Sorry, but while I respect your many contributions here and elsewhere, you’re out of line on this, and now I’m all fired up. I’ll post my response here instead of a DM because this statement contains an unfair implication that shouldn’t be sitting around in public without being corrected.
(I recognize that this is tangential to an otherwise delightful conversation about PKM apps and friction—apologies, I hope this doesn’t derail that train of thought too much.)
It would be fine to say “I’d prefer to use an app with a different support model.” Instead, here, you’re insinuating that Obsidian’s devs are somehow dodging the responsibility to pay the community moderators—i.e., me and a handful of other people.
That is simply not true.
1. Obsidian does have paid support staff and direct support channels
If you’re a commercial license holder or a subscriber to one of the paid services—Sync, Publish, and probably more in the future—you can use a support email to reach the paid support staff (yes, they exist) and the developers themselves. There also exists dedicated Discord channels to handle support requests for these services.
2. Obsidian’s community help channels are supported by volunteer moderators
If you’re using the app with a free license (this includes if you’ve donated to development via Obsidian’s Catalyst program), then yes, the support model is community support.
The community moderators—again, there’s only a handful of us—have had many conversations about the model we’re using, and we have repeatedly concluded that it’s better if the moderators remain intrinsically motivated to help.
To state that more simply: we have not asked to be paid, and we do not want to be.1 We are very intentionally “volunteers.”
We are happy to support the community as a hobby, because helping people is nice to do, and the app and knowledge management are topics we are passionate about. If I was being paid to do this, (a) nobody could pay me enough to deal with the shockingly awful way some users treat us when e.g., they haven’t gotten the feature request they wanted, and (b) I would do a worse job—I wouldn’t be answering help questions at 7am and at 10pm.
I hope that clears things up without vitriol. I feel quite angry about the implication levelled above, but I have tried to filter my frustration and engage respectfully here. I am happy to engage further via DM if necessary or helpful.
1: Naturally, this is all dynamic. I can only speak for the conversations I’ve been a part of in the past 1.5 years. The community and the app continue to grow, and so maybe the devs will set up more substantial direct support options for the community in the future.