I very much agree. I’ve been sort of begging for a couple of years to have fewer upgrades if it meant dealing with long-time bugs. There are very significant bugs that have existed for well over a year and some that are new but massive.
To be honest, it’s affected my decision to use the site for certain goals in the recent past. And on days I’m really busy or really frustrated, sometimes I think I might want to just go cold turkey and see if I can do without it cause the friction is just getting too high. I come to my senses, of course, but I worry many don’t. (Actually, I know that many don’t. Of the people I’ve introduced to Beeminder, only 1 stayed (despite all being in love with the concept) and all (including the one who stayed) complained to me, since I had been the one to introduce them, about bugs (and about the default settings)… complained a lot.)
The friction for using the site is high for everyone. It’s high for new users who have to learn to differentiate between confusing settings they “messed up” and bugs that have nothing to do with what they did, and the friction is high for long-time users with many goals or who want to use existing features, but for whom the bugs are an irritant. And look at the #1 reason usually cited for the advice “Don’t bother using app X” for any given app on the apple app store: bugginess/not ready for prime-time. Long-time users will wait, already knowing the value. New users bail. And, for new users, bug (or not understanding the default rules) + credit card = fear, and bug-caused derail + credit card = anger.
I think a way to strike balance is to have a bare-bones “works absolutely perfectly” interface and a beta “enter when you feel like tinkering” interface. Anyway, I posted this email I sent earlier this month: “Clean and Beta Versions/Options, Please”, as I thought it was related, but thought it might be more appropriate in a new thread.