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I go absent from the board for weeks at a time. I do it when, from my perspective, people are rude and angry and do not seem interested in considering another POV. When being on MR is a stressor, rather than something I enjoy doing, I stop writing for awhile.
As Robko said, beta testers don't get paid to do this and we know only what we are told--which isn't much. For example, we found out about the new devices the same way everybody else did. I know that Kobo reads everything we write in the beta group and most of what is written in the sticky asking for improvements and changes and in threads like this. Beta testers will point to a thread on MR if something comes up and we want to make sure that folks at Kobo see it.
As for why someone who asks to be included in the group gets no response, I don't have any special insight into this. I do know that it is important to me that people be capable of clearly articulating an issue without getting so angry that you just want them to go away. I would not be surprised to find that Kobo staff feels that way as well. If I were a staffer, I'd be looking to see what folks were like here, on MR, as an indication of what they were likely to be like in the group. It also may be that sometimes they just feel like they have enough testers. You may think we miss things, but we don't miss much. Keep in mind that we don't usually get to see the production builds, and bugs have been known to slip in there that were not in our last beta.
As an aside: they are not big talkers/communicators. I am not at all surprised that they would choose silence over saying no and explaining why they did not elect to include someone in the beta group. We can write about bugs and never get a response, unless we ask directly if they have been able to replicate the issue. I know we are important to them, but they don't have the staffing to be able to assign a staffer to making us feel warm and cozy, much less to respond personally to things people say elsewhere. They do write on MR occasionally. I think it is pretty great that they do it at all. After all, this is not their official help site. I don't see much developer action on the other boards (well except for calibre--but MR IS the official support site there).
I have come to understand that the Kobo developer group we work with is not all powerful. For example, some things that may seem to me to be development issues are really in the content folks' backyard. I also know that developers have advocated strongly for positions that were held by beta testers that involve different work teams.
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