Since a lot of people online seem to live to yell “gotcha!”, I’d better come clean on this, yes, I’ve very slightly altered the text of a comment posted by Rich, removing the https from an url in his comment, and the text of a comment I tried to post, removing the http from a different url. This is because before I did so, I found that I couldn’t get links on the posts in which these comments are located to open in new windows, and that failure was likely to make navigation a problem for visitors. This seems to be a continuing problem on this blog, with the windows failing to so open in the links to the screenshots you saw on Imageshack. Imageshack won’t let me put code onto the pages for the images, so there would have been no way for the visitor to return, other than by backing up, something that tends to be associated with long delays. Most annoying for the reader.
I would have written to Tumblr about this, but on going to “help” found nothing but a search form for a collection of documents, none of which are likely to help, because this problem is taking place at their end - assuming that they would consider this to be a problem. A loud and mouthy contingent exists, of people who feel that having links open in new windows should be a capital offense, and they never seem to tire of screaming until they are given what they want. So maybe this bug is a feature? Either way, I did what seemed to be needed. Mea Culpa. I’d fall on my sword in the morning, as any decent soul would do over such a transgression, but on consulting the shulhan arukh, found that this would be frowned on by the rabbis, and you know how people will talk. What can one do, but soldier on?
- J. Dunphy
No, it’s not about an attempt to destroy Posterous. Not yet, at any rate. It is about an attempt to keep Posterous honest, and call the company’s and the public’s attention to the situation when their employees are out of line, or doing a bad job. How that company responds to that information is up to it. What is not up to the company, and should not be up to the company, is how we (their past, present and prospective users) respond to their response, which is why this subject needs to be talked about in a location where Posterous has no editorial control.
The problems mention in this post - these and more - arose after Posterous rushed what another user aptly called “an alpha level release”, inflicting it on all of their users, seemingly just so that they could issue a press release and talk about their exciting new product. From a user’s point of view, the only thing that changed was that, for a while, one couldn’t edit one’s static pages or the links in one’s sidebar, or even find the management panel for one’s account, leaving one unable to do much with one’s account, other than stare at an almost empty virtual workspace while marveling at the stupidity of some very well known bloggers, as they publicly praised Posterous for having broken its own system (and having then left it broken for the next few days). ”So bold, so innovative!”, they said. “So suggestible”, I though, wondering if these people ever did anything other than reprint the press releases that the providers sent them. Did they ever try these “bold and innovative” products for themselves, to see whether or not they even worked, which this one did not?
The response of the company was to have the company whore (also known as their Vice President of Marketing and Business Development) try to spin utter, disastrous failure as a triumphant success. In this post, you saw a link to a bit of creative artwork he shared with everybody, a clearly doctored screenshot created to leave those examining the record, at a later did, with the illusion that one could toggle one’s workspace into something usable around this time. When I responded with screenshots that showed that Rich was not telling the truth, and that our workspaces did not, in fact, have the set up he claimed that they did, he responded by blocking my comment, and then acting, as I said, as if I had been reluctant to share the screenshots I had mentioned, and he were actively seeking out that which he had kept others from seeing.
While I’m not prepared, at this point, to say that it’s time to abandon Posterous, I will say that the time has come for Posterous to abandon Mr. Pearson, or accept the damage to their corporate reputation, should they not. The man has, demonstrably, engaged in fraud while acting on the company’s behalf. No, this is not even close to being unheard of in the industry, but then, the industry’s reputation has never been good. Posterous, on the other hand, seems to want a good reputation, to be seen as being an honest and conscientious company determined to do right by its users.
Let’s see if they deserve that reputation, and then, for better or for worse, give them some of the publicity that they deserve. As I’ve said elsewhere, in a comment that might or might not ever been seen by the general public, this is a potentially multi-writer blog: I am looking for other contributers. What I am not looking for is shills for or fanboys of Posterous, both of whom I’ll toss off of this blog without a second thought or any misplaced sense of guilt. As the saying goes, “I don’t need to give equal time because I am equal time” - the shills and the fanboys can already be heard on the company blog.
The rest of us are the ones who need somewhere to talk, and maybe this blog can be one such place - one among many, eventually, I hope.
Posted by: J. Dunphy
Note to readers of this very new blog: what follows is a comment I posted to the post “Woo-hoo! Introducing Posterous Spaces!” on the Posterous company blog. This one did, in fact, appear publicly, after some of its predecessors were blocked.
Some comments that seemed to have been “lost”, after I posted them to your blog, last night …
1. Just tried the new Posterous spaces, and I hate it, with good reason. I just tried editing a link to one of the copies of the homepage for my blog, having relocated that page, and found that I could not do so in either Internet Explorer or Firefox. I would click on edit, and nothing would happen, so thanks to Posterous (and a not very professional homepage hosting service), I now have a link to nowhere that I can’t fix. That which worked reasonably well, now doesn’t work at all.
This is a cliche for a reason: “If it isn’t broken, please don’t fix it” You guys went into the system and moved stuff around, apparently for the sake of being able to do a press release, and you broke stuff. This is not cool. This is a real headache for the users, and if the marketing people are telling you that this is the way to get users interested in your service, then please fire them, because this is how you drive users off, or worse, convince them that they don’t want anything to do with the Internet, because it’s too much trouble.
As a user, I have to ask - am I going to have to relocate, again, just for the sake of somebody else’s marketing ploy? Do you see why somebody might say “this is more trouble than I’m willing to put up with, just to give away content”? As a blogger, I find that I’m spending more time cleaning up other people’s messes than I’m getting to spend doing any actual blogging, just because people in the industry really seem to enjoy acting like absolute, total … richards. Think about it. What’s the nickname for Richard? Yes, they’ve been acting like richardheads, and it would be so nice to be able to blog in a place where the staff did otherwise. A breath of fresh air, really.
Please, be bold. Break new ground by acting like your users’ time is worth something. Techcrunch might not sing your praises if you do so, but we will.
Honest.
2. This gets better.
You have an error message indicating that while you’re working “very hard” to support Internet Explorer, you’d like us to use another browser. As I said, I tried Firefox, and noticed something delightful.
There was no chain of visible links that would take me to blog management for my already existing blog. The only way I could get there was to go into Internet Explorer, find that url for blog management will in that forbidden browser, cut and paste the url into the address bar in Firefox, and then wonder at the pointlessness of the whole effort, because I still couldn’t edit any links, or create any new links.
How does anybody seriously argue that this is a good development? What’s a user supposed to do when links in the sidebar need to be updated?
Posted by: J. Dunphy
Note to readers of this very new blog: what follows is a comment I’ve posted to the post “Woo-hoo! Introducing Posterous Spaces!” on the Posterous company blog.
@Rich Pearson: You write
“this seems like a bug. Can you please send in the screenshots to help@posterous.com so we can understand what is going on and fix it “
Or, Rich, I could post them in public, as I did two days ago, only to find that you had blocked the comment with the links from appearing, inspiring me to create a whole new blog, in honor of this action. Here’s the url for the post on the new blog, with the links you kept people from seeing two days ago
posterousness.tumblr.com/post/10281919926/rich-pearson-is-heard-from-or-posterous-post
The new blog is called “Posterous Watch”. I’m thinking of subtitling it “The House that Rich Built” - do you think that would be a good subtitle? The potentially multi-author blog will be focused on Posterous’ less than glorious moments, of which this surely was one, and would not even exist, but for your conduct as you moderated the comments on this post.
You seem determined to shape what is now not a very favorable consensus about the new release into something more to your liking by choosing who can be heard and who can not, and then counting on the herd mentality to kick in after you create the illusion that most of the users were happy with what just happened. This is highly dishonest, not because you’ve engaged in comment moderation, but because you’ve done so without admitting that you’ve done so, creating the illusion that we’ve been having a free and open discussion, when, in fact, you’ve allowed nothing of the sort to take place.
Unfortunately for you, I was seeing a modestly respectable flow of traffic each year before I hooked up with Posterous. Only a few hundred thousand hits per year, which isn’t enough to make me a major presence, to be sure, but it’s enough to get honest rumors circulating. I’ll repost that comment you tried to bury - the most recent one of mine that you tried to bury, that is. Bury this one, too, if you wish. It will be posted publicly to that new blog, which I will be linking to from my other pages, extensively. It will be seen, and in the end, you will accomplish nothing by this crude attempt to control the discussion other than making yourself and your company look sleazy in the eyes of anybody with so much as an ounce of common sense.
—————————
The blocked comment
—————————
The screenshots I referred to … What I’m seeing in my account:
imageshack.us/photo/my-images/690/posterousspacesscreensh.jpg
imageshack.us/photo/my-images/155/posterousspacesscreensh.jpg
What I saw over on skitch
imageshack.us/photo/my-images/84/posterousspacesscreensh.jpg
and what was to be seen at the bottom of this page, when I posted my previous remark (which still hasn’t appeared on the page), to show that I did screenshot the page that Rich linked to
imageshack.us/photo/my-images/823/posterousspacesscreensh.jpg
Posted by: J. Dunphy
(Note: this originally appeared as a post on a blog of mine hosted on Posterous, dated September 15, 2011) Continuing from my previous post …
Note: As I’m editing this, I find that the system is removing the links which I’m entering for some reason. No problem, really - you can see an unmangled version of this post here, on the mirror to this blog hosted on what (at the moment) would appear to be the far superior Typepad. (Update to note - replacing the imageshack urls with shortened urls, created on tinyurl.com, ig.gd, bit.ly and ow.ly, and removing the http from the highlighted text in the link, seems to have solved the problem, for now)
A day later, some of the functionality has returned, after Posterous’ ill advised decision to mangle its own system, for the sake of being able to do a press release, but that functionality is far from being back to normal. The navigational problems mentioned yesterday remain in place, unresolved. But this is not to say that Posterous and Rich Peason have decided to do nothing about them. Far from it. Rich and company appear to have done a creative artwork, an alleged screenshot that supposedly showed how easily one could find one’s way to one’s own blog in the new system, something which, if you recall, many of us found that we couldn’t do in Firefox, on this system that now carried a publicly posted warning against the use of Internet Explorer, which was said to not be supported by Posterous at that time. Mr. Pearson wrote
Just a quick update that we rolled out the first of a series of fixes to make it easier to manage posts. The screenshot below show the default “list view” that now appears for all the Spaces that you own or contribute to. Drafts will appear at the top of this list as will comments and those that need moderation. On the right, you can see a familiar way of editing and deleting posts. We’re still working on the ability to tag and autopost from this view as well. On the top right, you’ll see the ability to switch between the list view (the one we just added) and the expanded view (the old one). skitch.com/suyashsonwalkar/f3b96/posterous-spaces More to come to make tagging, auto-posting and adding/editing pages
I found this a little odd, and replied with a few brief comments, all but one of which were blocked by whoever was watching the company blog at the time.
(Note 1) Looking at the two pages on which I find a “create a post” button, I see nothing that looks at all like what was posted over on skitch. I’m screenshotting the top of those pages, now.
(Note 2) “Looking at the two pages on which I find a “create a post” button, I see nothing that looks at all like what was posted over on skitch. I’m screenshotting the top of those pages, now.” And now I’ve screenshotted the bottom of this page, and the top of the page at skitch, for later documentation.
(Note 3) The screenshots I referred to … What I’m seeing in my account:
imageshack.us/photo/my-images/690/posterousspacesscreensh.jpg
imageshack.us/photo/my-images/155/posterousspacesscreensh.jpg
What I saw over on skitch
imageshack.us/photo/my-images/84/posterousspacesscreensh.jpg
and what was to be seen at the bottom of this page, when I posted my previous remark (which still hasn’t appeared on the page), to show that I did screenshot the page that Rich linked to
imageshack.us/photo/my-images/823/posterousspacesscreensh.jpg
Click on each of the images at the other end of each of the links, and you’ll see an enlargement of the image. There would seem to be a little bit of a discrepancy between what Rich is showing, and what I can see on my own account. I was wondering if Rich could explain that.
Only the comment marked “note 2” in the above list was approved, Rich, or whoever was handling the comments for the post creating the illusion that I had talked about taking the screenshots without posting any such screenshots, publicly. Having then acted to keep the general public from seeing something that really didn’t support what he was saying, Pearson then acted as if he were actively seeking that which he had just hidden.
this seems like a bug. Can you please send in the screenshots to help@posterous.com so we can understand what is going on and fix it
Or, Rich, you could just follow the links in the post which you just blocked, and see those screenshots instantly, but that’s not really the point, is it? The point of this is to get me to take this to private e-mail, instead of discussing this out in public, where the discussion is making the company look almost as bad as it has been. Lying about the capabilities of a rightly criticised system, and then blocking the evidence that one has done so, for the sake of manipulating public opinion? That’s terrible - not completely unexpected in this industry, any more, but still terrible. So, whether Pearson likes it or not, I’m going to put those screenshots out where everybody can see them, because while this is, perhaps, not the greatest scandal of our age, it remains a moral issue. One simply should not do business in that way.
And sunlight remains the best disinfectant.
(This post was originally published on a blog of mine hosted on Posterous, Sept 14 2011; I have no plans of shutting this blog down, at present)
I’m also considering the possibility of shutting down this blog. As I wrote in a comment on the company blog, which Rich has decided to not let you see
“As a user, I have to ask - am I going to have to relocate, again, just for the sake of somebody else’s marketing ploy? Do you see why somebody might say “this is more trouble than I’m willing to put up with, just to give away content”? As a blogger, I find that I’m spending more time cleaning up other people’s messes than I’m getting to spend doing any actual blogging, just because people in the industry really seem to enjoy acting like absolute, total … richards. Think about it. What’s the nickname for Richard? Yes, they’ve been acting like richardheads, and it would be so nice to be able to blog in a place where the staff did otherwise. A breath of fresh air, really.
Please, be bold. Break new ground by acting like your users’ time is worth something. Techcrunch might not sing your praises if you do so, but we will. Honest.”
You know, I’m not being paid to write this thing. You might notice that the link to the copy of the blog homepage at 001webs.com is dead. As you can see by following the link to the other copy of said homepage at scriptmania, this is not because of any offensive content on that homepage. Said page is gone because 001webs is run incompetently, and the company has lost my homepage over and over and over, forcing me to write to them about this problem and re-upload the same pages, over and over and over. Eventually, I decided that I’d had enough, went looking for a new provider, and found one. I created a new page at this location, hoping that the url would not prove to be ironic.
I then wrote to my former provider, and got this response from the owner
don’t really understand why you took this personally, you did so from the start.
It’s a struggle for us to fight all the spammers that sign up. We have people trained to delete them and only them, it seems that somewhere something is not yet clicking as it should.
001Webs Admin”
Uh, huh. How about because you gave me your word that you were going to put an end to these deletions, and we are now on letter 18 in this conversation, Cristian? Meaning that I had to resurrect my site or ask you to resurrect it, how many times? How much patience is enough, and have you ever heard of a saying that ran something like “a man is as good as his word”? Note the unapologetic attitude. I could rebuild my site at the old location, again, and it would just vanish, again, so why bother?
Having created the new homepage, I then set out to update the appropriate links, replacing the url for the old (and now non-existent) blog homepage on 001webs with the url for its replacement, and found myself thwarted by the system on Posterous as I tried to do so. Please remember that name, if you’re reading this, because I wouldn’t want to foster any misunderstandings - the system at Typepad, where the twin to this blog is to be found, worked wonderfully, as it almost always seems to. The only place where I had the problem I’m about to discuss was at Posterous, and Posterous wasn’t about to let me talk about the problem on the company blog.
“I found a replacement service, created a replacement homepage, and then tried to realign my links. I succeeded in this in every location except for one: Posterous. I found that your system won’t let me edit the links in my blog sidebar, either in Internet Explorer or in Firefox, forcing me to leave a link in place that goes nowhere. Better still, when I go directly to the posterous homepage in Firefox, while logged in, I find no sign of a path to the blog management page. Navigation has gone from being difficult, to being a nightmare, with nothing but frustration waiting for the user who manages to find his way through the maze you’ve made of our control panels. Just finding the button needed to make a new post took a lot of looking through a not at all intuitive interface.”
Just one of a number of comments I’ve posted about the problem, which the company has opted to keep the public from being able to see, including this one
“As a user, I have to ask - am I going to have to relocate, again, just for the sake of somebody else’s marketing ploy? Do you see why somebody might say “this is more trouble than I’m willing to put up with, just to give away content”? As a blogger, I find that I’m spending more time cleaning up other people’s messes than I’m getting to spend doing any actual blogging, just because people in the industry really seem to enjoy acting like absolute, total … richards. Think about it. What’s the nickname for Richard? Yes, they’ve been acting like richardheads, and it would be so nice to be able to blog in a place where the staff did otherwise. A breath of fresh air, really.
Please, be bold. Break new ground by acting like your users’ time is worth something. Techcrunch might not sing your praises if you do so, but we will. Honest.”
These are excerpts. I held onto the entirety of my comments, which I’ll repost in another location, later (but not much later), but yes, this sums up the problem. I’m spending so much time dealing with the drama and insanity of the companies that I’m dealing with, that I find that I have little time left to do any blogging, which is what I’m putting up with the drama to do, in the first place. As I wrote in response to somebody we all know and love, over on the company blog
“Oh, and Rich …
I notice that you commented an hour ago, meaning that there has been time for my earlier remarks to be seen and processed. You seem to be under the impression that you’ll be able to keep them from being seen.
In this, you are quite sadly mistaken. I’ll just post them elsewhere, as an illustration of the way in which Posterous has engaged in censorship on its company blog in order to stifle criticism of what is obviously a marketing driven move that has served its user base poorly. Hype is no substitute for functionality.”
(No, this blog is not the location I was referring to) How crazy is it, to destroy basic functionality, just in order to be able to do a press release? As things are, on these terms, at the very least, I have to cut all links to this blog, and let it drift, because otherwise, I’m left with webring navigability issues.
So, while I’m thinking of finding a replacement for this blog, I’m also thinking of just giving up. Between having to start again from scratch, because a company will just delete its entire service without telling its users, first (“tee hee hee!”), or having to do damage control on my reputation because some admin - the people who are supposed to maintain some level of sanity - is off spreading rumors in retaliation for my evil decision to wear a blue shirt on a wednesday, or whatever one of these guys has decided to get worked up over - I don’t have time to do what I’m here to do. That’s why there are as few posts on this blog as there are, and that’s ridiculous. There should be some reasonable expectation of professionalism when dealing with supposed professionals, and online, no such level ever seems to be met.
There are a few places where, to some extent, those expectations are being met. Maybe, what I need to do is retreat to those locations, and let sites that I’ve found to be poorly served by the staff die, instead of trying to replace them, because sanity, in this industry, seems to be very much more the exception than the rule, responsibility and integrity being concepts that scarcely seem to be remembered, at all.
Posted by: J. Dunphy
I’m wondering if this blog even still functions. More about that, later - maybe here, maybe somewhere else. (Originally posted to a blog of mine on Posterous, Sept 13, 2011)
Posted by: J. Dunphy
