forum ban as a CRM method

this post initially was supposed to be a reply to the Ideas forum thread on “Include quota status on Dashboard“, but since I was banned from the forum (see some details in the previous post) I have to post it here:

wow, what a nice CRM just for the one year from:

Basically our philosophy is people shouldn’t have to worry about things like bandwidth and storage which are kinda foreign and hard-to-understand concepts anyway.

Matt, 2006/01/22

to:

If you’re running out of space to upload files then head on over to the Upgrades page where you can buy an extra 1GB, 5GB or even 10GB of space to store more files for your blog.

There’s also a handy little space meter on the Uploads form now so you’ll have a better idea of how much space you’ve used.”

Donncha, 2006/12/06

well done! my sincere congratulations Mark, Donncha, Matt and all who made this possible.

and now my special kudos to someone who has quietly banned me — it plainly admits that I was talking a truth, unpleasant but still a truth ;-)

it seems like I have become the first WordPress.com dissident. now this is a good and crystal clear example how much we can trust our content (not User Generated one! — hate this term) to public webservices.

btw, have you had a chance to skim through Dave Taylor’s “Is WordPress the fabled Blog Police after all?“, it has a very nice passage:

I think that this is a splendid reason why anyone who wants to blog, even if you have no plans to do anything to monetize your content, should be hosting their blog on their own server. Do you really want your efforts to be held hostage to the whim of a service manager?

Let me pull that point out:
Don’t let someone else host your business blog. Ever.

Today it’s about “sponsored postings” but what if tomorrow they decide that they’ve grown to truly hate a particular religion and are going to shut down any blog that mentions anything to do with that religion, positive or negative, or that they don’t want people linking to SixApart, makers of competitive product Typepad?

This entry was written by options and posted on December 7, 2006 at 04:24 and filed under CRM, Commercial, Knitting, Legal, Politics, Web Services, Weblog Hosting, WordPress.COM. Bookmark the permalink. Follow any comments here with the RSS feed for this post. Both comments and trackbacks are currently closed.

12 Comments

  1. mark
    Posted December 7, 2006 at 09:50 | Permalink

    Why do you say you are banned?

    Please send me screenshots to illustrate this fact.

  2. options
    Posted December 7, 2006 at 14:43 | Permalink

    I was banned indeed, I swear (tho I must not), i.e. speaking in the bbPress terms my userr account has been “Deleted”.

    I was not able to post a reply above, could not log in to forums, my profile was deleted.

    everything looked exactly according to the bbPress/bb-templates/profile-edit.php:

    Deletion attributes all content to Anonymous and cannot be easily undone. A Deleted user can do anything any non-logged in person can do.

    A more useful solution to user problems is to change a user’s User Type to Inactive or Blocked.
    Inactive users can login and look around but not do anything.

    Blocked users just see a simple error message when they visit the site.
    Note: Blocking a user does not block any IP addresses.

    unfortunately, I am in big rush right now — don’t have enough time to search in the browser cache and post any screenshot, which also would not proof anything I have said. may be some later I’ll update this comment by pictures. sorry, Mark, you can rely on my honest word only.

    PS
    I guess I can send some .html files from cache — they contain forum ‘nonce’s — so it’s a more solid proof than pictures.

    apparently, despite user deletion “cannot be easily undone”, someone undid ;-)

    UPDATE:
    here are some screenshots promised:

    Global Tags
    Foldable Category Tree
    Quota Size?

    PS
    WTF, why can’t I use in my comments such innocent elements as: IMG, UL, IL?

    am I supposed to think they ain’t secure, as it usually said to naive wp.com users in the forums?

  3. that girl again
    Posted December 7, 2006 at 16:08 | Permalink

    I am sad. I wanted to be the first wordpress.com dissident ;)

    and, btw, I saw enough arbitrary deletions when Matt was still active in the .org forums for me to have no trouble at all believing you were blocked from the forums here.

  4. Matt
    Posted December 7, 2006 at 17:01 | Permalink

    While suspecting we have nothing better to do than ban people from the forums is interesting, what actually happened is last night there was a bug which messed up about 13k accounts. Because of caching it may have manifested itself at different times for different people. Before it was fixed, none of those people could log in or do anything. You can see ample evidence of this on the forums.

  5. options
    Posted December 8, 2006 at 17:57 | Permalink

    hello, that girl again!

    don’t be sad, after such a successful fixing of a manifestation you still have a chance to be the 1st wp.com dissident. but mind it may cause a bug which may mess up many of user’s accounts — mean there are other people who may get in trouble.

    see even just software protests against my foolish words by such an unexpected way!

  6. options
    Posted December 8, 2006 at 19:09 | Permalink

    hello, matt!

    I am really glad you’ve managed to fix a bug and recover so many accounts including mine and I also appreciate taking your time to inform me about the issue by leaving a comment on this blog.

    while, admittedly, my first reaction on the bug was sort of histeroid and paranoid at the same time, it wasn’t that hard to imagine myself being suddenly banned after unexpected closing (and kind of hiding) rather calm forum thread, where folks was just sharing ideas on possible ways of resolving an issue with ‘Global Tags’.

    especially since there were all of signs: I can’t post to the forum (but can see that other can), I can’t log in and my profile does not exist anymore (but other’s does still) and finally the more so as all content of my posts attributed to Anonymous/Unregistered. and besides, at the same time I could post/login to this blog (what I should say rather puzzled me) which means that only forum account of mine is deleted.

    what would you think about all that being in my shoes?

    PS
    and by the way, searching a forum for a login term gives me the only recent topic with my own reply to it — i.e. before the ‘bug’.

    is it possibly because all those 13K users still can’t login to the forums/successfully used ‘Feedback’ form, or due to the fact their resolved forum posts were Closed ==> Hidden, so I can’t see that ample evidence like with “Category – Clobal Tags” topic which is not shown in the list of last forum posts anymore since it’s been closed (at least I could not find it by just browsing forum list pages)?

    PPS
    Akismet didn’t like this comment ;-)

  7. Komeddyk
    Posted March 7, 2007 at 22:59 | Permalink

    Somebody using pheromons to attract women, whether is real it?
    Where they can be got?

  8. options
    Posted March 8, 2007 at 01:58 | Permalink

    “Many commercially-available substances are advertised using claims that the products contain human sexual pheromones and can act as an aphrodisiac. These often lack credibility due to an excessive marketing of pheromones by unsolicited e-mail. Despite claims to the contrary, no defined pheromonal substance has ever been demonstrated to directly influence human behaviour in a peer reviewed, published study.”

    however, according to the latest sudies in this field like:

    Smelling a Single Component of Male Sweat Alters Levels of Cortisol in Women

    Rodents use chemosignals to alter endocrine balance in conspecifics. Although responses to human sweat suggest a similar mechanism in humans, no particular component of human sweat capable of altering endocrine balance in conspecifics has yet been isolated and identified. Here, we measured salivary levels of the hormone cortisol in women after smelling pure androstadienone (4,16-androstadien-3-one), a molecule present in the sweat of men that has been suggested as a chemosignal in humans. We found that merely smelling androstadienone maintained significantly higher levels of the hormone cortisol in women. These results suggest that, like rodents, humans can influence the hormonal balance of conspecifics through chemosignals. Critically, this study identified a single component of sweat, androstadienone, as capable of exerting such influence. This result points to a potential role for synthetic human chemosignals in clinical applications.

    where to get them? it’s really easy — just ask Noam Sobel from Weizmann Institute of Science, Rehovot 76100, Israel

    suggested reading:

    “The Restaurant at the End of the Universe” by
    Douglas Adams

    Their journey northwards brought them into steep mountainous terrain of breathtak-ing sweep and beauty. The vast, jagged, snow covered peaks ravished their senses. The cold began to bite into their bones.

    They wrapped themselves in animal skins and furs which Ford Prefect acquired by a technique he once learned from a couple of ex-Pralite monks running a Mind-Surfing re-sort in the Hills of Hunian.
    The galaxy is littered with ex-Pralite monks, all on the make, because the mental con-trol techniques the Order have evolved as a form of devotional discipline are, frankly, sensational—and extraordinary numbers of monks leave the Order just after they have finished their devotional training and just before they take their final vows to stay locked in small metal boxes for the rest of their lives.

    Ford’s technique seemed to consist mainly of standing still for a while and smiling.
    After a while an animal—a deer perhaps—would appear from out of the trees and watch him cautiously. Ford would continue to smile at it, his eyes would soften and shine, and he would seem to radiate a deep and universal love, a love which reached out to embrace all of creation. A wonderful quietness would descend on the surrounding coun-tryside, peaceful and serene, emanating from this transfigured man. Slowly the deer would approach, step by step, until it was almost nuzzling him, whereupon Ford Prefect would reach out to it and break its neck.

    “Pheromone control,” he said it was, “you just have to know how to generate the right smell.”

  9. Suewhienuit
    Posted December 5, 2007 at 01:10 | Permalink

    What is the Dejа vu? What is this fleeting imprinted in the memory?

    P.S. Please administrator options.wordpress.com. If the thread is not to be in category этот, I ask you to move my thread to the correct category.

  10. options
    Posted December 5, 2007 at 01:58 | Permalink

    huh? sorry, I don’t quite get what you mean.

    do you really want to ask me what’s a déjà vu?

    actually, I’ve got a special contact form at the http://options.wordpress.com/feedback/

    if you’d like to ask me something privately, then, please, comment there — it won’t be published.

    otherwise, please, be more specific and comment wherever you think it’s apropriate.

  11. Suewhienuit
    Posted December 5, 2007 at 11:50 | Permalink

    First touch with the girlfriend in a live, after a while, through ICQ. Today met, and I felt the inability to talk with her on all topics, be open. Like komok in the throat, once tried to have intimate relations on the subject, immediately zamolkal. Yes, and she could not say anything wing.
    Why, Internet communication allows more freedom than the real one? Perhaps some blame my fear, or the ability to label themselves in the Internet masks, I do not know. What do you think about this?

    P.S. Please administrator options.wordpress.com. If the thread is not to be in category this, I ask you to move my thread to the correct category.

  12. options
    Posted December 5, 2007 at 15:06 | Permalink

    I’m sorry if you’re a real human, but just to make sure that I’m not talking with a bot please tell me:

    what colours the roses and the violets respectively are?


One Trackback/Pingback

  1. By “Pheromone control,” he said it was, “you just have to know how to generate the right smell.” « JAWW (beta) on March 8, 2007 at 03:17

    [...] Stupidity, People — options @ 03:17 did someone receive an absolutely unrelated to the post topic spam comment of the following content (original author’s orthography and syntax are [...]