Fail Blog

I’ve already reported about the poor web site management happening at help.com (see “CBS / Viacom Website Moderator: “I’m not going to close this post. If you feel insulted – leave”“) — here is another example. The moderators are now breaking their own terms of service and the site management is allowing moderators to delete user accounts of users they do not like.

The following webpage has also been deleted on the site, but may still be available via Google’s cache (just try searching for the quoted title of the post, and then click on “Cached”):

“I still think it’s wrong for moderators to delete users“

(the user account “regularguy” as well as the post about a Harvard Business Review article ["How to Make Solving Problems Fun"] the user had quoted, described and linked to in a post were all deleted within less than 1 hour by the help.com site moderators).

Please keep in mind that a large percentage of the users reach this website by typing nothing other than “help” or “help me” into their browser or search engine — basically: predominantly suicidal teenagers and/or people suffering from severe depression, unemployment, home foreclosures, complete bankruptcy, etc.

There have been several cases in which bullied users of the website have actually committed suicide. How long will this incredibly poor state be allowed to continue?!?

Posted by New Media Works from Paid Content Market

Ditzy
Ventura, CA, US | 12 hours, 21 minutes ago (3 days, 14 hours after post)

I’m not going to close this post. If you feel insulted – leave -

Cbubble is entitled to a rant session. This is her post and you guys are on it. If anything I should be paying attention to her reports – but for some reason she never reports the insults that get thrown at her.

I will ask ya’ll to stop throwing the insults. This isn’t what Help is about.

Cbubble has been given the reasons for her temporary ban (time-out) She went against what was asked of her by a Moderator. To stay away from two users posts who cannot hack her straight forward and blunt help.
Ditz(Mod)

.

Guess some people really do have thicker skin. This is after-all still the interwebz. Expect to get your feelings hurt.

Good bye Courty.
Ditz(Probably non-friend by now)

My comment: Isn’t the idea of a moderator supposed to be that they practice moderation?

Seems to me like a major fail — maybe not an epic fail, but it seems to be quite close….

Posted by New Media Works from Free Advice Column

IMHO: That should not be the case.

You should value your own ideas and goals at least as much as the ideas and goals of the people in your community / communities.

In other words: For each time you ask “what do others think about X?” you should also be certain to ask “what do I think about X?”

If you have no opinion of your own, then you have a problem with your self worth.

If others wish to call your opinion wrong or invalid, then that is OK.

If, however, they do so but cannot (or are unwilling to) explain their reasoning, then they have a problem.

Do you want / need to solve other people’s problems?

Maybe not — but if you do, then it might be a good idea to ask them if they would like your help or not. If they do not appreciate your offer to help, then it will probably be a waste of time.

Posted by New Media Works from Free Advice Column

I was startled last week when Mr. Obama, in an interview with Bloomberg News, questioned the case for limiting financial-sector pay: “Why is it,” he asked, “that we’re going to cap executive compensation for Wall Street bankers but not Silicon Valley entrepreneurs or N.F.L. football players?”

That’s an astonishing remark — and not just because the National Football League does, in fact, have pay caps. Tech firms don’t crash the whole world’s operating system when they go bankrupt; quarterbacks who make too many risky passes don’t have to be rescued with hundred-billion-dollar bailouts. Banking is a special case — and the president is surely smart enough to know that.

All I can think is that this was another example of something we’ve seen before: Mr. Obama’s visceral reluctance to engage in anything that resembles populist rhetoric. And that’s something he needs to get over.

Perhaps one way to regulate the financial industry would be to limit the number of transactions — or perhaps to have a “sliding scale” for transaction costs, such that the first million transactions are cheap, the next million a little more expensive, and so on.

Such a scheme would mitigate against institutions becoming too large (i.e. “too big to fail“).

Likewise, all transactions could be held for a set period of time before clearing (perhaps 60 seconds or so), such that transactions that cancel each other out within this time frame would not result in any actual activity whatsoever.

Again: mitigating against super-computer powered arbitration and an overemphasis on hedge-betting.

But these are just random thoughts (not really thought through at all) — any other ideas?

Posted by New Media Works from organizers.at Work: Newspapers’ Views + Opinions = Regulation of Information about Jobs + Businesses + Homes + Money + People + Issues