Thank you for touching on this, @dangostylver.
I think you’re right that there’s a big influx of new users right now who switched from LastPass because of some controversies in pricing, freebie features and (for me) too many Android trackers (black box in black box since it’s not open source). It felt like LogMeIn got greedy.
I chose Bitwarden and became a paying customer the first day, in part because it seems like a much smaller and less corporate-minded product/business, which speaks to me. Maximizing profits at all costs does not seem to be the mantra.
I have seen some “why isn’t this fixed yet” (“my biggest problem must be everyone’s biggest problem and therefore the top priority”) and “I can’t leave LastPass until you get this”-comments around the forum and while they bring no value and are annoying I’m afraid you’ll get that with most products that grow and start to attract lots of customers. Definitely agree it’s annoying and in some cases disrespectful though, and I respect that you care about the people behind Bitwarden. I want them to succeed as well.
I think we could help them succeed better with a shared goal to simply give good input and discuss it without telling people what they think and want, and why they’re wrong. I’m a bit guilty of doing that myself in saying that, but I hope you’ll give me a chance to argue. Your comment paints a mindset of “them and us” - the old timers and the new users from LastPass. The new ones:
The new people today moved away from LastPass because of changes in how they handle free accounts.
The new people want a LastPass clone
And then a mention of the dynamic between the 2 groups:
We offer to show them the “Bitwarden-way” but we get push back because they’re so used to LastPass. It’s really frustrating as we understand your point as we did also use LastPass in the past but if you live with the Bitwarden-way you might find you like.
This confuses the users who post those “why isn’t this done yet” comments with all other users who have valid input about something that could be better. Some of the replies I’ve gotten - which you have liked - are comments that complety neglect the needs I communicate (clearer system feedback as an example) and instead go right to telling me that I’m simply wrong. For example, saying that software is different and anyone can learn to use it is true. But if we want Bitwarden to succeed and grow then I would argue that finding ways to make it even easier to use for new users would help that.
I hope to convey that taste and preference in terms of solutions can of course be discussed, but when people put in the time to communicate issues (not those demanding specific solutions! They are just as wrong as the ones claiming it would be wrong to change Bitwarden), I would really like the replies to be constructive. Then we can hopefully find some common ground in issues that could be helped and work on what exactly they are instead of solutions that we feel solve things that aren’t issues.