A lot of producers and show-runners will avoid fan boards and social media sites for their shows not because they don't value the fans, but because of legal issues. If some fan posts a story idea and a similar story shows up later on the show (whether by coincidence or not) without crediting the fan, you're looking at a lawsuit. Most such "They took yur ideas!" suits are laughable and end up going nowhere (unless you're Harlan Ellison, who seemed to make a career out of claiming everyone stole everything from him). But if the plaintiff can show that show execs and writers were active participants in the same fan board where he posted the idea, you've got a real problem.

I know this may go against the grain but, with a few exceptions, I really do think it's best to keep the fans and show-runners in their own separate cages, for the most part. A lot of fans will feel weird posting honestly if they know the people they're criticizing are right there. And show execs are setting themselves up for legal and PR headaches if they start getting accused of stealing story ideas from the fans.

And yet another article that's basically all about My Little Pony.

Six years ago, ponies on Slashdot were a joke. We were all grizzled men with grizzled beards. We made systems run through sweat and tears, we coded heroic late night fixes, congregating here to share war stories of pride in ourselves and defiance of users.

Now we're grizzled men with grizzled beards and a Fluttershy desktop.

How the times have changed.

I don't wonder at all.

You are being yelled at to make money for your network, and you have two options on how to do it. You can pay a half dozen juggalos (or "real" housewives") a couple million dollars a year to act like idiots and make hundreds of millions profit. Or, you can spend hundreds of millions on a high-tech sci-fi scripted TV show that doesn't even break even.

If you don't make money for the network. You get fired.

What do you do?

I'm pretty sure they were thinking that they weren't a charity and thus did not have much interest in funding shows that were losing money. Just because a fanbase is extremely vocal doesn't make it large. This I think is the inherent problem with writers/directors/developers paying too much attention to social media and fan forums. The fact is, the few hundred or thousand people who post endlessly on forums simply are not a representative group of the several million people who watch the show or movie or play the game. Instead, they all represent the same hardcore group of fans, who's interests and desires likely do not reflect the interests or desires of the overall community. But, when the media covers a game/show/movie, they turn to the forums and act like it represents the community, which in turn puts pressure on the studio to put pressure on the creator to cow to the demands, regardless of how detrimental they are to the game/show/movie. It's especially tough with TV shows, since ultimately the viewer is watching an incomplete work. Viewers may think they disagree with a particular character, plot line or scene, but it's possible it's setting up for something they actually would like. But you get a meddling studio telling the writers that the fans hate X and it needs to be changed and you never get to the payoff. Worse, this kind of crap tends to lead to plot holes and dangling plot lines, and if it goes to far the whole show falls apart.

I think the problem with having fans write the shows is best summed up by a comment from a City Of Heroes developer on pleasing the players: "If the game spit out 20 dollar bills people would complain that they weren't sequentially numbered. If they were sequentially numbered people would complain that they weren't random enough."