With the help of some incredible creators, we’ve officially launched our TikTok. You’ll find helpful tips from independent artists, their not-so-Instagrammable moments from the cutting room floor, inspirational messages that’ll get you through the rough patches, and so much more! It’s all right here: https://tiktok.com/@patreon
So busy doing this work for Patreon that requests from creators are flat-out ignored and the forums here are a wasteland, abandoned by Patreon except for announcements of how great Patreon is and how Patreon is building THEIR business while crapping all over creators by ignroig them.
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Never seen anyone ask for TikTok but keep seeing requests for more payout methods that are successfully ignored for years. Are Patreon team sure they are moving in the right direction with all these “helpful tips” updates? This thread seems to answer “No”.
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hiya. There’s a lot happening at Patreon, throughout all departments to make Patreon go, and to help serve, highlight and benefit creators of all kind.
I joined Patreon’s Community Team in June and immediately began work to help address some of the questions and issues here on this very forum. There’s a lot happening behind the scenes to process all the feature ideas, requests and feedback, and I’m delighted to share that very soon you’ll start to see it. There’s more to just responding to feedback, it has to be processed, collected, researched and analyzed if it is to go anywhere to actually be influential - and that’s all work that happens behind the scenes with various processes and taking all that’s learned from this forum, the Creator Community and Education survey, and processes from our product team to develop better, and more efficient ways to collect and make actionable feedback. Stay tuned, in about a week or so you’ll see the fruits of this project coming to the Feedback category (forum) here.
Meanwhile, I think we can agree, creating educational, social, and program opportunities for creators is important work that has lots of far reaching benefits.
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Please see my previous reply in this thread:
Some of my requests have been languishing for three years - they are not difficult and are things numerous other creators have asked for. We keep hearing the same tired refrain - "I just started’ or “We’re reviewing it” or “It needs to be analyzed” or “things are happening behind the scenes” and yet nothing ever changes.
Well, that’s not true - Patreon has effectively abandoned this forum for Discord which does NOT allow for easy topic segregation, notification, etc.
So, in other words, in three years, things have become worse, not better.
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I hear you and I understand your frustrations. Before joining the Patreon team as a staff member, I was part of a very active creator team and I saw lots of room for improvement here. In fact that was a motivation for me to join Patreon’s team - to help fellow creators be heard and to work on the places I saw could be improved.
That being said, I get it, and I hope you’ll see as the project I mentioned above starts to roll out, that the forum isn’t being ignored as gears are turning behind the scenes. In the mean time I’d like to keep this thread on topic and encourage you to create a new thread if you wish to discuss something other than Patreon’s launch of Tik Tok.
why is patreon staff making a tiktok instead of actually putting their team to work fixing and updating our MANY complaints?
“the forum isn’t being ignored” why is nobody here then?
“gears are turning behind the scenes” are those gears actually hooked up to anything because our bugs and requests have been sitting silently for years now.
“i’m excited to share stuff soon” when is soon? where is the roadmap and communication we were promised?
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I’ll answer your questions below, however this is the last I’ll remark on anything that’s off topic. If you have a question or discussion that is not related to the topic of this thread, I encourage you to make a brand new discussion instead of veering this thread off topic.
Patreon is company, and like many other organizations there are many different teams filled with so many talented folks who specialize in all sorts of fields. Our marketing and social teams, for instance, are made up of marketing and media professionals who use their skills and talents to work on projects to help elevate creators and Patreon itself. They are not engineers and do not work on the product, code or other elements that would involve literal updates to the technical part of the site/company.
Feedback from creators is important, positive feedback and constructive feedback alike. It helps guide projects in providing perspective. It’s unfortunate when people complain, because it’s usually a signal that something isn’t working - whether it’s unique to a specific creator’s use case/need, or if it’s an indication that communication on how to use a feature should be improved, or even that a feature isn’t as useful as we’d like it to be. It’s helpful, and important, and it guides the future of Patreon for sure, but it’s also important to note that just because you do not see something happening, doesn’t mean that something isn’t happening, and unfortunately, everything you want to see happen will not ultimately happen due to a wide ray of reasons, which may or may not be apparent to you - these things include resource constraints, pre-existing and new roadmaps, and other visions and decisions that are not obvious and in some cases are not shareable publicly (such as proprietary info).
This forum was created a few years ago with a vision that no longer matches today - it’s clear. You mention above, that you’re disappointed with Patreon putting resources into TikTok that you perceive should be put into Patreon itself, yet you’re disappointed with Patreon not putting resources into this forum. It’s a catch 22. I am spending a lot of time working on Creator’s product feedback, time is a finite resource so I have to determine if working on the actual requests - cataloging them, researching them, and engaging with various teams to figure out what, if anything, can be actionable - is more worth my time than hanging out posting engagement prompts and other community work here. I have determined, and I hope folks can agree, that spending time trying to get answers to your questions is more worthwhile to the immediate need of folks waiting for info or responses, than posting here say, an update about news on an announcement of what’s happening, like this very thread, where there really is no way to win here. Creators want information and you routinely call me out for not posting here, yet when I do post here you’re upset that it’s not what you want - I understand that, I really do, and there needs to be a balance. Keeping the community informed with what’s happening and with the actually updates and information that I have to share. I cannot share information I do not have, and it takes time to get info.
I agree, this forum isn’t working the way it was a few years ago and in part I think that’s because both Patreon and the creator community needs have changed. As such, inevitably, this space will need to change too to adapt, and what that change is, I don’t know but it’s clear from the Community and Education Creator survey that creators, at large, beyond the few folks vocal in this space now, have clear ideas of what they need and want out of Patreon’s community spaces and that is the Community team’s north star for the work we’re doing this year.
Yes, the gears turning behind the scenes are actually moving the needle on bug fixes, feature ideas/requests and other actionable measures.
I can’t speak for previous Patreon staff or team members on what they said, but I can speak for me. Saying a timeline or date is not a promise, it’s a communication of expectation. To be real blunt here for a second - if you take issue with time line estimations/expectations or communication here from me, that will result in me not sharing details until I have 100% confirmation of an exact timeline, which is quite rare and hard to have and can lead to more silence, which you are not happy with. So I encourage everyone here to be understanding. I get that you’re putting pressure on me because you want information, you’re eager to be heard and you want what you want. I get it. And I’m doing the best I can with what I have to help all creators, and to help Patreon itself. I am working with our Product Marketing Managers combing over hundreds of feature requests and feedback ideas that were posted here on the forum, that I painstakingly cataloged so that the team can actually use them in their work, and research the details necessary to reply here. You want answers, but you want them to be accurate, and that takes time. So, I’m hoping to have their replies and my announcement thread launched this week, with more replies to come on a rolling basis as they’re ready. There is A LOT happening that isn’t apparent, and a lot happening that I cannot go into detail about just yet (that will be announced when ready), and you’ll see that this transition period, with folks working with their heads down, was all worth it.
In the mean time, I encourage you to follow Patreon on TikTok, discover the great things fellow creators are making, and make sure you’re signed up to the Patreon Product Newsletter, which will go out about once a month or so (4-6 week intervals), that shares more about what product news is available or to come soon.
Hence forth, any reply that’s off topic from Patreon’s newly launched TikTok will be removed, or moved out of this thread.
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