@sombre: I don't think it's disdain I think it's more about their backgrounds. They all came up during an earlier part of the web when they made content to be consumed and weren't involved in a back and forth parasocial relationship with their community like modern streamers are. They've evolved that somewhat (including live recording podcasts and responding to the chat during them) but for things like Twitter engagement etc...? It's just not the job they're doing.
From the beginning they were always pretty involved with the community compared to peers (with things like Thursday Night Throwdown) and having chat open during podcast recording is more involved than many podcasters, not to mention the sheer number of questions they take, but it's during specific work hours and events, not all the time. I think that's healthy.
Those kinds of things and complaints about the quality of the product are distinct from the issues of site usability and communication about what they're up to.
Site usability is pretty bad right now and it's unclear how many engineering resources they have to fix it. This site has a ton of content associated with it so it's not so easy to update compared to if you were building something new. It's super easy to break stuff on a site this old.
Lack of communication about what they're doing and what they'll be putting out has been a constant issue since they stopped doing the I Love Mondays feature way back in the day. I think Ryan, despite Twitter blocks, did a good job of organizing information and letting people know what was going on, and that function has never been replaced.
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