people to selectively target anything with me or Stardock for criticism. In turn, I will tend to be defensive about it. I try to avoid it but sometimes you'll see trolling that is so over the top that it's hard not to respond. In turn, this will make some people who know who I am become critics as well and so the negative feedback loop continues to the point that no matter how legitimate the news item is, you'll have people targeting it for trolling simply because the source is either me or has something to do with Stardock.

Overall, though, it's been a tremendous success. Staff morale is much higher. We're able to get a lot more done. And the community as a whole has grown.

Cheers!

[goji]

So we get Neowin exclusive discounts now? :shiftyninja:

[Yusuf M. Veteran]

Kudos to you, Frogboy. (Y)

[stevember]

Nice post Frogboy.

Wow I am an old member 538th.... before you...

[+shift. MVC]

...

Brad, I certainly appreciate that fact that you post in the OTHER forums as well other than ONLY in the Stardock related forums.

Maybe a lot of the members expected a "hostile takeover" type of situation when you acquired 40% of Neowin.

[ViperAFK]

I honestly don't know how anyone can think this is such a big deal, neowin is still neowin and hasn't changed for the worse.

[Frogboy Administrators]

Brad, I certainly appreciate that fact that you post in the OTHER forums as well other than ONLY in the Stardock related forums.

Maybe a lot of the members expected a "hostile takeover" type of situation when you acquired 40% of Neowin.

I think that's a big part of it. In the old days, when there'd be a Stardock news post, no one cared. But then, AFTER (starting 3 years ago), every time there was a Stardock news post, a portion of those wanting to "fight the man" felt compelled to get in there and stick it to us.

So even though the number of Stardock postings per month has declined since 2005, when a Stardock posting comes up, there are those who think it's part of some corporate take over and want to get in there and zing it. :)

[j.r.l.]

Personally I think it's for the better of this site... so, I fail to see the problem.

Either way, appreciate your take on this Brad, your post on page 6 pretty much cleared everything up.

[Calum Veteran]

Hi guys!

Here's a brief history of how things came to be...

As I stated before, I didn't know much about this situation (hatred towards Stardock, dislike of you Frogboy, Neowin being 40% owned by Stardock, etc). However, after reading the Neowin Software article, which you linked to. I understand your's and other's points of views completely now.

That article was HORRIBLE to read because of it's negativity. The negative comments weren't even constructive. E.g. "another useless prodcut from Stardock". Ahem, how can they say that? Have they never seen WindowBlinds, ObjectDock, etc!? I use ObjectDock and think it is amazingly useful. I'm sure the same people who said that would not say that Apple's dock on their Mac OS X is useless would they!? Well ObjectDock functions the same (if not better - skins, more features, etc), it's just for Windows, which makes it much more useful, than useless!

I'm sorry to go into detail here, but after reading the link Brad posted, please can somebody tell me why they dislike him for commenting back in the manner he reportedly does? Their comments are uncalled for, jealous and immature. If somebody was insulting something you created yourself and became very successful in it - it is your pride and joy - then surely you'd be defensive about it when people are just trolling!?

I would just like to say to Frogboy/Brad: Thank you very much for the wonderful software you have provided for me and others, I hope you don't take the negative trolling into account - they're just jealous! Also, thank you for the amazing job you have done since investing in Neowin. Without you this community would not be as good as it is today :)

Edited May 12, 2008 by cJr.

[Piggy]

I don't have a problem with Stardock / Brad, but I am really happy this thread is here and people are discussing the issue.

:laugh:

[stevember]

Someone asked why they post negatives...

The reason they normally do is because they think bringing down more successful than them brings them up somehow closer. :rolleyes:

[Lee G. Veteran]

I've also noticed a lot of negatively in regard to Stardock recently too, which has annoyed me. It was a great idea of initiate a thread on this issues. Also, to be honest, I thought it was well known fact that Stardock partly owned Neowin. But then again, I haven't seen Neowin before state this outright on the forum.

[Mike Frett]

I've been here for quite some time and haven't really noticed much of anything about Stardock. So if there was something going on, it went over my head.

Most I ever read is about the memory hoggin' from Windowblinds. But I don't use it so I could care less. But I firmly believe the if a company makes bad software, it should be spoken that the software is bad, and why.

However, almost all front page stories are filled with useless comments. Most times heavily critisizing the poster of the article, which I think is out of hand. I say, just be glad we get any news the way things have been going.