Earlier today, I made a comment on @theally's post from three days ago, now a field of many users' gripes with this broken site and their confessions to canceling their paid subscriptions. Among then, I stood worried by CIvitai's prolonged ignoring of us, for it had been long since anything could be heard from them. I myself had this to say, and posted:
"Politely, I think you guys need to make another announcement. You can't expect patience and understanding from your consumers when the product won't deliver what it promises, and then stay silent for a prolonged period with no updates, clarification, or perspective for your main consumerbase to lean on. How else will they give you the benefit of the doubt? They aren't going to wait over a suspicious silence forever. It shows bad faith or abandonment toward them, whether or not there is. Just give an updated explanation, some broader context, some perspective. I can only believe you all are trying to fix some things because I should assume there is no reason why you wouldn't. But what am I to assume that on after being ignored so blatantly? Your social media? Your Discord? Your YouTube channel? This announcement/article? If it's the latter, then what it provides does not apply to the image generator, as it is inoperable despite the suggested prompt formatting with ComfyUI.
tl;dr
At this point, anything is better than silence. What's going on and are we being ignored?"
Shortly after this, to my surprise, an announcement actually made onto the site by the Civitai team. It was not posted as an article, but rather at the top of the home page, and reads:
"Over the past week, we've been battling not just unprecedented load but also challenges with vendors, hardware, and new software updates. We know the disruptions have been frustrating, and we're truly sorry for the degraded experience - our team is working around the clock to stabilize the site and restore full functionality as soon as possible."
Well, we know what's going on now. But why were we being ignored?
Now, I don't want to be an asshole. If my suspicions are true, I empathize with the team. I want to commend them for actually saying something, way too late though the message may be. The site, after all, touts transparency as one of its core values. Except, you know... for the past weekend. It is vaguely worded, rather ambiguous, and written far later than it should have. It does show they are not ignoring the problem, which unbelievably seemed like a very true possibility, but it doesn't explain the fact that they did.
But I think I know why. And this isn't like my other articles, where I'm diving into parody-cospiracy. No, this is my hypothesis of sorts. Because finally, Civitai has made an announcement regarding the current nature of their site. And, as we all guessed... Yeah, they probably broke it.
This is not news itself to us, the community of socially challenged automated-picture enthusiasts. Everyone suspected this. But looking at the context around this announcement and taking what we know from it, let's see if we can generate another image. And don't worry, this one won't cost any buzz.
First of all, let's start by taking note of how their announcement states not only "vendors, hardware, and new software updates" as the cause of the many "disruptions," but phrases this in such a way that makes the "updates" sound much more generalized, almost separate from the ones that caused this mess in the first place. After all, wasn't it their software updates to include all checkpoints and use ComfyUI instead of Automatic1111, the so-called industry standard? Are those not the very same software updates they themselves just implemented? And as for their dealing with an "unprecedented load," one must wonder if, had this been such an issue for them "over the past week," why implement these clearly massive updates when they themselves admit to "challenges" with "vendors" and "hardware" at the very same time?
There's two ways you could explain this.
They wrote it in a hurry and assumed they know what they meant
They wrote it in a hurry and are trying to hide their SNAFU through obfuscation
I wish I believed in option one. But if that were the case, then why were they so tight-lipped, so dismissive?
Respectfully as I can possibly answer such a question, I say this: It is because Civitai's team knows not what they can and cannot. They have no realistic concept or reference for how to manage this site, this community, with the resources they haveāresources far fewer than they'd probably like us or potential parties investing in them to think. So, their ambitions are ambitious, but unnecessary and harmful to their site. They lack discipline in measuring the growth of ideas once decided upon and rush to execute them without following a proper model to ensure they can survive any shake-up to their foundation.
They don't have the hardware necessary for their wants on this site, because they are probably in Idaho, or North Carolina, or maybe both on some impressive rigs, but not enough to manage the load they aspire for. So, they have to act as businessmen, trying to look good when they don't need to, and fumble along the way. You know, instead of fostering community or being transparent. Probably because they see this site as having potential. It does, but you're not helping it by your inability to prioritize.
Like I said, we know what's going on now. But why were we being ignored?
So, here's how I propose a solution if the problems with the image generator are ever fixed.
Give everyone some buzz compensation. It doesn't have to be a lot, but it has to look satisfactory. Perhaps 75 yellow buzz, 125 blue buzz? Make sure this is adjusted to be useful for users if, for some reason, you again decide to change buzz prices. Otherwise, they'll feel duped. Again.
Write a long article that explains what went wrong. Sound more responsible than "We Take Full Responsibility for this degraded experience." Instead, say what happened with a direction, such as, "Hey, everyone. We know what's been going on; we know we haven't been that responsive, and we really underestimated just how much our silence would hurt your trust in our site, as it basically broke at the seams. As you know, we tried something very ambitious with the implementation of our latest updates, and yeah, this one is definitely on us. We broke the main thing this site is for beyond sharing AI imagery, that being the ability to create freely with it. What we did wrong was not having the adequate equipment we initially thought, and we're going to try and get that fixed before we do something this ambitious again." Don't use an AI to write the message. Proofreading is fine, but AI works on its own assumptions of the context you provide. You're dealing with people here, not an audience who will sit and nod and then murmur in the halls about their lack of trust. They'll call you out in the first comments unless you try astroturfing (which, given the site layout, doesn't fully work as convincing).
Look at what went wrong this time, find out how, and get what you need to fix it. Ask for donations if it's hardware. You're running a ship with holes in it, and plugs won't last forever before you sink. This place has strengths, and it will be valuable. But for the love of God, stop poking your dick in it. This is more than an assignment to tinker with; it's a curation of resources housed from which you can make money off of carefully.
Anyhow, I'm gonna go to my actual job. For those who've read this far, I sincerely thank you. I've had a lot of fun writing these articles, and it's nice to have a place to put them. Let's hope we can make images again sooner rather than later. Ciao.