Yes, I know the title makes it sound like I only have one person who reads the blog, but there are more than that. I’m sure I have at least six regular readers plus another six irregular readers, and several thousand who once pushed a button to follow the blog, before fading away and never coming back. I’m actually talking about the tb that says “Reader”.

When I have run things, I have always thought that communication was important. I admit I’ve never run any big important things, so it may be that as you increase in size and importance you don’t need to bother with things like this. When I’ve been in charge it has always been something small and manageable so it has been easy to walk round and talk to people. If you are a massive entity like WordPress, you can’t do this, but you could email everyone. They seem to know how an email system works, as they always manage to send my invoices.

However, change the system in a major way, and all they send is silence. Take the most recent one – the loss of the tab that says “Reader”. I use it quite a lot and find it very useful. After a bit of prodding and pushing buttons I still couldn’t find it, so used the Help facility. I try to avoid this as it’s often more annoying and mystifying than the problem I’m trying to answer.

After a few attempts I found that I had to follow a link and press a button. I did this. Nothing. I did it again. Nothing. So I did it again more carefully. Nothing.

Then I realised that the two circles which ahd appeared on the top bar, were probably meant to be spectacles. And you use spectacles for reading, so I clicked on that. What had been a useless pair of circles when I had originally tried it, now had a link attached to it and the reader function was restored.

Would it not have been easier to have sent everyone a message to warn them.? It would have taken somebody at HQ 20 minutes. Instead of that it took me 20 minutes, and I assume it took a lot of other people similar amounts of time. If a thousand people ll wasted 10 minutes reconfiguring that button (because most would be quicker than me) that is 10,000 customer minutes wasted. Or 166.66666666666666  hours, according to my calculator. I have left all the 6s because it amuses me to see 666 linked so comprehensively to the management of WP.

I confess I am easily amused.

Correct, the pictures symbolise my detective efforts to trace the missing reader.