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| reply to efrem
Re: Farewell Guys said by efrem:Ok, here is more food for nostalgia. I had to boot up an old Win'95 box for this. 
There was a heated debate that raged for months about the graphics used in WinCIM. The ultimate selection of what shipped pretty much sealed the fate of "professional" CompuServe. The Blockheads were hell bent on keeping people from defecting to AOL, and one of the big reasons cited for people cancelling was "it's too hard for non-techies to understand." (Another was that the long-established community etiquette and forum conduct policies made people who didn't have good writing and interpersonal skills unwelcome.)
WinCIM was considerably more functional than the traditional TTY comm package used by most people, especially with the TapCIS-like features. However, the dumbing-down of the UI universally insulted and offended the long-time user population. The UI team went so far as to drop beta testers who submitted negative feedback about the cartoonish graphical elements, and regularly purged unflattering remarks from the WinCIM beta and support forums. (This attitude was a key reason I declined to extend my consulting contract with them.)
Management was also uninterested in stemming the exodus of vendor-sponsored support forums to the Internet. The attitude was basically denial and "they'll be back!" One of the marketing execs I frequently dealt with in 1994 brainwashed most of the decision makers into thinking the Internet was "no different than BBSes of 10 years ago, and people didn't care much for those because they had to call each one separately." He literally laughed me out of a meeting where I suggested exploring creating gateways or getting in on hosting those websites as a way to stem defections or revive relationships and keep the brand relevant. Oh, well. What would I know about stuff like that?
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There is no giant fur-bearing trout. |
