I'm surprised that emails for the backer numbers are STILL being handed out, this late. But they are probably doing it manually, so I can't complain.
The problem with Dina, has moved beyond anything to do with feminism or nepotism/cronyism (she says BF stands for Best Friend, Community is still out to lunch on that one) and her being the link between the community and Comcept really, (for me anyway) isn't technically an issue.
It's more about the way she responded since then. With massive incompetence and not in a very professional way. Which isn't surprising, as she has no experience managing a community. Right now, the problem seems to rotate around censorship criticisms, and favoritism. There hasn't been any kind of real reaction from concept except to try and ride it out and hope they don't lose too much money before December 30. That date being the latest you can get a refund. Ben Judd made a post on the forums, asking for people to be patient, but, and I assume this is because of the refund deadline- The uproar only got worse, since backers who are on the fence on if they should get refunds are getting agitated by whether there will be any kind of real response before December 30, or if they should back out now. people asking for refunds are also being met with Damage control emails telling them to "be patient", that they are assessing the situation, and that "many people have cancelled their refund, let us know if you want to". Some people are forgoing DDM/Comcept entirely, and getting chargebacks, which can damage both parties credit and potentially freeze Comcept's bank account if too many chargebacks occur.
Doesn't help that the CM's supporters are just as toxic as anyone who dislikes her, but while people who are detractors get mod edits and warnings, her "defenders" get none. They are allowed to spew all the vitriol they want.
There are only 2 (community member, non-paid) mods, and they are powerless. Their power extends as far as editing posts, but not opening posts, and they can't do anything else.
Threads deemed "identical content" get locked and redirected to one of two threads, depending on the argument, (there is a general detractor thread, and a general supporter thread) but either of those are just containment threads at this point. It's not like anything posted in them actually gets addressed.
But suddenly, a wild AWD appears! Yup, Dickman himself appeared on the forums and here's how that went down.
[spoiler]
then this happened when people wondered why the thread wasn't locked like the dozens of others.
So blatant favoritism in the works. the thread eventually got locked by Mark from 8-4, who also occasionally browses the forums, since by then, after Dina's refusal to lock the thread, it spiraled downward as you would expect.
here's AWD's tweets following that, by the way
Some people have latched onto that "I was brought by Dina" bit, since he previously mentioned (before his rant) getting a message to be more active in the community. personally, i couldn't say, seems more like he's being overly sarcastic.
For the record, here's a more or less decent summary of the problem
She's also not very good at choosing her words and seems to have a habit of putting her foot in her mouth, such as, when questioned by a member about how we can trust her, given the locks, edits, etc etc, she responded by saying that she isn't concerned if people trust her or not. Obviously, that didn't go over well...
there's this, too...
people were not quite so thrilled with her offhand reply to that.
[/spoiler]
And from there, it's a censorship/favoritism thing people have most issue with. They feel she just is not professional or experienced enough to handle the forums, and I'm inclined to agree with that.
That said, it doesn't help that the forum itself is absolute [parasitic bomb]. It's Drupal, and while I have no experience with it, the current layout is alarmingly bad. There is no quote function, for example- when you reply to a post, your reply appears under that post. You can imagine how that is a bad thing. There's no ability to merge topics, and there is no ability to sticky topics. Forum is still out to lunch on deleting topics, since a few have been deleted, but apparently there is a problem with the forums due to updates being made. They should have gone with IP board or something. The forum layout is DEFINITELY one of the factors in this mess. tensions rise when there's a topic of 10+ pages, and replies are as wonky as they are.
Oh, also, the E media has gotten wind of this and decided to spin it as a misogyny issue, where the evil backers are attacking the CM for being a girl with opinions in their "boys club". (someone actually called it that)
One guy actually emailed Patricia Hernandez of Kotaku. Who then tried to get a statement out of Comcept, 8-4, and Dina. Thankfully, they all declined, and no Kotaku article has popped up yet.