I would worry that since all those categories are all quite broad themselves and that many people run things differently, that it may be putting too much pressure on one person to represent an entire subsection of ‘creator.’ If paid, that also puts them on the payroll and in a lot of cases, that puts an unintended distance between the user and them, followed by accusations from some that they are staff and no longer care, etc. (This happens in a lot in different areas of humanity so i worry that they will get unneeded flack and stress from this. )
I do agree however, that there is a communication gap for sure and that we creators need to be more involved in the processes that go on here. I know some of the staff are creators themselves so this puts an even larger feeling gap in there because either their voices weren’t the majority (if they didn’t like this change), they weren’t fully informed (which honestly, happens a lot in jobs, period) or they didn’t see how negatively this would affect their user base. (It is never one sided but being a part of a company, a brand, you are expected -to a degree of course- support and uphold their changes and practices even if you don’t like them.) So who actually knows how that all went down.
If this representative thing goes ahead, some new avenues will also need to be made to allow for broader communication with them, from the creators they represent. (sub forums here or something?) However, again, shooting the messenger is a huge thing (as we saw with Carla having to pretty much deal with the fee debacle here on the forums on her own and us venting all our frustrations on her. I do not envy her or any of the other staff’s jobs who have to deal with stuff like this. It is a taxing job.) The mental stress of dealing with this sort of thing is a hard thing to handle and i honestly wish no single person to have to deal with that from a whole slew of creators trying to be heard. I personally would prefer that patreon just communicate as they should, with us here, as a whole, but that may be wishful thinking. (Because one single creator representing many is going to cause turmoil when someone doesn’t like how they said something or if they feel they missed a point or ignored them. It’s no small feat, even if there is pay involved. )
I really do agree with you though. Patreon has some serious work to do to fix whatever the heck is broken over there that caused this disconnect in the first place. (It’s even more concerning because some of them are even creators themselves.)