Neverwinter Nights 2: Shane DeFreest on Dev Chats

Almost missed this excellent post by Shane DeFreest, community relations manager, and thought it was something worth putting up.

I dont know why it is that seemingly every time there is a chat someone has to fuel the fire of paranoia by suggesting that we screen questions only to answer the "safe" and/or "easy" questions. Continuously propagating that developers purposely dodge the more difficult or complex questions is simply not true. It's also insulting to the very busy people who take time out of their day to talk with the fans as a group.

Chats are screened mostly to give the team time to decide who is the best person in attendance to answer a given question, and for them to formulate the best answer possible. Unscreened, unmoderated chats quickly turn into chaos.

While I wont deny that we put the kibosh on a question or two here or there. It does not happen often and It's generally for reasons that involve people asking radically off topic questions, questions that we have previously answered repeatedly, or are just trying to be controversial. (Which is usually also off topic)

While moderated, screened chats are not for everyone. I'd ask that people be more respectful of the time and effort that goes into them from all parties involved.

-Shane

He followed it up with this:

Another misconception is that questions that dont get answered are "rejected". Truth be told 99% of the questions that dont get answered are simply due to either time constraints, or that we dont really have an answer for it yet. Also if we dont have the right person there who can necessarily answer the question accurately we pass on it.

-Shane

Its good to know how these things work.

Read the full thread here.