(Apologies for this not being directly about the API, but on a meta level it is …)
Many of us had frustrating outages with ChatGPT-4 not completing over the last days (seems fixed for now, thanks). Many of us are having issues with being double charged. …
Neither the forum nor the discord nor the help pages nor the chat nor the error messages were able to inform users / customers what was going on. That’s frustrating. I lost more time trying to figure out what’s going on, than what I lost from not being able to do the work. But multiply the lost time by the affected users, and you get a large number of hours.
We get it. You’re being loved to death. Scaling to this size is hard. Doing it as fast as you are is even harder. Overall, you are doing a great job.
But the secret sauce is missing. The pixie dust, that distinguishes an organization that is able to build and sustain loyalty from yet-another-tech-giant. It’s simple. It’s called communication.
We all know things can go wrong in unexpected ways. Our own stuff breaks all the time . But when I have a problem, I need to be able to find out if it affects only me, or others too. Whether someone is aware of the issue. Whether someone is working on it. By when the organization is expecting to have it fixed.
A simple solution would be a category right on this board that is being monitored by OpenAI and where information is being posted. Not corporate announcements, but tech level, up-to-date information. Volatile is fine. To be revised is fine. But if we work with you on mission critical applications, you need to let us see your pulse.
Minimally, a section for “current issues” needs to be added to the help pages. Or a channel to the discord. But whatever you do: communicate.
Thanks god someone who is courageous enough to explain how they feel about the situation, I have been so shy of doing it because my communication skills are not the best, English is my second language…
Nonetheless I have been trying to find out a way to express my feelings and concerns about the topic around the same time you sent your message
My overall experience of is that you have people complaining about stuff without being thoughtful about the situation and then you have people that are advocating for the opposite way of seeing things just because they are used to disagree and they like to play devil’s advocate…
Then you have those people who are bringing the constructive and positive thoughts about the situation and they are skilled and are capable of finding everything that is positive and offering improvements that are hyper valuable and positive…
I feel like there is no space in between tho express how things are not always perfect and still being thoughtful, respectful and bringing something valuable and constructive for the community…
I feel so satisfied and happy when I see someone capable of expressing themselves in a positive and constructive way about something that have a negative impact, this kind of contribution is very important to help develop a better product and help OpenAI to understand what can be improved…
Despite OpenAI genuine interest in knowing that type of things, and despite those managing the forum also having clearly established that they are interested in knowing that… I have the feeling that the community is still very sensitive about the mention of negative situations and more than just the people I personally believe that the way the forum is designed and the context of each categories is not something that is helpful in order to express our opinions in such an open manner like you just did and I am genuinely happy to hear that I am not the only one experiencing problems with the overall experience…
We see all the efforts and we know that we are asking a lot… But it is for sure that we do appreciate what you are building and we are all super excited about the next steps…
For my part if it was not the fact that I love so much your project I would not be complaining about anything… I feel empowered by your tools and I love them so much so that it is what makes me feel like a part of it…
You can imagine the fans of a Football or Baseball team…
Personally I’m not so interested about professional sports and since the topic I am interested about the most has political repercussions I will not name it but yet I will nonetheless say that I imagine you like those Warriors trying to win the next victory… I am not going to name the country but let’s just say that it is the blue and yellow team so it is ok to be a small team in the Golden State but I will use my analogy to make my point, when I think of your small team I think similarly about the geopolitical situation in other places in the world (metaphorically speaking, both teams have the faith of a lot of people in their hands and they must absolutely do the right thing despite what their supporters want them to do)…
At the end of the day I am sure that like those Warriors I was describing, my blue and yellow team fighting fiercely for their land you are an other team of Warriors from the golden state…
I Hope you can successfully scale up but please please explain to everyone else in your team how communicating with your fans, stakeholders, users and such is of a primordial importance…
As an example when you say that people don’t understand what a small team you are… well if you don’t communicate it to us we Will not know…
Despite all those critics that are coming from me personally you must absolutely keep in mind that from my perspective the best asset OpenAI has in order to communicate with the people, is you… each time I am complaining I have in mind the fact that at least we have one person who is there to help us with our interactions with OpenAI that’s you!!!
I Hope someone is going to understand that the Open in OpenAI can be as close as you wish when it come to security concerns or some competitive advantage but I do believe that when you exclude any reasons you and your team see fit for keeping secret… you will probably agree with me that there is still a ton of things that could be communicated Openly with the users and others… that is true I believe in so many different levels of communications from the trivial to the corporate…
Thanks again for all your efforts you and your Golden State Warriors are doing great and we will still be there to put pressure on you so that you can be even better… I am in this team and I don’t want any other group to develop something amazing and capitalize on the insatisfaction of your user base to strive… I want my team (your team) Our team to win in the long run… and in the short term too !!!
. But when I have a problem, I need to be able to find out if it affects only me, or others too. Whether someone is aware of the issue. Whether someone is working on it. By when the organization is expecting to have it fixed.
so it is ok to be a small team in the Golden State but I will use my analogy to make my point, when I think of your small team I think similarly about the geopolitical situation in other places in the world (metaphorically speaking, both teams have the faith of a lot of people in their hands and they must absolutely do the right thing despite what their supporters want them to do)…
please explain to everyone else in your team how communicating with your fans, stakeholders, users and such is of a primordial importance…