MFL: Help me see the light (1 Viewer)

[CalBear]

David Dodds did an interview with MFL owner Mike hall in 2006 and 2008 and asked the forum users here to submit questions for Mike. My 2008 question was:

As feature laden as MFL is, the single most common criticism I hear about the MFL product is how unattractive and poorly laid out the league home pages are. Even the templates that are available have that, "My girlfriends nephew knows some CSS and he made it for me" look. Have you given any thought to hiring a design team to create a more professional and user friendly experience, one that would rival the look and feel of some of your competitors such as Fanball, ESPN and CBS Sportsline?

The question wasn't posed exactly as I had asked it (but was close) and Mike's answer was a slap in the face to those that really wanted an answer; he ignores the real question/criticism, which is that MFL has an atrocious UI, and blames the ugly sites on commishes customizing them to make them look ugly!

Hall: First, and most importantly, we agree! Sometimes we go to league home pages, and see the ugliest, most poorly laid out, visually unappealing web pages you could ever imagine! And while that's a bad thing for that league, and the owners in that league (and anyone else who sees that league home page, and incorrectly thinks "man, MyFantasyLeague.com pages are ugly!"), it really emphasizes the flexibility and functionality of our system. Just like we don't dictate what league scoring rules you can or cannot have, or dictate what waiver rules you should have, we don't tell you how it should look. It's your league, so if you choose to have an ugly, poorly laid out league home page, who are we to tell you that you can't? As time goes on, we try to make system changes on this front, making league pages easier to use and making our default page appearance more modern by adding more skins, etc. But overall, the reason that some league pages are ugly is the exact same reason why we think customers love us - because of the flexibility and customization we offer.

The reason our league moved to MFL in 2005 was because of the many different scoring options, options that other sites didn't have. But have you noticed how utterly stagnant MFL has been regarding scoring or rule changes? They add useless stuff like Facebook integration, but ignore the most commonly requested features in their feature request forum. Heck, back in that 2006 interview David asked him about two feature requests (importing from Draft Dominator into MFL and Ebay style +1 proxy bidding on blind waivers) and he said they would be added to the "wish list". Of course, they were never added because, well, nothing of substance has been added in the last 7 years.

Ugh, that's a pretty awful response. We're not talking about how it looks, we're talking about how it works.